When in doubt...

As I'm sure you're aware, there have been some scandals going on in our country.  IRS targeting conservative groups, the DoJ targeting AP and Fox News journalists, the NSA apparently collecting massive amounts of information on innocent American citizens, and my personal favorite: the attacks in Benghazi.  Just to remind you, all of these scandals involving all of these different agencies have one thing (and one thing only) in common: The President, Barack Obama.

And when one criticizes this current President, the liberals come out swinging to defend him.  They don't particularly like to debate the issues though; they would much rather change the subject and deflect the criticism in another direction once their argument quickly runs out of gas.  If you try and debate one of these scandals with a liberal, there's a few signs to look out for to know when you've backed them into a corner and won the argument.  When in doubt, they will call you a racist, blame the (conservative) victim or blame George W. Bush.  I'm not here to talk about the race card today, because that is the flimsiest of the defenses, and I've previously covered their victim blaming.  I am currently more concerned with the current administration's (and its' defenders') continuing tactic of blaming Bush for everything that went wrong here recently.

Three of the four major scandals going on right now fall under this tactic to some degree.  The outlier is Benghazi  but we won't cover that today because everyone knows questioning the events in Benghazi means you're racist (against Obama), sexist (against Clinton), or on a partisan witch hunt.  Before diving into these scandals, I'd like to remind everyone that every single thing that went wrong for 8 years under George W. Bush was directly Bush's fault according to liberals.  9/11?  Housing market collapse?  Economic recession? Abu Gharib prisoner abuse?  Patriot Act?  Missing WMDs in Iraq?  Guantanamo Bay?  Hurricane Katrina? You name it and it was Bush's fault according to liberals, because it happened under his watch.  If a Democrat got a hang-nail while Bush was in office, it was Bush's fault.  To quote the movie Rules of Engagement, "Even if you thought it wasn't your fault, it went wrong, and you were there".

That's fine if you want to apply that logic, because accountability needs to start at the top.  The problem is that this logic is 100% ignored in reference to the current administration.  Benghazi attacks?  Boston bombing? Jobs disappearing?  IRS targeting political enemies?  NSA tracking innocent Americans?  DoJ suppressing freedom of press?  Guantanamo Bay still open?  Hurricane Sandy?  Obama wasn't there, wasn't involved, didn't know anything about it, and isn't accountable for any of it.  Yet somehow, Bush is still responsible.  It hurts my head.

When it came out that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, IRS chairman Doug Shulman resigned but refused to take any responsibility for his department's actions.  This man, a known donor to the Democratic party, was appointed by Bush in 2007.  That is the best defense the Democrats have.  George Bush tries to extend an olive branch to the other side, tries to appoint a Democrat specifically citing that we need someone impartial in this spot, and Shulman immediately turns his back on conservatives.  This man served one year under Bush, and four under Obama, but somehow this is still all Bush's fault.  Their defense is essentially "Yeah, he's one of us.  Yeah, he did all of these horrible things.  Yeah, he spent four times longer under Obama than Bush.  But its still your fault for hiring him!  Its your fault for trusting us!"  Let's not hold anyone accountable who was involved in these recent actions, rather let's blame the man who hired him six years ago.  How could it possibly be a partisan attack against conservatives if a conservative hired this man?  Disregard all of the actual evidence against him and his IRS.

To quickly mention the other two scandals, they also continue to blame Bush.  The DoJ is targeting journalists, and the NSA is engaged in surveillance against innocent citizens.  Liberals quickly make some vague connection to the Patriot Act and then take the next step of blaming Bush.  Nevermind that Obama has massively expanded Patriot Act activities; Bush is the one that invented it.  Nevermind that the DoJ and Eric Holder fall directly under the Executive Branch, and are thus accountable to the President.  Nevermind that the NSA is part of the DoD, which directly falls under leadership of our Commander-in-Chief.  Patriot Act, George Bush, blah blah blah.

The biggest difference between Bush and Obama is accountability.  When something controversial happened under Bush, his administration stepped up and took responsibility.  Enhanced interrogations?  Yep, we waterboarded the hell out of them.  Patriot Act?  Yep, the NSA is expanding surveillance for your protection.  Deal with it.  Secret CIA prisons?  You bet.  Under the most transparent administration in history with Obama, everything is done in t
he shadows.  Their story morphs from "the White House didn't know anything about that" to "Everyone in the White House knew about it except the President".  For some reason no Democrats have a problem with that.  The biggest difference between Bush and Obama, is that I don't like being lied to.  Bush pushed the Patriot Act into existence and was quite public about it, so I may not like it but I have no problem how it came about.  Obama demonized the Patriot Act and championed civil liberties, and then expanded the Patriot Act.  He stabbed every American citizen in the back over and over with empty promises and complete lies to get elected, and that is why I have such a problem with his administration.  I may disagree with most of what a man does, but I can deal with it.  Just don't lie to me.  Is that too much to ask?

