Obama Administration Scandals

[shiny!]

Scandal #1) Benghazi:* Not only what happened there, but Petraeus' role in the cover-up. This is big, but getting overshadowed by:

Scandal #2) IRS targeting conservative groups:* First we heard it was the Tea Party. Then a few more groups, then more, and more... And they've known about it for years, even before the election. Asking people about the content of their prayers??? How far out does it go, and how far up in the Administration will it go?

And

Scandal #3) DOJ running surveillance on reporters:* First we read there were a few files, then more came to light, and then an avalanche of files. First we were told it only affected the AP, then Reuters, then more and more news agencies. Now even liberal CBS is crying that they've been a target. Not only reporters and their sources, but even reporters' families. How far out does it go, and how far up in the Administration will it go?

Until now, the MSM pretty much gave the Administration kid-glove treatment, until news came to light that they themselves have been targets. That the Administration had been running roughshod over the "free press" and 1st Amendment. Will the MSM let this all go... once again tell us "nothing to see here, move along..." Or was this a bridge too far?

The breadth, depth and sheer audaciousness of these scandals is growing every day. But even more interesting (to me) than the scandals themselves, are the questions:

1. "Why now?" Why are they all coming to light in a big way right now?

2. Do any of these scandals have the weight to bring down the Administration, and will they? Should they?

* Too many articles to link, I don't even know where to start.

(Note to FRED: I didn't put this in Select News because it has nothing to do with economics, and it seems more a fit topic for News than Rant and Rave because it's so "news-y". But if you want to move it, I defer to your judgement.)

[doom&gloom]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

In answer to "why now", every administration gets caught up in the excesses of it's power and pushes the limit. Eventually TSHTF as those they have trampled finally fight back with enough force to get noticed, even by an emasculated press. As to which if any of these scandals can bring down the Administration, clearly the one that could is the IRS one. It is hard, given the way it is unfolding, to say the White House was not aware. The question then becomes was Obama himself personally aware...

[shiny!]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

Normally the press would have minimized and tried to deflect the IRS scandal, but now they're angry as hornets because they've also been victims.

[wayiwalk]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

As far as timing, good question, it has been in the back of my mind too.

I look at it this way, that at least the newsmedia phone tapping scandal really points to an even bigger question that isn't going to be asked.

I was reading an article about the Boston Marathon bomber, and the lack of depth to the "checkng up" on the brother who was killed, despite supposedly having a red flag raised by a foreign government (the Russians) a la, "hey, do you have anything on this guy"?

Nothing, not even a relatively innocous view/track/analysis of the type of things he is publicly posting in terms of his interests on his social networking pages.

The same government, though, determined that tracking the leak of the al Queda informant story required a completely extensive tapping of our press's phone lines, really, quite extensive.

It begs the question, which truly does scare me - who does this government see as its enemies?

Totally misplaced priorities.

I'm not so sure this is solely the current administration's fault, or worse a case of a gov't that is too focused on it's own survival and the process of it's operations and missing the bigger picture.

How many full time gov't employees looked the other way on this, and went along? Maybe that's the impact of poor protection of whistleblowers, though.

Between these scandals, the current bills that congress is actually focusing on, and EJ's admonitions about hard times to come, it sure makes me nervous for the stability of this country in the next decade.....and I'm not more than a "5" on the doomer scale.

[BadJuju]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

Between these scandals, the current bills that congress is actually focusing on, and EJ's admonitions about hard times to come, it sure makes me nervous for the stability of this country in the next decade.....and I'm not more than a "5" on the doomer scale.

A picture from one of my favorite Internet memes:




And a link to the corresponding story! http://chanarchive.org/4chan/v/40679

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

Benghazi is pretty broad in some respects......the things that most intrigued and I posted here about, include:

*Petraeus, head of AFRICOM, and Carrier Battle Group commander(whose force MAY have been within reach) were all gone in short order after the event.

Yep.....there's a self-inflicted component to their departures, but I tend to think along the lines of EJ's comments about Elliot Spitzer and his departure.

In order to get to that level, even in the military, may compel some form of self-inflicted compromise or prepared scapegoating loaded in the barrel.

