Obama's Latest Buck-Passing Lie
Doesn't Work Out So Swell
Ever since he entered office President Obama has shown an unusual affinity for passing the buck every time a bad policy decision comes back to try to bite him on the ass.
Let's take a trip down memory lane:
1. WHITE HOUSE GETS CAUGHT RED HANDED CHANGING IT'S PANELS REPORT ON SIX-MONTH OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING MORATORIUM:
When asked who came up with the completely unnecessary six month moratorium on offshore drilling following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Obama White House told everyone that expert panel they had convened to study the issue came up with it.
It probably never dawned on the White House that the panel would speak up and tell the truth. When it did, the Inspector General for the Interior investigated and discovered the White House had indeed changed the language of the panel's report to make it look as if the panel had recommended a six month drilling ban.
From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/11/10/10greenwire-white-house-changed-report-implying-experts-su-96097.html
The White House tampered with language in a controversial Interior Department report on its deepwater drilling moratorium, implying a group of independent scientists supported language recommending the ban, according to the agency's watchdog.
Interior's inspector general said edits made by the White House to the Interior report "led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed by the experts."
At issue is the May 27 report on oil and gas drilling safety that was compiled at President Obama's request after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, sparking the nation's worst oil spill. The report made several recommendations for safety improvements at offshore drilling rigs and called for the six-month ban on deepwater drilling and permitting.
To escape any political blowback from it's own policy decisions, Obama & Co. decided to try to foist it's decision onto the panel it convened. They would repeat this pattern constantly over the next several years.
2. WHITE HOUSE LIES ABOUT IT'S ROLE IN DECIDING TO STRIP AUTO WORKERS OF THEIR PENSIONS AND OTHER BENEFITS BY CLAIMING THE COMPANY MANAGING THE GM BANKRUPTCY MADE THAT DECISION
The first necessary step of any attempt to avoid bankruptcy is to shed debt. Which the White House did with GM by shedding debt owed to thousands of auto workers in the form of their pensions and benefits accumulated over the years of their labor. Strangely enough, many noticed that those workers for GM who were unionized were moved to the head of the line and got to keep all their pensions & bennies, and those who were not unionized ended up losing everything.
When questioned about who's idea it was to engage in such blatant favoritism, the White House claimed the company handling the auto bailout plan made that decision on it's own. Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary and other Treasury officials testified as much under oath before Congress.
And then the truth came out:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/emails-geithner-treasury-drove-cutoff-of-non-union-delphi-workers-pensions/
Once again the pattern is seen: they make a decision and then run from it, trying to point the finger of blame at someone else. They pretend to be bystanders and say "Oh hey, PBGC, really?"
3. AFTER WASTING $20 BILLION OF THE TAXPAYERS MONEY TRYING TO PROP UP FAILING GREEN TECH COMPANIES LIKE SOLYNDRA, THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS THEY ARE SIMPLY CONTINUING GEORGE W. BUSH'S LOAN POLICY.
The list of failed green tech companies is now so long it would be tedious to list them all. In a stupid attempt to dictate to the market where it should go, Obama threw away billions of taxpayer cash in risky loans to struggling - and in some cases bankrupt - green energy companies.
When the sheer number of green tech companies going under - and the amount of wasted tax dollars - became an issue, the White House tried to claim many of the loans they had made to these failing companies had actually been started under the previous President, George W. Bush.
In fact, the Bush administration had REFUSED to loan Solyndra and many of these other failing companies any money under it's green tech investment program after an analysis showed they would be bad investments.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/16/solyndra-pestered-bush-administration-over-delays-in-approving-federal-loan/
David Ploffe & other Obama political operatives attempted to spin it as if the real question was who STARTED the green tech loan program. Watch how Poltifact tries to make when the loan program started the issue, not which administration decided to hand out a loan to failing companies the other guys backed away from:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/17/david-plouffe/solyndra-loan-george-w-bush-david-plouffe/
Having wasted billions of tax payer dollars in risky investments in failing green tech companies the Bush White House had backed away from, the Obama White House then tried to pass the buck and claim this was all Bush's fault. Again, the pattern emerges: make bad decisions, the fallout shows up, claim you're just some bystander trapped by the Evil Bush.
4. WHEN THE DISASTROUS FAST & FURIOUS GUN RUNNING PROGRAM WAS REVEALED TO HAVE LET THOUSANDS OF HIGH POWERED WEAPONS WALK INTO MEXICO INTO THE HANDS OF VIOLENT DRUG CARTELS & USED IN OVER 300 MURDERS, THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE CLAIMED F&F WAS ACTUALLY BUSH'S OLD 'WIDE RECEIVER' PROGRAM WITH A NEW COAT OF PAINT ON IT.
