It’s January and we already have the 2014 Lie of the Year

And once again it goes to President Barack Obama.

Barack Obama was awarded Politifact’s 2013 Lie of the Year for his promise

“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,”

It’s only January but it’s difficult to imagine a bigger lie than the one Obama blurted out during his Superbowl Sunday interview with Bill O’Reilly

I promise you that we hold everybody up and down the line accountable.

Let’s review that claim.

The scandals

Fast and Furious:

Eric Holder allows 2,000 automatic weapons to flow untracked into the hands of Mexican cartels. US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of those weapons and they continue to show up at murder scenes.

Who’s been held accountable? No one.

NSA scandal:

Think about three recent presidential declarations. A few weeks back, the president appeared on CBS to claim that the secret FISA court is “transparent.” He then appeared on NBC to claim that “We don’t have a domestic spying program.” Then, as mentioned above, he held a press conference on Friday to suggest there was no evidence the NSA was “actually abusing” its power.

For these statements to just be inaccurate and not be deliberate, calculated lies it would mean that the president 1) made his declarative statement to CBS even though he didn’t know the FISA court was secret (despite knowing all about the FISA court six years ago); 2) made his declarative statement to NBC but somehow didn’t see any of the news coverage of the Snowden disclosures proving the existence of domestic spying and 3) made his sweeping “actually abusing” statement somehow not knowing that his own administration previously admitted the NSA had abused its power, and worse, made his statement without bothering to look at the NSA audit report that Gellman revealed today.

The Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress.

Who’s been held accountable? No one.

Benghazi

Lindsey Graham:

“This will catch up with him because they’re misleading us and the president is still misleading us. You would have to suspend disbelief, as someone famously said, to believe what the president said to Bill O’Reilly,” the senator said.

Graham also took a swipe at Clinton, who recently called Benghazi her biggest regret as secretary of state.

“I’m glad she is regretful, but being regretful is no substitute for accountability,” Graham said.

He also slammed the decision to have National Security Adviser Susan Rice — who was serving at U.N. ambassador at the time — make the media rounds to address the attack, instead of Clinton herself, who Rice said had a “grueling week.”

“If Susan Rice is telling the American people the truth, Hillary Clinton should never think about running for president because she is not qualified,” Graham said.

Accountability?

In the Benghazi case, four State Department employees were removed from their jobs and placed on leave after an independent review board criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at the Benghazi consulate that was attacked on Sept. 11, 2012. All four were reassigned when they returned to work.

In other words, nothing.

IRS

At the PJ Tatler Bryan Preston puts together a great summary of how asserting that the IRS abuse wasn’t by design is to fracture credulity:

You always have to keep your eye on the ball with this president. The IRS leaked the existence of the abuse in a conference call last May, and apologized for it at the same time. The leak itself came just ahead of an inspector general’s report that was about to disclose the abuse. The agency blamed the abuse on “rogue” officials in its Cincinnati office, but officials later testified that they were acting on orders from IRS headquarters in Washington. It was eventually revealed that the IRS leaked information from conservative groups to their critics on the left.

Career IRS lawyer Carter Hull testified that the applications involved were reviewed by William Wilkins, an Obama appointee in the IRS counsel’s office.

Then IRS commissioner Doug Shulman’s wife tweeted political attacks on the same groups that the IRS was abusing.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the abuse, eventually invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testify before Congress about her role in the abuse. She developed a history of using her government positions to target and abuse conservatives. She was allowed to retire from the IRS last year rather than be fired. It was Lerner who first revealed the abuse. It turned out that she had worked with the White House counsel’s office on a “careful plan” to manage the rollout of the scandal, to minimize its damage. Lerner blamed the “rogue” officers in Cincinnati, but she had emailed colleagues that the Tea Party scrutiny was “very dangerous” and sought to work some of the tax-exempt applications involved from Washington.

In January 2014, the Obama donor appointed to “investigate” the abuse declined to bring any charges against anyone, which leads to the question: Why did Lois Lerner take the Fifth? If there were no crimes committed, how could Lerner incriminate herself?

Obama regime actions? Reassignment and obfuscation.

◾The IRS announced on May 16, 2013, that Joseph Grant, commissioner of the agency’s tax-exempt and government entities division, would retire on June 3. The announcement came two days after the IG report and just eight days after Grant was promoted from deputy commissioner to commissioner.
◾Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations, was placed on administrative leave on May 23, 2013. She resigned in September after an internal review recommended that she be removed from her position. “Lawmakers said Lerner’s resignation came as an Accountability Review Board formed by temporary IRS chief Daniel Werfel was set to remove Lerner for mismanagement,” McClatchy reported on Sept. 23, 2013.
◾Holly Paz, director of the office of ruling and agreements within the tax-exempt and government entities division, was placed on administrative leave in early June 2013, according to the Washington Post. (We asked the IRS about the current status of Paz, but it has yet to respond. We will update this story if it does.)

Healthcare.gov

Three and a half years, a billion dollars and Kathleen Sibelius could not produce a functioning website.

The feckless head of HHS is still at work. She’s screwed it up and for her incompetence she is rewarded by allowing her to stay on the job.

No one has been fired. No one has been held accountable for anything.

image courtesy lifenews.com

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.