Category: Democrats

Ted Cruz: Media Acting as ‘Palace Guard’ to Protect Obama in IRS Scandal UPDATE: Tom Perez Fails to Provide Information on Bosserman’s Appointment

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday the media have failed to do their job by demanding answers in the Internal Revenue Service scandal.

“The media should hold the administration accountable,” Cruz said. Instead of acting as watchdogs, however, the media are acting as a “palace guard” protecting President Obama from scrutiny, the conservative Republican told bloggers during a conference call.

Cruz’s comments came after a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which he questioned Attorney General Eric Holder about the Justice Department’s investigation of the IRS scandal. In wake of reports that the investigation is being led by Barbara Bosserman, who donated thousands of dollars to Obama’s presidential campaigns, Cruz asked Holder: “I would call upon you to carry out the tradition of independence that attorneys general have honored that office with for centuries and protect the integrity of the Department of Justice, given the political sensitivities, given the fact that individual citizens believe they are being persecuted by the Department of Justice for partisan reasons. It would further Justice and further the integrity of the Department of Justice for you to appoint a special prosecutor with a meaningful degree of independence to investigate and find out what happened, and I would suggest that any special prosecutor should have integrity beyond reproach, and not be a major Obama donor.”

Holder answered: “I don’t think that there is a basis for us to conclude on the information as it presently exists that there is any reason for the appointment of the independent counsel. … The notion that somehow this has caused a loss of faith in this Justice Department is inconsistent with the facts.”

Holder said: “I don’t have any basis to believe that the people who engaged in this investigation are doing so in a way other than investigations are normally done. That is by looking at the facts, applying the law to those facts, and reaching the appropriate conclusion. I don’t have any basis to believe anything other than that is occurring.”

Sen. Cruz responded, “I would say a lot of American citizens have a basis to believe it, given 282 days have passed and no on has been indicted, 280 days have passed and many, if not all, of the victims have not even been interviewed. 280 days have passed and apparently the anger and outrage that both the President and you expressed has utterly disappeared. Indeed, in last night’s State of the Union address the President did not so much as mention the word ‘IRS.’ So the anger and outrage sees very little manifestation in actual action.”

Speaking to bloggers after Wednesday’s hearing, Cruz said “Holder accepted no accountability,” and said the Justice Department “has done absolutely nothing” in its investigation of the IRS scandal, which Cruz described as “abuse of power and lawlessness.”

UPDATE: In related news, on Jan. 14, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a letter to Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who in his previous job as an assistant attorney general was Barbara Bosserman’s boss at the Justice Department until July 2013.

In their letter, Issa and Jordan asked Perez to provide documents related to Bosserman’s appointment to lead the IRS investigation: “Please supply this information as soon as possible, but no later than 5:00 p.m. on January 28, 2014.”

Just checked with a source at the Oversight Committee, who reports that Perez failed to comply with Issa and Jordan’s request.

 

ObamaCare Is Doomed

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Megan McArdle recounts the basic case:

In a nutshell, Obamacare has so far fallen dramatically short of what was expected — technically, and in almost every other way. Enrollment is below expectations: According to the data we have so far, more than half of the much-touted Medicaid expansion came from people who were already eligible before the health-care law passed, and this weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that the overwhelming majority of people buying insurance through the exchanges seem to be folks who already had insurance. Coverage is less generous than many people expected, with narrower provider networks and higher deductibles. The promised $2,500 that the average family was told they could save on premiums has predictably failed to materialize. And of course, we now know that if you like your doctor and plan, there is no reason to think you can keep them. Which is one reason the law has not gotten any more popular since it passed.
The administration and its supporters have been counting on the coverage expansion to put Obamacare beyond repeal. So what if the coverage expansion is anemic, the plans bare-bones, the website sort of a disaster? It’s a foundation upon which we can build — and now that so many people have coverage, the thinking goes, Republicans will never dare to touch it. The inevitable problems can be fixed down the road.
But it’s far from clear that this is true . . .

Read the whole thing.

