This and That...

[Warph]

Report: "Duck And Cover" Alarm
At U.S. Embassy Kabul...

Photos From Kabul Airport Attack (Warrning: Some Graphic)
The attack apparently began at around 4:30 am, Kabul time, with a small vegetable truck trying to breach the perimeter of the airport compound. Inside was a bomb. Police reportedly blew up the truck:


Seven Taliban insurgents then took up positions in two buildings at the perimeter of the airport and began firing RPGS into the NATO/American held area in the airport. Kabul police reported at least some of insurgents were wearing Afghan police uniforms to help facilitate the attack.

Reporters racing to scene:


All seven Taliban attackers were reportedly killed, two by suicide vests they were wearing and five by military/security forces.
Graphic: dead Taliban on ground:


Graphic: Fingerprinting hand of dead insurgent, hand/arm no longer attached to insurgent:


Here comes the calvary:


Update: Report Of Attack On Kabul Airport..
Update: Report: Suicide Bombers In U.S. Air Force Area Of Airport...
Update: More Forces Deployed To Airport...
Update: Explosions Continuing At Airport..
Update: Assailants Under Attack By Afghan And International Forces, Reporters Huddled Down In Nearby Building...Update: Bombing May Have Damaged U.S. Air Force Tents, Reports Of Two Vehicle Explosions...
Update: Taliban Claims Responsibility For Attack...
Update: Reports Of Two Attackers Left, Police Destroyed One Bomb Packed Vehicle...
Update: One Building Cleared, Fighting With Attackers In One Remaining Building Continuing...
Update: 3 Taliban Reportedly Killed, More On The Way...
Update: Fight Now Over, Initial Early Report No Other Casualties

[Warph]

British Muslim Convert Arrested, Being Extradited To America For Helping
Al-Qaeda In Yemen Create "Inspire" Magazine

(Next stop SuperMax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence )

Via IBT:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/476493/20130609/minh-quang-pham-qaeda-yemen.htm

A London web designer faces life imprisonment in the US on charges that he provided propaganda and technical expertise to al-Qaida and met terrorist operatives in Yemen.

Minh Quang Pham, 29, is accused of helping produce the group's online English-language "magazine" Inspire, which has featured instructions on how to manufacture explosives and is thought to have been used by terrorist suspects in Britain and the US.

Using the pseudonym Mohammed Amin, Pham is said to have pledged an oath of allegiance to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and received military-style training from the group after travelling to Yemen in December 2010.

Pham is a British national of Vietnamese origin, who converted to Islam are moving to the UK as a child. In September 2010, he set up a company designing websites and leaflets which was registered to his home in New Cross, South London, where he has lived since 2005.

Pham was arrested at Heathrow last July as he returned from Bahrain, when a live ammunition round was found in his possession.

He was re-arrested on a US extradition warrant last week, and is currently in custody in Belmarsh maximum security prison awaiting extradition proceedings. He will appear at Westminster magistrates court in August for his next hearing.

In an indictment released by the US Department of Justice, Pham is accused of providing material support to AQAP, based in Yemen, along with others "known and unknown".

Pham is said to have "facilitated communications and provided expert advice and assistance in photography and graphic design" for AQAP's media wing before returning to Britain the following October.

He allegedly met two American citizens, referred to as "American CC-1″ and "American CC-2″, and worked with the first to produce online propaganda for AQAP.

[Warph]

The Obama Administration has presented such an array of botched domestic and foreign policies that an observer can become disoriented. Seeing a blur of so many negative events is like watching a Jason Bourne movie, with the camera on high speed. Each alleged malfeasance or scandal is worthy in itself of deliberate scrutiny, yet as we start to examine each one, others suddenly compete for our attention. It is a dazzling tapestry of mismanagement at best. But there is one theme that connects it all:

CONTEMPT!

First, we have a rogue agency named the Internal Revenue Service interfering in the lives of ordinary folks with views that are conservative or at odds with the Administration. This contemptuous act against Americans who have committed no apparent wrongdoing or financial legerdemain is heavy-handedness reminiscent of banana republics or authoritarian regimes of yesteryear.

