Why the IRS scandal is the worst scandal in US political history
Please read it, and send it out to other people you think should read it. Don’t forget your liberal friends, if they are at all amenable to actually reading something you might send them (I’ve worn out my political welcome with most people).
John Kass also gets it—from bitter experience in Chicago, where it’s long been the way it works. It’s not for nothing that Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago; it’s a place that suited him well.
And one of the comments (from “Joe Phillips”) to the Kass article says it quite well:
This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.
This is the government Barack Obama said to ignore the warnings about.
This is the government George Orwell wrote about.
This is the government Hugo Chavez dreamed about.
This is the government Ayn Rand feared.
This is the government that will make your medical decisions.
This is the type of corrupt government that has enslaved and killed their citizens.THIS IS WHAT WE THE PEOPLE HAVE ALLOWED OUR GOVERNMENT TO BECOME!
The biggest question by far is Hillary’s extraordinarily useful one: what difference does it make? If the American people don’t care, the tree will fall in the forest without making much of a sound. Way too many on the liberal/left side will think what the IRS did was perfectly fine, because it was part of the fight against the evil right, and all’s fair in that war.
But it’s not just the IRS. The FBI, OSHA, ATF, and whichever other alphabet agency that’s handy will do too, in addition to the IRS. So it’s even worse than what he says.
We’re well on our way to becoming a Banana Republic. God help us all.
Meanwhile, pay attention to what’s going on today with the DOJ snooping after Fox reporter Rosen — and also, as it now seems to be emerging, another Fox reporter and a Fox producer. To get a warrant to read Rosen’s email, the DOJ told the court that he was a coconspirator with potential criminal liability — for, as Fox put it in a news release, doing his job “as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”
As to those who would excuse the scandals because of a lack of direct evidence of Obama’s involvement, just keep in mind that once a leftist always a leftist.
I am reminded of the story of the scorpion and the frog:
Why would Obama and the leftists of his administration do this? Because that’s their nature—they are leftists.
Mrs Whatsit: I just this moment put up a post about the Rosen incident, with video link.
Absolutely chilling.
The brown shirts have arrived again.
Baklava: I think it’s worse than that. If it really were the brown shirts, people would recognize it and fear it, because what they did was overt and physical.
No, these people are dressed in beige, and what they do is covert and disguised.
You are so right on.
The old Jewish phrase that I heard from Dennis Prager was, “Never again”.
That never again phrase has been replaced with…….. silence.
I watched this and linked this on my facebook
http://vimeo.com/66513422
Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote on The Huckabee Program on FOX 5 18 2013
Unfortunately I got no likes. Normally when I post a picture of my wife and grandbaby I get between 15 and 30 likes.
Just to cut to the chase:
Catherine Engelbrecht details how she was visited 17 times and not just by the IRS but by the FBI, ATF and EPA and OSHA.
This is so coordinated, from the top down and these agencies are not doing their actual job but are TARGETING non-liberal groups to basically upend America into Venezuela where families can’t even get enough toilet paper or essentials because that country is in a downward spiral of communism.
Coordinated.
Targeted.
In.Your.Face. BROWN SHIRTS – targeting “True the Vote” because they are for fair voting.
They need more than sequestration. They have too much time and money on their hands.
Said it before:
Libs, including your lib friends, will go to dark places they never anticipated in order to defend this administration.
They might feel bad about it, but they’ll go and they’ll stay.
I have a friend who’s very intelligent and follows politics fairly closely, with a very definite bias for the left on most questions. He tends to foam at the mouth about Republicans and conservatives of the Tea Party stripe. So this morning on Facebook he posts a link to a story from some progressive outfit claiming that it shows that the real scandal is that Tea Party groups are abusing their 501(c)(4) exemption by “being political.”
Being the fair-minded sort of guy that I am, I took a look at the piece, and it’s full of gruesome stories of tax-exempt Tea Parties telling people to go vote for this or that candidate.
Well, ok. Next question that came to mind, obviously, was: is that actually over the line? What are 501(c)(4) groups actually allowed to do? I mean, clearly some degree of political advocacy is allowable–are the Tea Parties going too far? So I looked around on the web for some existing 501(c)(4)s in good standing, to get some idea of what’s generally ok with the IRS.