Yes. They actually claimed this.
Here's Jake Tapper of ABC News on Obama's stunning and appalling lie:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/president-obama-falsely-claims-fast-and-furious-program-begun-under-the-previous-administration/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-20039031.html
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ATF_Report.pdf
After Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death in Arizona by a F&F gun, the ATF Agent's fears had become reality & they could no longer be silent about the program in which they had been ORDERED by their superiors to watch thousands of high powered weapons enter Mexico.
Facing a backlash for the program it had launched that didn't try to track any weapons it let into Mexico, the White House and the Holder Dept. of Justice attempted to claim F&F was the 'continuation' of a program that had started -and ended - under Bush: Operation Wide Receiver.
The problem with this claim - as I discussed at length in a blog post last year:
http://drawandstrike.blogspot.com/2012/06/stupid-new-liberal-talking-point-obamas.html
is that Operation Wide Receiver was ended soon after it started after it was clear the attempt to track the guns with GPS devices in concert with Mexican authorities was not working.
5. AFTER OUR CONSULATE IN BENGHAZI CAME UNDER ATTACK DUE TO POOR SECURITY THE WHITE HOUSE TRIED TO CHANGE IT'S STORY AND CLAIM OUR PEOPLE THERE WERE VIRTUALLY DEFENSELESS DUE TO BUDGET CUTS MADE BY CONGRESS.
Now, the White House lying about Benghazi being a terrorist attack and spending over two weeks trying to sell the idea to the country it was a 'spontaneous demonstration due to a inflammatory YouTube video' gets most of the attention on this issue, and deservedly so. You lie about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans and could have easily turned into a wholesale massacre, that's what you get.
They tried to sell an alternative narrative to reality that would let them off the hook and allow them to escape real accountability for their incompetence and almost criminal negligence. To this day the White House & State Dept. can't put forth one shred of evidence that they claim supposedly led them to go down the 'YouTube' rabbit hole for that 2 week+ period.
But another bald faced lie escaped most people's notice. Right after the Benghazi attack, State Dept. spokesperson Victoria Nuland was asked repeatedly if the consulate had been stripped of much of it's security due to budgetary concerns. She repeatedly denied this was the case.
Then when Hillary Clinton testified under oath before Congress, all of a sudden the administration was blaming lack of security for the Consulate on funding cuts.
The only problem with this is that after those funding cuts were made, the State. Dept. under Hillary Clinton apparently DID have enough $$$ to buy over $16 million worth of Kindle book readers at the outrageously inflated price of $6,600 each. Oh, and to spend $4.5 million on art to decorate offices. Because like Ambassador Stevens, when you have to run for the safe room, you want a tastefully decorated office to run through.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/state-department-had-no-for-benghazi-security-here-is-what-it-did-have-for/
Even if we BUY this lame excuse proffered by this administration, what told them to spend $20 million+ on frivolities while stripping security from one of the most dangerous postings in the world? It was KNOWN at the time our consulate was sharing Benghazi with a Al Qaeda terrorist training camp. Yes, really.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/31/exclusive-us-memo-warned-libya-consulate-couldnt-withstand-coordinated-attack/
Now we come to the latest example:
6. HAVING COME UP WITH THE SEQUESTER HIMSELF, THREATENED CONGRESS WITH A VETO IF THEY DIDN'T SEND IT TO HIM & SIGNING IT INTO LAW, OBAMA THEN LIED AND CLAIMED THE SEQUESTER WAS THE REPUBLICANS IDEA AND THEY SOMEHOW FORCED IT ON HIM.
Obama traveled the country the past 2 weeks selling the sequester as a financial Armageddon and claiming it was the Republicans idea. Not only that, Obama went on to claim that after the Republicans had FORCED him to go along with the sequester and sign it into law, they then RENEGED on the tax hikes that were part of the deal.
Bob Woodward, who was there during these negotiations two years ago, promptly called BS. Not only did he remind the rest of the MSM that seemed to have lost it's voice the previous two weeks that the sequester was Obama's idea all along, he pointed out tax hikes WEREN'T part of the deal Obama had made.
Naturally, Obama and all his cheerleaders didn't take these facts well. Tough sh*t.
So here we are, the pattern being followed again. Make a policy decision, then attempt to avoid any responsibility for it by foisting it off on someone else and demonizing them to attempt to score political capital.
People who keep wondering when Obama's gonna 'stop campaigning' are clueless. Obama's running like a mofo already for 2014 hoping he can get the House flipped and hold onto the Senate. He wants the same blank check from 2014-2016 that he mostly got from Congress from 2008-2010.
If you don't like what he's been doing lately, just wait until you see what he's like with no Congress in his way.
