Darrell Issa.
“Issa has become the chief antagonist to Barack Obama,” brags spokesman Kurt Bardella. “He has the best job in Republican politics right now. When he puts an inquiry out there, that inquiry travels from here right to the White House Briefing Room, where Gibbs gets peppered by everybody about it.”
We must never, ever forget that this complete and total piece of shit used car thief with power came into that power already long chomping at the bit to destroy this Democratic President. He not only wanted his current position, but getting it consumed him for many years beforehand to be absolutely sure to be in the position to get it, very specifically, to use its serious power as a weapon. To elevate the most far-out-of-the-mainstream rightwing extremists he could hope to find, and to empower other like-minded ideological Jacobins with gavels to join in the inquisition.
And we have to be ready for when the useful idiots in the traditional media finally bite. It might not be on the "Fast and the Furious" baited hook, but Darrell Issa and company have more and more and more and more to come. This guy is no better than a powerful Joe "You Lie!" Wilson.
After leading a House committee’s vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress on Wednesday, Rep. Darrell Issa joked during a TV interview that he didn’t want to speak to “Barack.”
On the set of Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” on Wednesday night, the show’s host was interrupted when Issa’s phone started ringing.
“Um, that may be the attorney general,” Van Susteren said as Issa scrambled to turn his phone off.
“If it’s Barack,” he said, “I’ll tell him we’re not available.”
There are fleeting little windows that open and close in a blink that can let you peer very briefly into the uncensored content of another person's character that often flash by in everyday life. Moments like when someone is startled by his cell phone going off on live tv and who then tries to lighten that unexpected and awkward moment by tossing out a throwaway attempt at being funny. If you catch them, these unguarded moments can tell you a lot about a person, or a lot about what/how they think about somebody or something.
With no time to think, and speaking on instinct, Darrell Issa simply cannot hide his basic lack of respect for the current President. A man he has held, and continues to hold, in deep contempt with or without the hundreds of hours of Jacobin hearings Issa has invested his entire political life in since 2010. It's a recurring theme on the Movement Conservative Right. From "You Lie!", to a completely fake reporter from a completely fake Rightwing "news" outlet very comfortable with heckling the current President at the White House before he has even finished speaking.
Not 'if it's President Obama'. Not 'if it's the President'.
If it's Barack.
Like he's at the watercooler talking about some other middle-aged jaggoff three cubicles over.
And why not? It's Greta Van SpaceAlien's Big Comfy Couch. On Fox News. The absolute closest thing to a nice safe return to mother's womb for an unhinged wingnut congressman with a huge (and hugely misplaced) gavel who is all about feeling every single last one of his oats because, after years of waiting, and fishing, the 21rst Century Version of the Arkansas Project might just have generated something more that unlimited talk radio poutrage. It's not a 'Vince Foster was Murdered', but it'll do.
For now.
You'll just have to forgive me for not actually linking over to the Politico Stenography & Reach-Around Club, because the Right couldn't do what they do without totally useful idiots like them. It should be of no surprise to anyone at all that Darrell Issa's lil' funny found a nice home there. They are exactly the type of outlet that the Rightwing echochamber is so utterly desperately counting on to flack (and by extension completely inflate) the 'Fast and the Furious' freak-out, only one of Darrell Issa's almost-too-many-to-keep-track of premeditated and also completely ideologically driven crusades to tear down this White House, into a national media freak-out.
But there is a problem with courting stenographers and reach-around artists, and that problem is that.... well, they are stenographers and reach-around artists. There is a big reason why the mafia doesn't like to keep records, and mob families don't have family historians who lovingly jot down and record for posterity the hits, cons, and rackets a crime family gins up in a lifetime of malignancy. It's called 'evidence', or 'proof', or 'people's exhibit A-Z' and that is just not a good thing when you are up to no fucking good.
California Rep. Darrell Issa is already eyeing a massive expansion of oversight for next year, including hundreds of hearings; creating new subcommittees; and launching fresh investigations into the bank bailout, the stimulus and, potentially, health care reform.
Issa told POLITICO in an interview that he wants each of his seven subcommittees to hold "one or two hearings each week."
"I want seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks," Issa said.
Issa is also targeting some ambitious up-and-comers like Reps. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio -- all aggressive partisans -- to chair some of his subcommittees.
He also wants to organize aggressive oversight beyond his committee and plans to refer inquiries to other House panels, drawing even more incoming GOP chairmen to the cause of investigating the executive branch.
Make no mistake about what this is, and what is coming next.
