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Quote of the Day

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

“This will be a scandal like Watergate if it turns out that the IRS was acting under orders from Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett. If the White House’s conduct turns out to be unimpeachable, then it is something far worse: a sign that the government itself has become a threat to the Constitution.”

— James Taranto

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Quote of the Day

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

“And the IRS scandal was a subversion of democracy on a massive scale. The most fearsome and coercive arm of the administrative state embarked on a systematic effort to suppress citizen dissent against the party in power. Thomas Friedman is famous for musing that he wishes America could be China for a day. It turns out we’ve been China for a while.”

— James Taranto

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This sums it up pretty well

Friday, May 24th, 2013

The Bookworm Room nails it:

…the Obama government is about politics before country, revenge before law and morality, and cover-ups above and beyond everything.

Yes, there is more…

…the head of the IRS went before Congress and confessed that the IRS denied what was going on before the election (a lie) and that it timed the release of information to bury it in the news cycle.  And then there’s all that other fascinating stuff that’s been oozing out from the single most powerful coercive entity in the federal government.

In every single statement she made, Lois Lerner, the IRS official who every so casually broke the story, lied.  Just some examples are the fact that the IRS didn’t target, maybe, 75 groups.  It targeted at least 470 groups.  And it wasn’t just wacky Tea Party groups that got caught it the cross hairs, it was any group that appeared even vaguely to oppose Obama’s policies.  The targeting wasn’t just confined to a rogue Ohio office, it went to the top.  And, indeed, the very top person got over $100,000 in bonuses and was promoted to head the — ahem — nonpartisan branch of the IRS in charge of enforcing ObamaCare.

We also know that the IRS illegally leaked information about Obama’s political opponents — which definitely has a kind of mirror-like Watergate quality to it.  Nixon’s henchmen stole data directly from his political opponents; Obama’s henchmen release data about Obama’s political opponents to Obama’s supporters.  And of course, speaking of stealing things, it appears that the IRS stole tens of thousands of medical records — this would be, of course, the same IRS that’s in charge of enforcing ObamaCare.

Of course, our Dear Leader claims he knew nothing of this, and his cultist followers will deny any wrongdoing, except to blame former President George W. Bush.

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The Smoking Gun for the Obama IRS Scandal

Monday, May 20th, 2013

As you may know, unless you get all your “news” from MSNBC, the Obama administration’s IRS illegally targeted conservative groups.  Of course, our Dear Leader denied any knowledge and sent out his spokes weasels to claim that this really isn’t important.

 Jim Hoff at Gateway Pundit has the details on what looks, sounds, walks, and smells, like a smoking gun of Barack Hussein Obama’s direct involvement with the IRS’ illegal, and unconstitutional, hate crimes against conservative groups.

President Obama met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief Colleen Kelly in the White House the day before the agency targeted Tea Party.

The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General’s Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America.

In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS “Determinations Unit Program agreed” to open a “Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases.” As stated by the IG report.

Now let’s see if any of the mainstream media, besides possibly Fox News, pick up on this.

Of course, there is more:

A tea-party group targeted by Democrats gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.

The Washington Post gives  “A Bushel of Pinocchios” for IRS’s Lois Lerner.

IRS Scandal Roundup, Day 11.

 

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Sweet, sweet Schadenfreude….

Sunday, May 12th, 2013

Michael Graham writes the following about our Dear Leader’s Press Secretary:

It was one of the tastiest servings of schadenfreude I’ve sampled in a long time.  Watching Carney lie is boring. Watching him lie while he knows everyone watching knows he’s lying is a delight.

What we’ve known from the beginning–and the folks at ABC News are just starting to figure outis that the White House knew within 24 hours--48 max–that the Benghazi consulate was destroyed by a pre-planned, organized attack on the anniversary of 9/11 by Al Qaeda. Which means every time Hillary Clinton said “video” at Chris Stevens funeral or President Obama said it at the UN or Susan Rice said it on TV–they were lying.

They were lying because the CIA, the State Department and the Libyan government has all told them the truth within a day of the attack.

Bottom line, Carney is moving into Baghdad Bob territory every time he opens his mouth about Benghazi.

Of course, the Obama cultists “don’t care” about the President and his staff lying repeatedly to the American people, as long as it is their “lightbringer” doing the lying.

 

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Some true words on the US economy and entitlement spending.

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

Some true words on the US economy and entitlement spending.

