Thursday, May 30, 2013

ASKED AND ANSWERED
(updated)


The wingnuttosphere is freaking about this bit of old news regurgitated today by the Daily Caller:
IRS's Shulman had more public White House visits than any Cabinet member

Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president's Cabinet.

Shulman's extensive access to the White House first came to light during his testimony last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee....
Um, yeah -- which is when the Huffington Post's Paul Blumenthal tweeted this perfectly rational explanation:

Well, duh. A big, complicated new government program needs to be implemented -- and so there are many discussions of that at the White House. Imagine!

Of course, that explanation would strike the right as even more sinister, because "Obama will use Obamacare to target conservatives for death!" is the new birtherism, except that it's not a marginalized belief on the right -- it's mainstream Republican thinking. So it won't satisfy the vultures.

*****

UPDATE, FRIDAY: At The Atlantic, Garance Francke-Ruta elaborates:
[Shulman] was cleared 40 times to meet with Obama's director of the Office of Health Reform, and a further 80 times for the biweekly health reform deputies meetings and others set up by aides involved with the health-care law implementation efforts. That's 76 percent of his planned White House visits just there, before you even add in all the meetings with Office of Management and Budget personnel also involved in health reform.

Complicating the picture is the fact that just because a meeting was scheduled and Shulman was cleared to attend it does not mean that he actually went. Routine events like the biweekly health-care deputies meeting would have had a standing list of people cleared to attend, people whose White House appointments would have been logged and forwarded to the check-in gate. But there is no time of arrival information in the records to confirm that Shulman actually signed in and went to these standing meetings.

Indeed, of the 157 events Shulman was cleared to attend, White House records only provide time of arrival information -- confirming that he actually went to them -- for 11 events over the 2009-2012 period, and time of departure information for only six appointments.
End of story.

7 comments:

Ten Bears said...

Yeah-huh... the whites dogs are trying to kill me, but Obama's targeting the white dogs for death.

Maybe I ought'a rethink my lack of support...

No fear.

Phil Perspective said...

Um, yeah -- which is when the Huffington Post's Paul Blumenthal tweeted this perfectly rational explanation: ...



And who tweeted her stupidity about this issue right after you? Why, McArgleBargle of course!!

Victor said...

Phil,
You mean she beat Malkin?

I find that hard to believe. :-)

And since when have our righties let facts, figures, and common sense, get in the way of a good meme that they want to inflate into a scandal?

Meanwhile, when James Dale Guckert - aka: Jeff Gannon - a "reporter" without proper credentials, was at countless press briefs, asking the softest of softball questions of the President and his Press Secretary (and who was later discovered to be a gay, male-escort), the Bush people and their MSM pals cried foul, and shrieked that that this was just the lefties trying to create a scandal where there was none.

Cognitive dissonance.

John said...

Blumenthal's explanation is convenient but not even Schulman is claiming that it is true.

When asked, under oath, what was discussed during his many trips to the WH, Schulman did not mention Obamacare. See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxQS280RgEA

Steve M. said...

See the update. Case closed.

Joseph Nobles said...

Just in time for Records-Keeping-Gate.

John said...

According to the update, the WH records are in a shambles. If Schulman had denied having so many WH meetings, then the update would be relevant. However, he didn't deny it.

Further, nothing in the update changes the fact that Blumenthal's spin was contradicted by Schulman's testimony.