A Guy in New York

“Is this still America?”

CR — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:17:10 +0000

This is not good. This is very bad. Very, very bad.

The IRS under the Obama administration painted targets on the backs of conservatives beginning in 2010, and ousted acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller apologized to the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday. But members on both sides of the aisle were furious, and castigated him for the mismanagement and political gamesmanship the IRS engaged in on his watch.

Texas Republican congressman Kevin Brady had the harshest criticism for Miller.

‘Is this still America?’ he asked him.

‘Is this government so drunk on power that it would turn its full force, its full might, to harass, and intimidate, and threaten an average American who only wants her voice, their voices heard?’

‘The American public deserves better,’ Miller agreed. But both he and J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration, insisted that no IRS employees engaged in political witch-hunting.

‘Is this still America?’ Congressional hearing turns into IRS smackdown as disgraced former commissioner and Treasury Inspector General face tea-party scandal questions

Very bad. This is thugocracy run amok.

And the IRS is the agency responsible for administering Obamacare penalties? YIKES!

Uh oh: Democrat Baucus warns: More to come out on IRS scandal

The revelations also spurred calls for investigations into the practices of the administration of President Barack Obama and allegations of a potential cover-up operation.

“It’s an abuse of power and it smells of Watergate,” said Bob Quasius, the president of the conservative Latino group Café con Leche, referring to the political scandal that led to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

“I think it goes to the top levels of his administration,” Quasius added. “If it doesn’t directly connect to him it at least connects to someone close to him.”

Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted In IRS Scandal

Ozymandias

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT), learn what Members of Congress pay in taxes, and prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading.

“President Asterisk”

CR — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:57:26 +0000

No one can deny that Barack Obama is a highly skilled politician, at least by the measure of election outcomes. His record is undefeated, save for an ill-advised 2000 primary challenge to an entrenched incumbent congressman. His 2008 presidential victory, after a fraction of a term in the U.S. Senate, was especially dazzling. It disproved those who said that Hillary Clinton was invincible, that a left-wing Democrat couldn’t win, and that America wasn’t ready for a black president.

No one can deny that Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire were highly skilled athletes. But their accomplishments are forever tainted by their use of banned performance-enhancing drugs. The use of the Internal Revenue Service’s coercive power to suppress dissent against Obama is the political equivalent of steroids. The history books should record Obama’s re-election with an asterisk to indicate that it was achieved with the help of illicit means.

President Asterisk: Why the Obama IRS scandal may be worse than “a cancer on the presidency.”

We elect a Chicago machine pol, an accomplished moral preener, to the White House and we’re surprised he’s a sleazeball? Rubes.

The president may not realize the cost of reducing the trust content of his actions. Perhaps they teach that lying has no cost in Chicago, but in reality trust’s absence exacts a very definite price.

The Lying King

President Umbrella knows nothing.

What do the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal have in common? They were both about winning elections, under false pretenses.

Winning elections, after all, is something Barack Obama is good at. He obviously loves campaigning and delivering grand orations to enormous adoring crowds.

He loves it so much that he flew off to Las Vegas to campaign the day after the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years.

What actually happened in Benghazi was out of sync with the Obama campaign line. Osama bin Laden was dead. Al-Qaida was on the run. The global war on terror — well, don’t call it that anymore.

A deliberate effort to mislead the voters was launched. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House press secretary Jay Carney and the president himself talked about a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video — even though no evidence of that came from Benghazi.

Benghazi and IRS Targeting: Politics by Other Means

Ozymandias

What video!?!?

CR — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:17:52 +0000

Fourteen days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered by Islamists, President Barack Obama stood up in front of the United Nations and declared that the “message” of a movie virtually no one will ever see “must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity,” that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” and that we all should “condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims.”
. . .
So many things wrong in so few words. Why this video, and not Theo Van Gogh’s Submission, or Lars Vilks’ animation of Mohammed wanting to go to a gay bar, the “Super Best Friends” episode of South Park, or Funny or Die’s “How to Pick a Pocket”? Is it the degree of the insult, the craptasticness of the production values, the size of the release, or the vociferousness of the outrage expressed?

President Obama Says We “must” Condemn “those who slander the prophet of Islam,” Among Others

So, no blaspheming, you proles. (Oh, Piss Christ is OK.)

Benghazi, Obama, Clinton, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Chris Stevens, Islam, Islamists…

The country is in the very best of hands.

Ozymandias

Cognitive Dissonance: “I see nothing!”

CR — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:27:07 +0000

♫ ♪ ♫ ♩ ♫♪ ♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, ain’t nobody here at all.

