Re-Birther Of The Monster

Tea Party leaders are playing the aggrieved victim card over the IRS mess even though precisely none of them were denied tax-exempt status, and they are vowing to take revenge on those who wronged them.

“This is the defining moment to say ‘I told you so,’ ” said Katrina Pierson, a Dallas-based tea party leader, who traveled to Washington last week as the three political headaches for President Barack Obama unfolded.

Luke Rogonjich, a tea party leader in Phoenix, called the trio of controversies a powerful confluence that bolsters the GOP’s case against big government. “Suddenly, there are a lot of things pressing on the dam,” said Rogonjich.

It’s unclear whether a movement made up of disparate grassroots groups with no central body can take advantage of the moment and leverage it to grow stronger after a sub-par showing in last fall’s election had called into question the movement’s lasting impact. Republicans and Democrats alike say the tea party runs the risk of going too far in its criticism, which could once again open the door to Democratic efforts to paint it as an extreme arm of the GOP.

“Never underestimate the tea party’s ability to overplay its hand,” said Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee. “Just because there is universal agreement that the IRS went too far, that should not be misread as acceptance of the tea party’s ideology of anger.”

At the very least, furor over the IRS devoting special attention to tea party groups claiming tax-exempt status is giving the tea party more visibility than it has had in months, and it’s providing a new rallying cry for tea party organizers starting to plot how to influence the 2014 congressional elections. The law allows tax-exempt organizations to lobby and dabble in politics as long as their primary purpose is social welfare.

The difference this time around is that the Tea Party isn't new anymore.  They're not fooling anyone about their extremist far-right positions on everything from eliminating women's rights to control their reproductive systems to eliminating affirmative action to slashing social welfare programs.  Voters aren't fooled by claims of "non-partisan" Tea Party groups any more.  We know exactly where they stand, and it's back in the 1950's.

America won't fall for it again, guys.  The people who were going to vote Winger were always going to do so.

StupidiNews!

• A series of spring tornadoes ripped across the Midwest Sunday, with the heaviest damage in Oklahoma and more storms expected today.
• Associated Press chief Gary Pruitt says that the subpoena of reporters' phone records in a Justice Department leak investigation is "an unconstitutional act" and plans to fight it in court.
• Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is seeking wide-ranging federal powers to rein in state governors over transparency and voting regulations.
• UK home prices increased a fifth straight month to a new record as the British economy is showing signs of recovery.
• Yahoo will purchase micro-blogging upstart Tumblr for $1.1 billion in a deal that has current Tumblr customers very worried about the service.

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.

Last Call For Dim Darrel

"The real problem with this IRS scandal is how the White House refused to tell Congress anything about this investigation until after the election, it was a massive cover up and...

...what's this all about then?"

The Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration sent a letter to Congressman Darrell Issa and Congressman Jim Jordan on July 12, 2012 informing them they would be auditing the IRS in response to their concerns that certain groups might be receiving extra scrutiny. The letter came in response to a June 28th letter of that year from Congressman Issa.

The letter states that after meeting with the staff of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which Issa chairs, the IG Office of Audit began work on the issue. The IG offered in the letter to provide a status update to the staff of the committee throughout the investigation as well as provide copies of interim and final reports.

“We would be happy to provide a status update to the Subcommittee staff and provide a copy of our interim and final reports on the matter when they are issued,” the letter reads.

Oops. GOP knew about this investigation for 10 months.  They said nothing.

“I knew what was approximately in it when we made the allegations about a year ago. This is one of those things where it’s been, in a sense, an open secret, but you don’t accuse the IRS until you’ve had a nonpartisan, deep look,” Issa said. “That’s what the IG has done. That’s why the IGs in fact exist within government, is to find this kind of waste and fraud and abuse of power.”

And Issa immediately accuses the White House of a cover-up.  When Issa knew about the investigation.  You know, the opposite of an actual cover-up.   Over at Hot Air, Mary Katherine Ham has no choice but to move those goalposts again...

The fact that there was an investigation going on was on the IG website as of fall, 2012, according to the same Lew interview with Bloomberg today. “The heads-up that I got was something that was a matter of public knowledge. It was posted on the IG’s website in the fall of 2012,” Lew said. “I was not aware of any details. My deputy was not aware of any details until it became a matter of public knowledge.”  

So now SecTreas Jack Lew is the target.  Keep on copulating with the poultry, guys.  President Obama's approval ratings have gone UP in the last week from 47% on May 14th to 51% on May 17th, according to Gallup.

The Bugs Are Back

Not cicadas, hornets.  Charlotte Hornets, that is.

The Charlotte Bobcats are on their way to becoming the Charlotte Hornets.

The Bobcats have started pursuing a name change to Charlotte’s original NBA team, an informed source confirmed to the Observer. Though the Bobcats will need permission from the league to make such a change, incoming NBA commissioner Adam Silver has twice indicated that shouldn’t be a problem.

 What’s still in question is when the name change could be implemented and how extensively the Bobcats would assume the Hornets’ old look. The source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, would not comment on whether the popular teal-and-purple color scheme would return to Charlotte.