All three led organizations that possess in extremis force capabilities to some degree under their respective commands that MAY have been capable of a hasty response.

*I suspect what may come out of this is a possibly quite heavy footprint of a politicized Executive branch response where inaction and post murder spin was selected over the risk of another Desert One rescue mission failure.

I suspect the Executive branch had President Carter and Op Eagle Claw/Desert One top of mind combined with "How will our decision here affect the election polls"?

IRS: How does IRS as a political punishment tool compare with past Executive Branch use of the IRS as a punishment tool?

The same as in the past or more serious, it needs to result in some form of senior prosecution.

The IRS taking the 5th is not a good sign.

Journalistic Surveillance: Quite worrying. but we are living in a total surveillance society. Believing anything less is naive. I don't accept or agree with it, but how this turns out could give an indicator of what direction we go in as a society.

My biggest concern:

The President certainly seems to know everything instantly when it comes to killing Osama Bin Laden and announcing his victory.

But he doesn't seem to know anything about Benghazi, the IRS, or journalistic surveillance.

Directly/indirectly culpable OR failing to lead/manage his own out of control organization is completely unacceptable.

I'd like the give the President the benefit of the doubt.

I think his complete lack of executive/management experience except for his on the job training since becoming President is probably the simplest and most likely answer.

It's not apologizing for the President, in fact I think of this whole cluster of events as further evidence of the embarrassment of electing a person woefully unqualified to fill the role.

Exciting teleprompter armed orators don't make the short list for CEO of Boeing, Chairman of the JCS, or senior, non-appointed Foreign Service Officers in the real world.

No matter how much people WANT and NEED President Obama to be one of the US's most successful Presidents, I suspect what people will GET is President Obama easily falling somewhere in the bottom 50%, and from here it's a game of limbo....how low will he go in the history books.

Just my 0.02c

[vt]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

My buddy Bill came up with this: "OK, Michelle Malkin had a blurb about the highly anti-tea union, the National Treasury Union, president Colleen Kelley was registered on the WH log as having been there 3/31/2010. She visited the POTUS. According to the IG report, employees started their targeting conservative tea party patriots the very next day. THE VERY NEXT DAY. THe IG report said a manager in the tech unit suggested the need for a sensitive Tea Party cases reports." Interesting. I think Congressman Issa needs to call Ms. Kelley to testify. Maybe we can find out what POTUS knew and when he knew it.

[shiny!]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

Journalistic Surveillance: Quite worrying. but we are living in a total surveillance society. Believing anything less is naive. I don't accept or agree with it, but how this turns out could give an indicator of what direction we go in as a society.

What makes this story so impactful isn't that we live in a total surveillance society (which we here at iTulip know), but that now the MSM is making sure the rest of the world knows it, too. Even liberal Democrats, even apolitical people know that this is a very serious breach of the Constitution and are appalled by it.

How hard will the media bang their pots and pans, and for how long?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

What makes this story so impactful isn't that we live in a total surveillance society (which we here at iTulip know), but that now the MSM is making sure the rest of the world knows it, too. Even liberal Democrats, even apolitical people know that this is a very serious breach of the Constitution and are appalled by it.

How hard will the media bang their pots and pans, and for how long?

The answer to that question(I think) is:

What do the Big 6 want and what will they get to make this all quietly go away?

The high concentration of media ownership is a serious worry.

We often talk about "too big to fail" banks here.

We don't often discuss how excessive concentration of mass media ownership has the potential to morph into Propaganda Incorporated(the outsourced version 2.0 of the old Ministry of Propaganda) contributing to our society's failure to achieve escape velocity.

Maybe banks' "too big to fail" should include mass media's "too concentrated to be the 4th Estate"?

[c1ue]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

We don't often discuss how excessive concentration of mass media ownership has the potential to morph into Propaganda Incorporated(the outsourced version 2.0 of the old Ministry of Propaganda) contributing to our society's failure to achieve escape velocity.

There isn't much discussion of the concentration of media ownership, but there's all sorts of discussion on MSM - which amounts to the same thing, no?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

There isn't much discussion of the concentration of media ownership, but there's all sorts of discussion on MSM - which amounts to the same thing, no?

