by John Lawrence

Determined to make a scandal out of the Benghazi incident, Vista, CA Congressman Darryl Issa has launched an investigation. What else do Republicans have to do?

They certainly aren’t going to pass any legislation that might be on Obama’s agenda. So they’ve got nothing else to do but to launch an investigation.

Here are the facts:

Four people were killed, including US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. Ten others were injured.

From 2001 to 2008, under the Bush Administration, there were 13 terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities (not including attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan) resulting in 98 deaths. Despite the numerous attacks on American diplomatic facilities in the Bush administration, there was no hue and cry from Republicans.

The 2012 Benghazi attack was only the second deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic facility that occurred during the Obama administration.

A bit of a double standard, don’t you think? Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, thinks it’s his job to sniff out Democratic farts in the hopes that there’s a turd nearby which he can prod and probe and perhaps discover a nugget, a molehill of a scandal which he can turn into a mountain.

Not interested in passing any positive legislation which would benefit the American people (that’s a foregone conclusion) anal-retentive Issa is only interested in being the fart smeller in chief of his pathetic little dominion because the objective here is to damage Democrats including President Obama and Hillary Clinton as much as possible in the next few years until Obama’s term is over. In Republican minds there’s simply nothing else worthwhile doing except perhaps naming more Post Offices and airfields after Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, they castigate Obama by throwing pejorative projectiles at him like “socialist” and “communist,” words which they have so thoroughly demonized that they don’t have anything to do with their original meanings. They are just used as verbal hand grenades, tossed gratuitously.

Objectively speaking, Obama couldn’t be both a socialist and a communist at the same time. They are two distinctly different things. The definition of socialism is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work” and the definition of communism is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Here’s an example of communism from the Bible. Jesus said to the rich man, “Sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and then you can come and follow me.” But the rich man thought this was communism. Why should he, having worked hard all his life, having started with nothing, give away everything he had accumulated to those worthless poor people who were slackers, who had been goofing off while he was working hard and who, therefore, didn’t deserve a handout?

So I guess Jesus’ value system was basically communistic. It had nothing to do with valuing hard work nor was it respectful of the property rights of individual accumulation. It recognized that human beings had various degrees of talent and ability but all were deserving of a certain level of material welfare. If this meant that the rich had to give up some of their wealth, so be it.

So as Darrell Issa and the Republicans pile on Obama determined to raise a stink, what they are not doing is dealing with the problems of the poor, the incarcerated, the homeless, the hungry, those in need of medical care, immigrants or those who have lost a loved one to gun violence.

They gave Bush a free pass over numerous incidents of terrorist attacks on American diplomatic missions, but as soon as President Blackenstein gets in there, even one is one too many because they have nothing else to do except stir the turd for everything it’s worth.

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John Lawrence

John Lawrence graduated from Georgia Tech, Stanford and University of California at San Diego. While at UCSD, he was one of the original writer/workers on the San Diego Free Press in the late 1960s. He founded the San Diego Jazz Society in 1984 which had grants from the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and presented both local and nationally known jazz artists. John received a Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego chapter, 2014 award. His website is Social Choice and Beyond which exemplifies his interest in Economic Democracy. His book is East West Synthesis. He also blogs at Will Blog For Food. He can be reached at j.c.lawrence@cox.net.

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