♫ ♪ ♫ ♩ ♫♪ ♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

Obamagate: a three part scandal encompassing the IRS harassment of conservative groups, the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records, and the handling of the Benghazi attacks.

As Moe Lane said, “This is not a failure of the system. This is the system.”

Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.

And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.

In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn’t even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department’s trampling of press freedoms.

President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.

Three serial shocks (and their continuing aftershocks) are sufficiently grave to produce a form of trauma in those who hitched their hearts to Obama:

1. Facing proof from one of their own that Obama and his administration lied and then continued to lie to the faces of the White House Press Corps through Jay Carney about Benghazi casts serious doubt on other claims of his they have supported and defended;

2. Continuing revelations of the IRS’s misbehavior toward the hated tea partiers and conservatives calls into question which side are the good guys (see point 1);

3. And finally the revelation that all their loyalty bought them no consideration at all when it came to secretly grabbing records of their communications in AP, tells them loyalty is one way street with this guy and his crowd.

The Mainstream Media Obama Psychodrama

Thank goodness Sgt. Schultz is in charge of the Justice Department: I see nothing!

GAO auditors found calculating errors totaling at least $829 million between 10 taxpayer accounts with balances equal to or exceeding $32 million, which went undetected by the agency’s internal review procedures.

“…IRS does not have a detailed listing, or subsidiary ledger that accurately tracks and accumulates unpaid tax assessments and their status on an ongoing basis,” the [GAO] report said.

Now We Find Out That the IRS Is Incompetent

The IRS Scandal, Day 8 – roundup

Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, Justice, HHS – the country is in the very best of hands.

Ozymandias

To Serve and Protect . . . Themselves

CR — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:17:26 +0000

It’s a wonder anyone trusts the police, who are the tip of the spear of the state.

“My brother spent the last eight minutes of his life pleading, begging for his life,” said Christopher Silva, 31, brother of the dead man. He said he’s talked to witnesses but did not see the incident himself.

At about midnight, Ruben Ceballos, 19,was awakened by screams and loud banging noises outside his home. He said he ran to the left side of his house to find out who was causing the ruckus.

“When I got outside I saw two officers beating a man with batons and they were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head,” Ceballos said.

Silva was on the ground screaming for help, but officers continued to beat him, Ceballos said.

Dad who died during arrest ‘begged for his life’; witness videos seized

Thank goodness we pay them well and give them great pensions, otherwise the cops might get really upset with us citizens….

For about eight minutes, Ms. Melendez said, the man screamed and cried for help. Then he went silent, she said, making only choking sounds.

Finally, having hogtied him, a number of witnesses said, two officers picked up the man and dropped him, twice. One deputy nudged the man with his foot. When he did not respond, they began CPR.

“He was like a piece of meat,” said Ms. Melendez, 53, who was visiting her son at the hospital after he was injured in a car accident. “We were telling them: ‘He’s dead. You guys already killed him.’ ”

Responding to a call, deputies had arrived at the scene to find the man, David Sal Silva, a 33-year-old father of four, on the pavement. Their attempts to rouse him resulted in the altercation, the authorities said. Mr. Silva was pronounced dead less than an hour later at Kern Medical Center.

Fatal Encounter With Police Is Caught on Video, but Kept From the Public

It is quite possible that under federal law, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office illegally seized two cellphone videos from citizens.

The Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000aa(a) (hereafter PPA), states:

Did the Kern County Sheriff Illegally Seize Videos of Deputies Beating a Man to Death?

Ozymandias

How Not To Respond to Criticism

CR — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:27:25 +0000

“To truly see the diversity of the human race is sometimes frightening….”
Tyler Cowen

We now present a masterclass in how a business owner should not respond to criticism.

The Folks at Amy’s Baking Company In Scottsdale Have Gone Insane

Part 2

It appears that the owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Arizona expected an appearance on celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” program to vindicate them. They believed that they serve quality food, that they have been unfairly slandered by the entire Internet. Maybe they had never seen the reality program, which features last-ditch efforts to save failing restaurants run by people who are delusional or incompetent…and frequently both.

How Not To React To Internet Criticism: The Epic Facebook Meltdown Of Amy’s Baking Company

Part 1

Perhaps that it’s beyond a bad idea to accuse an unhappy customer of working for the competition, and then call him/her “ugly,” a “loser,” and a “moron.”

Ouch! Today’s Hard Lesson on Yelp

Yelpers went nuts over the weekend — and guess who was the topic? Amy Bouzaglo of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, who apparently cooked up a storm on Saturday.

In fact, I reached out to one diner who was at Saturday night’s taping of Kitchen Nightmares at Amy’s. He got a very real dose of reality television — more than he bargained for, actually.

Screaming, Expletives, and, Eventually, Police: All in the First Night of Kitchen Nightmares Taping at Amy’s Baking Company

Wow. Just wow.

Amy’s Baking Company [Yelp]

Get popcorn:

Ozymandias

Nothing to see here. Move along.

CR — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:27:36 +0000

A presidency that began with such high hopes of “hope” and “change” has conducted itself just like so many administrations before it. A president who, just ten days ago, mocked “voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity,” has been caught presiding over an Internal Revenue Service that, yet again, applied inquisitorial scrutiny to critics of the government, a Justice Department that, once more, snooped on journalists, and a Federal Bureau of Investigation that can’t help spying on the public’s communications. These abuses remind us not that the Obama administration has invented new ways to abuse power, but rather that even this supposedly fresh start commits the same old excesses that inevitably result from a surfeit of coercive power and plenty of targets of opportunity on which to wield it.

So, as we prepare to hand authority over our health care system to a tax agency that has, time and again, wielded its power for political purposes on behalf of whoever is currently in power, we owe thanks. Thank you, Mr. President, for demonstrating that you’re just as untrustworthy a bastard as all of your predecessors. Thank you for reminding us that, no matter the public assurances we receive, every iota of power given to the government will be misused. We repeatedly forget these lessons, and we need our reminders.

Thanks, Mr. President, For the Reminder That You’re as Big a Bastard as Your Predecessors

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Ozymandias

Sordid Links

CR — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:47:08 +0000

Why Cops Bust Down Doors of Medical Pot Growers, But Ignore Men Who Keep Naked Girls on Leashes

College bubble bursts after decades of extravagance

Goldman outs Bloomberg snoops – Another Bloomberg nanny?! Say it ain’t so!

A California liberal looks at the Tsarnaev brothers – But, but, but, we like echo chambers!

Why is Daily Kos so afraid of some speech competition from the Koch Brothers? – But, but, but, we like echo chambers!

Is the Fed able to offset “austerity”?

HHS budgets $150m to teach people how to enroll in Obamacare – Sequester? What sequester? We don’t have no stinkin’ budget problems.

Congress Is Creating an Over-Criminalization Task Force. Will it Tackle the Drug War?

Ozymandias

Free Citizens are Sooooooooo Much Trouble. Question Authority.

CR — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:37:18 +0000

“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord Acton

It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.

Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps.

These two pieces of legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion irreversibly against the king.

The same king also prosecuted his political adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel” — basically, criticizing the government.

Thomas Jefferson . . . warned that it is the nature of government over time to increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.”

Why All of Us Should Mistrust the Government

Chris Rock, rube-tool.

The president is not my boss and not my dad. Sheesh.

Ozymandias

Syria and Iraq, Hope and Change!

CR — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:57:26 +0000

Actually, we’re not having a debate about taking sides in Syria’s civil war. That’s the problem. We’re debating Syria as though it’s an engineering question—an electrical outage, or a bit of erosion in the backyard. Doing so removes the most vexing aspects of the issue, leading us to the delusion that military action can easily make things better.

Too much of the discussion has focused on moral arguments and too little of it on the very real political problems beneath the war.
. . .
In the 1990s, realists like Richard Betts were warning Americans not to fall victim to the “delusion of impartial intervention.” Admonishing policymakers for their newfound enthusiasm for limited, ostensibly apolitical intervention, Betts reminded readers of a ground truth: “A war will not end until both sides agree who will control whatever is in dispute.” This is as true in Syria as it is anywhere. Alternatively, if analysts want to use the U.S. military to regime-change Assad, they have every obligation to explain how they intend to shepherd the country toward whatever political order they seek.
. . .
Anyone who doesn’t deal with the underlying political problems at stake is threatening to push the country into another ill-considered, potentially costly war.

Our Astrategic Syria Debate

The Obama administration will have a hard time cobbling together even a modicum of popular support for the (inevitable, IMO) U.S. military intervention into Syria without a re-mobilization of that once-noisy but recently scarce tribe of armchair agitators known as the Liberal Hawks. Right on cue comes Bill Keller in today’s New York Times, making the argument that “Syria Is Not Iraq.” Which is, I suppose, a much more succinct headline than “Listen to Me About Bombing a Middle Eastern Country in 2013 Even Though I Was Totally Wrong About it in 2003.”
. . .
You would think that “getting over Iraq” would also mean getting over the elementary school-style argumentation about war demonstrating “credibility” and seriousness, but perhaps it’s unsporting to stand between a man and his epiphanies.

Reluctant (and Later Apologetic) Liberal Iraq Hawk Says Onward to Syria!

Ozymandias