 

The ObamaCare ‘Death Spiral’ Debate

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ObamaCare is exactly the kind of policy failure its opponents predicted, although it has also failed in a few unpredicted ways. The only way anyone can call ObamaCare a “success” is in a political sense, i.e., it helped re-elect Obama. We might also say ObamaCare is a “success” in the sense that its unmistakable failure will likely be leveraged as an argument for a single-pay government takeover of health care in some future Democrat administration, but we have not yet reached that point. Where we are now is Ezra Klein and other liberals trying to pretend that ObamaCare’s failure is not yet certain:

Ezra Klein is back in line. The Journolist founder, who now runs Wonkblog for the Washington Post, took some flak from other left-liberal journalists last year when he acknowledged that the ObamaCare exchanges had serious technical flaws. But now, as we move into Phase 3 of the ObamaCare failure — the unraveling of its economic assumptions — Klein and his wonkblogger staff are in full denial.

James Taranto’s recounting of the arguments is amusing, with Ezra Klein in the role of the Monty Python pet shop owner who insists that the Norwegian Blue is merely “pining for the fjords.”

 


Earth Heals, Oceans Recede, So Now It’s Time to Trust President Obama, Right?

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“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
— Barack Obama, June 3, 2008

Credibility is one of those things like virginity that you either have or you don’t, and President Obama lost his long ago:

President Obama will require intelligence agencies to obtain permission from a secret court before tapping into a vast trove of telephone data, but he will leave the data in the hands of the government for now, an administration official said.

After watching Obama’s speech today, I trust him as much as I ever did, which is say, I don’t trust him at all.

 


‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran’s “Occupy NOVA” Reign Of Error Staggering To A Halt

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by Smitty

DLTDHYOTWO, Jim. It’s been a crummy 15 years I’ve lived in VA-8, and watched the country increasingly go down the tubes since the Democrat takeover of Congress in 2006, knowing that you’re a ringleader of the debacle.  I don’t mean crummy for me, personally: I’ve only endured one brief bout of unemployment. But, in doing the proper thing and voting against you, I guess I’ve voted “against my interests”. It seems like the Washington, DC equivalent of Occupy Wall Street, your career, only with women in lieu of drums. God have mercy on your soul, and help this country come to understand just how diabolical you and your ilk have been.

And now let’s take a walk through the archives, and sample the low notes:

Inside Voice Outside Voice
Ding, dong, da dork definitely departing! This blog can do a victory lap at the news of “Gentleman” Jim Moran’s decision to spend more time with his family next year.
Is there an ulglier record of public disservice that we can think of? Well, yes, but the number is a lot lower than it should be. We should say nice things about the gentleman.
He really has been a source of great post fodder. Like when ManBearPig flew in  to tout the tired termite.Obama said “because of Jim’s leadership, our brave service members and veterans are better protected, our civil service is stronger, and our air and water are cleaner and safer”. If a thicker wallet is a sign of strength, then the civil service portion of that phrase is true. Even if we did not always agree with Moran, we should try to find a way to respect his efforts, if possible. If not possible, at least go to some place like the Iwo Jima Memorial, and stand close to the statue, and try to transfer some respect from that to Jim Moran for as long as considering him is necessary. 
Moran was so far out to lunch as to afford Chris Matthews an opportunity to appear reasonable. Moran was certainly a man from a different era. Say, Tudor England, when the nobles were nutter and the peasants had best hold their peace.
While Virginia-8 includes the Pentagon and Mount Vernon, even the most abject tool of a veteran would have nothing more than absolutely necessary to do with a piece of work like Jim Moran. It is possible that Wesley Clark may personally esteem Jim Moran.
Should we have been shocked at Moran’s support for the Ground Zero Mosque? Money spoke, and in the language of currenncy he enjoys fluency. Moran’s regard for paying customers is a lesson for all politicians.
Should we have been shocked at Moran’s contempt for the military? Moran’s regard for paying customers is a lesson for all politicians.
The Mark Center debacle is still jacking up traffic on 395 (way to feign surprise, Jim). I still hear mentions of the bizarre commuting arrangements triggered by the dopey decision to put those jobs Right There. One can only assume that your real estate portfolio was cheered by the result. Moran’s support for the arts, as at the Mark Center, was offbeat. What no one understood at the time that the whole bullfrog gag was a Three Dog Night reference.That Jim Moran sure is a complex guy.
George Washington was a surveyor; maybe that explains some of Moran’s hankerin’ for real estate. In defense of Moran, he never did anything that the voters did not permit, and in fact re-elect him to do. Admittedly, this is tantamount to blaming sheep for bespoke suits, but baaaad jokes are what I do.
The bit with Martin Bashir referencing Allen West as the hyena and Barack Obama as the Lion King. There has to be some kind of award for blending petty and stupid like that. It is a good thing that Moran confines himself to cartoons. One shudders to think what could happen if he were exposed to any of Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre.

