# I pit the President for making the same excuse again **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 20, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864 "2014-05-20T21:15:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/61 "2014-05-21T13:48:57Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Everything **adaher** says should be assumed to be false unless backed up with multiple ironclad cites. > > Seriously – in an [Elections thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17393311#post17393311), he just said, and I kid you not, “There is no right to vote in the Constitution.” And after being shown the multiple amendments which explicitly reference “the right of citizens to vote”, he _still won’t back down_. > > It’s amazing. Well, now… wait a second. The Constitution lists circumstances under which the right to vote cannot be denied. The Second Amendment, similarly (and more directly) mandates that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. So: I agree with you. The Constitution protects the right to vote. But let’s be precise about the language – the Constitution protects the right to vote by forbidding its infringement in a wide range of circumstances, rather than by universally affirming its existence. And… in like manner, the Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms. It would be passing strange to heroize the Constitution’s protection of the right to vote one minute, and vitiate its protection of the right to keep and bear arms the next…correct? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/62 "2014-05-21T13:49:58Z")
Why the hell are we talking about Benghazi? > [@Bricker](#): > > I agree with this. Yes, it’s a scandal; yes, the President is responsible in the sense that he is the Chief Executive. > > No, it is not reasonable to hold him personally responsible: it’s a big government. And for all the people that are seemingly upset for President Obama’s failure to instantly evaluate and fix the issue: be realistic. A thorough investigation is necessary because this may well morph into a criminal prosecution. A quick fix will potentially weaken or kill building a criminal case. It might not be Obama’s lookout to “instantly evaluate and fix” the book-cookery, but the underlying problems at the VA are definitely His Problem. We’ve known the VA is unable to handle its caseload for pretty much his whole administration, and he doesn’t seem to have done a great deal about it. Congress may be the ones controlling the purse strings but I don’t recall Obama demanding extra funding - or at least not making a big deal of it. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/63 "2014-05-21T13:50:43Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Bricker, neither of those examples are scandals or wrongdoing. The first was an entirely legitimate action and the second was also legitimate, but a bad misjudgement. > > You’ll notice I didn’t include Benghazi in my list for that reason. There was no wrongdoing that led to Benghazi for the President to claim ignorance of, unlike the five other examples I listed. It appears you and are using different definitions of the word “scandal.” What do you mean when you say, “Scandal?” ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/64 "2014-05-21T13:52:19Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It might not be Obama’s lookout to “instantly evaluate and fix” the book-cookery, but the underlying problems at the VA are definitely His Problem. We’ve known the VA is unable to handle its caseload for pretty much his whole administration, and he doesn’t seem to have done a great deal about it. > > Congress may be the ones controlling the purse strings but I don’t recall Obama demanding extra funding - or at least not making a big deal of it. I agree he hasn’t made the VA a priority. My point is not to laud his accomplishments, but to point out that he is no worse than his predecessors, and any criticism that singles him out while holding his predecessors blameless – even by omission – is not a balanced one. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/65 "2014-05-21T13:52:34Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Bricker, neither of those examples are scandals or wrongdoing. The first was an entirely legitimate action and the second was also legitimate, but a bad misjudgement. More pathetic goalpost shifting from your ‘challenge’ in post #47. I also provided 3 examples in post #50. As is typical, **adaher** is wrong. Par for the course. Such repeated, unadmitted, and unrepentant wrongess deserves to be met with mockery. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/66 "2014-05-21T13:53:39Z")
Gross mismanagement or wrongdoing. Your first example is clearly neither. The sale of ports to UAE companies was 100% legal and was only abandoned because of a political furor where Democrats played the xenophobia card. The disbanding of the Iraqi army was a dumb decision, but it wasn’t an example of the system not working. That was Paul Bremer’s(or Garner’s, I don’t remember which one of them did it) very public decision. It wasn’t something that went hidden and then the President found out about it from reading the papers. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/67 "2014-05-21T13:55:25Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > More pathetic goalpost shifting from your ‘challenge’ in post #47. I also provided 3 examples in post #50. > > As is typical, **adaher** is wrong. Par for the course. > > Such repeated, unadmitted, and unrepentant wrongess deserves to be met with mockery. Then why haven’t you been mocked? There’s no goalpost shift. The five examples I listed were examples of wrongdoing and gross mismanagement, and they went on for some time without the President supposedly knowing about it. The examples Bricker gave were not in that category. One wasn’t even a scandal and the other was a very public decision that the public knew about the same day it happened. You have a habit of getting ahead of yourself. Must be nice to live with so much certainty in your life. Why, you’re almost like GWB himself! ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/68 "2014-05-21T13:56:48Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I agree he hasn’t made the VA a priority. My point is not to laud his accomplishments, but to point out that he is no worse than his predecessors, and any criticism that singles him out while holding his predecessors blameless – even by omission – is not a balanced one. Being “no worse” than one’s predecessors isn’t really a defense, considering who his immediate predecessor was. I take exception to people blaming Obama for Bush’s failures, but I do think he should be held accountable for not trying to fix them. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/69 "2014-05-21T13:59:54Z")
I agree that he shouldn’t be held responsible for Bush’s failures, and I also understand that the government is big and he’s had a lot on his plate, so maybe the VA wasn’t a huge priority. But can we at least admit that the lines of communication within the executive branch have seriously broken down in the last few years? Even if you choose not to blame the President for not knowing what his government is doing, shouldn’t it be clear that a lot of people are keeping a lot of things from the President? To an unusual extent that seems to have gotten worse? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/70 "2014-05-21T14:00:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Then why haven’t you been mocked? There’s no goalpost shift. The five examples I listed were examples of wrongdoing and gross mismanagement, and they went on for some time without the President supposedly knowing about it. Wrong and wrong. You can’t see past your ridiculous biases, and you look at everything the President does as “wrongdoing and gross mismanagement”. My three examples in post #50, and Bricker’s, meet those categorizations just as closely as yours do. And you didn’t mention “wrongdoing and gross mismanagement” in post #47 – you just said “ignorance of what the government is doing”. You’re trying to change what you’ve said just because you might be starting to realize it was foolish. > [@](#): > > You have a habit of getting ahead of yourself. Must be nice to live with so much certainty in your life. Why, you’re almost like GWB himself! No, no certainty. It’s not needed when arguing with fact-free drivel. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/71 "2014-05-21T14:02:52Z")
There are 4.3 million federal employees; he can’t be expected to keep track of all of them. I don’t think it is happening to an unusual extent either. Again, my problem with Obama is his unwillingness to fix the problems he knows about, not why he isn’t finding out about the ones he doesn’t know about. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/72 "2014-05-21T14:05:10Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Wrong and wrong. You can’t see past your ridiculous biases, and you look at everything the President does as “wrongdoing and gross mismanagement”. My three examples in post #50, and Bricker’s, meet those categorizations just as closely as yours do. Hold on now. The proposed sale of ports to UAE companies was “wrongdoing”? Really? And you accused me of bias. So name which one or two of the five examples I listed was an example of something nonscandalous going on. > [@](#): > > And you didn’t mention “wrongdoing and gross mismanagement” in post #47 – you just said “ignorance of what the government is doing”. You’re trying to change what you’ve said just because you might be starting to realize it was foolish. Fair enough. However, I listed five examples and challenged Bricker to come up with two related examples. I can see now why there might have been confusion, but the point stands: This President continually uses ignorance as a way to dodge responsibility for gross misconduct within his government. And in a few of those cases, it can probably be demonstrated that he’s lying. Most notably in the VA case, where received a very specific letter from a Congressman detailing the corruption in the VA a year ago. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/73 "2014-05-21T14:11:11Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Hold on now. The proposed sale of ports to UAE companies was “wrongdoing”? Really? And you accused me of bias. So name which one or two of the five examples I listed was an example of something nonscandalous going on. The IRS non-scandal – some bureacratic mismanagement… but “scandalous”? Only if you’re a Republican who wants to make some hay out of virtually nothing. The website failure… scandalous? No, just poor execution. Big mistake, sure, but scandal? No, not even close. Health care cancellations – scandalous? No. Not even close. Some bad politics, some misstatements, maybe some humdrum lies, but scandal? Come on. NSA Spying? Yes, this is a scandal. VA stuff? Also a scandal. Weak challenge met. Again. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/74 "2014-05-21T14:15:09Z")