Testifying on Capitol Hill about his reportedly 157 visits to the White House, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman dismissively cited "the Easter Egg roll with my kids" among the reasons for such an astonishing number of meetings. Lois Lerner, Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations pleaded the Fifth Amendment, and Steven Miller, Acting Commissioner referred to the debacle as "horrible customer service" in his apology. To make it worse, the IRS will judge whether Americans are in compliance with Obamacare, not supported by a majority of the American people and railroaded into existence by the President. And it is the same IRS, which investigates U.S. companies for excessive corporate entertainment expenses that are reported as income tax deductions, that spent $50 million on conferences over a recent three-year period, with certain IRS officials staying in $3,500 hotel suites, according to findings of the Treasury Department's inspector general. Indeed, the IRS has shown itself to be unworthy in its principal role as the instrument of revenue collection from American people and companies.

Further, the Department of Justice that has shown contempt for the First Amendment through highly unusual surveillance of journalists of the AP who like those harassed by the IRS, are seen to be a threat to the Administration's narratives. In a disingenuous and cynical act, Attorney General Eric Holder invited journalists to an "off the record meeting," again evidencing contempt for openness and the principle of transparency which the Administration has piously affirmed. All this comes from an Attorney General already held in contempt by the House of Representatives for not presenting documents relating to the mismanaged Mexican Fast and Furious gun tracking operation, the first such a sanction of a Cabinet official in American history. Moreover, it has been revealed that an anti-abortion group in Iowa was directed to commit to the IRS that it would not demonstrate in front of Planned Parenthood, a crudely repressive action by the Department of Justice that seems at odds with the First Amendment.

The same contempt prevails in foreign policy. Benghazi is enshrouded in fog and allegations of deception by the Obama Administration, which before the November election desperately put out the story that the massacre of U.S. foreign service staff was the result of a video offensive to Muslims produced in California, and not a concerted ambush by Al Qaeda or its affiliates — to avoid the inference that America had not successfully broken the back of Islamist jihadism.

To this day, we do not know who denied requests for security at the American mission; who ordered a Special Forces unit in Tripoli to stand down, as charged by Gregory Hicks, formerly deputy chief of mission; who directed Susan Rice, ambassador to the United Nations, to take to the air waves and call it a reaction to a video offensive to Muslims; and who ordered that this misrepresentation be maintained for seventeen days until President Obama finally acknowledged that it was a terrorist attack. Further, we do not know exactly what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama were doing during all seven hours of the siege of the U.S. consulate. And now, the controversial and highly criticized Susan Rice has been named national security advisor.

Perhaps the Administration hopes that Americans have attention deficit disorder — absorbed with buying and selling, family problems, and the distractions of a consumer economy — making them unable to assimilate and concentrate on so many issues of incompetence, or worse, illegality if proved.

What we have is a matrix of contempt — contempt for the American people, or at least about half of them; contempt for the principles of transparency and stewardship; and contempt for the pursuit of truth. Let us hope the electorate will speak out and make its will known; resignations of shameless senior U.S. officials could be too much to hope for.

Who knows — we might even get to hear Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, state that in an era of moral relativism, we must make allowances for our government.

[Ross]

This is an old video but still true today.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yHrwLq-LdQ&feature=youtu.be

[Warph]

From the 2003 Television docudrama: George Orwell - A Life in Pictures:
George Orwell - "1984 - A Final Warning"

June 10, 2013
Sales Of George Orwell's Book "1984″ Surge 68% Following News Of Obama "PRISM" Program

Movies:

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984) full - BBC 1954 Version
Uploaded on Aug 16, 2011
The first film of the famous George Orwell book published in 1949.
This is the full version... very rare:

