Obama and transparency

[Minskaya]

Obama supposedly didn't know anything about Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS audits of opposition political groups, bugging the phones and email of reporters, the impending failure of Solyndra, requests for additional diplomatic security in Benghazi, or the FBI investigation of CIA Director David Petraeus. I can *sort of* buy into Obama not being personally aware of these items until the crappola hit the fan.

But I can't buy into the notion that Obama knew nothing about the problems with the ObamaCare website (his presidential legacy) or his NSA secretly intercepting the phone calls of dozens of allied leaders for years.

Without doubt, Obama's 2008 inaugural promises of change and greater transparency are taking some serious hits.

[TopHatter]

Without doubt, Obama's 2008 inaugural promises of change and greater transparency are taking some serious hits.

He is, was and always will be a snake-oil salesman that can give a good speech. In effect, the perfect politician.

His mistake was promising all those things, when even the smallest child knows that they're impossible to deliver on.

[Doktor]

He is, was and always will be a snake-oil salesman that can give a good speech. In effect, the perfect politician.

His mistake was promising all those things, when even the smallest child knows that they're impossible to deliver on.

Yet grown up people believed him.

it is all Bush's fault. And I mean it.

[astralis]

TH,

e is, was and always will be a snake-oil salesman that can give a good speech. In effect, the perfect politician.

nah, not perfect. he hates the glad-handing, the wheeling-and-dealing, and the i-feel-your-pain that natural politicians have. he also lacks the "cross-me-and-i'll-break-your-knee-caps" instinct that LBJ or nixon had in spades, either.

that he over-promised? what politician doesn't? for that matter, his ego is not a surprise, either: given what is needed to become a President of the United States, THAT comes with the job description.

i, for one, am much more concerned with the fact that either obama is not keeping track of major items his administration is doing, as minskaya noted, or that he's being disingenous.

[Firestorm]

But I can't buy into the notion that Obama knew nothing about the problems with the ObamaCare website (his presidential legacy) or his NSA secretly intercepting the phone calls of dozens of allied leaders for years.

I guess Obama is as ignorant of the NSA's phone-tapping spree as Reagan was of the Iran-Contra affair ;).

[zraver]

Obama supposedly didn't know anything about Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS audits of opposition political groups, bugging the phones and email of reporters, the impending failure of Solyndra, requests for additional diplomatic security in Benghazi, or the FBI investigation of CIA Director David Petraeus. I can *sort of* buy into Obama not being personally aware of these items until the crappola hit the fan.

But I can't buy into the notion that Obama knew nothing about the problems with the ObamaCare website (his presidential legacy) or his NSA secretly intercepting the phone calls of dozens of allied leaders for years.

Without doubt, Obama's 2008 inaugural promises of change and greater transparency are taking some serious hits.

Add in CGI's connections to the Obama's (no bid contract), Solyndra and other stimulus monies awarded to Obama supporters, the never ending race baiting, his cabinet appointment choices (people with expressed anti-American views) plus all the shady shite from before his election... The dude is either corrupt to the core or an imbecile. Given the slickness of his campaign I think he is corrupt.

[citanon]

Obama supposedly didn't know anything about Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS audits of opposition political groups, bugging the phones and email of reporters, the impending failure of Solyndra, requests for additional diplomatic security in Benghazi, or the FBI investigation of CIA Director David Petraeus. I can *sort of* buy into Obama not being personally aware of these items until the crappola hit the fan.

But I can't buy into the notion that Obama knew nothing about the problems with the ObamaCare website (his presidential legacy) or his NSA secretly intercepting the phone calls of dozens of allied leaders for years.

Without doubt, Obama's 2008 inaugural promises of change and greater transparency are taking some serious hits.

You're not the only one who feels this way Minsky. It's starting to hit a cord.

Dana Milbank: What did President Obama know and when did he know it? - The Washington Post

What did President Obama know and when did he know it?
By Dana Milbank,

For a smart man, President Obama professes to know very little about a great number of things going on in his administration.

On Sunday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that he didn’t learn until this summer that the National Security Agency had been bugging the phones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders for nearly five years.

That followed by a few days a claim by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that Obama didn’t know about problems with the HealthCare.gov Web site before the rest of the world learned of them after the Oct. 1 launch.

It stretches credulity to think that the United States was spying on world leaders without the president’s knowledge, or that he was blissfully unaware of huge technical problems that threatened to undermine his main legislative achievement. But on issues including the IRS targeting flap and the Justice Department’s use of subpoenas against reporters, White House officials have frequently given a variation on this theme.

Question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Answer: Not much, and about a minute ago.

The Associated Press’s Josh Lederman led off Monday’s White House briefing with an obvious question: “Was the president kept out of the loop about what the NSA was doing?”

“I am not going to get into details of internal discussions,” press secretary Jay Carney replied, repeating previous promises that “we do not and will not monitor the chancellor’s communications.” This formulation conspicuously omits the phrase “did not.”

CNN’s Jim Acosta cited the HealthCare.gov rollout and the IRS targeting, which Obama said he learned about through news reports. “Is there a concern,” Acosta asked, “that the president is being kept in the dark on some of these issues?”

Carney told Acosta he had “conflated a bunch of very disparate issues.”

“Republican critics,” Acosta said, “are making the case, though, that the president appears to be in the dark about some pretty significant stories that are swirling around this White House.”

“Well, Republican critics say a lot of things, Jim,” Carney replied icily.

