Last Call For Oldies But Baddies

The GOP clearly isn't getting any traction with the so-called "scandals."  The President's approval ratings remained untouched if not slightly up, and the Republicans are falling back to two of their standard attack tactics in Virginia's upcoming gubernatorial race:  questioning the President's Christian faith, and having baseless attacks delivered by a black conservative to obviate any accusations of racism.

The Virginia Republican Party picked conservative minister E.W. Jackson as their nominee for lieutenant governor Saturday night. Jackson will run along side Ken Cuccinelli and is the first black candidate the party has nominated for statewide office since 1988 according to the Associated Press.

In 2010 Jackson formed a political action committee called the Stand America PAC “to recruit and support conservative black candidates to run against liberals in Congressional Black Caucus districts” according to a press release. Jackson also maintained a now defunct blog on his site, where he argued in one post that President Obama saw the world “from a Muslim perspective.”

Oh gosh, we all know what that's code for, but of course since it's being delivered by a black Christian minister, it can't be racism and it has to be the truth, right?

Those who are paying attention and thinking about these issues do not find it unreasonable to consider that President Obama is influenced by a strain of anti-Semitism picked up from the black community, his leftist friends and colleagues, his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright. If this conclusion is accurate, Israel has some dark days ahead. For the first time in her history, she may find the President of the United States siding with her enemies. Those who believe as I do that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight. We are. NEVER AGAIN!

Yeah, there's the trifecta:  Obama, liberals, and African-Americans are all anti-Semites who hate Israel.  And let's not forget the top member of that ticket:  Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, a real piece of work who wasted millions of Virginia taxpayer dollars on suing Obamacare only to see his suit tossed, who refused to investigate Republican voter registration fraud in 2012, and who believes birth control is genocide and slavery.

Together they'll be bringing a Christian fundamentalist government to Virginia in November 2013...unless corporate Democrat hustler Terry McAuliffe can stop them.  And even then, it'll suck.

If you live in Virginia, especially northern VA, do yourself a favor and move to Maryland.

Sometimes The Bad Guys Win, Too

Cincinnati is a mostly a good city and I've come to learn to like it, if not love the city and the people who live in and around it.  But don't forget for a second that the Queen City is home to a number of huge corporations who don't give a damn about the people other than lip service:  Proctor & Gamble, Great American Insurance, Fifth Third Bank, Kroger, and in the latest example of stunning greed, Western and Southern Insurance Group.

The Anna Louise has been housing women since 1909 in the same charming, dormitory-style building that looks like a plantation home. Although it began by helping young, ambitious types who were pouring into then-booming Cincinnati, it later became geared toward women who needed a fresh start; some have left abusive husbands, others are transitioning from foster care to adulthood while others are recovering prostitutes and drug addicts.

The historic downtown Cincinnati neighborhood where the women live, known as Lytle Park, became an important part of their recovery, since most were coming from dangerous parts of the city where it'd be easier to slip back into their former ways of life.

Western & Southern executives, whose headquarters sit across a park from the Anna Louise, offered to buy the Anna Louise for $1.8 million several years ago, less than half its value. The Anna Louise declined and won $12.6 million in federal and state tax credits to renovate the home, where some rooms are smaller than 100 square feet and all the women have to share bathrooms and one kitchen.

Days before the renovation was to begin, Western & Southern sued over a zoning issue and a judge ordered an immediate construction halt until the legal fight was resolved. The Anna Louise and its supporters didn't back down, vowing to fight Western & Southern with everything they had — until last week when they inked a deal with the company to sell the home for $4 million.

Leaders at Cincinnati Union Bethel, the nonprofit that runs the Anna Louise, said they sold reluctantly because they couldn't afford to fight any longer.

So a women's shelter standing for over a century will be obliterated because they were lowering the property value, so W&S threw their considerable weight around in the city until they could force a sale.  They'll make they money back on yet another overpriced gentrified hotel downtown that they'll own.  No doubt the employees there won't have a union, won't be paid very well, and will "be lucky to even have" the jobs this will create.

Company CEO John Barrett has long said it was time for the women at the Anna Louise to leave the neighborhood to make way for economic development. He plans to turn the building into a boutique hotel and envisions transforming the neighborhood into a hub of activity with restaurants and bars.

"This truly is a win for everyone and will make Lytle Park a destination like no other," Barrett said in a Monday news release announcing the Anna Louise sale.

Barrett, who has repeatedly declined requests for an interview, has become a loathed figure at the Anna Louise, not only for his tireless efforts to acquire the property but also for the way he has talked about the women living there, repeatedly referring to them as recovering prostitutes and saying they just don't belong in the neighborhood.

As far as where the women will go?  Well, who cares?  It's not W&S's problem anymore.   Maybe Cincinnati will do something about it after some national shaming...but I doubt it.

Peggy Noonan? Meet Nate Silver...

...and have a seat, madam.  The plural of anecdote is not data on the whole IRS thing, and who better to explain that to one of our more factually-challenged Village numbskulls than the Swami of Statistics himself as he takes Peggy to task.

Some conservatives, however, are alleging that there is another component to the scandal. They accuse the I.R.S. of targeting not just conservative groups that sought 501(c)(4) status, but also individual taxpayers who oppose President Obama or have supported conservative causes. “The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration,” the Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote on Thursday, describing the I.R.S.’s actions as the “worst Washington scandal since Watergate.”

What evidence does Ms. Noonan present for this second allegation? She reports on four cases of conservatives who she says were targeted for audits, and infers that there were undoubtedly many more ...

If Nate Silver is asking you for evidence, you don't have it.   What follows is glorious.

Ms. Noonan is surely correct that many conservative taxpayers were audited. In fact, based on some simple math that I’ll present in a moment, it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of Mitt Romney voters were selected for an audit in 2012.

However, it’s also likely that hundreds of thousands of Mr. Obama’s supporters were audited. Although the percentage of taxpayers who are audited is relatively low — about 1 percent — the number of taxpayers in the United States is so large that this still yields well more than a million audits every year, across the political spectrum.

Here's the key chart of data from Nate.

That's right:  the vast majority of people audited by the IRS make less than 200k.  Half of those audited make less than $25k.  In other words, if anything, the IRS regularly audits more taxpayers making little or no income because...hey, people who make little or no income far outnumber the people making millions each year.

Matching those exit poll numbers up with the data shows if anything, the IRS audited 100,000 more Obama voters.

This of course means Peggy Noonan is full of nonsense, because she found four people who got audited who voted for Romney...four out of 879,000.  Of course you can find four.  Congratulations, you're still a moron.