On September 27, I wrote a post called Obama Fantasies to ridicule the MSM’s latest attempt to push a narrative they deem helpful to their chosen one – the risible, snort-inducing, “scandal-free Obama administration” meme.
The “scandal-free” narrative tried to gain traction, a week or so ago:
Mark it on your calendars: if President Obama has just 20 days to go — October 6! — in order to claim the record as the most scandal-free president since 1977.
Then the Solyndra scandal broke in a big way, smashing the meme to smithereens. But the idea that the Obama administration was “scandal free” was a complete fantasy before Solyndra.
Here’s an incomplete list of Obama scandals to date:
Dealergate, DOJ Black Panther whitewash, the Obamafication of NEA art, the Sestak affair, the politically expedient IG Gerald Walpin firing, misspent Porkulous funds, the DOJ’s secret astroturf propaganda unit, the Shorebank scandal, oilgate, Blagojevich Rezko Obama corruption, his unaccountable Communist czars, Fast and Furious, The Gibson Guitar Raid, and now Solyndra and LightSquared.
Scandal-free, my a$$.
Now, a month later, we have Jonathan Alter reviving the narrative in a piece that reads like The Onion at Bloomberg News:
President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest. (emphasis mine.)
Stop laughing – it gets better:
…the president’s Teflon is intriguing. How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? After investigating the question for a recent Washington Monthly article, I’ve been developing some theories. For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions…
I’ll tell you how he got into such a -uh – “scandal-less state”. Most of the idiots in the MSM aren’t reporting on the scandals as they should be, (in some cases they’re actively running interference for the administration – *cough* NYTs *cough* . So those who don’t watch Fox News, read conservative media, or page 23 D of the newspaper the one and only time the scandal’s mentioned, don’t get to find out what is really going on.
But the White House’s intense focus on scandal prevention has had mixed results. The almost proctological vetting process has ended up wounding Obama as much as prospective nominees. He gets cleaner but often less imaginative officials.
Bwahahahah…*breathe, breathe* Bwahahahaha!
Who was the proctologist in charge of the Van Jones vetting process? Eric Holder? Kathleen Sebelius?
There’s been a culture of corruption in the Obama administration since day one, as should be obvious by now to anyone with working brain cells. It was so blatant and egregious, Michelle Malkin was able to write a book about his “team of tax cheats, crooks, and cronies” only six months into his Presidency.
The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse.
He really had to bring “Sheriff Joe’s” stellar work fighting waste and fraud, into it, didn’t he? Because we haven’t laughed enough, already.
A few months ago, Doug Ross listed what he considered to be the top 10 boondoggles funded by the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, selected from the Coburn report“American Recovery and Reinvestment Act“.
Here’s a few – You’ll love these:
1. Restoring a ‘national park’ that’s almost 100% underwater (FL) – $13 million
Visitors to Key West, Florida with enough time and money can explore one of the National Park Service’s less convenient destinations: Dry Tortugas National Park. Located 70 miles offshore, the park is almost entirely underwater and accessible only by airplane or private boat. Despite its relative inaccessibility, the park will get $13,304,484 in repairs for its barely above-water attraction, Fort Jefferson. Those willing to take the 4 1/2 hour round-trip ferry ride aboard the Yankee Freedom II have to pay as much as $165 per person, but will discover that only 40 of the park’s 65,000 acres are dry land.
4. Commerce Dept. Makeover and Door Shift (Washington, DC) – $183 million
The Hoover building in Washington has been rehabbed at a cost of nearly $1 billion over the last decade. It houses approximately 3,500 federal employees at the Department of Commerce, the White House Visitor Center, and the National Aquarium. The money will be used renovating unused office space for temporarily rotating groups of up to 400 Commerce employees at a time and ripping out
walls to install 16 miles of insulation. And moving a door to the aquarium.
3. Snow-making equipment and chair lifts (Mt. Snow, Vermont) – $25 million
Mt. Snow will use the stimulus dollars to replace two chairlifts, construct a 120-million-gallon storage pond for snowmaking, and install additional snowmaking fan guns. “Mount Snow was pursuing the chairlift renovations when they learned that government stimulus funds were available for ski area capital improvements.”
2. Fake News Videos Pitching ObamaCare (NYC, New York) – $25 million
What do you do when a key government program is unpopular with the general public? In the case of the stimulus, you sign a multi-million dollar contract with a public relations firm previously embroiled in controversy. For some time, the administration’s push for health information technology systems has faced significant public resistance because of privacy concerns. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services spent $25.8 million on a contract with Ketchum Inc. to help win over public opinion. Ketchum was criticized before, however, on other governmental work. The reason? Producing fake TV news stories for government agencies.
It turns out that waste and fraud are features, not bugs in the unwanted stimulus – the inspiration for the Tea Party.
I realize Alter’s target audience are the drones – he means to keep them in a continued state of unawareness – but judging from the comments at Bloomberg, it ain’t flying with most if not everyone at that site. If the first page of comments are an indication of the rest of the 1338 Comments, Alter has safely cleared the shark in a clown-suit as far as most people are concerned.
Here are a few sample comments:
DRIPPING WITH STUPIDITY. . .. . This writer is as intellectually honest as Obama is. Where to begin? …
Pretty brutal stuff – especially when you consider that the vast majority of the over 1,300 comments are in the same vein.
Was devouring “Antonio Gramsci unicorn skittles” in front of God and everybody really worth it for Alter, I wonder?
UPDATE:
One more biggie for the scandal list: Pigford – Thanks to an anonymous commenter for reminding me.
There are so many scandals, it’s really hard to keep track of them all.
Linked by Gay Patriot, and Doug Ross, thanks!
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Nice Deb 
Only thing I can add that hasn’t already been mentioned regarding Alter is that I keep thinking back to that old BeeGees song, written especially for JA’s parents: “I started a joke.”
Keep ’em coming, Jonny…keep ’em coming. Like Joe Pesci, you amuse me.