That’s true. But in this case, the Republicans understated the number of issues on which the president has claimed to be in the dark. A compilation by the Republican National Committee titled “The Bystander President” cited the NSA spying on Merkel, the Obamacare rollout and an investigation of the IRS’s targeting of political groups (the White House counsel knew of the inquiry but said she didn’t inform Obama). The RNC also mentioned the failure of clean-energy company Solyndra, which had received government funding (Carney had said Obama read about it in “news accounts”), and the attempts to go after reporters’ phone and e-mail records (which the president also found out about from reading the news, Carney said).

The RNC didn’t mention that Obama had allegedly known nothing about an FBI investigation of an affair involving David Petraeus that led him to resign as CIA director. Neither did it mention two other claims that conservatives often question: Obama’s ignorance of a guns-on-the-border sting operation called “Fast and Furious” that went awry, and his unawareness of requests for additional diplomatic security in Libya before a U.S. outpost in Benghazi was attacked.

There’s no reason Obama should have known about Fast and Furious or diplomatic security requests. But how could he not know his spies were bugging the German chancellor?

“Is it believable that the president would not know about surveillance of the head of state of a close American ally?” ABC News’s Jon Karl asked Carney. “Does that sound plausible to you?”

This finally provoked a hint from Carney that Obama did, in fact, know that the NSA was bugging Merkel. “The Wall Street Journal probably doesn’t appreciate the suggestion that their story is wrong,” he said, referring to a report that said Obama learned of the activity in the summer, “but I would say simply that we’re not going to comment on specific activities reported in the press,” he said.

Another hint came from Carney’s assurance that “the president has full confidence in General [Keith] Alexander and the leadership at the NSA.” Obama probably wouldn’t have such confidence if that leadership had kept him in the dark about something as consequential as the bugging of world leaders’ phones.

On one level, it would be reassuring — and much more credible — if the White House admitted that Obama is more in the loop than he has let on. On another level, it would be disconcerting: Is it better that he didn’t know about his administration’s missteps — or that he knew about them and didn’t stop them?

Twitter: @Milbank

[Gun Grape]

Its called "Plausible Deniability"

30 years ago the same questions were being asked about Reagan.

I'll bet if you use a little Goggle-Fu, you will find the same with every President back to at least Kennedy. When the CIA coined the term.

[zraver]

Its called "Plausible Deniability"

30 years ago the same questions were being asked about Reagan.

I'll bet if you use a little Goggle-Fu, you will find the same with every President back to at least Kennedy. When the CIA coined the term.

Not this many times with one president across so many different issues where the only plausible connection is POTUS himself.

[DOR]

I was wondering about many of these issues myself, but then I saw this:


Solyndra


And, immediately I realized the source and bias.

Whew!

[zraver]

I was wondering about many of these issues myself, but then I saw this:


Solyndra


And, immediately I realized the source and bias.

Whew!

Whats up krugbot? So how much exactly was the cost of your personal ethics? When you so obviously shill for the left at the expense of truth and common sense I am going to treat you the same way AM gets treated when he shills for Pakistan. The connections between Solyndra and Kaiser, and Kaiser and Obama are not even in dispute anymore. All technically legal, but still unethical and dirty. A person who is a super bundler for POTUS, has a firm he is invested in get a 535 million dollar federal loan after bragging that everyone at the White House knew of the company he was invested in... So he didn't (so far as can be proven) directly ask for the loan- company officials did. All he did was grease the skids, open doors, make introductions and provide access. The result is the same- big bundler gets tax payer funded payoff.

[Gun Grape]

Not this many times with one president across so many different issues where the only plausible connection is POTUS himself.

Your to young to remember Reagan. The darling of the tea party. Who holds the distinction of being the President that had more than 130 members of his administration Investigated, indicted or convicted. The most of any President. Would have been more convictions if not for Bush Srs pardons

Who can forget HUD grant rigging, Iran Contra, Arms for hostages, and many more?

Its no different here

[desertswo]

Your to young to remember Reagan. The darling of the tea party. Who holds the distinction of being the President that had more than 130 members of his administration Investigated, indicted or convicted. The most of any President. Would have been more convictions if not for Bush Srs pardons

Who can forget HUD grant rigging, Iran Contra, Arms for hostages, and many more?

Its no different here

The difference Gunny is that no one has the balls to take him on, regardless of party affiliation, because everyone knows any serious questioning of the sort will prompt the throwing of the race card. Not by the President but by his proxies who are only too willing to do so. It is what it is. This stuff needs to be looked at because it's screwed up, and I don't care who the author is. I have no love to either party, a pox on both their houses, but someone needs to step up and say, "Enough!"

[zraver]

Your to young to remember Reagan. The darling of the tea party. Who holds the distinction of being the President that had more than 130 members of his administration Investigated, indicted or convicted. The most of any President. Would have been more convictions if not for Bush Srs pardons

Who can forget HUD grant rigging, Iran Contra, Arms for hostages, and many more?

Its no different here

Not to young to remember Reagan. Obama even exceeds Clinton...

[Parihaka]

Add in CGI's connections to the Obama's (no bid contract), Solyndra and other stimulus monies awarded to Obama supporters, the never ending race baiting, his cabinet appointment choices (people with expressed anti-American views) plus all the shady shite from before his election... The dude is either corrupt to the core or an imbecile. Given the slickness of his campaign I think he is corrupt.

Change imbecile to not-very-bright and I'd say he's both. His campaign was a combination of excellent media management and good oratory when Donald Duck with speech lessons could have won against the republicans. He's just not in to self sacrifice. He's more important than his job, in his mind. That makes him not very bright.