In a way yes, in a way no, I reckon.

I think talking about the problems with MSM is a bit like talking about the problems with the economy.

Just as we all know there are fundamental problems with the MSM, we know there are fundamental problems with the economy. Most people simply can't articulate the fundamental reasons why their broken.

Unlike the general public, I think here on iTulip there's an incredible level of collective knowledge and understanding regarding the economy, FIRE, how we got here, and how we might get out of it.

And I think the same analogy applies with the general public and the iTulip community when it comes to mass media, except I'm not convinced the iTulip community possesses the same high level of collective knowledge and understanding regarding mass media.

I see fragments and slivers posited and discussed regarding the problem with mass media, but I don't see a refined analysis of the problem, just bits and pieces....albeit that could largely be due to the fact that the primary purpose of the forum is economic/financial in nature.

EJ has talked around it with a great post on a propaganda book published in the early 20th century as well as commenting on financial news media's less than benign role at time with small investors and the general public.

We've also had bits and pieces from other forum members as well.

But I continue to be stunned at the lack of concern about the extremely high concentration of media ownership that has occurred over the last 20 years.

How no one seems to notice the scary consistency of the media narrative shaping with the 2nd Amendment debate is nothing short of frightening.

Diversity of mass media ownership would have seen the FACT that the 2nd Amendment's role is the collective deterrence against tyranny as opposed to the artificially manufactured battle over whether people have the individual right or not to target shoot and/or defend their homes.

To me, the concentration of mass media ownership that has resulted in a privatized and outsourced Ministry of Propaganda is the biggest(but definitely not only) reason why MSM is failing us.

I could be wrong, but I'm most definitely not convinced.

[astonas]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

In a way yes, in a way no, I reckon.

I think talking about the problems with MSM is a bit like talking about the problems with the economy.

Just as we all know there are fundamental problems with the MSM, we know there are fundamental problems with the economy. Most people simply can't articulate the fundamental reasons why their broken.

Unlike the general public, I think here on iTulip there's an incredible level of collective knowledge and understanding regarding the economy, FIRE, how we got here, and how we might get out of it.

And I think the same analogy applies with the general public and the iTulip community when it comes to mass media, except I'm not convinced the iTulip community possesses the same high level of collective knowledge and understanding regarding mass media.

I see fragments and slivers posited and discussed regarding the problem with mass media, but I don't see a refined analysis of the problem, just bits and pieces....albeit that could largely be due to the fact that the primary purpose of the forum is economic/financial in nature.

EJ has talked around it with a great post on a propaganda book published in the early 20th century as well as commenting on financial news media's less than benign role at time with small investors and the general public.

We've also had bits and pieces from other forum members as well.

But I continue to be stunned at the lack of concern about the extremely high concentration of media ownership that has occurred over the last 20 years.

How no one seems to notice the scary consistency of the media narrative shaping with the 2nd Amendment debate is nothing short of frightening.

Diversity of mass media ownership would have seen the FACT that the 2nd Amendment's role is the collective deterrence against tyranny as opposed to the artificially manufactured battle over whether people have the individual right or not to target shoot and/or defend their homes.

To me, the concentration of mass media ownership that has resulted in a privatized and outsourced Ministry of Propaganda is the biggest(but definitely not only) reason why MSM is failing us.

I could be wrong, but I'm most definitely not convinced.

You raise some excellent points, lakedaemonian!

I have to say, I did notice that the perspective and worldview was surprisingly unified in the English language press, and at odds with much of what is covered in other languages (or at least the ones I can read). I really wasn't factoring in explicit propaganda, trying instead to relate it to a difference in cultural perspectives based on shared history and language.

But perhaps that was just a bit naive.

The polarization of the Anglo-Saxon worldview into the neo-Kenesian left and the pseudo-Austrian right is certainly a very dominant meme that is everywhere in English, and viewed with slightly stunned disbelief elsewhere. If this, for example, is a manufactured concept, I have to ask: Cui bono? Who benefits from this meme? Is it simply a general smokescreen? A distraction from the rest of what might otherwise be news? I would imagine that if it were propaganda, it would need a more specific origin.

