Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATED: Procedural Mishap Turns Democrat Elijah Cummings Into M.O.P.E (Most Oppressed Person Ever)

Democrats, Politics, Republicans, Taxation

It’s in the nature of politics in this country. The terrifying Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has targeted conservative non-profits and conservative individuals. Yet a procedural silliness has made Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings the focus of attention, as the M.O.P.E (Most Oppressed Person Ever) in the IRS scandal. (The IRS is a scandal.)

Long story cut short: The American President’s Woman, Lois Lerner, who was likely involved in the “agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups,” has once again refused to talk, taking “the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination nine times during the House Oversight Committee hearing,” a constitutional right that ought not be available to state officials.

Rep. Cummings of Maryland began carrying on like a crazed man when “Congressman Darrell Issa of California” “shut down the committee hearing on Wednesday when the IRS official at the center of the scandal” refused to talk.

Issa … defended his actions and told reporters after the hearing: “He was not directing questions toward the witness and the committee [had] already adjourned.”

He later told Fox News that Cummings “was simply endlessly slandering the efforts of the committee.”

Members of both parties, though, have apparently criticized Issa’s actions.

MORE mindlessness.

UPDATE: Search engines are probably biased. It is not easy to find the text of the emails released in 2013, that “show that Lois Lerner “specifically singled out applications for tax-exempt status from organizations that described themselves as right-wing ‘tea party’ groups, and ordered that the politically sensitive requests should be held in limbo until the IRS could develop a coherent policy to address them.”

The Daily Mail online has excerpted fragments of the incriminating emails, barely:

The ‘Tea Party Matter [is] very dangerous, Lerner instructed her IRS colleagues in February 2011. ‘This could be the vehicle to go to court,’ she added, on the question of whether a Supreme Court ruling about the status of political donations from corporations might also apply to nonprofit groups.
‘Counsel and Judy Kindell [Lerner’s top advisor] need to be in on this one … Cincy should probably NOT have these cases.’

MORE.

And at The Blaze.

Analyze This: On ‘The Factor,’ Psychologizing Passes As Analysis

Conservatism, Democrats, English, Foreign Policy, Reason, Republicans, Russia

Bill O’Reilly, star of Fox New, has this Pavlovian response to any suggested comparison between Russian and American military bellicosity: he foams at the mouth. Why is it absolutely verboten, on The Factor, to compare Russia’s “excursion” into Ukraine to America’s naturally illicit and illegal occupations of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, on and on?

You’re in for a treat. In defense of their reflexive rejection of the reasonable, if inaccurate, comparison—for decades the US has been far more aggressive than Russia in its foreign policy—don’t expect argument from Bill, Juan Williams and the gang. What you get is a form of ad hominem, or psychologizing.

President Vladimir Putin, said (today, Monday, March 3) Bill, is a thug. That’s why he can’t be compared to “a good country” like the US. (Childish doesn’t begin to cover this stuff.) Apparently Bush and Obama are never to be called thugs.

Why, Billy? Because they’re American?

The other “argument” for the lack of validity of said comparison was that Putin seeks the recrudescence of the Russian empire (my usage; Bill and the gang did not use that word. Read about Bill’s valiant but botched attempts to promote English). Bill has read Putin’s mind, and knows he wants Russia to be an empire again. Hence we cannot compare the actions on the ground of the two countries.

If ever you doubted that liberals and conservatives are situated on the same foreign-policy continuum, listen to the prescriptions for Ukraine of leftist Juan Williams. On the same silly segment, the Fox News “analyst” recommended that the US freeze the assets of individual Russians, stateside and abroad, expel visiting Russians and stop Russians from traveling to the US, all in retaliation for the presence of Russian forces in Crimea (which is dominated by a Russian-speaking population). Williams, naturally, also wants to see economic sanctions placed on Russia.

Williams is an “analyst” in the same way Bill O’Reilly is a thinker.

The Two Party Dilemma: Dr. Mengele Vs. Dr. Frankenstein

Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Politics, Republicans

BY MYRON PAULI

As President’s Day approaches, I will say that I am not enamored with our current White House occupant, or with his recent predecessors. Barack Obama is a boring windbag egomaniac, mouthing a lot of leftist rhetorical garbage. However, in spite of the adulation of his supporters or the detraction of his political enemies, he is not some good or evil demigod, but rather just symbolic of the bloated corrupt corporate-socialist government.

