— by Polydamas
Even before and certainly during the first term of President Barack Hussein Obama, his administration enjoyed the adulation as well as the protection of the liberal mainstream media. The complicit media uncritically brushed aside such fundamental issues of Mr. Obama’s birth certificate and his constitutional eligibility to serve as our nation’s president. There was little inquiry into the five years that young Barack Obama spent, from ages six until ten, in Jakarta, Indonesia. No other American president before him had spent his formative childhood years outside the United States and absorbed, whether consciously or subconsciously, the outlook of a foreign culture, much less one that was not favorably disposed to American values.
Even later in life, details of his college studies and even transcripts from Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School were locked away behind a veil of privacy. There was very little critical examination by the media into his belief structure and ideology. Little inquiry was made into his views on constitutional law despite his 12 years of lecturing on constitutional law at the University of Chicago. His seven years as Illinois State Senator, from 1997 to 2004, and his one term as United States Representative, from 2005 to 2008, invited minimal scrutiny by the media. Instead, favored members of the media were permitted to disseminate a much sanitized and fawning version provided to them by Barack Obama himself, members of his inner circle, and his army of media and public relations professionals.
Many of the mysteries surrounding the life of Barack Obama were undoubtedly calculated to create a candidate whose very opacity would appeal to the broadest electorate possible and would allow his voters to project onto him their own ideals and desires. The end result was that never before has so little of substance been known and so many expectations untethered to reality have been projected about the man who sought election and was, indeed, eventually elected to the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world.
The scorching spotlight brought about by recent scandals, however, are bound to shed much overdue yet very necessary light on the inner workings of the Obama administration. Even the many scores of die-hard liberal members of the media who carried water for the Obama administration and lovingly shielded it from scrutiny during his two campaigns for the presidency and during his first term in office are no longer capable of commanding the public, in a manner reminiscent of the “Wizard of Oz”, to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” The curtains concealing Washington’s own Wizard of Oz appear certain to be ripped open and the smoke and mirrors that had been employed to great success by President Obama and his administration may be finally revealed to the unsuspecting masses. All we can say here at The Cassandra Times is “we told you so” and “about time”.
If there is anything that would provoke the media into examining the misdeeds and scandals of the Obama administration, it is the Justice Department’s recent, unprecedented incursion into the domain and prerogatives of the media. In an article in Reuters, titled “Associated Press Says U.S. Government Seized Journalists’ Phone Records” and dated May 14, 2013 (http://yhoo.it/16yBo6D), the Associated Press was informed on May 10, 2013 that Justice Department seized telephone records for more than 20 home and cellular telephone lines belonging to the Associated Press, its editors, and journalists. Not only has the Justice Department failed to provide legal justification for seizing the records, Associated Press Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt correctly noted that “There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters”.
As can be expected, embattled Press Secretary Jay Carney denied any involvement by the White House. However, judging from the clouds of smoke, there must be a significant fire here and careful attention must be paid to the words of Laura Murphy, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The Obama administration has been one of the most aggressive administrations in history when it comes to going after whistleblowers, and we find their conduct highly disturbing, and this is part of a pattern”.
Now, it should be remembered that the ACLU and the Obama administration share much of the same liberal agenda. It is probable here that the Obama administration was caught red handed in a gross abuse of its power where the victims of such policies and practices are the ACLU’s traditionally protected liberal lambs and causes, namely racial and ethnic minorities, and the rights of criminals and terrorists. One thing is certain which is, if the Associated Press and the ACLU are taking on the Obama administration, the Obama honeymoon will be officially over and the media will be finally discharging its watchdog duties amidst hackneyed 1970s era cries of “the press has a right to know”.
Outspoken California Republican Representative and Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee correctly issued a statement that “Coming within a week of revelations that the White House lied to the American people about the Benghazi attacks and the IRS targeted conservative Americans for their political beliefs, Americans should take notice that top Obama Administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don’t have to answer to anyone.” Indeed, for six years, Barack Obama and his cohorts have not had to answer to anyone.
The Obama administration’s malfeasance in abandoning the lives of the American ambassador and his protectors to Al Qaeda’s Libyan terror forces on September 11, 2012 has been discussed at length in last year’s posts of The Cassandra Times. That the President and his handlers sought to lull and mesmerize the American public into a stupor a mere six weeks before the 2012 elections was very apparent even seven months ago. What was not known at the time was the length to which the Obama administration would go to intimidate and to retaliate against any dissenters and whistleblowers. What is likely to emerge from overdue scrutiny here will make the Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame scandal in the second term of President George W. Bush appear by comparison like a tea party for six-year-old girls.
As if the two scandals above were not enough, a third scandal emerged this past week that, for reasons that will become clearer after a full congressional investigation, the auditors of the Internal Revenue Service (the same compassionate government agency that has been entrusted with administering compliance with the provisions of Obamacare) have decided to target 75 conservative tax-exempt “tea party” and “patriot” organizations for extra audits and loving attention. ( http://bit.ly/10NC19O ). As George Will points out in his Washington Post opinion titled “In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate” (http://wapo.st/18GeJVc), using the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate and retaliate against political enemies was one of the articles of impeachment that was brought against President Richard M. Nixon for “acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to . . . cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”
Cognizant of the soon to emerge scandals that would envelop his administration, President Barack Obama sought to “draw the sting” last week by preemptively striking his would-be accusers and stealing a page from his Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s manual. It should be recalled that, in the late 1990s, Mrs. Clinton had claimed that the impeachment efforts against her husband President Bill Clinton were the workings of a “vast right-wing conspiracy”.
As alluded to in George Will’s opinion, in the President’s May 5, 2013 commencement address (http://b.globe.com/12HYVeu) to the graduating class of Ohio State University, Barack Obama cautioned his audience of 60,000 people that:
‘‘Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.’’
The three scandals involving dereliction of duty and abuse of power by government officials prove beyond doubt that, contrary to Barack Obama’s words, there really is a sinister entity called the government and that tyranny is, indeed, lurking just around the corner. Now, one can either rationally accept the true reality of the rising tyranny in 21st century America or be numbered among the gullible lemmings who choose to disbelieve the evidence of their own senses and minds when Barack Obama himself tells them to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