Uploaded on Oct 17, 2011

George Orwell's "1984". Produced in 1954.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus effectively perpetuating propaganda, who grows disillusioned with his meagre existence and so begins a rebellion against the system. The novel has become famous for its portrayal of surveillance and society's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered the popular vernacular. Orwell, who had "encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel" in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 19471948 while critically ill with tuberculosis. He sent the final typescript to his friends Secker and Warburg on 4 December 1948 and the book was published on 8 June 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel's title, its terms, its language (Newspeak), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective "Orwellian" denotes many things. It can refer to totalitarian action or organization, as well as governmental attempts to control or misuse information for the purposes of controlling, pacifying or even subjugating the population. "Orwellian" can also refer generally to twisted language which says the opposite of what it truly means, or specifically governmental propagandizing by the misnaming of things; hence the "Ministry of Peace" in the novel actually deals with war and the "Ministry of Love" actually tortures people. Since the novel's publication "Orwellian" has in fact become somewhat of a catch-all for any kind of governmental overreach or dishonesty and therefore has multiple meanings and applications. The phrase Big Brother is Watching You specifically connotes pervasive, invasive surveillanceThe story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain". Posters of the ruling Party's leader, "Big Brother", bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way television (the telescreen) dominates the private and public spaces of the populace. Oceania's people are in three classes — the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. The Party government controls the people via the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith, an Outer Party member. As in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, propaganda is pervasive; Smith's job is rewriting historical documents to match the contemporaneous party line, the orthodoxy of which changes daily. It therefore includes destroying evidence, amending newspaper articles, deleting the existence of people identified as "unpersons".


[...]

"1984" - 1956 Version DVD (FULL)
Published on Aug 6, 2012

Nineteen Eighty-Four (mostly written 1984) is a 1948 dystopian fiction written
by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), about a society ruled by an oligarchical
dictatorship. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war,
pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control. Oceania is
ruled by a political party called simply The Party. The individual is always
subordinated to the state, and it is in part this philosophy which allows the
Party to manipulate and control humanity. In the Ministry of Truth, protagonist
Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party's
propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and
always correct, yet his meager existence disillusions him to the point of
seeking rebellion against Big Brother.

[Warph]

San Francisco Builds Taxpayer-Funded Foot Bath And Prayer Space For Muslim Cabbies

(Can you imagine far-left San Fran using taxpayer dollars to build a Christian-related prayer room?  Yeah, me neither)

Via SFGate:
http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/06/09/airports-garage-now-muslim-house-of-worship/

Here's a sign of the changing times — Muslim cabbies now have their very own place at San Francisco International Airport to wash their hands and feet before they pray.

Under Islamic law, Muslims are required to pray five times a day — a ritual that also calls for a ceremonial cleansing.

For many cab drivers, that's meant either lugging bottled water around or using one of the bathrooms inside the terminal to wash — a practice not always welcomed by airport passengers.

So Royal Cab driver Hasan Khan, 52, a Pakistani immigrant, collected some 300 signatures from fellow cabbies, urging the airport to give them their own cleansing station.

Airport brass obliged — and the wash equipment was installed on the ground floor of the main garage, right next to where the drivers congregate for their breaks.

"The way we look at it...this was in the interest of maintaining a good relationship with ground transportation providers,'' says airport spokesman Doug Yakel.

(As for using public resources?)

Yakel says the costs were nominal, with the work done by in-house plumbers.

As for Khan, he recognizes not everyone might appreciate the religious accommodation. But then he points out that Christians generally pray at church on Sundays — while for him and his fellow working Muslims, the ritual is woven into their daily routine.

[Warph]

Obama: "We Don't Want to Tax All Businesses Out of Business"

(Just most, Barry.... Just most!)

Via CNS News:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-we-dont-want-tax-all-businesses-out-business

President Barack Obama says Democrats "don't want to tax all businesses out of business."

"I know that there are a few Republicans here in the audience," Obama said Friday at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign in Palo Alto, Ca. "If you talk to us, it turns out we're pretty common-sense folks.

"We don't think government can do everything," he said. "We don't think that top-down solutions are the right way to go. We believe in the free market. We believe in a light touch when it comes to regulations."

"We don't want to tax all businesses out of business," Obama said. "But we do think that there's a role to play for government."

