++How bitter will the next few years be? Maybe it is just the humidity but already the nuts are beginning to surface again.
++The House is developing a menu to present President Obama in order for them to raise the debt limit. President Obama said this time he was not negotiating it. Observers expect it to reach climax by December recess. One of the options is to "privatize social security", which would only increase the debt but never mind.
++The House says they will have a conference July 10th on their immigration bill. Whether it includes a "path to citizenship" is anyone's guess.
++If you believe CNN, Republicans are demanding something be done about student loans. Last I looked it was Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, who was spearheading the charge to cut interest rates on them.
++Sam Adams Lager had a 4th of July ad that quotes the Declaration of Independence but omitted the word "God". A Fox news commentator said that was "letting the terrorists win."
++The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity are running ads in Georgia warning the state about the dangers of solar energy and that their rates will skyrocket if state power plants use solar.
++The same Americans for Prosperity have cut ads aimed a younger women warning them about Obamacare.
++Republicans are attacking Obamacare again because the employer mandate has been delayed a year. Now they are arguing this is illegal while others are proclaiming this is Doom and Gloom for the health insurance industry like they did when it was passed the first time.
++Rick Perry is using his anti-abortion stunt in Texas as a launchpad for his 2016 run for the Presidency.
++Scott Walker, who also has higher aspirations, quietly signed his ultrasound anti-abortion bill into law. The ACLU and Planned Parenthood are suing.
++In Michigan, New Jersey and Alabama, same sex couples are suing for the right to marry.
++Mississippi is attempting again to pass a strict anti-abortion law after the success of Ohio, Wisconsin and Texas.
++House Republicans sort of admit that there is no there in the IRS "scandal case". What's worse there smoking gun was the director of the IRS visited the Whit House over 150 times to see President Obama. Forbes rained on their parade in an article that no he never went there.
++House Republicans think they have found the person who can expose the Benghazi scandal. The only problem is that the man is a retired Marine and wants nothing to do with them.
++The Russians think it would be best for Edward Snowden to go to Venezuela for asylum. No one seems to be making the point that Booz-Hamilton, his employer is owned by the Caryle Group, which is now owned by foreigners.
++The Obama scandals all seem to have Republicans as major players. The Scandal to me is the NSA and the Fisa Court. So the head of the NSA is a Republican and the head of the FISA Court is none other than John Roberts. As the New York Times piece indicated this morning, Roberts appoints all 11 judges and they have vastly expanded national security law,which is of course totally secret. The NSA has rejected all FOIA requests by American citizens and the DOJ has just urged the FISA court to keep their decisions secret, contrary to some in the Senate.
++A Mexican sheriff was killed over the weekend with a gun from the Fast and Furious program. This should give Darryl Issa something to play with now that his scandals keep shrinking.
++Liz Cheney wants to be Senator from Wyoming. The only problem is that Republican Mike Enzi doesn't want to retire. Allan Simpson says this will get ugly.
++Only a year ago Mohammed Morsi won the first election in Egypt's modern history. A year later the largest demonstrations in modern history led to his removal by the military. The Saudis applauded Morsi's removal as a sign that authoritarianism would return to the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal urged that Egypt should have a leader like Pinochet. Great. Now The Moslem Brotherhood is waging counter-protests. El Baradei was going to be the Prime Minister, now he's not and he cancelled his appearance on the Sunday talk shows. It looks like the military can't run things any better than Morsi.
++John Kerry was on a yacht during the Egyptian crisis or not. A video shows he was, giving the right new fuel for a Benghazi-type scandal.
++Syria's Assad applauded Morsi's overthrow. The Free Syria Army are waging a war against the Islamists as if that struggle was over and now they are gearing up to take power.
++While Republicans are figuring out ways to suppress the vote in 2014, Hispanics are registering at high rates in reaction to Republican opposition to immigration reform.
++A Fayetteville ,North Carolina man had a July 4th float in a parade celebrating White History Month. I didn't know whether the negative reaction was because of his racism or that his float had a confederate flag.
++Ted Nugent wants to run for President in 2016. I think he would be older than Hillary Clinton.
