The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Benghazi and Other ‘Concocted’ Scandals

Posted on | May 18, 2013 | 10 Comments

U.S. consulate, Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012

“Fraud flows from the top down, not the mid-level up. Mid-level officials in the White House and the State Department do not call the shots — they carry out orders.”
— Andrew McCarthy

Well, that’s just “common sense,” but what does common sense count for nowadays? In an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN Thursday, Jay Carney dismissed the Benghazi scandal as a Republican “concoction.”

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom caught JournoLister Ezra Klein offering a similar argument that these aren’t really scandals, which sounds a bit like Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” talk:

“We lied about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans, the Justice Department secretly seized phone records for the Associated Press, and the IRS used ‘inappropriate criteria’ to punish the president’s Enemies List, but these aren’t really scandals. Besides, those bitches deserved it. Shut up, Republicans.”

Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard pointed out the pervasiveness of the media’s “Not Really Scandals” meme.

As is usual when this kind of elite “consensus” groupthink agenda gets rolling, the consensus is itself cited as tautological proof that skeptics are irrational, biased and therefore untrustworthy. You’re a Flat Earther or a Tinfoil Hatter if you think there was a deliberate effort by the White House to suppress the ugly truth, or if you believe that such a cover-up would actually amount to a scandal.

“Polls show that nobody cares! Shut up, Republicans!”

But no matter what the polls say — low-information voters care more about celebrity mastectomies than about politics — it’s obvious the administration is lying about pretty much everything. For example, IRS officials tried to blame the problems on an alleged “surge” in non-profit applications that didn’t actually happen, and this bogus rationale was offered via a dishonest ruse that they lied about.

OK, so if the first public excuse was a lie,  and we then learn that this was revealed via a phony set-up question, and if every new fact we discover — “Tell us about your prayer meetings” — tends to make the situation seem worse . . . Well, what would we know if we knew everything?

We don’t know, and thus we must be cautious in asserting that we’ve found the “smoking gun” that will result in federal indictments, the resignation of a half-dozen Cabinet secretaries, perp walks for White House staffers and the Impeachment of the President.

On the other hand, when the best excuse Obamaphiles like Ashley Banfield can come up with is that the President of the United States doesn’t know anything about anything and his administration is plagued by rampant stupidity, we should probably keep asking questions.

“In the Obama era, the question isn’t whether you’re paranoid. It’s whether you’re paranoid enough.”
— Professor Glenn Reynolds

 

 


Category: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Libya, Scandal, Taxes

Comments

10 Responses to “Benghazi and Other ‘Concocted’ Scandals”

  1. Buffalobob
    May 18th, 2013 @ 4:27 pm

    Yesterday some nitwit prog suggested that IRS scandal is the Republicans fault. Because they are the ones who made the tax code so complicated.

  2. Adjoran
    May 18th, 2013 @ 5:59 pm

    The Journ-O-Listers and media sycophants are all over the place with excuses. From Carney’s “concocted” Benghazi (because it is Republicans’ fault Obama wouldn’t just tell the truth in the first place, apparently) to Obama and others blaming budget cuts to security (after sworn testimony by Obama’s State Department asserted budget problems were NOT the reason for the lax security in Libya) to claims the IRS “was just trying to do their job efficiently” because “there were so many conservative groups applying after Citizens United” (when in fact, there were more applications from liberal groups AND overall applications were DOWN from the previous year), it all just a pack of lies.

    Lies. That’s what Obama feeds us. The closest thing to the truth we have seen from Obama or most media is the claim of incompetence because the government “just so vast.”

    Heh. Why not cut it down to size, then?

  3. Impeachment Not On The Table…Yet…Maybe Never | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    May 18th, 2013 @ 6:38 pm

    […] And here’s some musings by Stacy McCain; […]

  4. Sirius U. Guise
    May 18th, 2013 @ 6:46 pm

    That Kool-Aid concoction that helps him hang on.

  5. WWII: Wartime Love Letters and Weekend Links!
    May 18th, 2013 @ 8:00 pm

    […] Other McCain has up a bunch of great blog posts including this one by Stacy: “Benghazi and Other ‘Concocted’ […]

  6. K-Bob
    May 18th, 2013 @ 8:55 pm

    It’s exactly like trying to fire a drug addict. They have an answer for everything, and every single answer is a chance to blame someone else, or some conspiracy.

  7. Teeing it up: A Round at the LINKs (Scandals edition) | SENTRY JOURNAL
    May 19th, 2013 @ 1:49 am

    […] THE OTHER McCAIN: Benghazi and Other ‘Concocted’ Scandals […]

  8. Shawny Lee
    May 19th, 2013 @ 3:04 am

    Much as I despise the term “Progressive” to describe Communists, it genuinely disgusts me every time I hear of betrayal, cowardice, deceit, fraud, callousness, depraved indifference, tyranny and treason passed off so easily as “scandal”. Men of honor and integrity who went before us damn well knew the difference.

  9. Shawny Lee
    May 19th, 2013 @ 6:49 am

    Judge Goes Nuclear On Obama: Why Do You Apologize To Muslims And Lie To Americans

  10. Bob Belvedere
    May 19th, 2013 @ 5:55 pm

    Truth is just so 1780’s – get with the times, man.