Final Review: End Of An Error, Part 5 - The Many Failures of The Obama Administration: Tabulating The Damage

As the Obama Presidency starts to wind down we thought it would be a good idea to do a final review of the Obama era. We took an initial swing at that topic back in October, 2016 with a series of seven posts starting on October 9, 2016 with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Not unexpectedly, the review across those seven posts captured the myriad of failures of this Presidency. Diplomatically, economically, fiscally, militarily, legally, Constitutionally, integrity-wise,and in many other ways, in my opinion, this has been the worst Presidency of my lifetime. If you are a liberal, please read the posts, all of which are extensively sourced, before going off the deep end without thinking. This Presidency has stunk.

We started out this week by using some fine reporting and research by Reason magazine to point out how hypocritical Obama has been relative to abusing military power and how his actions have helped create a so-called “Imperial Presidency” which 1) abuses the rule of law and Constitution and 2) is now being run for better or worse by Donald Trump.

Over the next few days we will looking at other folks opinion on how well Obama did as President It will not likely to be pretty, as the previous seven posts referenced above have already proven.

1) One of the funniest and yet saddest pr efforts to recently come out of the Obama White House is the ludicrous claim that there were no major scandals during the Obama administration. Valerie Jarrett and Obama himself have been caught on camera making this outrageous claim which can be seen at the video embedded in the following link:

https://news.grabien.com/story-exclusive-complete-guide-scandals-obama-administration

- Fast and Furious campaign which illegally supplied military grade weapons to Mexican drug cartels which were eventually used to kill dozens if not hundreds of Mexican civilians and at least two U.S. Border Patrol agents.

- The illegal and un-Constitutional military intervention in Libya which destroyed an entire society, resulting in death, destruction, a massive refugee problem, and the establishment of another terrorist haven in the Middle East.

- The cover up to the Benghazi attack where Obama and Hillary Clinton lied to the world when they claimed an obscure YouTube caused the attack when they knew it was an outright, pre-planned terrorist attack.

- Obama allowing Hillary Clinton to have an unsecured, very hackable computer server be stationed in her house and used for top secret State Department email correspondence, correspondence that was likely hacked by multiple foreign parties and whose usage was against State Department rules and existing Federal government laws.

- Obama unilaterally and illegally changing well over a dozen edicts within the Obama Care legislation without Congressional approval.

- Obama politicized the IRS to harass American citizens that wanted to more formally participate in the election process in this country, denying those Americans their First Amendment rights.

- Food assistance rolls are still well over 40 million Americans a month, six years into the so-called Obama Recovery.

I could go on but you get the idea, to say there were NO scandals is either the ultimate delusion or these people think we are that stupid not to know what reality is.

And while we stopped our Obama scandal list at seven scandals, the Grabien article cited above did some remarkable research, identifying a whopping 730 Obama scandals, detailing out what the scandal was, what Federal government organization incurred the scandal, and when the scandal was. Now, admittedly, some of these 730 are pretty petty but a vast number of them are not, representing either illegal, un-Constitutional, or unethical behavior by this scandalous Presidency.

2) John Wayward, writing for Breitbart on January 4, 2017, listed out what he considered the 18 major scandals of Obama’s “scandal free” administration:

- Economic stimulus program - Even though he spent over $800 billion on his economic stimulus package, it failed to produce those robust “shovel ready” infrastructure jobs and other meaningful work for society. Money was squandered on absolutely stupid programs, money disappeared because of bad accounting processes and criminal activity and according to the Associated Press, half of the U.S. bridges that were “fixed” with stimulus money did not have anything wrong with them.

And the funny thing is that the entire wasteful effort was probably not needed. The stimulus legislation was signed in mid-February, 2009 but by the middle of the summer, if not sooner, in 2009 the recession had officially ended, long before the first stimulus dollar was spent.

- Fast and Furious - this idiotic program ended up placing military grade hardware in the hands of violent drug cartels in Mexico, weapons that were used to kill dozens, if not hundreds of Mexican civilians, and at least two U.S.Border Patrol agents. Although this program likely broke multiple domestic and international laws, Obama stonewalled the Congressional investigation by claiming executive privilege over White House and Justice Department documents.

- Eric Holder, Obama's Attorney General - Holder became the first sitting member of any President’s cabinet to be held in contempt of Congress by refusing to testify regarding the botched and illegal Fast and Furious program.

- Obama Care - from the President’s false claims and lies that if you like your doctor, insurance policy, and hospital you could keep them under the Obama Care legislation to Nancy Pelosi’s ridiculous statement that “we need to pass it [Obama Care] to find out what’s in it” and her dereliction of Congressional duty. And then once it was passed, Obama broke the law numerous times by unilaterally changing the provisions of the legislation without Congressional approval.

- Spying on journalists: This administration spied and harassed numerous journalists, stonewalled Freedom of Information Act requests, and suppressed information so many times that the Investigative Reporters Editors the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Poytner Institute called on Obama to end “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.”

You get the idea, there were a lot scandals but this is getting long winded so let' s tone the summaries to just a checklist:

- The IRS scandal: Politicized the IRS to suppress conservative political groups.

- Benghazi: Lied about the cause of the terror attack even though Obama and his staff, e.g. Hillary Clinton, knew the truth. 

- Hillary Clinton’s secret computer/email server.

- NSA spying scandal: Shredded the Fourth Amendment by spying on most if not all of Americans electronic communications without warrants or cause. 

- Bowe Bergdahl: The trading of an Army deserter for five dangerous terrorist leaders is a self contained scandal.

- Iran nuclear deal and ransom payment

- Polluting the Colorado river

- The GSA scandal: The General Services Administration was caught wasting large amounts of taxpayer money on expensive and unnecessary travel and parties and silly projects. 

- The VA death-list scandal

- Solyndra

- Secret Service gone wild

No scandal? I do not think so. One last Obama Presidency review tomorrow.

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