Thread: Obama Minions Shouldn’t Act High and Mighty When It Comes to Abuse of Power

Obama Minions Shouldn’t Act High and Mighty When It Comes to Abuse of Power
By Joe Simonson|12:44 pm,
March 5, 2017

It’s a tough time for President Obama’s former lackeys. One day you’re day dreaming of how you’ll continue scheming in Hillary Clinton’s administration, and the next you’re stuck sitting at home with no pants on and a hungry cat whose litter box is full. No one thinks you’re relevant anymore, so the only platform you have to bitch and moan is Twitter. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Chuck Todd will mention one of your trivial tweets on Meet the Press.

One of the prime examples of this harrowing existence is Ben Rhodes, an ex-foreign policy advisor and speechwriter for Obama. Ben’s latest crusade is acting indignant over President Trump’s accusations that his boss wiretapped Trump’s phone.

Rhodes responded to the allegation with the following, “No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you.”
Some balls on this guy.

Does Rhodes really want to take a trip down memory lane? Sure, people like him benefit from a mainstream media that’s practically begging for Obama to hop on a white horse, ride into the White House, and depose Trump. But any idiot (that’s me) knows that someone like Rhodes is one of the last people innocent of being part of an administration free of executive branch misconduct.



Lois Lerner aka “Toby Miles”Let’s start with the IRS scandal. Where were the restrictions to protect everyday Americans from people like Lois Lerner, the former IRS official who oversaw the organization’s systematic discrimination and intimidation of conservative nonprofits? Don’t count on a Democratic Department of Justice to act as a watchdog — despite clear evidence of illegal behavior and unprecedented abuses of power by the IRS, Obama’s DOJ decreed that no criminal acts had been committed.

The scary thing is that if Republicans didn’t take control of Congress in the wake of the scandal, the IRS likely would have continued this kind of behavior through 2016. Even though the IRS had destroyed evidence in the middle of the investigation, that Lerner used an e-mail account under the name of “Toby Miles” for official business, and that she was held in contempt of Congress, our cool-guy-in-chief said “not even a smidgen of corruption” plagued the agency. Well, that settles it.

But hey, Ben Rhodes was only referring to wiretapping, right? Obama would never misuse that kind of power. Until he did.

Back in 2013 it was revealed that Obama’s Justice Department snatched the phone records of over 20 reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what was characterized as a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” Obama also used the Espionage Act more than all previous presidents combined to go after leakers who fed information to the press. How progressive.

Think Trump has a reason to be paranoid yet?

And what safeguards were put in place to protect Fox News reporter James Rosen from being labeled a “criminal co-conspirator” for merely informing Americans about what’s going on around the world? That investigation led to searches of Rosen’s e-mails and phone records — all because he was just doing his job.

And don’t tell me it’s just a coincidence that Rosen happens to work for Fox. If someone broke a story about how Trump was reading an NBC reporter’s mail, Rachel Maddow would immediately be in full army fatigues screaming “ATTICA! ATTICA!” in Times Square. Instead, Trump sends the media into apoplectic fits when he calls it the “enemy of the people,” while his predecessor actually treated it like one.

Forgive me for not wanting to hear a peep from these Obama toadies. So far, most of Trump’s missteps have been a result of incompetence, not malfeasance. Besides, I guarantee the first time Trump pulls something truly inappropriate with the press, he’ll use Obama’s behavior as a cover. Until then, I think I’ll continue ignoring Rhodes — and I suggest you do the same. If Rhodes really cared about limiting a president’s power, he wouldn’t wear his previous job title so proudly.

https://heatst.com/politics/obama-mi...gh-and-mighty/

Speaking of Ben Rhodes, let's talk about his, and a few others, background and ties to the MSM

Washington Post: Family Relations Between Media, Obama Officials Does Not Affect Coverage
by JOHN NOLTE13 Jun 2013


Let’s start by going throughthe Post’s article to create a list of journalists married to or closely related to officials within the Obama administration. The size and scope of this is bad enough. But what is most troubling is how high up this incest occurs in the worlds of both the media and the Obama administration:

• ABC News President Ben Sherwood, who is the brother of Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a top national-security adviser to President Obama.
• His counterpart at CBS, news division president David Rhodes, is the brother of Benjamin Rhodes, a key foreign-policy specialist.
• CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Tom Nides, who until earlier this year was deputy secretary of state under Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• White House press secretary Jay Carney’s wife is Claire Shipman, a veteran reporter for ABC.
• NPR’s White House correspondent, Ari Shapiro, is married to a lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, who joined the White House counsel’s office in April.
• The Post‘s Justice Department reporter, Sari Horwitz, is married to William B. Schultz, the general counsel of the Department of Human Services.
• [VP] Biden’s current communications director, Shailagh Murray (a former Post congressional reporter), is married to Neil King, one of the Wall Street Journal‘s top political reporters.

This list doesn’t even include those dating and sleeping together. And if you’ve seen “House of Cards,” you know it’s Caligula up there.

Naturally, the Post, and those in media interviewed for the article, all claim that none of this in any way affects their coverage of the Obama administration.
And you know what — I believe them.

As someone who has been watching the media closely for twenty-years, I can tell you that even without all this incest, the media would still be guarding Obama’s palace just as aggressively as it does now. Family relations have nothing to do with it.

Our media would be just as corrupt, just as unwilling to dig into scandals, just as obsessed with The War On The WomanParts and gay marriage; just as dishonest, partisan, and lazy were no one in any way related to top officials within the Obama administration.

These relations are not the cause of the media’s corruption; they are a symptom of it.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journal...fect-coverage/

Presidents of ABC and CBS News Have Siblings Working at White House With Ties to Benghazi

By Noel Sheppard |

May 11, 2013 | 5:09 PM EDT

"CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi."

So stated political consultant and media commentator Richard Grenell on Saturday's Fox News Watch (video follows with transcript and commentary):

RICHARD GRENELL: I think the media's becoming the story, let's face it. CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. Let's call a spade a spade.

Let's also show you why CNN did not go very far in covering these hearings because the CNN deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Tom Nides. It is time for the media to start asking questions why are they not covering this. It's a family matter for some of them.

JON SCOTT, HOST: So they don't want to bring embarrassment upon folks who, who they're close to?

GRENELL: Who directly are related to this story. Absolutely. They're covering for them. There's no question about it.

For the record, Ben Sherwood's sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is the Special Assistant to Barack Obama.

Virginia Moseley's husband, Tom Nides, is the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.

As for David Rhodes' brother Ben, he is Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication.

As ABCNews.com reported Friday, Rhodes was a key player in revising the White House's Benghazi talking points last September:

In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows – Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

After that meeting, which took place Saturday morning at the White House, the CIA drafted the final version of the talking points – deleting all references to al Qaeda and to the security warnings in Benghazi prior to the attack.

Consider, too, that CBS News executives possibly including Rhodes have allegedly come down on their own investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson for "wading dangerously close to advocacy on" Benghazi.

If Attkisson gets the boot, it could very well be with a foot attached to the brother of an Obama administration official directly involved in the cover-up.

A family matter indeed.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/noel-sheppard/2013/05/11/presidents-abc-and-cbs-news-have-siblings-working-white-house-ties