++Environmentalists warn that the new border security provisions in the immigration law will jeopardize several animal species because they migrate back and forth between the United States and Mexico.
++Oh, by the way, Mariano Rivera made the all-star team in this, his last season.
++The right is circulating a video about a new Civil War where Texas would be the first to secede. The theme is that the confederacy is born again. Strange that your ideal is the confederacy. In Iain Bank's last novel "The Quarry", one of his characters makes the sage comment that libertarianism is the new Marxism for political ideology. I think we are seeing that fused in the United States where after the minorities are suppressed,the whites will have a libertarian paradise.
++With Mohammed Morsi gone, does that make North Carolina's law against Sharia moot?
++What would be our unemployment rate if we had the 1 million government employees back?
Showing posts with label IRS scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IRS scandal. Show all posts
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Light Fare
++Mariano Rivera has 23 saves out of 24 chances this year. He appears on this week's cover of New York magazine.
++Sandy Koufax appeared at the Dodgers-Yankees' Old Timers game at Chavez Ravine. Sandy looked great and ready to pitch again. On the Yankee side Ricky Henderson appeared.
++I wish the NSA would data-mine the Washington Post's baseball writers. With 100 games left in the season, these guys are all gloom and doom because the Nats are at .500 ball. What would happen to these writers if they had to cover the 1962 Mets?
++The really great writer Iain Banks died this week,only a few weeks before his last book "The Quarry" appeared. His publishers told his fans that he received a copy before he died. Iain Bangs was probably one of the few writers who could understand Prism and make something fabulous out of it.
++For reading about the NSA flap,look at Jane Mayer's piece in this week's New Yorker on why Data-mining is more intrusive than your Gene Hackman wire tap. On these matters, I trust Ms. Mayer than the Washington pundits.
++The ACLU today sued the Obama White House for its "dragnet" approach to communications saying it violated the 1st and 4th amendments. The last time they tried this with the Bush Administration they lost at the Supreme Court 5 to 4.
++Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch is suing the Obama Administration over the Verizon court order.
++Google has requested the administration allow them to publish the NSA requests for their cooperation.
++Having struggled with Google for the past several months, I wonder whether there are real humans working there. Maybe they can forward me my passwords.
++Immigration Reform passed the Senate subcommittee. The Senate also approved by wide margins it coming to the floor and again agreed to debate the issue. Before I left for Africa, the House had passed legislation to deport all the Dream Act kids. Senator Cruz complained that Obama was the biggest obstacle to immigration reform because he insisted on a pathway to citizenship. I thought that was the point. Still 13 years to citizenship looks long.
The GOP is expected to flood the bill with amendments that include prohibiting new immigrants from receiving Obamacare.
++The Salvation Army said that parents of gay children should die. And gays should be put to death. Not the kinder, gentler Salvation Army I used to know with their Christmas kettles.
++Expect all the same-sex marriage decisions from the Supreme Court this month. Also the Voting Rights decision.
++Check out Josh Marshall's writings about Edward Snowden at TalkingPointsMemo.com. He's taken some heat but raises the good questions from private contractors in intelligence to whether Snowden really had access to what he claims. He is not persuaded that Snowden is a martyr.
++Today marks the first time since 2005 that more Americans like George W. Bush than dislike him.
++Today also marks six months after Newtown and with the Santa Monica shootings, the NRA now surpasses the deaths of Americans in Iraq with shooting deaths here in the States. Congratulations! A convict wrote the NRA a thank-you letter saying when he is out of prison he now can buy a gun and restart his life of crime.
++The background check bill will make a recurrence soon.
++Mitt Romney, he who paid no income taxes for ten years,has called for a Special Prosecutor for the IRS "scandal". The problem with this faux scandal is that all the perpetrators are Republicans. The supervisor in charge of ordering the review of Tea Party applications is a self-proclaimed conservative Republican. And he said there was no evidence that the White House knew anything about what he was doing.
++Conservatives are lusting for the new batch of e-mails from previously unknown State Department personnel on Benghazi. The great scandal has petered out. While I was away Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who headed the Review Board on the shooting, protested that he was never asked to present his recommendations about embassy security.
