Spurious Defense

Obama loyalists are defending him regarding the three “scandals” of Benghazi, the IRS affair and the AP telephone surveillance by claiming that there is no scandal involved and/or that no harm was done. They may be right on the first, but the other two are silly, in that if they want to defend Obama himself they have far better defenses.

I’ve already given my take on the Benghazi nonsense. I don’t think for a moment that Obama or any of his people were “covering up” anything; they were just a bunch of politicians more interested in looking good than they were in being informative. That’s hardly flattering, but it’s not unusual for politicians of either party. In fact it’s so routine that it would be freakishly remarkable if they didn’t take such an approach.

As to the IRS business, the most common defense is that no harm was done. No groups were denied the 501(c)(4) status, they were merely delayed, and in any case, so what if a few conservative groups were minimally harmed, they were just conservative assholes anyway. Obamabots only believe in equal treatment under the law when it is liberals who are getting the short end. When conservatives get the short end of unequal treatment that is merely justice because conservatives are evil.

A better argument, if defending Obama is one’s goal, is to admit that the IRS action was illegal and reprehensible, but that to suggest that it was done at Obama’s direction is utterly absurd, and that there is absolutely no evidence or suggestion that it was. Obama supporters are so accustomed to giving Obama credit for everything and claiming that their man can do no wrong that the “he didn’t do it” defense never occurs to them.

On the AP telephone records Obama defenders are just hilarious. Their defense consists of bashing the media, citing what a horrible job it does and reminding us that it is corrupted by corporate greed. Not sure than I can argue with much of that, but all of it is entirely beside the point. Good or bad, they are still the “press.”

If one walks up to a child pornographer who is unarmed and shoots them in the head, it is murder. It was a very bad person who was killed, but it is still murder. I’m not comparing AP to a child pornographer, but… My point is that it doesn’t matter how well the press is doing it’s job, it is still entitled to freedom from interference by government.

It never fails to amaze me the way Obama loyalists will defend everything Obama does, even when it wasn’t him who did it.