[Warph]

CBS News Obtains Documents Showing Obama State Department Engaged In "Endemic" Coverups Ranging From Sexual Assaults To Drug Rings

(Doesn't surprise me.... Scandal-Palooza rolls on)

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – Uncovered documents show the U.S. State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal behavior ranging from sexual assaults to an underground drug ring.

CBS News reports that is has unearthed documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal watchdog agency, that implicate the State Department in a series of misconducts worldwide.

The memo, reported by CBS News' John Miller, cited eight specific examples, including allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries" — a problem the report says was "endemic."

Former State Department internal investigator Aurelia Fedenisn told CBS News, "We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases."

Often times, other DSS agents were simply told to back off of investigations of high-ranking State Department members. Fedenisn told CBS that "hostile intelligence services" allow criminal behavior to continue.

In one such cover-up, investigators were told to stop probing the case of a U.S. ambassador who was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park. The memo states that the ambassador was permitted to return to his post despite having, "routinely ditched...his protective security detail" in order to "solicit sexual favors from prostitutes."

[Warph]

Report: Air Force Orders Airmen Not To Read
Obama-Scandal News

(Don't worry... they're going to read it anyway)

(Nothing to see here folks..... move along)

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/military-told-not-to-read-obama-scandal-news/

WASHINGTON — President Obama has said the outrage over the federal government's decision to monitor citizens' phone activity is all "hype."

He might want to share his opinion with the U.S. Air Force, which is ordering members of the service not to look at news stories about it.

WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal.

The notice applies to users of the Air Force NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network), which is the only way that many troops stationed overseas and on bases in the U.S. are able to access the Internet.

The last line of the executive summary states:

"Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message Incident."

Cindy McGee, the mother of an airman stationed in the UAE, spoke with WND.

"The fact that our government is attempting to censor our service members from the truth of what is happening here at home is truly frightening and disheartening," said McGee.

Her son received the same notice.

[Warph]

WND EXCLUSIVE
Obama loses the left
Politicians and mainstream media turn against the president

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/obama-loses-the-left/#VYy2H9dDrmVs8MIt.99


It's become so bad, even Obama may be giving up on Obama.

From moderates to radicals, the left is abandoning Obama in droves, and a statement from the president might suggest even he has already given up on himself.
While commenting Friday on his latest scandal, the NSA's spying on the phone records of millions of Americans, the president seemed to predict his own impeachment, saying he "will leave office sometime in the next three and half years."

It may be sooner than later, the way he's going. Virtually everyone on the left is howling over the Obama administration, from the New York Times to Al Gore

The Times may have delivered the most serious blow to Obama, given the enormous credibility it has with the left.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html?_r=0

Its Thursday editorial condemned his administration for collecting phone call data from millions of Americans and starkly stated, "the administration had lost all credibility."

That was a dramatic break between the leading leftist newspaper and the president it has supported so strongly and consistently during his two terms.

The Times editorial board must have had second thoughts because it later revised the bold statement, toning it down a few hours later to read the "administration has now lost all credibility on this issue."

But other leftists certainly are not toning down their scathing criticism of the president.

Al Gore called the actions of the Obama administration "obscenely outrageous."

After it was reported Wednesday the National Security Agency has been using a secret court order to collect the phone records of everyone on the Verizon network, the former vice-president turned on the administration.

Gore blasted the Obama administration with a tweet reading, "In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?"

The Huffington Post took the satirical route and delivered perhaps the unkindest cut of all, for a leftist, comparing Obama to former president George W. Bush. The website posted a picture on the front page photo-shopped to depict Obama as a hybrid of Bush.

Liberal pundit Bob Beckel may have delivered the most extreme criticism, nearly calling Obama a fascist.

"I think it is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution I've heard. They have no right to the phone records. ... It is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and it is deplorable. I didn't like it when they did it during the Bush administration, and I don't like when they're doing it now," Beckel said on Fox News.

"They have taken this Patriot Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken it and abused it," he added.

"You talk about fascism? You're getting damn close to it," Beckel concluded.

The leftist institution the ACLU was already upset with the administration over its policy of using drones for assassinations, including the targeting of Americans.