++Apparently, the State Department's Inspector General has issued a report on State Department personnel procuring prostitutes, buying drugs, and sexually harassing local women. He said that further investigations were stopped by higher-ups. While one ambassador was involved, the bulk of the complaints seemed to be against "private security contractors".
++President Obama has backed away from appealing the court decision on the Plan B pill. Instead, it will be offered to women of all ages.
++Susan Rice and Samantha Powers appear to be moving to their new posts--as NSC director and UN Ambassador respectively. Republicans are apoplectic over Rice because of her role in the great Benghazi talking points scandal. Michael Gerson and Senator John McCain like Samantha Powers, while other conservatives claim she is anti-Israel, in the manner of Hagel.
++Sandy Koufax appeared at the Dodgers-Yankees' Old Timers game at Chavez Ravine. Sandy looked great and ready to pitch again. On the Yankee side Ricky Henderson appeared.
++I wish the NSA would data-mine the Washington Post's baseball writers. With 100 games left in the season, these guys are all gloom and doom because the Nats are at .500 ball. What would happen to these writers if they had to cover the 1962 Mets?
++The really great writer Iain Banks died this week,only a few weeks before his last book "The Quarry" appeared. His publishers told his fans that he received a copy before he died. Iain Bangs was probably one of the few writers who could understand Prism and make something fabulous out of it.
++For reading about the NSA flap,look at Jane Mayer's piece in this week's New Yorker on why Data-mining is more intrusive than your Gene Hackman wire tap. On these matters, I trust Ms. Mayer than the Washington pundits.
++The ACLU today sued the Obama White House for its "dragnet" approach to communications saying it violated the 1st and 4th amendments. The last time they tried this with the Bush Administration they lost at the Supreme Court 5 to 4.
++Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch is suing the Obama Administration over the Verizon court order.
++Google has requested the administration allow them to publish the NSA requests for their cooperation.
++Having struggled with Google for the past several months, I wonder whether there are real humans working there. Maybe they can forward me my passwords.
++Immigration Reform passed the Senate subcommittee. The Senate also approved by wide margins it coming to the floor and again agreed to debate the issue. Before I left for Africa, the House had passed legislation to deport all the Dream Act kids. Senator Cruz complained that Obama was the biggest obstacle to immigration reform because he insisted on a pathway to citizenship. I thought that was the point. Still 13 years to citizenship looks long.
The GOP is expected to flood the bill with amendments that include prohibiting new immigrants from receiving Obamacare.
++The Salvation Army said that parents of gay children should die. And gays should be put to death. Not the kinder, gentler Salvation Army I used to know with their Christmas kettles.
++Expect all the same-sex marriage decisions from the Supreme Court this month. Also the Voting Rights decision.
++Check out Josh Marshall's writings about Edward Snowden at TalkingPointsMemo.com. He's taken some heat but raises the good questions from private contractors in intelligence to whether Snowden really had access to what he claims. He is not persuaded that Snowden is a martyr.
++Today marks the first time since 2005 that more Americans like George W. Bush than dislike him.
++Today also marks six months after Newtown and with the Santa Monica shootings, the NRA now surpasses the deaths of Americans in Iraq with shooting deaths here in the States. Congratulations! A convict wrote the NRA a thank-you letter saying when he is out of prison he now can buy a gun and restart his life of crime.
++The background check bill will make a recurrence soon.
++Mitt Romney, he who paid no income taxes for ten years,has called for a Special Prosecutor for the IRS "scandal". The problem with this faux scandal is that all the perpetrators are Republicans. The supervisor in charge of ordering the review of Tea Party applications is a self-proclaimed conservative Republican. And he said there was no evidence that the White House knew anything about what he was doing.
++Conservatives are lusting for the new batch of e-mails from previously unknown State Department personnel on Benghazi. The great scandal has petered out. While I was away Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who headed the Review Board on the shooting, protested that he was never asked to present his recommendations about embassy security.