This is a long-term Arkansas Project-like Movement Conservative inquisition, and Darrell Issa is one of its self-appointed heads. He's spent a lot of time and money fishing on everything from the bailouts of the banks, to the SEC and it's investigation of Goldman Sachs, to the regulatory reform efforts on overseeing financial markets and firms, to healthcare reform, to earmarks, to green jobs initiatives, to border security, to mexican drug cartels and domestic law enforcement agencies, to the stimulus. It has been non-stop and, at times, it has been so reckless that Issa has scored some own-goals in his zeal to destroy Barack Obama.
Not that you would hear it from the traditional media. (Thankfully, we have our own good guys like Media Matters and the folks over at TPM looking out.)
ISSA INQUIRY BACKFIRES ON REPUBLICANS
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his investigators had been looking into the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission because, Issa said, it went way over budget and commissioners and staffers “may have conflicts of interest created by their previous roles in the public and private sectors.”
Issa said he was troubled by “ extensive ties of some of the senior staff at a putatively bipartisan commission to partisan Democrat politics” and said that the FCIC “served as nothing more than a cheering section for the Administration and congressional Democrats in their efforts to defend a partisan and ineffective financial regulatory reform bill.”
Instead, the documents that were reviewed by congressional investigators, according to the Democrats’ report on that matter, reveal that Republican commissioners and staffers were improperly sharing the FCIC’s work with outside parties. Dems also say that emails show that one Republican commissioner was trying to use his position on the commission to bolster the GOP’s chances of repealing financial services reform.
-Talking Points Memo
This is a previously impotent zealot who finally thinks he has found a witch worth burning in the trumped up "Fast and Furious" case.
After years of coming up with nothing but bitter moutfuls of dry dust and go-nowhere attempts at exploding various poutrages that came up empty like dozens of little Al Capone's Vaults, Issa thinks he finally has a hit. Born of a flat-out whackadoodle to the core conspiracy theory about how not trying to pass gun control regulations was actually the hot nefarious path to a national gun confiscation power grab, but still, it's better than nothing.
And then there is that little nugget I opened this diary with.
“Issa has become the chief antagonist to Barack Obama,” brags spokesman Kurt Bardella. “He has the best job in Republican politics right now. When he puts an inquiry out there, that inquiry travels from here right to the White House Briefing Room, where Gibbs gets peppered by everybody about it.”
Every real journalist in the business of gathering and communicating the news for a living should hear that knowing, and gleefully so, comment and feel the bitter sting of it real, real deep down inside. Down in their guts. Because that comment is a shank.
The sad fact is, Chairman Issa knows that it's a bigger sin in DC to call somebody a liar than to lie, that "both sides do everything equally", and that the lazy conventional wisdom pimps of the beltway media love the art of the scandal almost as much as they all love collectively flying to their fainting couches. Like I said before, stenographers and reacharound artists abound. Now I, and we all, get to watch as the same lazy establishment ship of fools who first reported that an outrage and faux scandal machine was essentially the overriding goal, the plan, and the subject of strategizing literally for years when the GOP was in the minority after 2006, and is now very likely to take the post-2010 election's prefabricated GOP freak-out machine's first hit to the next level.
In my quest to find a decent non-Politico link containing the Politico's fluffing of the coming Issa ratfuck factory in it's powering up stages post-2010 election, I found a Steve Benen piece over in the archives at Alternet that contained what I was looking for.
Basically, a 'Nobody Expects the Hackish Inquisition!'
Benen was spot on. Another 'It's like the 1990's didn't happen' moment of zen.
It's the equivalent of a full-employment plan for D.C. lawyers. Issa will be handing out subpoenas like he's handing out candy on Halloween.
When former President Bill Clinton, who knows a little something about GOP witch hunts, said in September Republicans would pursue "two years of unrelenting investigations," he knew what he was talking about.
"Witch Hunt: RWer Issa Plans Hundreds of Partisan Investigations of White House"
In the short-term, this is all about constantly and consistently embarrassing President Obama to get him and keep him on the defensive whenever possible while he is trying to run against Romney. Actually going about beating Barack Obama will have to be in the Koch Brother's and Karl Rove's wheelhouse. Just like you wouldn't have had some total idiot Senator or House loon shooting a melon stand-in for Vince Foster's head in a Dole '96 ad vs. Clinton, it's unlikely some of the more far-fetched nonsense will be of use to Mitt Romney and his campaign.
This is essentially Clinton Term Two Electric Impeachment Boogalloo If we don't retake the U.S. House in November, because this is not being done to help elect Mitt Romney. They'd take it if it did, but this is about a longer-term gambit.
When, not if, but when President Barack Obama is successfully re-elected for a second term, this is all about the next step: politics by other means to remove him from the White House if they can, but at the very least trapping him in four long years of nothing but fake scandal, lazy media bullshit, and heartache.
And if that happens it will be because a smug second-rate car thief Torquemada will lead them.