In praise of Barack Obama

By Tom Quiner

By all accounts, Barack Obama has been an exemplary husband and father.

This deserves high praise, because he is the exception, not the rule, in the African-American community where 7 out 10 babies are born out of wedlock, and 53% are aborted.

In Barack Obama, the African-American community has a legitimate role model in many respects. Unlike profane, thuggish rap stars or prima donna Black athletes who bed one woman after another, Barack Obama has excelled where it counts: in the family.

This is rare praise coming from this blog, which has been critical of Obama governance. I am compelled to point it out in light of President Obama’s laughable assertion on Sixty Minutes that his presidency has been “scandal free.”

It HAS been free of the taint of sexual scandal which so defined Bill Clinton’s presidency.

But the list of Obama scandals is formidable, even when compared to the Clinton presidency, and especially when compared to recent Republican presidencies.

Can you think of a single, legitimate scandal in the George W. Bush presidency? And PLEASE don’t tell me “Bush lied and people died.” Even the New York Times has recanted that lie in a 10,000 word, eight part series on the subject, which I have graciously excerpted for you here.

By contrast, the Obama administration made the choice to lie to the American people after the Benghazi attack for the sake of political expediency, blaming the attack on an American citizen.

Abu Ghraib WAS a scandal, although it wasn’t perpetrated at the direction of the Bush Administration, and offenders were punished.

By contrast, under the direction of partisan hacks embedded in our federal bureaucracy, the IRS targeted political enemies of the president in the run up to the 2012 election. When Congress issued a contempt citation to the lead hack, Lois Lerner, for stonewalling, the Obama Justice Department refused to enforce it. In the meantime, Lois Lerner is living happily ever after, unpunished,  on a lucrative, tax payer-funded pension.

Was waterboarding a scandal during the Bush II presidency? Certainly not. Honorable people disagreed on the policy. But the dissent of liberals was dishonorable in light of their shocking silence in the face of drone killings ordered directly by Barack Obama, complete with collateral damage. Their moral equation went like this: pouring water on someone’s face: BAD; killing them: OKAY.

How about Halliburton? They won lucrative federal contracts during the Iraq war under the Bush II administration. Some were transacted with competitive bidding. Even more, then Vice President, Dick Cheney, had been the former CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and he received deferred compensation connected to Halliburton WHILE in office. However, the New York Time reported on the steps he took to eliminate any appearance of a conflict of interest:

“Mr. Cheney bought an insurance policy that guaranteed a fixed amount of deferred payments from Halliburton each year for five years so that the payments would not depend on the company’s fortunes. The officials also said he had promised to donate to charity any after-tax profits he made from exercising his stock options. These steps are not unusual for corporate executives who enter government.”

By contrast, the Obama administration pushed for and won taxpayer-funded backing for solar energy companies, some of whom had financially supported his 2008 presidential run. Solyndra was the poster child for this scandal. Their primary shareholder, George Kaiser, raised somewhere between $50,000 and and $100,000 for Mr. Obama, and ponied up an additional $53,500 in his own cash. In exchange, Solyndra received $535 million in government backing. Crony capitalism was rampant during the early Obama years in the green energy sector, with the following companies receiving taxpayer monies:

√ Solyndra.

√Abound Solar.

√Beacon Power.

√ Ener1.

√ Energy Conversion Devices.

√ Evergreen Solar, Inc.

√ Mountain Plaza, Inc.

√ Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsens Mills Acquisition Co.

√ Range Fuels.

√ Raser Technologies.

√ Spectrawatt.

√ Thompson River Power LLC.

Each went bankrupt.

At least Halliburton didn’t go bankrupt!

And at least Halliburton had to bid on most, but not all, of the government contracts they won. And taxpayers and the military received services for the monies we paid, even if there was clearly waste and inefficiency along the way.

I haven’t touched upon other Obama administration scandals, including Operation Fast & Furious; the State Department email scandal; the hacking of Office of Personnel Management; Veteran Affairs mis-management; the Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records; the NSA’s mass surveillance of Americans without a proper warrant; payment of ransom to Iran for American hostages; the EPA’S poisoning of a river in Colorado; and unrelenting Executive Branch overreach (to be kind).

Whether inept or corrupt, the Obama years were laced with one scandal after another.

But at least Barack Obama is a good family man. I sincerely appreciate this aspect of the man, but not much else.