++Apparently, the State Department's Inspector General has issued a report on State Department personnel procuring prostitutes, buying drugs, and sexually harassing local women. He said that further investigations were stopped by higher-ups. While one ambassador was involved, the bulk of the complaints seemed to be against "private security contractors".
++President Obama has backed away from appealing the court decision on the Plan B pill. Instead, it will be offered to women of all ages.
++Susan Rice and Samantha Powers appear to be moving to their new posts--as NSC director and UN Ambassador respectively. Republicans are apoplectic over Rice because of her role in the great Benghazi talking points scandal. Michael Gerson and Senator John McCain like Samantha Powers, while other conservatives claim she is anti-Israel, in the manner of Hagel.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Casting Aspersions on my Asparagus*
**Louie Gohmert
++Hey, whose scandals are these? No Drama Obama better take ownership of them soon or people will forget they are his.
1. Benghazi and Jon Karlgate. The big flap at the beginning of the week kicked off by Jon Karl's scoop ended with the interesting news that Republican staffers had doctored the e-mails on the Benghazi talking points, which had been fully disclosed to the congressional committees this past fall. President Obama rained on the parade by releasing them. Former Fox reporter Major Garrett stunned television viewers by providing full details on how they had changed and basically claiming Republicans were lying.
2. Compounding the GOP disaster was the open letter from Ambassador Pickering demanding to appear before Issa's committee to testify in public because his integrity had been challenged. Instead, today Issa issued a subpoena for Pickering and Admiral Mullen to appear behind closed doors.
3. Conservative representatives had an orgy over the IRS scandal today attacking the former acting director, who is retiring in early June. The problem is that the main culprit for the IRS snafu was an appointee of George W. Bush,who had been held over in the Obama administration because the Senate would not allow President Obama to nominate his own director.
4.The most serious scandal of the broad seizure of AP phone numbers has been met with a yawn by Republicans, except for a throaty defense of the First Amendment by John Boehner. The problem of the AP story is that it is the natural result of the surveillance state created after 9-11 and everything the Justice Department did was legal as far as we know. The strange note of Eric Holder recusing himself from the case because he was one of the objects of the investigation hides another odd fact that the administration pursued the leaker because of the demands of Republican Senators.
So, President Obama, take these scandals away from the Republicans! They had enough under the last administration.
President Obama as Richard Nixon was the theme of the week. Also odd when you realize Roger Ailes of Fox News was key in creating the image of the New Nixon. Peggy "Martooni" Noonan wept that this was worse than Watergate. She even alluded to a Romney backer who had been audited--without telling the reader the donor was widely seen as corrupt. However in tonight's Washington Post, an op-ed by a historian recites all the presidential scandals going back to Nixon and says,"well,I don't think so" about the Obama-Nixon comparison. He points out that all second term presidents experience a wide-range of scandals in the second-term.
Rinse Penis of the RNC warned the GOP not to start talking about impeachment until the facts are in and if the Republican Party plays it right the American people will be for them. Heritage Foundation demanded that John Boehner stop any legislation and only concentrate on the scandals. As of today, 19 to the House 22 committees are now committed to investigating--well at least Benghazi and IRS but not so much the AP.
I thought it was 40 Times Obamacare has been repealed. More conservative numbers have it 37. And last night I heard 39 times. At the cost of $52 million, what a bargain for such a futile effort.
Despite the air of scandal, it seems two clunky versions of immigration reform we amble their way into both the Senate and the House. A farm bill shuffles through the house and Obama's nominees are actually being approved.
Gallup is sensing the American people are not fixated on the scandals. I sense that the GOP has to keep this going until the Fall, when if lightening strikes they can make a bigger hue and cry out of this. So far it has only fueled the conspiracy freaks.
The best Benghazi line I have heard is that President Obama had arranged with the Muslim Brotherhood to kidnap Ambassador Stevens but the plot went wrong. The idea would be to rescue Stevens to make Obama seem like a hero and then he would as part of the bargain release the blind Sheik.
The real story of Benghazi is actually interesting. Benghazi was a CIA station, which was holding Islamic militants captive, and that Ambassador Stevens and the CIA were involved in tracking down Qaddafi's surface to air missiles for use by the Syrian rebels. The details of the attack and CIA reactions to them are worth making public.