What did the President know, and when did he know it? Apparently he never knew to begin with.

Today has been a day with yet another scandal breaking at the federal level; that the DOJ unlawfully targeted the AP's phone records in an investigation.  That is after Monday's scandal broke regarding the IRS targeting conservative groups.  And the Benghazi scandal in recent weeks.  However, I'm not here today to discuss any scandal in particular.  I'm here to discuss a pattern which seems to be developing in the White House.

The Obama administration, and everyone's favorite spokesman Jay Carney, seem resigned to the tactic of ignorance on all of these scandals.  Day after day, Carney speaks for the President, and occasionally the President himself speaks on his own behalf.  While initially on Benghazi they all pointed in the wrong direction regarding the events which transpired (and the cause and aftermath), since then it has pretty much been a mixture of the following excuses: We don't know.  We didn't know.

I'm not sure exactly how they expect us to believe this.  You didn't know what was going on in Benghazi leading up to the attacks.  You didn't know what was going on during the attacks.  You didn't know what was going on after the attacks.  You didn't know at the time that you were blaming the wrong factors.  You didn't know the IRS was targeting conservative groups with audits leading up to the elections.  You didn't know the DoJ was illegally obtaining phone records from the AP.  Your Attorney General didn't know anything about it.  Also you don't know what he knew, because Carney said today that the President has not spoken to the Attorney General about this matter.  Basically anytime a scandal breaks out in this administration, the administration doesn't know anything about it until they see it in the news like you or me.

Here is today's question: What exactly does the President see every day in his daily briefings?  Literally every morning a report is delivered to the President with the main activities, concerns and issues of the day to keep an eye on.  We are now supposed to believe the President never read anything in his daily briefings about Benghazi in the months leading up to the attacks.  His briefings never mentioned violence escalating or request for security.  It never mentioned terrorist activities behind the attack.  It never mentioned any link to Al Qaeda.  It never mentioned anything about the IRS audits targeting conservative groups, even though this information has been lurking around for the last two years.  It never mentioned anything about his hand-selected Attorney General heading up a Department of Justice which was illegally using AP phone records.  We have literally been told they didn't know about this story until they saw it on the news.  The President of the United States has the full resources of the most powerful intelligence gathering machines ever assembled in human history, yet he seems ignorant of these major scandals.  And nobody seems to blame him for anything that happens under his watch.

Let me rewind a few years.  Does anyone remember a man named George W. Bush?  He was President for about 8 years.  Does anyone remember how often Bush was blamed for activities under his administration?  Liberals basically blamed him for anything that happened for the entire 8 years of his presidency.  9/11?  Bush.  War in Iraq?  Bush.  Missing WMDs?  Bush.  Struggling economy?  Bush.  Prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib?  Bush.  Real estate bubble collapse?  Bush.  Hurricane Katrina?  Bush.   The Democrats and liberal media somehow managed to blame a natural disaster and act of God on George W. Bush.  It hit New Orleans and they weren't prepared, therefore George Bush doesn't care about black people.  Seems legit.  For eight long years, you could pretty much pick a bad headline out of any major newspaper, and you'd have Jon Stewart or Bill Maher informing us of how this somehow fell at the feet of George W. Bush.  Love him or hate him, George Bush took way more flak than maybe any President in history for things he wasn't even involved in.  For some reason, our current President doesn't take flak for anything even if it falls directly at his feet.  Heavy lies the crown Mr. President.  If you enjoy your position of power, it is time to accept the responsibility which comes with it.

So back to the President's daily briefings.  Remember that memo during the Bush administration entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US"?  Democrats absolutely hammered Bush and his cabinet for ignoring these warnings.  Remember those memos requesting more security at Benghazi leading up to the terrorist attack which were ignored?  Democrats declare such a question a witch hunt and political sideshow.  It sure must be nice to have your cake and eat it too.

That leaves us with two possibilities.  Either the President and his staff are lying to us when they continue to plead ignorance and tell us they never knew anything all of these scandals currently mounting.  Or the President is completely asleep at the wheel, ignoring the intelligence provided to him, and caring more about partying with Jay-Z and golfing with Tiger Woods than reading his daily briefings.  Either way, I imagine things probably wouldn't be too much worse if you replaced the daily briefings with a booklet of Mad-Libs.  Of course, that is assuming we are dealing with ignorance, not lies.  Pay attention these next few weeks.  I'm guessing today won't be the last time the administration tells us "we don't know".