The first group I found: MoveOn.org. Need I say more?
Have you made it clear to them that they in turn have worn out their welcome with you, and why? That is to say, have you made it clear over what exact moral principle it is, what line in the sand it is, that you feel once crossed, is worth ending friendships over?
You may find the exercise surprising. Meaning that you will be surprised at how self-consciously they have in fact made their choice, whether they can be said to be current on all the news or not.
I think you will be surprised at how many people you think of as close to you, and as generally OK types, are completely indifferent not only to their own freedom, but to yours, and to your interest in yours (that is to say to your moral autonomy), as well.
I think that your sense that the futility of reasoning with them lies in the fact that they have led ideologically cloistered lives is only the half of it. And, that in your merely insisting on getting the same hearing out of them that they assume you are obligated to give to them, will make clear just how one-sided these “friendships” are.
In other words, I think most conservatives – specifically excluding quite a few here – have been suffering the delusion that their moral claims are taken seriously by their politically opposed friends, but that the problem in discussing them has been largely the result of sensitivities related to emotional habits and ego.
I think that it is often deeper than that: call it something fundamentally intellectual, or of the will, or even spiritual, if you must.
But it’s one hell of a wake up call once you begin to grasp just how many people you associate with on a daily basis are, for all intents and purposes, nihilists. Turns out that they are not paying attention or listening for reasons we may find shocking to imagine.
Though it may not be shocking to many commenters here; some of whom have stated that they had come to the regrettable conclusion that half of their friends and relatives would sell them out, if their thought that by not doing so their comfort would be interfered with in the least.
In other words, you are generously convinced that they know not what they do. And I am pretty much convinced on the basis of my own experience, that you are, unfortunately, and on average, wrong in that regard.
” Richard Aubrey Says:
May 20th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
R Aubrey may very well be among Neo’s commenters I just alluded to with the remark, ” … [who] have stated that they had come to the regrettable conclusion that half of their friends and relatives would sell them out …”
Once the scales fall from your eyes the world never looks the same again.
Only covert n disguised when power is not yet complete
Mac,
What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander… or whatever.
I mean NAACP is able to overt and the SEIU and the CTU and this and that organization is basically pro-democrat candidate down the line.
If they are in so-called, “good standing” then I don’t see anything wrong with conservative organizations supporting a candidate that respects conservative positions.
Liberals (brown shirts) want conservatives to fight with one hand tied behind the back and the other holding an spoon with an egg in it – and oh – you must be in a potatoe sack with the liberal in that same potatoe sack with you.
That is how Fox News is so-called biased – because it dares have a conservative and liberal point of view on the same station.
DNW,
What’s funny about the whole situation is that I’d give the shirt off my back to any family member or coworker or friend on a cold blustery day to help them.
But they can’t open their ears long enough to hear one bit of reasoning for a generous man like me.
They are so closed minded about hearing an alternative point of view and they use ridicule as their methodology.
At one recent family gathering I stayed silent as I listened to a group of liberals make fun of another family member for watching Fox News and no longer using a bank account.
I wanted so badly to open my mouth and tear into them about their meanness.
But I know what happens… Their meanness will simply be redirected towards me as they blindly go blathering on. These are the same people who lost homes buying too much home that they couldn’t afford here. I didn’t. That other guy they were making fun of didn’t lose his home.
All that time the left was lauding European socialism, we granted them too much goodwill by assuming they meant Sweden and France instead of East Germany and Russia.
The coordination by various agencies of repression is especially chilling. Maybe that’s what all Obama’s czars were for.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/05/16/184635797/Venezuelans-Stock-Up-On-Toilet-Paper-Amid-Shortage
This is not going away. Will it reach all the way up to the messiah is anyone’s guess but its not going away. Even elements of the Obama fan club, ABC in this particular case, are taking note of this chilling abuse of power: http://tinyurl.com/n2jh5vv (Breitbart link.)
Baklava – is it too much to wish for when hoping that so much s–t hits the fan for Obama and the minions of the left that there’s not enough TP in the world to wipe it off?
What’s with the brown shirts bit?
They’re the green shirts/ Green Police.