You can fully expect to see Obama pull his passing-the-buck shenanigans the next 2 years as he tries to position the Democrats for total control of Washington.
The question is: is he running out of time as more people start to call him out on his continual abdication of responsibility for everything he does?
2. WHITE HOUSE LIES ABOUT IT'S ROLE IN DECIDING TO STRIP AUTO WORKERS OF THEIR PENSIONS AND OTHER BENEFITS BY CLAIMING THE COMPANY MANAGING THE GM BANKRUPTCY MADE THAT DECISION
The first necessary step of any attempt to avoid bankruptcy is to shed debt. Which the White House did with GM by shedding debt owed to thousands of auto workers in the form of their pensions and benefits accumulated over the years of their labor. Strangely enough, many noticed that those workers for GM who were unionized were moved to the head of the line and got to keep all their pensions & bennies, and those who were not unionized ended up losing everything.
When questioned about who's idea it was to engage in such blatant favoritism, the White House claimed the company handling the auto bailout plan made that decision on it's own. Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary and other Treasury officials testified as much under oath before Congress.
And then the truth came out:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/emails-geithner-treasury-drove-cutoff-of-non-union-delphi-workers-pensions/
Emailsobtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company
The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.
The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those nonunion pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.
Delphi, a 13-year old company that is independent of General Motors, is one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. Twenty thousand of its workers lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi employees who were members of the United Auto Workers union saw their pensions topped off and made whole.
The White House and Treasury Department have consistently maintained that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) independently made the decision to terminate the 20,000 nonunion Delphi workers’ pension plan
Former Treasury official Matthew Feldman and former White House auto czar Ron Bloom, both key members of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry during the GM bailout, have testified under oath that the PBGC, not the administration, led the effort to terminate the nonunion Delphi workers’ pension plan.
“As a result of the Delphi Corporation bankruptcy, for example, Delphi and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation were forced to terminate Delphi’s pension plans
The emails TheDC has obtained show that the Treasury Department, not the independent PBGC, was running the show.
Once again the pattern is seen: they make a decision and then run from it, trying to point the finger of blame at someone else. They pretend to be bystanders and say "Oh hey, PBGC, really?"
3. AFTER WASTING $20 BILLION OF THE TAXPAYERS MONEY TRYING TO PROP UP FAILING GREEN TECH COMPANIES LIKE SOLYNDRA, THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS THEY ARE SIMPLY CONTINUING GEORGE W. BUSH'S LOAN POLICY.
The list of failed green tech companies is now so long it would be tedious to list them all. In a stupid attempt to dictate to the market where it should go, Obama threw away billions of taxpayer cash in risky loans to struggling - and in some cases bankrupt - green energy companies.
When the sheer number of green tech companies going under - and the amount of wasted tax dollars - became an issue, the White House tried to claim many of the loans they had made to these failing companies had actually been started under the previous President, George W. Bush.
In fact, the Bush administration had REFUSED to loan Solyndra and many of these other failing companies any money under it's green tech investment program after an analysis showed they would be bad investments.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/16/solyndra-pestered-bush-administration-over-delays-in-approving-federal-loan/
David Ploffe & other Obama political operatives attempted to spin it as if the real question was who STARTED the green tech loan program. Watch how Poltifact tries to make when the loan program started the issue, not which administration decided to hand out a loan to failing companies the other guys backed away from:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/17/david-plouffe/solyndra-loan-george-w-bush-david-plouffe/
Having wasted billions of tax payer dollars in risky investments in failing green tech companies the Bush White House had backed away from, the Obama White House then tried to pass the buck and claim this was all Bush's fault. Again, the pattern emerges: make bad decisions, the fallout shows up, claim you're just some bystander trapped by the Evil Bush.
4. WHEN THE DISASTROUS FAST & FURIOUS GUN RUNNING PROGRAM WAS REVEALED TO HAVE LET THOUSANDS OF HIGH POWERED WEAPONS WALK INTO MEXICO INTO THE HANDS OF VIOLENT DRUG CARTELS & USED IN OVER 300 MURDERS, THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE CLAIMED F&F WAS ACTUALLY BUSH'S OLD 'WIDE RECEIVER' PROGRAM WITH A NEW COAT OF PAINT ON IT.
Yes. They actually claimed this.
Here's Jake Tapper of ABC News on Obama's stunning and appalling lie:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/president-obama-falsely-claims-fast-and-furious-program-begun-under-the-previous-administration/
Asked about the Fast and Furious program at the Univision forum on Thursday, President Obama falsely claimed that the program began under President George W. Bush.
“I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration,” the president said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable.”
In actuality, the Fast and Furious program was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.