So then the question moves to whether (a) Patrick Murray will run again, and (b) whether conservatives can build the enthusiasm and turn out the vote to overcome whatever godless Commie freakshow zombie carcass the Democrats pump full of embalming fluid and send out to continue the Moran tradition of voting for MOAR GUMMINT!

Had The Man Brains, He’d Be Dangerous

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by Smitty

What is this nonsense?

“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said Tuesday as he convened his first Cabinet meeting of the year.
Obama continued: ”And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”

The title of this post does not mean to imply a lack of respect for #OccupyResoluteDesk’s low animal cunning. Past all of the bluster, though, what does this mean? Is it tantamount to saying that our separation of powers is moot? Is the pack of limp-wristed sycophants on Capitol Hill sufficiently softened by the ObamaCare hijinks that they’ll cheerfully pass a law backing up Obama’s fiats, to keep the fig leaf in place?
To paraphrase George R. R. Martin: November is coming.

New York Times Plays the Koch Card, Reporting Democrat ObamaCare Panic

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The free market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) opened the 2014 campaign early, running ads targeting vulnerable senators who voted for ObamaCare, as I have previously reported:

AFP is one of the largest grassroots organizations in America, with thousands of supporters and contributors, but notice how the New York Times emphasizes a certain name in this article:

Democrats are increasingly anxious about an onslaught of television ads hitting vulnerable Senate and House candidates for their support of the new health law, since many lack the resources to fight back in the early stages of the midterm campaign.
Since September, Americans for Prosperity, a group financed in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, has spent an estimated $20 million on television advertising that calls out House and Senate Democrats by name for their support of the Affordable Care Act. . . .
Some Democrats are open about calling for help from allies and supporters of the health care law who may be biding their time.
“Democrats need money at this early stage in order to fight back against the limitless spending from the Kochs,” said Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “As we get closer to the election, we will have the resources to introduce their Tea Party candidates before they have an opportunity to define themselves for voters, but right now the limitless spending from the Kochs means we need Democratic donors to step up in a bigger way immediately.”

Why do the Koch brothers deserve mention in the second paragraph of this article, whereas the word “ObamaCare” does not appear until the 19th paragraph? The article doesn’t even name President Obama, who is thereby a sort of ghost haunting this article which is, after all, about the failures of his signature legislation.

The status of the New York Times as a Democrat Party propaganda organ has never really been in doubt, so it’s very encouraging to see this evidence that Harry Reid has hit the panic button. Meanwhile, AFP has launched new ads targeting vulnerable House members who voted for ObamaCare, including this one against Rep. Gary Peters (D-Michigan):

You Can Click Here to Contribute to
AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY

What a bargain: For $25, you’re like an honorary Koch brother.

 


Obama Still Hasn’t Responded to Republican Offer to Discuss Health Care

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A Republican congressman says it’s been nearly a month since he and 33 colleagues offered to meet with President Obama to discuss health care reform, and they still haven’t heard back from the White House.

“In the wake of Obamacare’s numerous failures, President Obama said that if Republicans had better health care reform ideas, they should say so,” Arkansas Rep. Tim Griffin said in a statement Wednesday. “That’s why 33 of my colleagues and I sent him a letter that included a list of nine proposals that would help build an open and innovative healthcare system, expand access, increase choice, and lower costs.  So far, our request for a meeting to discuss these ideas has been met with silence.  I hope President Obama meant what he said and will meet with us.  It’s not too late for a fresh start, so we can get real health care reform right.”

On Dec. 3, Obama challenged critics of his program: “If you’ve got good ideas, bring them to me. . . . [If] you still think this law is a bad idea then you’ve got to tell us specifically what you’d do differently to cut costs, cover more people, make insurance more secure.”

A week later, on Dec. 10, Griffin and 33 other GOP House members responded with a letter to the President highlighting nine separate areas of reform on which Republicans agree. “We appreciate your offer to discuss alternative proposals,” the letter said, “and we look forward to meeting with you at your earliest convenience.”

So far, apparently, that “earliest convenience” hasn’t arrived.