Don’t take any of this personally, **adaher**. You’re probably a nice guy. But you are wrong _a lot_. Way more than you should be. Such wrongness, when it happens over and over and over again, deserves mockery (and it’s _fun_). If you don’t like being mocked, then make a real effort to try and be wrong less. It’s like every single post you make contains wrongness – and often it’s the main thrust of your post that’s wrong. Just cool it and slow down, and check that the unsupported stuff you post is actually true. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/75 "2014-05-21T14:22:08Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The IRS non-scandal – some bureacratic mismanagement… but “scandalous”? Only if you’re a Republican who wants to make some hay out of virtually nothing. Not sure I agree with this. You say “some bureaucratic mismanagement,” but that would suggest there was no special attention given only to right-leaning organizations, and there’s a fair amount of evidence that there was such special attention in play. I agree it’s not a scandal of _Presidential_ involvement. But it’s fair to call it a scandal. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/76 "2014-05-21T14:26:51Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Not sure I agree with this. > > You say “some bureaucratic mismanagement,” but that would suggest there was no special attention given only to right-leaning organizations, and there’s a fair amount of evidence that there was such special attention in play. > > I agree it’s not a scandal of _Presidential_ involvement. But it’s fair to call it a scandal. Perhaps. My opinion is based on the [FBI report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_scandal#FBI_Investigation), in which they stated they “found no evidence of “enemy hunting” of the kind that had been suspected, but that the investigation did reveal the IRS to be a mismanaged bureaucracy enforcing rules that IRS personnel did not fully understand.” To me, that doesn’t sound like a scandal. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/77 "2014-05-21T14:44:41Z")
No one thinks **adaher** is one of the brighter bulbs on the Christmas Tree, but his stupidity in this thread surpasses. I still wonder if he’s really an intelligent liberal posting inanities here to give Republicans a bad name. (I only skim these threads and apologize to **adaher** if I’ve overlooked his award-winning stupidities from earlier threads.) > [@adaher](#): > > Spending today is higher than it was as a % of GDP than at any other time since WWII. Where the fuck is the money going? Blatant lie, as others pointed out. Even **adaher** is knowledgeable enough to glance at a graph and realize the 2008-2011 blip is due to crisis-avoidance programs like TARP (started, correctly, under GWB) so this lie is willful ignorance on **adaher** ’s part, rather than the raw stupidity we expect from sincere Republicans. And given a Republican Party which had vowed to embarrass Obama at every turn, he might have had more success _increasing_ State Dept. security budget if he’d asked for _reduction_. But the Gold Medal for stupidity comes when he compares Obama’s “mistakes” with one of GWB’s and writes: > [@adaher](#): > > The disbanding of the Iraqi army was a dumb decision, but it wasn’t an example of the system not working. That was Paul Bremer’s(or Garner’s, I don’t remember which one of them did it) very public decision. It wasn’t something that went hidden and then the President found out about it from reading the papers. Even Bricker was smart enough to get this one right: > [@](#): > > But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” The way that important trillion-dollar decisions in the Iraqi adventure were turned over to youngsters whose qualification was right-wing thinking, not knowledge of Middle East, while GWB just played with his chainsaw in Texas was a travesty. The way you ignore the facts, when even your fellow traveler **Bricker** tries to protect you from ridicule, would be amusing, if not for the fact that many GOP leaders are almost as stupid as you are. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/78 "2014-05-21T14:45:43Z")
Well, I did list gross mismanagement as one of my criteria. And the UAE ports thingie and the disbanding of the Iraqi army were not examples of that either. While I can agree that the disbanding of the Iraqi army proved to be a big mistake, it was a decision made transparently and with full accountability for the one who made it. In the five examples I’ve cited, the President has failed to find, or really even tried to find, who was actually at fault. Whereas in the case of the Iraqi army disbanding, we know exactly who made the decision because he made it publicly. All I really ask is that he say, “Yeah, it looks like we dropped the ball on this.” and recognize that since there is an identifiable pattern of governmental incompetence and mismanagement, that he make it a priority to fix it. What’s happening instead is that a President who wanted to be transformational in the fashion of Ronald Reagan is actually just reinforcing Reagan’s basic case, that government is the problem. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/79 "2014-05-21T14:52:40Z")
Here;s what I don’t get. The media is pretty much united in scorn for the President’s accountability-dodging, but the liberal dopers are resolute in holding him responsible only in the most general sense, if that. Fighting ignorance, or perpetuating it? I report, you decide. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864/80 "2014-05-21T14:53:06Z")
Yesterday in another thread, **adaher** made a _very specific claim_ about _specifically the 2000 election_. When challenged he admitted he was babbling about the _2012 election_. (“It’s the thought that counts.” :smack: ) It’s fun to watch you blather your opinions. But don’t expect anyone to pay attention to your “facts” unless they’re accompanied with a cite. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-president-for-making-the-same-excuse-again/688864.md?page=5)