Roughly 40 years ago, President Richard Nixon was running for re-election against what turned out to be a weak and ineffectual Democratic opponent named George McGovern. All the polls, at the time, showed that Nixon was comfortably ahead and would win an easy re-election. (He eventually carried 49 states and won in a landslide.) Not withstanding Nixon’s large lead in the polls, a group of low level Republican hacks decided that they would break into Democratic campaign headquarters and steal whatever campaign information might be available, in order to further help Nixon’s re-election efforts. Being the original gang that couldn’t shoot straight, these idiot hacks were caught in the act by the D.C. police. The Democratic campaign headquarters they broke into happened to be located in a newly-built, apartment-house, condominium complex known as Watergate. It was a very pricy establishment located on the banks of the Potomac, in Washington D.C.
Since Nixon had nothing to do with okaying this break-in, the sensible thing to have done, would have been to denounce these hacks, state that the White House had no role in authorizing the break-in, and offer that the perpetrators would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Had he done this, the so-called Watergate scandal would have never taken root or blossomed, and Nixon could have completed his presidency on a high-note. But although Nixon had achieved major accomplishments during his first term, (ending the Viet-Nam war, establishing diplomatic relations with Communist China, creating the Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, etc.) he possessed one fatal flaw. He was highly paranoid. He believed he was beset by enemies (the opposition) who were out to “get him.” This led to him creating “enemies lists” of people who he would try to destroy before they could destroy him. By sending IRS agents out to hound them, for example.
Because of Nixon’s paranoia, he and his White House staff decided to cover-up key facts about the break-in. Like who authorized it in the first place, and where the cash had come from to fund the operation. At the time, there were 2 young reporters at the local newspaper, the Washington Post, who were assigned to the political beat and were eager to prove their chops, named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Hence, these two reporters dug deeper and deeper into the White House coverup of the events surrounding the break-in at Watergate. They developed an inside source at the WH who kept feeding them never-before revealed facts. They called their source “Deep Throat” (after a famous porno movie that was in the theaters at that time) in order to protect his identity. There were also Senate hearings and other investigations on-going, and the Watergate scandal grew larger by the week. Key WH aides were forced to resign in the wake of the scandal. Finally, when it was obvious that Nixon himself would be impeached and removed from office by Congress, Nixon resigned the presidency. The only president in the history of the Republic to be forced out of office. Woodward and Bernstein were lauded across the country, for the greatest act regarding the written word since Moses came down from the mountain with the 10 commandments. In the 40 years since, every reporter, or anyone who has ever worked in the media, has dreamed of achieving similar fame by cooking up another Watergate. But it ain’t gonna happen; or at least it’s highly unlikely. Sometimes you just can’t replicate the original.
This all became relevant because, here, in the first-half of 2013, the Obama administration has suddenly been hit by 3 significant scandals, which has many Republicans and other assorted Obama-haters licking their chops in anticipation that Obama, like Nixon before him, can be forced out of office. (Of course, should this happen, it would only result in Joe Biden becoming president, who the looney-tunes right-wingers despise even more than Obama. If that was possible.) These scandals have, like Watergate, all resulted from the stupidity of Administration officials, so lets take a look and see what’s there.
Scandal No. 1: Benghazi. This one has been festering since last September when our Ambassador to Libya and 3 of his protectors were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi. First of all, the Ambassador should have been in Libya’s capital, which is Tripoli, instead of war-torn Benghazi. Seems he was there to check up on some CIA covert operation. In any event, the criticism of the Benghazi fiasco is two-fold. The first is regarding the fact that there was insufficient troop or Marine protection for the Ambassador in Benghazi, and calls to send in the cavalry for rescue operations after the attacks had begun, went largely ignored by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and, obviously, by the President himself. Secondly, after the 4 had been murdered, the Administration had put out a false narrative, stating that a YouTube video critical of Islam had so inflamed the local crowd, that angry mob actions were responsible for the murders. Clearly everyone in the Administration knew that the murders occurred due to carefully crafted terrorist attacks. So people were asleep at the switch beforehand, and put out idiotic comments after the fact. But if stupidity and lack of foresight were impeachable offenses, every president since since George Washington would have had to be removed from office. Early in the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan’s first term, 241 U.S. Marines stationed in Lebanon were blown up by terrorists one night, while they were asleep in their barracks. Should we go back and retroactively impeach Ronald Reagan, because people in his administration were similarly asleep at the switch.
Scandal No. 2: The IRS Fiasco. Seems that certain IRS offices were giving Tea Party and other right-wing political groups a really hard-time when they attempted to establish tax-free statuses for their organizations. Yes, IRS agents should not be targeting anyone for their political affiliations. Extremely stressful to have IRS picking you out of the line-up for special attention, especially when it regards one’s beliefs. But the larger question is why the government is giving tax-free status to any political organization-be they right-wing, left-wing or in the center.Tax-free status should be limited to genuine human or animal charities and maybe religious organizations. No wonder we’re so broke. It’s time to stop these piece-of-crap political groups from raiding the U.S. treasury.
Scandal No.3: The AP E-mails. The Government had an informant on the inside of a major terrorist group planning some dastardly acts against the U.S. Someone in the Administration leaked his name to the Associated Press, who in an act of total and unbelievable stupidity, printed all of this, thereby jeopardizing the life of the informant. I feel so much safer now that this info has been made public. The Attorney General’s office has been trying to find the source of this leak by secretly delving into AP e-mails. Perhaps not the smartest thing to do, but certainly understandable given the circumstances. Nothing really much here that resembles another Watergate.
So there you have it: three supposed scandals meant to drive Obama from office, or at the very least, prevent Hillary Clinton from winning the presidency in 2016. As I said before, looney-tunes Republicans are drooling over the prospects of either, or, both happening. Stay tuned to this channel to see how these on-going sagas play out.
realityincorporated 