Previous programs involving ATF agents allowing guns to “walk” across the border so as to trace them were run during the Bush presidency, but not this particular “field-initiated program.”In Operation Fast & Furious, there WAS no attempt to track the guns after they crossed the border. We know this because it was their being ORDERED not to track the weapons that led to the five ATF whistle blowers coming forward in the first place.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-20039031.html
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ATF_Report.pdf
After Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death in Arizona by a F&F gun, the ATF Agent's fears had become reality & they could no longer be silent about the program in which they had been ORDERED by their superiors to watch thousands of high powered weapons enter Mexico.
Facing a backlash for the program it had launched that didn't try to track any weapons it let into Mexico, the White House and the Holder Dept. of Justice attempted to claim F&F was the 'continuation' of a program that had started -and ended - under Bush: Operation Wide Receiver.
The problem with this claim - as I discussed at length in a blog post last year:
http://drawandstrike.blogspot.com/2012/06/stupid-new-liberal-talking-point-obamas.html
is that Operation Wide Receiver was ended soon after it started after it was clear the attempt to track the guns with GPS devices in concert with Mexican authorities was not working.
Now, the White House lying about Benghazi being a terrorist attack and spending over two weeks trying to sell the idea to the country it was a 'spontaneous demonstration due to a inflammatory YouTube video' gets most of the attention on this issue, and deservedly so. You lie about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans and could have easily turned into a wholesale massacre, that's what you get.
They tried to sell an alternative narrative to reality that would let them off the hook and allow them to escape real accountability for their incompetence and almost criminal negligence. To this day the White House & State Dept. can't put forth one shred of evidence that they claim supposedly led them to go down the 'YouTube' rabbit hole for that 2 week+ period.
But another bald faced lie escaped most people's notice. Right after the Benghazi attack, State Dept. spokesperson Victoria Nuland was asked repeatedly if the consulate had been stripped of much of it's security due to budgetary concerns. She repeatedly denied this was the case.
Then when Hillary Clinton testified under oath before Congress, all of a sudden the administration was blaming lack of security for the Consulate on funding cuts.
The only problem with this is that after those funding cuts were made, the State. Dept. under Hillary Clinton apparently DID have enough $$$ to buy over $16 million worth of Kindle book readers at the outrageously inflated price of $6,600 each. Oh, and to spend $4.5 million on art to decorate offices. Because like Ambassador Stevens, when you have to run for the safe room, you want a tastefully decorated office to run through.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/state-department-had-no-for-benghazi-security-here-is-what-it-did-have-for/
Even if we BUY this lame excuse proffered by this administration, what told them to spend $20 million+ on frivolities while stripping security from one of the most dangerous postings in the world? It was KNOWN at the time our consulate was sharing Benghazi with a Al Qaeda terrorist training camp. Yes, really.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/31/exclusive-us-memo-warned-libya-consulate-couldnt-withstand-coordinated-attack/
Now we come to the latest example:
6. HAVING COME UP WITH THE SEQUESTER HIMSELF, THREATENED CONGRESS WITH A VETO IF THEY DIDN'T SEND IT TO HIM & SIGNING IT INTO LAW, OBAMA THEN LIED AND CLAIMED THE SEQUESTER WAS THE REPUBLICANS IDEA AND THEY SOMEHOW FORCED IT ON HIM.
Obama traveled the country the past 2 weeks selling the sequester as a financial Armageddon and claiming it was the Republicans idea. Not only that, Obama went on to claim that after the Republicans had FORCED him to go along with the sequester and sign it into law, they then RENEGED on the tax hikes that were part of the deal.
Bob Woodward, who was there during these negotiations two years ago, promptly called BS. Not only did he remind the rest of the MSM that seemed to have lost it's voice the previous two weeks that the sequester was Obama's idea all along, he pointed out tax hikes WEREN'T part of the deal Obama had made.
Naturally, Obama and all his cheerleaders didn't take these facts well. Tough sh*t.
So here we are, the pattern being followed again. Make a policy decision, then attempt to avoid any responsibility for it by foisting it off on someone else and demonizing them to attempt to score political capital.
People who keep wondering when Obama's gonna 'stop campaigning' are clueless. Obama's running like a mofo already for 2014 hoping he can get the House flipped and hold onto the Senate. He wants the same blank check from 2014-2016 that he mostly got from Congress from 2008-2010.
If you don't like what he's been doing lately, just wait until you see what he's like with no Congress in his way.
You can fully expect to see Obama pull his passing-the-buck shenanigans the next 2 years as he tries to position the Democrats for total control of Washington.
The question is: is he running out of time as more people start to call him out on his continual abdication of responsibility for everything he does?
No comments:
Post a Comment