With New Orleans dropping the Hornets name to become the Pelicans next season,  it looks like the other half of that move is now on the table.  Growing up in NC with the Hornets as the first major pro sports team in the Carolinas, I'm glad to see this happening.

Now if Seattle can just get the SuperSonics back some day...

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/18/4049079/bobcats-plan-to-become-charlotte.html#storylink=cpy

More Products From The Umbrella (Poutrage) Corporation

Knowingly reporting on this Obama umbrella nonsense as a serious news story should probably drive a real reporter out of the business altogether.  Sadly, Beltway hack Rachel Weiner at the Washington Post suffers from no such affliction of conscience or character.

Slogging through a drizzly Rose Garden news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Obama took a break to ask for some rain protection.

“I am going to go ahead and ask folks, why don’t we get a couple of Marines — they’re going to look good next to us — just because I’ve got a change of suits but I don’t know about our prime minister,” he said as two Marines appeared at the lecterns with umbrellas. “There we go. That’s good.” He gestured to the soggy press corps, adding, “You guys I’m sorry about.”

It was a lighthearted moment in the midst of a grim few days for the White House. But in a week of Benghazi e-mails, Justice Department subpoenas and Internal Revenue Service targeting, some of the administration’s critics saw another example of overreach.

“Obama breaches Marine umbrella protocol,” read the headline on one conservative blog.

Per Marine Corps uniform regulations, the men are not allowed to carry or use umbrellas while in uniform. Female Marines can carry “an all-black, plain standard, or collapsible umbrella at their option during inclement weather” but not with combat uniforms.

Why is this even a story?   Why would the Village legitimize this baseless and stupid attack on the President?  I think I know...

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Two Metro North Amtrak trains collided in southern Connecticut Friday evening, sending 70 to the hospital for treatment.
• French President Francois Hollande has officially signed into law controversial same-sex marriage legislation, but a national protest against the measure is slated for May 26.
• Navy-trained dolphins have turned up an extremely rare 19th century torpedo off the California coast.
• North Korea again flexed its military muscles by launching three short-range test missiles off its coast.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to invest $100 million in US component manufacturing facilities.

Last Call For Syria

Meanwhile, in news that actually does matter, Syria is reaching something of a breaking point.

After more than two years of conflict, Syria is breaking up. A constellation of armed groups battling to advance their own agendas are effectively creating the outlines of separate armed fiefs. As the war expands in scope and brutality, its biggest casualty appears to be the integrity of the Syrian state. 

On Thursday, President Obama met in Washington with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and once again pressed the idea of a top-down diplomatic solution. That approach depends on the rebels and the government agreeing to meet at a peace conference that was announced last week by the United States and Russia. 

“We’re going to keep increasing the pressure on the Assad regime and working with the Syrian opposition,” Mr. Obama said. “We are going to keep working for a Syria that is free of Assad’s tyranny.” 

But as evidence of massacres and chemical weapons mounts, experts and Syrians themselves say the American focus on change at the top ignores the deep fractures the war has caused in Syrian society. Increasingly, it appears Syria is so badly shattered that no single authority is likely to be able to pull it back together any time soon. 

There's a cheery and altogether too real sentiment.  Syria as a country may be effectively done.  That kind of crackup on land bordering Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and of course Israel will not be pretty.

We'll see.

Umbrella (Poutrage) Corporation

This is now the new "Obama scandal" according to Daily Caller:



Umbrellas.  No, seriously.

The commander in chief of the American armed forces today forced a violation of Marine Corps regulations, so he wouldn’t get wet.

According to Marine Corps regulation MCO P1020.34F of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations chapter 3, a male Marine is not allowed to carry an umbrella while in uniform. There is no provision in the Marine Corps uniform regulation guidelines that allows a male Marine to carry an umbrella.

Except for the fact that HE'S THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, you morons.

Did you know that the U.S. Marine Corps has a policy on umbrella holding? Uniform regulations state that a male Marine can’t hold an umbrella (ella, ella) while wearing his uniform, presumably because he can't salute at the same time. President Obama probably didn't know this when he asked two Marines to hold bumbershoots over him and Turkey's prime minister during a press conference Thursday. Seeing a Marine with this particular accessory is "extremely rare," Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Greg Wolf explained, but because the president's the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, if he says "hold my umbrella," it's permissible. Some people weren't happy, including Sarah Palin, who tweeted, "Mr. President ... most Americans hold their own umbrellas." [Source]

You mean like this, Sarah?




Into each life, a little moose crap must fall.

Feeding You A Load

Yeah, I can understand member of the press being upset at the White House over the Associated Press subpoenas.  But the only thing guaranteed to piss off a reporter more than picking on them through the courts is making them look like chumps by feeding them false info.

CBS News White House reporter Major Garrett took the GOP to task last night.

On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes: "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation."

But it turns out that in the actual email, Rhodes did not mention the State Department.

It read: "We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation."

Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an email written by State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland.

The Republican version quotes Nuland discussing, "The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda."