Now, the ACLU sees the administration as Big Brother and its use of the NSA as even more alarming than the novel "1984."

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/aclu-condemns-nsa-surveillance-as-beyond-orwellian

"It's a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents. It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies," Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, said in a statement.

Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, called for a full investigation by Congress, saying, "Such extreme secrecy is inconsistent with our democratic values of open government and accountability."

An influential leftist has even written an editorial calling for fellow liberals to band together against the Obama administration.

[Ugly] Julie Roginsky served as a political strategist for the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg and other Democrats.

On Friday, she wrote on the Fox News website, "Every progressive with even a shred of moral consistency should side with the New York Times against the White House."

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/06/07/progressives-must-stand-with-new-york-times-against-obama/print#ixzz2VYvQmFqa

But she wasn't referring to just the latest scandal, the one involving the NSA.

"The events of the past month – from the Associated Press subpoena to the James Rosen search warrant to the revelation that our government has been indiscriminately collecting phone records data – have forced liberals to make a choice between complacency and outrage, between keeping silent because one of our own is in the White House and calling him out on betraying the principles for which we have fought for so long," wrote Roginsky.

She did not stop there.

"If this White House truly wanted to level with the American people, the president would have gone on national television to explain the necessity of these programs and the trade-offs between civil liberties and security he believes are consistent with his policies.

"That he has failed to do this for nearly six years is evidence of the fact that there is likely no excuse for such blanket surveillance upon the American public, aside from the usual 'it's necessary to keep us safe' bromide."

Roginsky plainly feels betrayed and perhaps that's why her criticism is so bitter.

"As progressives, we cannot remain silent when a president, whom we worked hard to elect and defend at every turn, betrays the very values upon which he ran five years ago."

The tide has been turning against Obama ever since congressional committees began hearings in May on the slew of scandals dogging the administration.

Those scandals involved the murder of four Americans (including Ambassador Chris Stevens) at a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in a terrorist attack the administration falsely portrayed as a protest over a video; the IRS targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status; and the Justice Department secretly snooping on the phone records of journalists.

Leftists were already either abandoning the president or preparing to give up on him before this latest round of snooping scandals even broke.

On May 16, leftist talk radio host Bill Press called for the firing of Attorney General Eric Holder over the secret collection of the phone records of the AP and Fox News reporter James Rosen.

He didn't mince words in a tweet that read "What 'breach of national security' are we talking about re the AP story? It's BS and Holder should be fired."

Liberal talk show host Chris Matthews had already soured on the president a day earlier, saying Obama "obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch."

"What part of the presidency does Obama like? He doesn't like dealing with other politicians — that means his own cabinet, that means members of the congress, either party. He doesn't particularly like the press.... He likes to write the speeches, likes to rewrite what Favreau and the others wrote for the first draft," Matthews continued.

"He doesn't seem to like being an executive," pondered Matthews.

On May 18, WND reported how Matthews blasted testimony from former IRS chief Steve Miller, who suggested the agency's behavior was inappropriate but denied any political targeting.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/obamas-biggest-fans-abandoning-ship/

"That Mr. Miller guy," Matthews said, "It's like he didn't see what he knew people certainly right, left and center could see, that when you target particular groups, you're targeting particular groups. I mean, if this were on the other foot, and this was a George W. administration, they were targeting groups that were calling themselves progressives, I would say it's prima facie evidence of targeting. I don't think it's complicated."

WND also reported, even CNN talk-show host Piers Morgan paused in his relentless crusade for stricter gun-control laws to comment, "I've had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here, saying to me, 'Well, the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government,' and I've always laughed at them. I said, 'Don't be ridiculous! Your government won't turn itself on you.

"But, actually, this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government," Morgan concluded. "I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior. I think what the Department of Justice has done to the AP is bordering on tyrannical behavior."

An Investor's Business Daily editorial commented, "Many in the dominant press are indeed turning. Politico ran a chilling story headlined 'The IRS Wants You to Share Everything'; NBC's Andrea Mitchell accuses Obama of 'the most outrageous excesses I've seen' in her years in journalism, going back before Watergate; the Washington Post's Dana Milbank accuses Obama of 'a full frontal assault on the First Amendment.'"