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Sunday Round Up

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Here is collection of interesting items I put in my “blog about” file but didn’t get to.

Let’s lead off with some Blue on Blue media attacks.  George Soros’ bought and paid for thugs at Media Matters attacked the uber-liberal reporters at NPR for committing an act of Journalism.  Chana Joffe-Walt did a story on that covered the fraud and corruption in the federal disability program on Chicago’s Public Radio This American Life and National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered.  Ms. Joffe-Walt apparently forgot about the memo that said that all news stories must praise our Dear Leader and blame Republicans.

Jon Stewart, a fairly reliable talking head for the extreme far hard left agenda, ripped in our Dear Leader for basic incompetence on his handling of the obscenely long backlog at the Veterans Administration. Gee, it’s almost as if Obama sees US military veterans as his enemy and is trying to kill them off.

Obamacare’s PR Problem: Not Just a Flesh Wound

Megan McCardle points out an annoying fact that leftists don’t like: The Aaron Sorkin Model of Political Discourse Doesn’t Actually Work

Democrat congressman Stephen Lynch on Benghazi Talking Points: ‘It Was Scrubbed … It Was False Information. There’s No Excuse For That.’  Yup, the Obama regime flat out lied the American people for the purpose of  “damage control” prior to the election.  This really does call for hearings.

Chicago Law Prof on Obama: “The Professors Hated Him because he was Lazy, Unqualified & Never Attended any of the Faculty Meetings” Hmmm…doesn’t sound like his work habits changed much.

 

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Quote of the Day: Noam Chomsky Edition

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

“I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”

Thus saith uber-leftist Noam Chomsky

Academic Chomsky is getting a lesson in RealPolitik, where the maxim “Scratch a liberal and you’ll find a fascist” is the norm, and not the exception.

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Let Us Examine the Obama Economy Once Again

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

The GDP growth rate is out for Q1 2013, and at 2.5%, it is a nice improvement over Q4 2012’s 0.4% rate, which was revised up from the original estimate of -0.1%.  It’s also lower than the 3% growth the Keynesian economists the Obama regime is strangely still paying attention to, predicted.

It’s not all good news for the worst recovery since the Great Depression, as this CNBC article points out.

A full percentage point of that 2.5% growth was a one time effect of the farming industry recovering from a drought.  So the real growth rate was an anemic 1.5%

Household incomes also dropped at a 5.3 percent rate in the first quarter of 2013, and the saving rate – the percentage of disposable income households are socking away – fell to 2.6 percent, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2007.

Neither of those last two items are a good sign for increases in consumer spending, which is going to get worse, as federal taxes go up, as well as local taxes.  The tax burden will be worse in the so-called “Blue” states as their expensive social programs continue to overwhelm their budgets, and their revenue generating working classes flee for states with less oppressive taxes on anyone moderately successful.

The only bright point was that the official government inflation rate was only 0.9%.  That is good for tax paying consumers, but is another missed milestone of the Obama Economic Team.  They want at least 2%.

 

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Let’s look at the numbers again…

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

The March unemployment numbers are out and the federal U3 number dropped from 7.7% in February to 7.6%.  That should be good news, still over two points over what our Dear Leader promised us we would have if we passed his massive porkulus act, but still moving in the in right direction.

So why did the architect of the Obama economic plan, Austan Goolsbee, call the March unemployment numbers a “punch to the gut”?

To answer that,we need to look at some more numbers.  Like the number of jobs the Federal BLS says were added in March, which is 88,000.  Since you have been paying attention, you know that the US economy needs to generate at least 120,000 new jobs a month just to break even.  So how did the U3 rate drop a tenth of a percent when we missed the break even point by over 33,000 jobs? The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the U3 (and 5 other “U” rates) rate as a percentage of the labor force.  While the BLS added 88,000 jobs, it dropped 630,000 workers from the labor force. That gives us a net loss of over a half million workers from the US economy in March 2013.  Just what would the Federal BLS U3 number be if those 630,000 Americans were still counted in the labor force?  One estimate has it at 11.7%.  That is Carter era employment numbers.  It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama’s Worst Recovery since the Great Depression is catching up with the Worst Recession since the Great Depression.

Not a shining moment for the Obama regime and it’s Keynesian economy policies.  Not enough for them to give up on those failed policies though.  For the left, their political agenda always trumps the truth.

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