Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATED: GOP, RIP, AWOL On IRS

Democrats, Ethics, Liberty, Republicans, Taxation

Seventy one percent of Americans want the Internal Revenue Service investigated for targeting tea-party groups (presumably for opposing Barack Obama).

Pat Caddell is perhaps the only Democrat (other that Dennis Kucinich) capable of expressing righteous indignation over such stuff—stuff that should outrage every moral human being with some affinity for the principles of liberty, namely a government subject, at the very least, to the same laws as the governed.

“Establishment Republicans want the IRS to go after Tea-Party groups,” contended Caddell. These groups “are an outside threat to their power hold, the lobbying-consulting class of the Republican party. The IRS now may also proceed against businesses that are cutting their work force. It is a lawless organization that no one will investigate.”

AND:

“This is about preserving privileges and arrangements that benefit these people over the country. And I’d say… it is worse than seedy. It is worse than corrupt. It is the issue that no one is allowed to speak up and the American people in the polls know it. This is a corrupt political system that doesn’t function, and as Michael Dukakis once said: It rots from the head down.”

Lest you think I’ve been taken in by Caddell, here is another instance, documented on BAB, where Caddell cannot contain his visceral revulsion for the abuse of power to which Americans are subjected. Is Caddell perhaps an Old Democrat; one of those good Dixiecrats?

Former polster Caddell was able to get to the crux of the arrest and attempted prosecution of a parent for questioning the pedagogues about the Common-Core Curriculum.

“What we saw here is bigger than just this. The people are the slaves to the office-holders: superintendents who won’t take questions, the EPA that goes to Alaska on to conduct a … raid, SWAT converging with guns on a gold-mining operation in a little town; the things that government does now to oppress people; the laws that we have, the NSA, the fear people have of the state spying on them and imposing on them–this is a kind of soft despotism, whereby if you get out of line, we’ll get you. We work for them. Public servants are the masters; we are the servants of the political class.”

UPDATE (6/24): “Seventy six percent of voters think IRS emails were deliberately destroyed.”

Megyn Kelly’s Come-Back

Iraq, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, Terrorism, War

If I have underestimated Megyn Kelly of “The Kelly File,” it is not for lack of trying not to. I moved from enthusiasm to disappointment in short succession, as it became clear Kelly’s hour on Fox News had degenerated into a smarter, prettier version of Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor”: Rah-rah for every single form of false jingoism imaginable.

However, Kelly often surprises. She certainly rattled the vampiric Dick Cheney:

MEGYN KELLY to Dick Cheney: “In your op-ed, you write as follows: ‘Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.’ But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well, sir. You said there were no doubts that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the Iraq insurgency was in its last throes back in 2005. And you said after our intervention, extremists would have to “rethink their strategy of jihad.” Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?”

MORE.

Is Laura Ingraham Dissociating From The ‘War Party’?

Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

Is broadcaster Laura Ingraham prepared to entertain the fact that her passionate populism may also require that she reject the War Party’s recreational wars? “Congressman Gutierrez,” she said on ABC’s Power House, “is closer to the Republican grassroots on this issue [Iraq], than the Republican leaders are. He’s on to something.”

What did Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez say?

“We shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place,” he said. “I voted against the incursion in Iraq. They said we would be welcomed as liberators; we weren’t. They said it was going to be paid for; it wasn’t. We should never have been there. This is a centuries-old fight between Sunnis and Shia.”

Obama Wags The Dog; GOPiers Bite

Barack Obama, Politics, Republicans, Terrorism

The Republicans are something. Barack Obama wags the dog; suddenly deciding to “capture” Benghazi terror suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala, after reporters have been sharing strawberry frappes and gulping mango juice with him for ages. And all Republicans can cavil about, in the wake of the capture, is whether Khattala belongs in Guantanamo Bay or the federal court system.

Barack Obama’s administration is, for once, being publicly affected by scandals that previously went unreported: The incriminating IRS emails have vanished. Started by Bush, Iraq’s unraveling continues apace under Obama. Central America is rushing the southern border. Veterans are waiting to die on the government’s watch.

Obama “purposely diverts attention” from all these, and Republicans take the bait.