Nobody Knows Nothin’!

By William L. Garvin

 

From 1965-1971, HOGAN’S HEROES was a popular television series starring Bob Crane and a terrific assortment of supporting actors.  The plot centered on a group of prisoners in a German POW camp during World War Two.  The allied prisoners were headed up by Colonel Hogan who did his best to outsmart Colonel Klink, the camp commandant.  One of the most memorable characters was the rotund Sergeant Hans Georg Schultz, played by John Banner.   Schultz was an affable but inept prison guard who, whenever becoming aware of Hogan’s plans and schemes, adamantly proclaimed “I know nothing!  I see nothing!  I hear nothing!”   Sergeant Schultz was the prototype for the Obama administration leadership team.

 

When the mainstream media finally became aware of the “Fast and Furious” fiasco that put thousands of guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, the Obama administration knew, saw and heard nothing.  When a Department of Justice attorney resigned in protest of DOJ policy to not prosecute cases against minorities, (a la the New Black Panther Party), the Obama administration knew, saw and heard nothing.  The national debt is now over $16.8 trillion and this administration knows, sees, and does nothing.  The Keystone pipeline is still stalled by Environmental Protection Agency obstructions while crony capitalism “green” projects sail through but the Obama administration knows, sees and does nothing.

 

The Internal Revenue Service targets Tea Party and other conservative organizations for special scrutiny but fails to subject liberal organizations to similar onerous treatment; the Obama administration knows, sees and hears nothing.  The Department of Justice singles out Fox News reporters and AP reporters for criminal investigations but the Obama administration knows, sees and hears nothing.  Eric Holder’s signature on that subpoena is such an inconvenient truth!  Four Americans die in Benghazi after multiple requests for security are denied, military aid is not rendered, and someone smokes up a hot air concoction that an obscure video is the causative factor and the Obama administration knows, sees and hears nothing.  That’s how tyranny operates.

Take the case of “True the Vote”, a Houston-based nonprofit formed by Catherine Engelbrecht and her King Street Patriots Tea Party group.  In an interview, Ms. Engelbrecht describes the IRS abuse of power: “We applied for nonprofit C-3 status early in 2010. Since that time the IRS has run us through a gauntlet of analysts and hundreds of questions over and over again. They’ve requested to see each and every tweet I’ve ever tweeted or Facebook post I’ve ever posted. They also asked to know every place I’ve ever spoken since our inception and to whom, and everywhere I intend to speak in the future.”

Engelbrecht’s application allegedly triggered aggressive audits of one of her family’s personal businesses as well. The FBI began a series of inquiries about her and her group; the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms began demanding to see her family's firearms in surprise audits of her and her husband’s small gun dealership--which had done less than $200 in sales; Occupational Safety Hazards Administration audited their small family manufacturing business; and the EPA-affiliated TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environment Quality) did a surprise visit and audit due to “a complaint being called in.”  The Democratic Party of Texas filed a lawsuit against her; so did an ACORN affiliated group.  Ultimately, the IRS determined that it actually owed a refund to Engelbrecht; the BATF found nothing wrong in any of its repeated visits and audits; OSHA’s fine-toothed comb found reason to demand $25,000 from Engelbrecht’s family business; and TCEQ demanded the Engelbrechts spend $42,000 on additional storage sheds.  “This is what the beginning of tyranny looks like," Engelbrecht said.

 

The excuse offered up by David Axelrod, the President’s Chicago mouthpiece, is that government is just “too big” for one man to govern.  Actually, that is what the Tea Party has been saying all along.  If President Obama showed as much interest and enthusiasm for governing as he does for fundraising, he might not have to discover these scandals in the Friday newspapers.  However, it is impossible to believe that there was no knowledge of any of these situations in the White House.

 

If in fact, he is surprised by all these problematic issues (not to mention Democrats and unions protesting the ObamaCare “train wreck”!), it shows a fundamental lack of organizational discipline, a lack of communication within his executive team, and a lack of personal and professional accountability throughout governmental agencies.  Given the previous lack of presidential experience in management or leadership, the sad state of current governmental affairs was entirely predictable.  The lying, cover-ups and governmental oppressions were not.

 

Ostriches, Obfuscation, and Oscillation

By William L. Garvin

“Little wheels spin and spin, big wheels turn around and around; Little wheels spin and spin, big wheels turn around and around.”  Buffy Sainte-Marie

Finally! Some of the media ostriches have pulled their heads out of…the sand.  It’s a miracle to behold!  The White House press corps even asked the president’s press secretary some probing questions.  In response, Jay Carney’s water gulping made Marco Rubio look refined.  That’s what happens when you have no experience with challenges to your talking points or when a compliant media maven fawns over your every utterance.

 

You could obfuscate about a stimulus that didn’t stimulate and the media ostrich buried its head in the sand.  You could claim executive privilege when the chief executive said he was not involved in “Fast and Furious” and the media buried its head in the sand.  You could ignore the Department of Justice ignoring its duty to defend DOMA or enforce the laws against voter intimidation (a la the New Black Panther fiasco) and the media buried its head in the sand.  When a respected DOJ attorney resigned in protest over the overt discrimination in case selection, the media buried its head in the sand.  When lawsuits were filed over the targeting of applications for 501(c) 4 status and anything that mentioned tea party ”,“ patriot” or a conservative theme by the Internal Revenue Service, the press buried its head in the sand.  When question after legitimate question after legitimate question was raised about the murders in Benghazi, the press buried its head in the sand.  When Dr. Kenneth Gosnell was charged with murdering three babies out of the hundreds of late term abortions he performed, the press buried its head in the sand.  Maybe as Bob Dylan wrote, the times really are changing.  Some of his verses seem appropriate to the moment:

“Come senators, Congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't block at the doorway

Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside

And it's ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'”

 

So Gosnell has now been convicted of murder.  Where will the media heads be?  Now that the IRS has admitted they targeted the tea party, where will the media heads be?  Will they look at the applications that have been pending for up to four years?  Will they explore why the affected organizations were required to provide names of their donors and all of their emails for extended periods of time?  We’ve heard the President and the head of the IRS say they heard about the problem from the media just last Friday.  That’s simply more obfuscation.  The Inspector General’s report said that “a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted.”  A year later, the IRS Commissioner told a congressional committee that it wasn’t happening.  More lies and more obfuscation.  Why did congressional representatives of both parties let the matter drop and why did the press let it drop?

