Walpin firing update
Byron York continues on the Walpin case, even if hardly anyone else is paying attention (something the Obama administration is banking on).
York writes that, just a few hours after Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa had presented a report on their investigation into the Walpin firing, the White House released previously-withheld documents germane to the case. No doubt the timing is a mere coincidence.
Here is some of what is disclosed in the new information:
The new documents support the Republican investigators’ conclusion that the White House’s explanation for Walpin’s dismissal — that it came after the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, unanimously decided that Walpin must go — was in fact a public story cobbled together after Walpin was fired, not before…
Pressed for the reason Walpin was fired, Eisen told House and Senate aides that the White House conducted an “extensive review” of complaints about Walpin’s performance before deciding to dismiss him. According to the new report, Eisen told Congress that “his investigation into the merits of removing Gerald Walpin involved contacting members of the Corporation for National and Community Service [CNCS] board to confirm the existence of a ‘consensus’ in favor of removal.” But Republican investigators later discovered that during that “extensive review,” the White House did not even seek the views of the corporation’s board — the very people whose “consensus” purportedly led to Walpin’s firing.
It goes on. But to anyone who’s been paying attention to this particular story, or to the actions of the Obama administration in general, none of it should come as a surprise.
At the risk of redundancy, let me just ask: can you imagine what the headlines would have been had Bush done this?
[NOTE: As for the Grassley/Issa report, it goes into some new details on the allegations against Johnson that IG Walpin was investigating when fired. It indicates that:
…Walpin was in fact fired because of the dispute over St. Hope and concludes that the White House “orchestrated an after-the-fact smear campaign to justify” Walpin’s dismissal.
The report says the [newly revealed] allegations of sexual misconduct and a cover-up “provide important context for Walpin’s insistence that the St. Hope matter should not have been settled without further inquiry.” In light of those allegations, the report says, complaints that Walpin was being too aggressive seem unfounded. “The content of the referral tends to undermine any notion that the [inspector general’s] investigation was driven by inappropriate motives on the part of Walpin,” the report says. “Rather, it appears to have been driven by non-political, career investigators simply following the facts.”
Obama and his Chicago friends: continuing to demonstrate the Chicago Way of doing the government’s business.]
The Clinton White House Travel Office firings gave us an immediate view of the lack of ethics and complete lack of concern for the little people we had voted for with Bill and Hillary. Walpin’s firing is the same harbinger for what we got with Obama.
Keep it coming. The lies of the Obama administration mount up.
Neo,
New conclusion. ∅bama is mostly a fool with knave tendencies.
This Japan trip gave me that mindset
http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/11/23/japanese-news-obama-visit-worst-in-history/#more-30867
I am beyond being surprised, let alone shocked anymore, by what this administration does.
The real tragedy, to me, however, is the total sell-out and abandonment of principles or ethics on the part of most of our national media. If the WaPo, NYT, 60 Minutes, CNN etc., brought this kind of stuff into the light of day, like they would if he had an “R” next to his name, this guy’s approval ratings would be in the low 30’s instead of high 40’s.
After all, corrupt and ruthless pols and their machines come and go, and are nothing new. Remember Tammany Hall in NYC. And old Man Kennedy was a corrupt stockbroker and a bootlegger who made his fortune illegally. And then got an Ambassadorship to England and got his sons careers on the “right” track via connections and pull. LBJ. Richard Nixon. And the Chicago machine was operating long before Obama was born. And on and on.
The difference is – THIS Administration gets away with it. Free pass after free pass. Crickets chirp, except in a few tiny corners of the internet. Hell, Breitbart has EXPOSED Acorn as a criminal enterprise, and depending on who all has hand their hand in THIS till – this could be a scandal in excess of Watergate proportions bringing down pols in BOTH parties ….but among the Beltway elite and their Statist media outlets?…..”Yawn. Nothing to see here folks. Some over-caffeinated right-wingers just hollering and carryin on again – but hey, now bout that Carrie Prejean and her sex tapes, or that moron Sarah Palin?”
I was at the eye doctor this morning, in a working class neighborhood in southern New Jersey, and got into a fun conversation with some of the patients waiting their turns for their eye exams. I was drawn in to the conversation.
An elderly black couple mentioned, out of the blue, that they had voted for Obama and his hope and change but were very disappointed with him. They thought that Obama was in Philadelphia today (it was Biden) and questioned why Obama needed 270+ service people to travel with him. I mentioned that Michelle had 23 aides of her own. They then commented that they couldn’t understand why Obama’s car had to be shipped with him to China. To them it was an outrageous expense. They were of the view that the economy is tanking and Obama is not doing what has to be done to fix it. And, they were very concerned about the lack of jobs, even though they were both retired. Most surprising, they said they would not only not vote for him again but were hoping he would leave office early.
Another patient, an elderly white woman, was concerned because her grandson is in Afghanistan and wrote her that morale is really slipping. He told her that the soldiers and marines feel that they are not being supported.