His main opponents, Republicans (most but not all) might have one believe that on 19 January 2009, this government was a small peaceful government running a surplus and respectful of civil liberties presided over by James Monroe – until (eeek eeek) Obama the Space Alien took over. Bush and his legacies of leaving no children behind, warring in Iraq and Afghanistan, the TSA, the Patriot Act, prescription drug plans, and the bailouts – has been lost in the memory hole of amnesia. I find myself not necessarily “defending Obama,” but rather disgusted at the amnesiac hypocrisy of the Republican detractors.

So suppose that in 2016 some Republican wins – Christie, Jeb Bush, Ryan, or one of the so-called “Tea Party” Republicans. Do I expect the budget to be balanced? Do I think they will repeal previous Republican legacies like OSHA, EPA, TSA, DEA, HEW, Student Loans, Americans with Disabilities Act, Patriot Act, Leave No Child Behind, Prescription Drug Plan, and Drone Warfare? What was Reagan’s domestic legacy – repealing CETA and Nixon’s 55 mph speed limit?

Take the most important issue of world history – homosexuality…. Democrats would compel Boy Scouts to take gays and make Christians photograph and cater to gay weddings. Republicans in Virginia passed this: “This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage” – thus my will and medical directive might be invalid. Whatever happened to the right of people to create contracts? Democrats want to shove “Heather Has Two Mommies” in the school curricula while Republicans want to shove “Abstinence Education”. And where in this Kultur-Jihad is freedom of association, freedom of contract, and the authority of parents?

Another good example is health care. Democrats would have everyone compelled to pay for such wonderful medical procedures as drilling holes in developing babies, in utero, and to even require certain trained slaves called “health care providers” to partake in these procedures whether they want to or not. Republicans would have the taxpayers pay millions of dollars to resurrect a dead pregnant woman and keep her on machines for months for the 0.001% chance of creating a baby. Both parties believe they can play G-d with voters choosing between Dr. Mengele and Dr. Frankenstein.

Can we expect better in foreign policy, where our attitude towards foreign nations is either to bribe a country, bomb a country, overthrow a country, or occupy a country? Will either party stop bribing crowds to demonstrate in Kiev or dropping drones on weddings in Yemen? Republicans obsess about 4 dead in Benghazi while ignoring the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq, forgetting the 242 marines in Beirut, and upset that American forces left Indochina after our interference in a civil war wound up with over 4 million dead.

Do we expect better for civil liberties when Republicans are upset when individual states do not want to jail dope smokers? Do we expect Republicans who shout “kill Snowden” to be any better reforming the NSA, CIA, TSA, no knock SWAT team raids, or the Patriot Act (especially with the last two being their own creations?).

Will either party eliminate agribusiness farm subsidies, ethanol mandates, quantitative easing, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, BATF, either DoE, HuD, mission to Mars, the F-35, troops in Italy, Ex-Im bank, trade ban with Cuba, DEA, Amtrak, federal student loans,…?????? Surely you jest! The irony of King Obama is that the expression that his opponents resemble the “pot calling the kettle black” is both figurative AND literal.

The rhetoric will change and the hot, putrid air will blow in the opposite direction.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

Bill O And Barack O’s Zero-Info ‘Sparring’

Barack Obama, English, Media, Republicans

During his interview with Barack Obama, which he had advertized non-stop for weeks, Bill O’Reilly acted his trademark abrupt. Nobody much minded given who was sitting opposite him.

Also trademark Fox News was the heavy focus not on the infractions of the healthcare law and the law-makers who midwifed it, but on the technical glitches.

When Obama began bandying about bogus numbers of people who’ve signed up for healthcare, O’Relly might have nabbed him but … didn’t. Instead, on the broadcaster noodled about the need to fire Kathleen Sebelius.

O’Relly did get to the, “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance” lie, but let it slide without resolution.

For the rest, the interview is vintage Bill O’Reilly bluster. A lot of bravado and noise from O’Reilly; but not much more.

Thanks to Fox News for finally offering a transcript. I usually leave the page when I see one of the network’s big fat pictures of a video clip I’m supposed to watch. Some of us still prefer the written word.