Obama scandals: fair to the media?

by NW Spotlight

When the American media signed on to be Barack Obama’s Pied Piper, they signed on with gusto! They sold him with so much baseless hype that he got a Nobel Peace Prize for just showing up!

So sure, they agreed to carry President Obama’s water, but they weren’t expecting to have to carry Chicago’s Lake Michigan! Covering for his foreign affairs’ failures and complete lack of leadership are already above-and-beyond for the American media.

But what’s really not fair is how many scandals President Obama is spewing out. How on earth is the media supposed to keep “unreporting” all the scandals and still expect to keep any shred of credibility? President Obama is not being fair to the media.

When George W. Bush was president, the media needed to invent scandals – and they did. Some even paid the ultimate sacrifice – they lost their jobs because of it, and they were willing to – because that’s what it took.

So the media have proven their loyalties. There’s no excuse for testing them, no excuse for causing them to expend their last shreds of credibility. But that’s just what President Obama has done with his never-ending “scandal machine.” He’s creating new scandals faster than Henry Ford could produce Model Ts!

Veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler at WhiteHouseDossier.com put together this list in August:

• IRS targeted conservative and pro-Israel groups prior to the 2012 election.
• Benghazi Part 1: failure of administration to protect the Benghazi mission
• Benghazi Part 2: changes made to the talking points in order to suggest the attack was motivated by an anti-Muslim video
• Benghazi Part 3: refusal of the White House to say what President Obama did the night of the attack
• Justice Department collecting Associated Press reporters’ phone records
• Justice Department monitoring Fox News reporter’s phones and emails
• Potential Holder perjury I: Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress he had never been associated with “potential prosecution” of a journalist for perjury when in fact he signed the affidavit that termed the Fox News reporter a potential criminal.
• ATF “Fast and Furious” which allowed weapons from the U.S. to “walk” across the border into the hands of Mexican drug dealers – one of those weapons killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
• Potential Holder Perjury II: Holder told Congress in May 2011 that he had just recently heard about the Fast and Furious gun walking scheme when there is evidence he may have known much earlier.
• HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius solicited donations from companies HHS might regulate.
• Pigford scandal: An Agriculture Department effort that started as an attempt to compensate black farmers who had been discriminated against by the agency but evolved into a gravy train delivering several billion dollars in cash to thousands of additional minority and female farmers who probably didn’t face discrimination.
• GSA gone wild: The General Services Administration in 2010 held an $823,000 training conference in Las Vegas, featuring a clown and a mind readers. Resulted in the resignation of the GSA administrator.
• Veterans Affairs in Disney World: The agency wasted more than $6 million on two conferences in Orlando. An assistant secretary was fired.
• Sebelius violates the Hatch Act: A U.S. special counsel determined that Sebelius violated the Hatch Act when she made “extemporaneous partisan remarks” during a speech in her official capacity last year. During the remarks, Sebelius called for the election of the Democratic candidate for governor of North Carolina.
• Solyndra: Republicans charged the Obama administration funded and promoted its poster boy for green energy despite warning signs the company was headed for bankruptcy. The administration also allegedly pressed Solyndra to delay layoff announcements until after the 2010 midterm elections.
• Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used the name “Richard Windsor” when corresponding by email with other government officials, drawing charges she was trying to evade scrutiny.
• The New Black Panthers: The Justice Department was accused of using a racial double standard in failing to pursue a voter intimidation case against Black Panthers who appeared to be menacing voters at a polling place in 2008 in Philadelphia.
• Obama may have violated the Constitution and both the letter and the spirit of the War Powers Resolution by attacking Libya without Congressional approval.
• Biden bullies the press: Vice President Biden’s office has repeatedly interfered with coverage, including forcing a reporter to wait in a closet, making a reporter delete photos, and editing pool reports.
• The administration paid millions to the former firm of then-White House adviser David Axelrod, AKPD Message and Media, to promote passage of Obamacare. Some questioned whether the firm was hired to help pay Axelrod $2 million AKPD owed him.
• Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used Bill Clinton as an intermediary to probe whether former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) would accept a prominent, unpaid White House advisory position in exchange for dropping out of the 2010 primary against former Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).
• I’ll pass my own laws: Obama has repeatedly been accused of making end runs around Congress by deciding which laws to enforce, including the decision not to deport illegal immigrants who may have been allowed to stay in the United States had Congress passed the “Dream Act.”
• It’s not clear who hacked the CBS reporter’s computer as she investigated the Benghazi scandal, but the Obama administration and its allies had both the motive and the means to do it.
• An American Political Prisoner: The sudden decision to arrest Nakoula Basseley Nakoula on unrelated charges after protests in the Arab world over his anti-Muslim video is an extraordinarily suspicious coincidence. “We’re going to go out and we’re going to prosecute the person that made that video,” Hillary Clinton allegedly told the father of one of the ex-SEALs killed in Banghazi.
• Corporation for National and Community Service Inspector General Gerald Walpin was fired in 2009 as he fought wasteful spending and investigated a friend of Obama’s, Sacramento Mayor and former NBA player Kevin Johnson.
• An investigation is underway of Alejandro Mayorkas, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who has been nominated by Obama for the number two post at the Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas may have used his position to unfairly obtain U.S. visas for foreign investors in company run by Hillary Clinton’s brother, Anthony Rodman.

Koffler’s list doesn’t even include some of President Obama’s other scandals like the recent NSA excesses, where the $787 billion stimulus package went, or President Obama’s selection of tax cheat Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary.

Is it fair for President Obama to continue to force the media to keep obfuscating and underreporting all these scandals? Haven’t they proven their loyalty enough?