Another patient mentioned that Michelle is dressing up in designer outfits and flaunting her “status” as first lady to people who have no money and don’t know where their next meals will be coming from. She stated that Michelle did not have Laura Bush’s class.
My goodness. The regular people are waking up and not liking what they see.
Thanks for that post, Steve. I needed a draft of good cheer!
My hope is that enough of our fellow citizens “wake up” to the Grand Guignol of this Administration before irreparable damage is done.
In order for that to happen, though, the lickspittle Fourth Estate will have to do their damned job for a change. Most people still get their “news” through NBC-Pravda, etc.
Steve G
I was in Northeastern Jersey for a week (Montclair, East Orange) and they are as mindlessly Obamanized as you can imagine. The shear unthinkingness of it baffles the brainpan.
Same here in the belly of the beast in CA state government.
SEIU employees who have been brainwashed….
Calpers issues? SEIU issues? Acorn? What is Acorn? And when I try to explain the words go in one ear and out the other.
just a sec…
I just figured it out. They know who Acorn is! They act stupid so they don’t have to talk about Acorn!
I have been mystified by Obama’s need to hold 10 think tank sessions to discuss how to proceed in Afghanistan. Apparently he made the comment that Stanley McChrystal is not a big picture kind of guy so he is not really taking his advice. The news this morning was that Obama was going to send 34,000 troops in response to the requested 40,000.
This says a few things to me:
1. Obama will likely micromanage what happens in the field.
2. McChrystal does not and will never have Obama’s confidence. Obama’s choice must have multiculturalism as his first priority, not fighting a war.
3. Obama will listen to every talking head about what to do in Afghanistan other than McChrystal, to the extent he will listen to anyone other than himself.
4. Shortchanging the requested number of troops by 6,000 is the epitome of stupidity. It can result in a disaster similar to what happened when Les Aspen, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, refused to send a tank or two to Mogadishu as requested by the general in charge on the ground. For the lack of a nail, the horse’s shoe was lost, for the lack of …
5. This is our war, not that of the government of Afghanistan. If we do not have confidence in Kharzai, that’s our tough luck. We did not go there to support his government (which did not then exist) but to take on the Taliban. We are in the process of changing the mission. Now, we are looking for a purer form of democracy in Afghanistan than Obama intends in the USA using ACORN.
6. Biden stormed out of a meeting with Kharzai earlier this year and Holbrooke reportedly sat with his back to him at another meeting, a decided insult. Kharzai will no longer meet with Holbrooke. I think that Kharzai has no confidence in Obama’s team or in Obama and is most likely trying to figure out how to survive until the next presidential election in the USA. I bet he longs for Bush.
7. Leslie Gelb had an article out today on the incompetence of the Obama foreign policy team. Given the stupid and silly things Obama has done to alienate our “friends”, such as return the bust of Churchill, to refuse to have dinner with the Sarkozys, put some distance between us and Israel, undercut the Poles and Czechs on antimissle defense, support the wrong sides in Iran and Honduras, tell the Chinese and Russians that human rights are no longer on our plate, and so on, I wonder if that team is just a bunch of “yes men and women”.
8. Does Obama start and end every discussion? Does he take input from the participants? What exactly was the positive accomplishment between, say, the first and second meetings, the 5th and 6th meetings, and/or the 9th and 10th meetings, so that Obama now can tell us his decision on McChrystal’s request for more troops? The net result is that he has introduced the Afghani political process into OUR war as an excuse to discuss and implement an exit strategy. When you are at war there is only two exit strategies. You win or you lose. I think Obama does not care if either result obtains.
9. Although unsupported, our troops in the field have to remain and fight the fight as losing a war with the Taliban exposes us to losing Pakistan, India, and several South American nations as allies. (Venezuela is now talking to Iran about nuclear somethings.) Imagine Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands and being used literally or as threats against us, India and South America, all while Obama improves his lackluster golf game.
10. I am coming to believe that Obama is Satan.
Shortchanging the requested number of troops by 6,000 is the epitome of stupidity.
Perhaps.
I would like to think that Patreus/McChrystal are sufficiently experienced to ask for more than they need, and that when they get a smaller, but sizable, number that it is indeed the number they really wanted.
Neo,
I believe Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, Althouse, Nyom, every other non-listening ‘thinker’ should read this story.
http://thehill.com//homenews/house/69295-dems-push-wall-street-150b-stock-tax
It makes my brain hurt! What do Democrats believe? Spread the wealth !!!
This crap is triple taxation (capital gains, dividends and profits are already taxed). This will drop investment like a rock. This will kill jobs and sink American companies like a lifeboat with 1,000 Cubans on it.
When can Economics 101 be mandated as a course in High School.
“The Clinton White House Travel Office firings”
Fabricating false criminal charges was a crime that should have sent a lot of Clinton administration people to jail for long terms.