 

On top of that, it’s now known that the Secretary of State was personally told the night of the Benghazi atrocity that it was a terrorist attack.  It is now known that there were TWELVE revisions of the CIA talking points and all references to al Qaeda, terrorists, and Ansar al-Sharia were deliberately removed.  That is not a limited or “non-substantive involvement” as the White House claims.  It is also not a “distraction” as President Obama now claims.  It is also not malevolent or diabolical as Senator Feinstein obfuscated. 

 

You see, Hillary, it does make a difference.  Who denied the requests for additional security from the Benghazi compound?  It wasn’t budget cuts as proffered by Democrat apologists; the State Department is spending more money this year than last year!  Who made the decision to tell our troops to “stand down” and not go to the aid of the embattled Americans?  No one knew how long that attack was going to last.  No wonder the military force was “furious.”  Who invented and pushed the theory that some obscure video was to blame?  Maybe the press will oscillate to its original purpose and intent.  Maybe they will no longer accept the lies and obfuscation.  Maybe, just maybe, they will restore luster to their tarnished profession.

Crying in Their Liberal Beer

By William L. Garvin

 

“OMG! …Could it be? …Finally …It must be …Fantasy …is Reality … Catastrophe …blame Tea Party!”  Deep in the labyrinths of the liberal media mind, it is critical to make the dots and synapses connect to fit predetermined conclusions.  No hypothesis is suspect; no theorem is ill-founded; no syllogism is illogical if the conclusion fits their ideology.  Traditional journalistic principles take a back seat (if they are even allowed on the bus!) to the drumbeat of progressive propaganda.

 

Some have opined that the many mistakes made by the mainstream media in reporting on the Boston Marathon bombing emanated from the need to be first in the 24/7 news cycle.  There is a more primal and nefarious reason.  In the words of Chicago mayor and Democrat heavy hitter Rahm Emanuel: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."   The bombing crisis gave the progressive media mavens ample opportunity to conspire and contrive to influence the low information vote by massive disinformation.  The unvarnished truth is that they will go to any lengths and stoop to any low to disparage and impugn the character of any and every conservative voice or voter.

 

It’s not new.  Brian Ross of ABC News immediately and erroneously linked the Aurora Theater shooting to the Tea Party.  Janet Napolitano appeared to be more afraid of military veterans, pro-gun, pro-life, anti-illegal immigration or conservative Christian citizens than she was of Islamic extremists in her infamous 2009 memo.  Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Piers Morgan (two “Mouths that Roared”!), the Huffington Post and numerous mainstream journalists erroneously linked Sarah Palin and the Tea Party to the Gabby Giffords shooting.  At least Brian Ross apologized for his egregious errors.  Keith Olbermann (remember him?) should have made his own “worst person in the world” list for advocating ALL conservative talk show hosts be silenced.  Liberals will stand for anything but dissent.

 

But Boston takes the cake.  Before the smoke had even cleared, there was CNN’s “national security analyst” Peter Bergen intoning that “right wing extremism” could not be ruled out.  He also referenced “…right wing groups trying to attack…the Martin Luther King parade in Oregon in 2010.”  No such incident ever occurred but that’s beside the point.  MSNBC’s Chris (“The Human Car Wash”) Mathews spouted and spitted that “Normally domestic terrorists, people, tend to be on the far right.”  Excuse me?!  That’s the bile spewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Not a single perpetrator at Aurora, Columbine, Newtown, Tucson, or Virginia Tech belonged to the Tea Party, the NRA or the Republican Party!  But hope springs eternal in the liberal mind.

 

“Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American,” pleaded Salon’s David Sirota.  Michael Moore immediately tweeted “Tax Day. Patriot’s Day.” in his usual misguided attempt to lay blame.  Making Moore their muse, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer picked up the theme and waxed eloquently on the battles at Lexington and Concord and the Revolutionary War while Anderson Cooper speculated that “Tax Day” was when federal income taxes were due and that may have played a role!  Marching in lock step, ABC and NBC reprised other April scenes of violence:  Columbine, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma City and Waco.  ABC referred to Oklahoma City and Waco as “right wing attacks.”  All were liberal “dog whistles” to slander conservatives.

 

Now that the bombers have been identified as radical jihadists (or members of “conservative Islam,” according to the Los Angeles Times!), every effort seems to be made to make excuses for the younger brother.  Mama Jihadi has been given far more television than her hateful histrionics deserve.  Apparently the venom and vituperation displayed by the networks early on, hoping against hope that they finally had their homegrown conservative act of violence, is fully dissipated.  Now, it’s “let’s not rush to conclusions.”  Now, the survivor is just a normal pot smoking college kid who was under the sway and influence of the dead older brother.  Have some sympathy and understanding.  What a shame.  Why oh why couldn’t he have been a Tea Party leader?  Life just isn’t fair.  Especially when you work in progressive media and have an agenda to promote.  Barkeep, another beer, please;  this one’s full of tears.