Chamber of Evil

That’s what the White House would have you think of the Chamber of Commerce.

President Barack Obama (D-USA), top political advisor David Axelrod, and Vice President Joe Biden (D-USA) have been calling out the Chamber of Commerce in recent days. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has called for investigations.

The crime? Using foreign money to push domestic political activism.

See, the Chamber of Commerce is a vocal critic of the Obama administration, and has recently been putting it’s money where it’s mouth is by creating some ads showing just how anti-business the Obama administration is.

The DNC is running an ad telling you how evil these people are:

But there are two problems with the accusation. We’ll address the hypocrisy one first.

If true, the Chamber of Commerce would hardly be the first organization to receive foreign funds and push domestic political causes. the AFL-CIO comes to mind immediately.

In fact, Mr. Obama himself is in deep trouble here, as during his 2008 campaign, he was widely criticized for not checking addresses of donors if they donated less than $100 (this is perfectly legal), to the tune of several hundred million dollars.

What’s that aphorism about glass houses and throwing rocks? Or was it about being sinless and throwing stones? I can never remember. But neither work out well for Mr. Obama.

However, hypocrisy is rampant in Washington, and the Democrats definitely do not have a monopoly on it.

The same is true of baseless accusations, as even the New York Times manages to figure out.

White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.

“The president was not suggesting any illegality,” Bob Bauer, the White House counsel, said. Instead, he said Mr. Obama’s reference to the chamber was meant to draw attention to the inadequacies of campaign disclosure laws in allowing groups to spend large amounts of money on politics without disclosing their donors.

White House officials called on the chamber to go beyond current disclosure laws and establish that no foreign money has been used in its political campaigns. “They can put this to rest,” said Joshua Earnest, a White House spokesman. “They have the keys to the file cabinet.”

Okayyyyy, so you make an accusation with no evidence whatsoever, and when called on it, your response is “make them prove we’re wrong”.

David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun was capable of figuring this one out

The Democratic National Commitee [sic] is using the same sort of tactic and logic that Sen. Joe McCarthy used in the 1950s: Level a headline-grabbing and unsubstantiated charge, like the State Department is filled with communists, and then say it is up to the State Department and the employees so charged to prove it is not true.

So much for hope and change; this is the politics of fear, slander and divisiveness on the eve of an election that looks as if it could deliver a damning verdict on the first two years of the Obama administration.

I may have trouble with my aphorisms on rocks and stones, but this one I remember.

“Mr. President, have you stopped beating your wife?”

“Mr. President, accusations have surfaced that your home was at one time a public sex den and that your daughters are actually someone else’s. Some blood tests would clear this up quickly. You can put this to rest. You have the keys to the cabinet.”

Ok, that was perhaps over the top. But you get the point. Making a serious accusation like this with no evidence, and then adopting a “guilty until proven innocent” stance is not acceptable behavior in America, especially from the President of the United States.

The problem our socialist/Marxist President has with the Chamber of Commerce isn’t that they receive foreign money, it’s that they’re capitalists and they’re exercising their right to freedom of speech, a right he personally deplores.