They’re looking to establish a sustainable despotism/ aristocracy of the elite — because some people are just born and educated better.
So, it’s “just them” versus everyone else.
So, get in line, Boxer. (equine) Even a hoofer has to dance the tune.
Baklava Says:
May 20th, 2013 at 5:49 pm
It’s easier said than done I suppose. I guess you have to calculate the cost versus the benefit of maintaining those social relations.
Baklava Says:
May 20th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Do we need any further proof that the Democrats engage in systematic vote fraud as a matter of course?
If they don’t, then why are they so adamantly opposed to voter ID? Why are they afraid of True the Vote?
The Democratic Party is literally a criminal organization. We have seen our last free and fair election in America.
DNW Says:
May 20th, 2013 at 5:29 pm
That’s why I cut all ties with them in November. I ended friendships of 30 years. And I burned the bridges behind me.
I can forgive young people for being fooled by Obama. Hell, I voted for Carter when I was 18. Young people do dumb things.
People closer to my age, in their 40s and 50s, I can sort of understand them voting for Obama the first time. They suffered from Bush fatigue, and were deliberately misled by the media about Obama.
If they realized the error of their ways, fine. But people my age who voted for him twice are enemies. Period. I want nothing further to do with them.
We are heading for a civil war, and it’s time to choose sides. There is no fraternizing with the enemy in wartime.
I find the Frank Vandersloot treatment very chilling.
http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/frank-vandersloot-romney-donor-investigated-or-audited-by-irs-dol-4-times-after-making-enemies-list-94602/
Can all the agencies of our government be used to destroy people?
I have no doubt that this has been a screw-up of epic proportions and that Obama is, in some way, to blame for it. That’s how authority works in a bureaucracy; some of this fecal matter should end up on his shoes, even assuming the best of him.
But the other side of this disgusting mess is what the Citizen’s United decision has showed about non-profits and politics. We are never, ever going to be able to make a clear and hard distinction between groups with political motivations and those without. Mac’s comment above is on target: Tea Party, Moveon.org, whatever. No one is clean here. It’s accepted corruption, happening because the law does not function worth a crap when it tries to define guilt by intention instead of by solid action. Any political group can come up with a “non-political” reason to exist and put on the form.
They have the same problems when trying to define discrimination and outlaw it. You can’t. Any prejudiced boss can come up with reasons not to hire someone, or to fire them, that sound valid. It’s either their prerogative as boss to hire and fire, or it isn’t.
Money is power. It can be used to manipulate people’s opinions, through exposure if nothing else. This could all be handled differently if people weren’t expecting government intervention in the first place.
DNW, 5:29 pm — “I am pretty much convinced on the basis of my own experience, that you are, unfortunately, and on average, wrong in that regard.”
Yep, based on how one very close friend of 45 (!) years cut me off. It started when I posted a cartoon on Facebook lampooning the incumbent. She said she was “offended” by the cartoon [her word]. I replied that in a truly post-racial society, the same standards apply to blacks as to whites, that there was nothing racist about the cartoon, and besides, consider how lefties have been lampooning righties mercilessly for years if not decades.
Long-story-short, to quote the incomparable Roy Orbison, “It’s Over”. (1964)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVdG09fQ8Ek
I wish it weren’t this way.
Neo writes, in part, “Don’t forget your liberal friends, if they are at all amenable to actually reading something you might send them (I’ve worn out my political welcome with most people).”
She has worn out her political welcome with most; meaning conversions are rare.
I believe ‘liberal friends’ are superficialities to us rightists. They are not true friends. They are like drinking buddies in bars. But when one stops being a bar-fly, those “Cheers” friends go “Poof” and disappear. A sober former drinker makes few friends in a bar of drunken ‘friends’- he makes lots of enemies, all of a sudden, because they do not want to change, to become sober as he has become, and has urged sobriety on these drunks with whatever cogent reasons.
It is an individual thing.
rickl: “They suffered from Bush fatigue, and were deliberately misled by the media about Obama.”
The Bush fatigue was deliberate, too. Bush was deliberately debased by the same folks who deliberately venerated Obama. Both sides of the same election strategy. A vote can be for or *against*, or both.