So far President Obama has taken measures to clean up two of these messes and defends the third one--the AP subpoenas. Where it will go--who knows? But betting on Republicans acting intelligently is a loser's bet.
I am off to Africa and will be out of pocket for two weeks. Stay tuned for my return.
++Hey, whose scandals are these? No Drama Obama better take ownership of them soon or people will forget they are his.
1. Benghazi and Jon Karlgate. The big flap at the beginning of the week kicked off by Jon Karl's scoop ended with the interesting news that Republican staffers had doctored the e-mails on the Benghazi talking points, which had been fully disclosed to the congressional committees this past fall. President Obama rained on the parade by releasing them. Former Fox reporter Major Garrett stunned television viewers by providing full details on how they had changed and basically claiming Republicans were lying.
2. Compounding the GOP disaster was the open letter from Ambassador Pickering demanding to appear before Issa's committee to testify in public because his integrity had been challenged. Instead, today Issa issued a subpoena for Pickering and Admiral Mullen to appear behind closed doors.
3. Conservative representatives had an orgy over the IRS scandal today attacking the former acting director, who is retiring in early June. The problem is that the main culprit for the IRS snafu was an appointee of George W. Bush,who had been held over in the Obama administration because the Senate would not allow President Obama to nominate his own director.
4.The most serious scandal of the broad seizure of AP phone numbers has been met with a yawn by Republicans, except for a throaty defense of the First Amendment by John Boehner. The problem of the AP story is that it is the natural result of the surveillance state created after 9-11 and everything the Justice Department did was legal as far as we know. The strange note of Eric Holder recusing himself from the case because he was one of the objects of the investigation hides another odd fact that the administration pursued the leaker because of the demands of Republican Senators.
So, President Obama, take these scandals away from the Republicans! They had enough under the last administration.
President Obama as Richard Nixon was the theme of the week. Also odd when you realize Roger Ailes of Fox News was key in creating the image of the New Nixon. Peggy "Martooni" Noonan wept that this was worse than Watergate. She even alluded to a Romney backer who had been audited--without telling the reader the donor was widely seen as corrupt. However in tonight's Washington Post, an op-ed by a historian recites all the presidential scandals going back to Nixon and says,"well,I don't think so" about the Obama-Nixon comparison. He points out that all second term presidents experience a wide-range of scandals in the second-term.
Rinse Penis of the RNC warned the GOP not to start talking about impeachment until the facts are in and if the Republican Party plays it right the American people will be for them. Heritage Foundation demanded that John Boehner stop any legislation and only concentrate on the scandals. As of today, 19 to the House 22 committees are now committed to investigating--well at least Benghazi and IRS but not so much the AP.
I thought it was 40 Times Obamacare has been repealed. More conservative numbers have it 37. And last night I heard 39 times. At the cost of $52 million, what a bargain for such a futile effort.
Despite the air of scandal, it seems two clunky versions of immigration reform we amble their way into both the Senate and the House. A farm bill shuffles through the house and Obama's nominees are actually being approved.
Gallup is sensing the American people are not fixated on the scandals. I sense that the GOP has to keep this going until the Fall, when if lightening strikes they can make a bigger hue and cry out of this. So far it has only fueled the conspiracy freaks.
The best Benghazi line I have heard is that President Obama had arranged with the Muslim Brotherhood to kidnap Ambassador Stevens but the plot went wrong. The idea would be to rescue Stevens to make Obama seem like a hero and then he would as part of the bargain release the blind Sheik.
The real story of Benghazi is actually interesting. Benghazi was a CIA station, which was holding Islamic militants captive, and that Ambassador Stevens and the CIA were involved in tracking down Qaddafi's surface to air missiles for use by the Syrian rebels. The details of the attack and CIA reactions to them are worth making public.
So far President Obama has taken measures to clean up two of these messes and defends the third one--the AP subpoenas. Where it will go--who knows? But betting on Republicans acting intelligently is a loser's bet.
I am off to Africa and will be out of pocket for two weeks. Stay tuned for my return.
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