"Let me tell you how bad it's gotten," NBC "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno quipped. "Fox News has changed its slogan from 'Fair and Balanced' to 'See, I Told You So!'"

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow further noticed it's not just the media, but also congressional allies jumping off the Obama bandwagon. When Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., announced plans to retire in 2014, he became the sixth Democrat to step down two years from now instead of running for re-election.

"Tell us if something is wrong there," Maddow said rhetorically. "What is the secret about this place that has you fleeing like rats from a sinking ship?"

Even Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid bristled over the AP phone-records story, telling Salon he "can't really defend the Department of Justice at all" and, "I just think this has been handled so wrong."

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., agreed, telling MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, "I don't think anyone truly believes that the president has given a sufficient answer for America, much less our press [about the AP scandal]. The president has to come forward and share why he did not alert the press that they were going to do this. He has to tell Americans, including me, what was this national security question? You just can't raise the flag and expect us just to salute it every time without any reason, and the same thing applies to the IRS. We've got to give him an opportunity to root out any wrongdoing, whether it's just negligence or it's criminal."

The Daily Beast – a website merged with Newsweek – ran a column from James Goodale, the attorney who defended the New York Times against President Richard Nixon in the famous Pentagon Papers trial, who asserted, "President Barack H. Obama's outrageous seizure of the Associated Press's phone records, allegedly to discover sources of leaks, should surprise no one. Obama has relentlessly pursued leakers ever since he became president. He is fast becoming the worst national security press president ever, and it may not get any better."

In an interview with the New York Observer, Goodale added, "Obama has all these things that he's done to the press on national security matters that Nixon never did."

Lanny J. Davis, a former crisis manager for President Clinton who admits he voted for and backs Obama, told National Public Radio, "[Obama's] crisis-management communications team is absent without leave. Ever since we lost the message on health care, I've wondered if there's anybody there trying to get out in front on the facts."

NPR further reported Davis saying the IRS story goes to the heart of government abuse of power: "The president of the United States should hold a press conference and commit to a full, 100-percent investigation in concert with the Republican leadership of the House and say, 'I want to have on my desk the list of anybody who recommended doing this. In the government, in the White House, or anywhere else.'"

Time political columnist Joe Klein wrote of the IRS news, even before the AP scandal broke, "Yet again, we have an example of Democrats simply not managing the government properly and with discipline. ... This is just poisonous at a time of skepticism about the efficacy of government. ... [Obama's] unwillingness to concentrate – and I mean concentrate obsessively – on making sure that government is managed efficiently will be part of his legacy."

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post penned similar criticism of Obama. "President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency," Milbank wrote, arguing Obama was reacting to the scandals with a portrayed ignorance reminiscent of "just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news."

Jim Kuhnhenn of the Associated Press leveled his criticism at White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at a May 14 press briefing: "The White House right now is confronting a confluence of issues – Benghazi talking points, IRS reviews of political groups, Justice Department review of journalists' phone records. And in every instance, either the president or you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else. On the Benghazi talking points, it's been political motivations on the Hill. On the IRS, it's been the bureaucrats at the IRS. And on the Justice Department issue, yesterday in your statement you said those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department. But it is the president's administration, so I wonder, doesn't responsibility for setting tone and setting direction ultimately rest with the president on these matters?"

Other reporters at the same press briefing passed up softball questions for tougher lines of inquiry, including whether news of the IRS scandal was "withheld until after the election," whether or not the AP subpoena's constituted an "overreach," whether the administration "might be hiding something," if the IRS is being "truthful" and how the president feels about "being compared to President Nixon." The press corps also grilled Carney relentlessly on the president's reputation for prosecuting those who leak information to the press.

Michigan's Rep. Sander Levin, ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in hearings before the committee the IRS and its employees "have completely failed the American people" by "singling out organizations for review based on their name or political views, rather than their activity. ... All of us are angry about this on behalf of the nation."


Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/obama-loses-the-left/#iylCh0Xp43Cf2Cod.99