(Unless, I suppose, it was simply found to have worked once, and so just kept getting used again repeatedly until it became all there was left in the news?)

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

You raise some excellent points, lakedaemonian!

I have to say, I did notice that the perspective and worldview was surprisingly unified in the English language press, and at odds with much of what is covered in other languages (or at least the ones I can read). I really wasn't factoring in explicit propaganda, trying instead to relate it to a difference in cultural perspectives based on shared history and language.

But perhaps that was just a bit naive.

The polarization of the Anglo-Saxon worldview into the neo-Kenesian left and the pseudo-Austrian right is certainly a very dominant meme that is everywhere in English, and viewed with slightly stunned disbelief elsewhere. If this, for example, is a manufactured concept, I have to ask: Cui bono? Who benefits from this meme? Is it simply a general smokescreen? A distraction from the rest of what might otherwise be news? I would imagine that if it were propaganda, it would need a more specific origin.

(Unless, I suppose, it was simply found to have worked once, and so just kept getting used again repeatedly until it became all there was left in the news?)

My feelings are:

Who benefits(on the 2nd Amendment WELL off centre black/white "debate"):

Mass media earn, just as they earn on every last bit of intentionally contrived, exploited, or accelerated carnage and controversy

Government and/or special interests benefit when perceptions are intentionally shaped towards an agenda.

Smokescreen:

2nd Amendment "debate" fit into this as well. Win or Lose, time poor and attention deficit disorder Joe Six Pack is confused and distracted by a high drama, low value overinflated crisis, while Rome smolders

---------

Information Operations/Propaganda is very, very real.

And while I don't think it possesses the ability to achieve mind control as Hollywood thrillers might have us believe or the hypnosis effect we see some comedians performing with funny/scary ways, I very much DO believe that we are all vulnerable to having our perceptions shaped.

And that includes everyone here, definitely including myself, even though we may be seemingly and completely aware that the attempt to shape us is taking place.

The best example of this I think is marketing. Take the world's best brand marketers, fully aware of and in command of tools to shapes perceptions, to the point of employing psychologists to test customer experimental and control groups on product shapes, colours, names, smells, etc in the hybrid science/art of making people desire things.

Even they are vulnerable and susceptible to other brand managers efforts.

So no matter how hard folks who've "seen the matrix" try, they are still always vulnerable, maybe just a little bit less.

I don't discount any other problems or flaws with mass media(such as the aforementioned word of caution often heard here about "getting what you pay for" with CNBC compared to iTulip), but I personally believe the shift from the Ministry of Propaganda to Propaganda.com Inc. is the biggest single problem.

Ma Bell got busted up and reformed, maybe Mass Media need to be busted up for a generation or two with limits to ownership once again to promote diversity of ownership and opinion.

I am surprised the iTulip community hasn't incorporated mass media ownership concentration reform as part of the solution platform starting with political reform(separating special interest money from politics) and obviously including economic/financial reform as already posited here.

[c1ue]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

To me, the concentration of mass media ownership that has resulted in a privatized and outsourced Ministry of Propaganda is the biggest(but definitely not only) reason why MSM is failing us.

I do agree with this - it is just that my view is that the real problem isn't media ownership concentration. It is that the US government no longer even pretends to act on behalf of its constituency.

The media concentration you speak of is a direct result of deregulation, much as the GFC and TBTF banks were also a result of deregulation.

Thus my view that breaking up the media concentration is good, but is not going to happen until the US government part is fixed - and that in turn is not going to get fixed barring the rise of a tyrant or some similarly cataclysmic political event.

[shiny!]

Re: Obama Administration Scandals

I do agree with this - it is just that my view is that the real problem isn't media ownership concentration. It is that the US government no longer even pretends to act on behalf of its constituency.

The media concentration you speak of is a direct result of deregulation, much as the GFC and TBTF banks were also a result of deregulation.

Thus my view that breaking up the media concentration is good, but is not going to happen until the US government part is fixed - and that in turn is not going to get fixed barring the rise of a tyrant or some similarly cataclysmic political event.

+1

"Those who make a peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy