John R. Houk
© May 6, 2009
I just read a thought provoking essay from Jonah Goldberg pertaining to the comparison of political corruption between Democrats and Republicans. It is entitled, “Dems’ ‘New Culture of Deception’.”
Now I believe the Dems rise to political power was based largely on the exploitation of the weariness of voters of the Iraq. The voters became weary due to an extremely efficient propaganda campaign making out President Bush the perpetrator of an unnecessary war.
I wholly disagree with the ‘unnecessary war’ concept. I believe Bush dropped the ball politically with a bad strategy after territorial control was secured to rid Iraq of Islamic terrorists who used their own propaganda to portray the American military as occupiers rather than liberators. Also Bush failed in countering Dem propaganda with alternative reasons other than the failure to locate Weapons of Mass Destruction (nuclear and chemical). There was plenty of evidence of both the nuclear and the chemical yet Bush allowed the Mainstream Media (MSM) to be the conduit of the Dem vision for making Bush out to be a near war criminal; thus the MSM ignored much of this evidence.
Next the Dems and the MSM successfully portrayed President Bush and his Administration as a destroyer of the Bill of Rights with the utilization of the Patriot Act (which many Dems voted for incidentally). Evidently the Global War on Terrorism (O that’s right, the Obama Administration says there is no GWOT) was not viewed by the Left as sufficiently troubling to draw back some rights of privacy to prevent war criminals from killing more than the over 3,000 American civilians already killed on the heinous day of September 1, 2001.
With this kind of character assassination the Dems duped voters into putting Leftists into power. The Dems loved calling the Republicans a ‘Culture of Corruption.’
Jonah Goldberg pulls a ‘not so fast’ moment. The Dems have their own culture of corruption.
JRH 5/6/09 (Hat Tip: Blind Conservatives)
*************
DEMS' NEW 'CULTURE OF CORRUPTION'
By JONAH GOLDBERG
Blind Conservative Social List
Sent: May 6, 2009 7:51:13 AM
Sent by: Madeline Sorrenti
SOME days you have to ask yourself, "My God, what if these people were
Republicans?"
Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs
about what they called the Republican "culture of corruption." To be fair,
the GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game. So was Rep. Mark Foley, the twisted Florida lawmaker who allegedly wanted male congressional pages cleaned, perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.
Of course, it wasn't as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery and corruption charges in 2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his freezer. Then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution scandal.
But that's all yesterday's news. In the here and now, President Obama, who
vowed he'd provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department -- and he's hardly the only one.
New York Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, failing to report income from his Caribbean villa.
Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from subprime lender Countrywide and has yet to adequately explain his too-good-to-be-true deal on his million-dollar "cottage" in Ireland, which he may have gotten in exchange for finagling a pardon (from President Bill Clinton) for a felon. Oh, Dodd also secretly protected those AIG bonuses that raised such a ruckus.
Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's moral authority on Iraq War military matters, has been shown as a kleptomaniac of sorts, delivering as much of the federal budget as possible to various cronies and lobbyists.
Former Sen. John Edwards, who had an affair even as he was scoring Oprah-points as the supportive husband during his wife's breast-cancer battle, is being investigated by the feds for the improper use of campaign funds. It looks like the silky-haired champion of the little guys may have used their donations to bribe the alleged "baby mama" into silence.
And it would be a shame to let it pass that Obama's Senate seat was put up for sale by the then-governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. A congressional ethics board is investigating whether Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. tried to buy it.
But you know what? We ain't seen nothing yet. For starters, the real corruption isn't what the media are ignoring or downplaying as isolated incidents. It's what the media are hailing as strokes of bold, inspirational leadership.
The White House, as a matter of policy, is rewriting legal contracts, picking winners (mostly labor unions and mortgage defaulters) and singling out losers (evil "speculators"), while much of the media continue to ponder whether Obama is already a greater president than FDR.
If a Republican administration, staffed with cronies from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, was cutting special deals for its political allies, I suspect we'd
be hearing fewer FDR analogies and more nouns ending with the suffix "gate."
Take Obama's "car czar," Steven Rattner. ABC's Jake Tapper reports that Rattner is accused of threatening to use the White House to smear a Chrysler creditor if it refused to back the administration's Chrysler-bankruptcy plan.
He's also connected to a big pension-fund scandal involving the investment
firm he used to run. It's alleged that Rattner's firm bought the less-than-worthless DVD distribution rights to the achingly awful film "Chooch" -- produced by the brother of an official in the New York comptroller's office -- as a thinly veiled bribe to gain access to New York pensions funds. Chooch, by the way, is Italian slang for "jackass," which just happens to be the Democrats' mascot.
More to the point, political corruption is inevitable whenever you give hacks -- of either party -- too much discretion over public funds. Businesses look to Washington for profits instead of to the market.
The thing is, this has become the Democratic Party's governing philosophy, from banking and cars to health care and now student loans. The federal government is taking over, and the culture of corruption inevitably trickles down.
That in itself should be a scandal. Call it "Choochgate."
______________________
Political Corruption is an Equal Opportunity Employer
John R. Houk
© May 6, 2009
_____________________
DEMS' NEW 'CULTURE OF CORRUPTION'
JonahsColumn@aol.com
© May 6, 2009
I just read a thought provoking essay from Jonah Goldberg pertaining to the comparison of political corruption between Democrats and Republicans. It is entitled, “Dems’ ‘New Culture of Deception’.”
Now I believe the Dems rise to political power was based largely on the exploitation of the weariness of voters of the Iraq. The voters became weary due to an extremely efficient propaganda campaign making out President Bush the perpetrator of an unnecessary war.
I wholly disagree with the ‘unnecessary war’ concept. I believe Bush dropped the ball politically with a bad strategy after territorial control was secured to rid Iraq of Islamic terrorists who used their own propaganda to portray the American military as occupiers rather than liberators. Also Bush failed in countering Dem propaganda with alternative reasons other than the failure to locate Weapons of Mass Destruction (nuclear and chemical). There was plenty of evidence of both the nuclear and the chemical yet Bush allowed the Mainstream Media (MSM) to be the conduit of the Dem vision for making Bush out to be a near war criminal; thus the MSM ignored much of this evidence.
Next the Dems and the MSM successfully portrayed President Bush and his Administration as a destroyer of the Bill of Rights with the utilization of the Patriot Act (which many Dems voted for incidentally). Evidently the Global War on Terrorism (O that’s right, the Obama Administration says there is no GWOT) was not viewed by the Left as sufficiently troubling to draw back some rights of privacy to prevent war criminals from killing more than the over 3,000 American civilians already killed on the heinous day of September 1, 2001.
With this kind of character assassination the Dems duped voters into putting Leftists into power. The Dems loved calling the Republicans a ‘Culture of Corruption.’
Jonah Goldberg pulls a ‘not so fast’ moment. The Dems have their own culture of corruption.
JRH 5/6/09 (Hat Tip: Blind Conservatives)
*************
DEMS' NEW 'CULTURE OF CORRUPTION'
By JONAH GOLDBERG
Blind Conservative Social List
Sent: May 6, 2009 7:51:13 AM
Sent by: Madeline Sorrenti
SOME days you have to ask yourself, "My God, what if these people were
Republicans?"
Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs
about what they called the Republican "culture of corruption." To be fair,
the GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game. So was Rep. Mark Foley, the twisted Florida lawmaker who allegedly wanted male congressional pages cleaned, perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.
Of course, it wasn't as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery and corruption charges in 2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his freezer. Then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution scandal.
But that's all yesterday's news. In the here and now, President Obama, who
vowed he'd provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department -- and he's hardly the only one.
New York Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, failing to report income from his Caribbean villa.
Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from subprime lender Countrywide and has yet to adequately explain his too-good-to-be-true deal on his million-dollar "cottage" in Ireland, which he may have gotten in exchange for finagling a pardon (from President Bill Clinton) for a felon. Oh, Dodd also secretly protected those AIG bonuses that raised such a ruckus.
Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's moral authority on Iraq War military matters, has been shown as a kleptomaniac of sorts, delivering as much of the federal budget as possible to various cronies and lobbyists.
Former Sen. John Edwards, who had an affair even as he was scoring Oprah-points as the supportive husband during his wife's breast-cancer battle, is being investigated by the feds for the improper use of campaign funds. It looks like the silky-haired champion of the little guys may have used their donations to bribe the alleged "baby mama" into silence.
And it would be a shame to let it pass that Obama's Senate seat was put up for sale by the then-governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. A congressional ethics board is investigating whether Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. tried to buy it.
But you know what? We ain't seen nothing yet. For starters, the real corruption isn't what the media are ignoring or downplaying as isolated incidents. It's what the media are hailing as strokes of bold, inspirational leadership.
The White House, as a matter of policy, is rewriting legal contracts, picking winners (mostly labor unions and mortgage defaulters) and singling out losers (evil "speculators"), while much of the media continue to ponder whether Obama is already a greater president than FDR.
If a Republican administration, staffed with cronies from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, was cutting special deals for its political allies, I suspect we'd
be hearing fewer FDR analogies and more nouns ending with the suffix "gate."
Take Obama's "car czar," Steven Rattner. ABC's Jake Tapper reports that Rattner is accused of threatening to use the White House to smear a Chrysler creditor if it refused to back the administration's Chrysler-bankruptcy plan.
He's also connected to a big pension-fund scandal involving the investment
firm he used to run. It's alleged that Rattner's firm bought the less-than-worthless DVD distribution rights to the achingly awful film "Chooch" -- produced by the brother of an official in the New York comptroller's office -- as a thinly veiled bribe to gain access to New York pensions funds. Chooch, by the way, is Italian slang for "jackass," which just happens to be the Democrats' mascot.
More to the point, political corruption is inevitable whenever you give hacks -- of either party -- too much discretion over public funds. Businesses look to Washington for profits instead of to the market.
The thing is, this has become the Democratic Party's governing philosophy, from banking and cars to health care and now student loans. The federal government is taking over, and the culture of corruption inevitably trickles down.
That in itself should be a scandal. Call it "Choochgate."
______________________
Political Corruption is an Equal Opportunity Employer
John R. Houk
© May 6, 2009
_____________________
DEMS' NEW 'CULTURE OF CORRUPTION'
JonahsColumn@aol.com
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