A Bad Year for Obama May Turn Worse in 2014

If President Obama were a baseball player he would have gone 0 for 2013.

No, it’s not exactly breaking news that 2013 was a bad year for the president.  But he may soon look back on the remnants of a bad year and say, “Those were the good old days.”

Mr. Obama’s biggest flop, of course, was also his biggest “accomplishment” (a word I put in quotation marks not by accident).  That would be the ironically named Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.

The rollout, he told us, would be as smooth and easy as shopping on Amazon. If Amazon sued the president for slander, I think Amazon would win.
Then there were all those (let’s be nice and call them) misstatements of fact.

If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Premium costs will go down on average $2500.

Okay, let’s just stipulate that so far ObamaCare has been one great big mess.  Period!  And it’s exacted a toll on the president.

As CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger put it: “People don’t think he’s as competent as they used to think. They don’t think he’s as trustworthy as they used to think.”

But it’s not just the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare. There were also revelations in 2013 that the National Security Agency was secretly keeping tabs on all of us.  Mr. Obama defended the plan, which caused a split in his liberal base.  Turns out they don’t like secret, widespread surveillance anymore than a lot of (but not all my any means) conservatives do.

Liberals were angry, too, that the president continued to use drones to knock off terrorists – and sometimes, innocent bystanders – a program started by the one liberals detest, George W. Bush.

There was also the IRS scandal, which conservatives believe showed that the president’s team was willing to use the agency to punish conservatives and further it’s own liberal agenda –no matter what the law said.

Whether it was Republican obstruction as Mr. Obama believes, or principled GOP opposition, the president got nowhere on a jobs program; nowhere on tax reform;  nowhere on immigration reform; no hike in the minimum wage; and no expansion of background checks for gun purchases, even after the Newtown massacre, despite a strong effort by the president.

And a new CNN/ORC International poll shows a drop of 14 percentage points since the beginning of 2013 in President Obama’s approval rating.  It’s now down to 41 percent.

Another poll, this one by ABC News and the Washington Post shows that 45 percent of Americans trust Republicans to do a better job handling the economy compared to 41 percent for President Obama.

But anyone who thinks that what goes down must at some point go back up, that 2014 has got to be better than 2013, may be engaging in wishful thinking.

Read More By: Bernie Goldberg

FUNNY VIDEO Obama Administration Scandals-- Seriously?

The Real Reason Gibson Guitar was Targeted by the Feds.

 

 

The inexplicable raid nearly three years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also used was another targeting by this administration of its political enemies.
 
On Aug. 24, 2011, federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. One of the top makers of acoustic and electric guitars, including the iconic Les Paul introduced in 1952, Gibson was accused of using wood illegally obtained in violation of the century-old Lacey Act, which outlaws trafficking in flora and fauna the harvesting of which had broken foreign laws.

In one raid, the feds hauled away ebony fingerboards, alleging they violated Madagascar law. Gibson responded by obtaining the sworn word of the African island's government that no law had been broken.
In another raid, the feds found materials imported from India, claiming they too moved across the globe in violation of Indian law. Gibson's response was that the feds had simply misinterpreted Indian law.

Interestingly, one of Gibson's leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Co. According to C.F. Martin's catalog, several of their guitars contain "East Indian Rosewood," which is the exact same wood in at least 10 of Gibson's guitars. So why were they not also raided and their inventory of foreign wood seized?

Grossly underreported at the time was the fact that Gibson's chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, contributed to Republican politicians. Recent donations have included $2,000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and $1,500 to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

By contrast, Chris Martin IV, the Martin & Co. CEO, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee over the past couple of election cycles.

"We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted," Juszkiewicz said at the time, adding the matter "could have been addressed with a simple contact (from) a caring human being representing the government. Instead, the government used violent and hostile means."

Read More: Investors Business Daily

Obama Met With IRS Union Leader Day Before They Targeted Conservatives…

 

Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?

Is the White House Visitors Log the trail to the smoking gun?

The stunning questions are raised by the following set of new facts.
March 31, 2010.

According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The White House lists the IRS union leader’s visit this way:

Kelley, Colleen Potus 03/31/2010 12:30
In White House language, “POTUS” stands for “President of the United States.”

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. 

The IG report wrote it up this way:

“April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.”

In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.

Thank You: Weasel Zippers