The actual email from Nuland says: "The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings."

The CIA agreed with the concerns raised by the State Department and revised the talking points to make them less specific than the CIA's original version, eliminating references to al Qaeda and affiliates and earlier security warnings. There is no evidence that the White House orchestrated the changes.

Keep in mind this never happens.  This is Garrett putting his career on the line and becoming persona non grata among the GOP by specifically calling out Republicans as liars over this.  Normally what you would see is "sources".  But Garrett uses "Republicans" here several times.

Josh Marshall is also surprised.

Generally, once partisan, tendentious sources leak information that turns out to be wrong, nothing’s ever done about it. That’s for many reasons, some good or somewhat understandable, mostly bad. But on CBS Evening News tonight, Major Garrett did something I don’t feel like I’ve seen in a really long time or maybe ever on a network news cast. He basically said straight out: Republicans told us these were the quotes, that wasn’t true.

Kevin Drum goes a bit further:

So here's what happened. Republicans in Congress saw copies of these emails two months ago and did nothing with them. It was obvious that they showed little more than routine interagency haggling. Then, riding high after last week's Benghazi hearings, someone got the bright idea of leaking two isolated tidbits and mischaracterizing them in an effort to make the State Department look bad. Apparently they figured it was a twofer: they could stick a shiv into the belly of the White House and they could then badger them to release the entire email chain, knowing they never would.

But it was typical GOP overreach. To their surprise, the White House took Republicans up on their demand to make the entire email chain public, thus making it clear to the press that they had been burned. And now reporters are letting us all know who was behind it.

This is where things get really, really interesting. We'll see if the rest of the press picks up on this or not...

StupidiNews!

• Texas rescue officials are still looking for seven missing people after Wednesday's deadly tornadoes in the northern part of the state.
• A new CDC study estimates that as many as one in five US children and teens suffer from mental disorders.
• A new report finds two "known or suspected terrorists" who turned states' evidence and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program simply boarded planes and left.
• McDonald's is paring menu choices and focusing on "core" offerings as the company revamps its offerings.
• Congress wants to know how Google plans to protect privacy of both users and the people around them when Google Glass eventually goes public.

Last Call On The Banks Of The Rubin Con

At this point Jennifer Rubin is reduced to bleating what was written about Dubya circa 2005 and replacing the various nouns with Obama-related ones.

That is the real similarity between the Obama team and the Nixon administration. In the 1970s, a paranoid president’s convinction that his enemies were out to get him and that their opposition was a threat to national security informed the decisions of his underlings. The ends justified the means. Now, a prickly president convinced of his own messianic quality and surrounded by sycophants decries his opponents as operating out of ill will. His underlings get the point.

It is not a coincidence that the few dead-enders in the lefty blogosphere and punditocracy still defending the president embody the same ethos as the president. Republicans are liars, entirely responsible for all that goes wrong, out to wreck the economy and racists, they would have us believe. Obama set the tone, but they amplified it, encouraged it and dutifully took down the White House talking points. Had they not been so passive and eager to enable the White House, some in the administration might have internalized a sense of limits. Instead, they got nothing but encouragement.

In the delusion that Rubin lives in, Obama is is mere yards from being thrown out of office by a groundswell of tens of millions (the same groundswell that failed to materialize and elect Mitt Romney, by the way) and that ironclad fact means anyone who disagrees with her is a "dead-ender", sure to be swept away in the tide of Revolution For Make Glorious Benefit Nation Of Teabagistan.

We all should be laughing at her, of course.  But keep an eye on the "progressive left" who think she's right.  She knows who her audience is.

Begun, These Clone Wars Have

Yesterday's amazing breakthrough in stem cell research where for the first time, viable stem cells were cloned and grown from an adult's DNA, is about to run into the buzzsaw of Crazy Anti-Science Republicans.

"There are already 60 countries in the world that have laws on their books banning human reproductive cloning, and this prohibition is also in a number of international agreements" says Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the , which is devoted to the responsible use of new genetic and reproductive technologies. "But in the U.S., we have not managed to put such a law on the books at the federal level."

At least 15 states ban cloning, either for reproductive purposes or research, or, in come cases both, according to the

But Congress has mostly fought issues of both and to a draw.

"What we saw the last time cloning was in the headlines was that the discussion really got mired in the abortion controversy," Darnovsky said.

The House passed bills banning all forms of cloning in 2001 and 2003; the Senate failed to act in both cases.

"All the other issues got completely swamped," she said. "And I really hope that doesn't happen this time."

But both the issue of cloning — for research and reproduction — and embryonic stem cell research have been mired in the abortion controversy from the start.

I agree we need ethical and consistent guidelines for stem cell research, especially those cloned from human embryos.  But the last people who should be writing these guidelines are House Republicans who believe the earth is only 6,000 years old and believe these non-viable blobs of cells have the same legal rights as live human beings.

I'm of the mind that the Senate needs to get out in front of this and gets a piece of legislation out that does this responsibly before the anti-science nutjobs attach a "personhood and cloning bill" to the next debt ceiling crisis.

Thanks.