I have been watching with great interest the cries of anguish over the so called "scandals" that have your dyed in the wool member of the Teabag set, salivating and dreaming of the day they get their revenge. Just for grins I actually dropped in on the group "that prides itself on its civilized discussion"-even though they very seldom actually do that. The members of this community are, by and large, are a self reinforcing community-trading conspiracy theories among themselves and viciously attacking anyone who dares to challenge the conventional orthodoxy.
"I got a chuckle out of the intolerant part. That really is a pretty good joke. Lex would have gotten a chuckle from it as well."
Probably he would have-because the simple truth was they could not see intolerance if it bit them in the ass. But just because they cannot recognize-or they choose not to recognize, their shortcomings, does not mean they don't have them. I reinforced that knowledge quite well-I got my fair share of abuse and am good to go for about 6 months. No need to return.
In case you have been in cave somewhere-here is a rundown for you:
Alex Pareene at Salon has an entertaining rundown of the three “scandals” that could supposedly lead to the impeachment of the president: Benghazi, the AP phone logs and the IRS-Tea Party thing.
Pareene figures the Benghazi issue is kaput because the GOP stupidly focused on meaningless talking points on Sunday shows rather than the real issue, which was inadequate security. And since austerity-humpers in the House were slashing security budgets like Fruit Ninja addicts in Arcade Frenzy mode, it’s a good bet they don’t want to go there. That and the preening Sunday performances of would-be soap opera stars like Senators McCain and Graham led the GOP to focus on the dud aspect of the Benghazi affair, soiling a once-promising bit of dirty laundry.
Likewise, Pareene points out that while the AP logs issue may have a built-in advantage due to its implications for the very media that would be charged with ginning up impeachment-level outrage, the GOP can’t claim clean hands there either: The Republicans are the ones who demanded that the administration investigate the leaks that led to the AP investigation in the first place. And the GOP isn’t really opposed to spying on reporters, at least if Republicans get to do it sometimes. This might lead to another brogressive boner for Rand Paul, but perhaps nothing more.
According to Pareene, the jackpot scandal has got to be the IRS-Tea Party thing because, even if, as seems likely, no one at the White House knew about it, it’s the “conservative movement’s dream scandal.
He is most certainly right about the last part-the IRS "scandal" is a Tea Party wet dream. The agency they hate the most-second only to their hatred of Obama, screwed up in actually trying to do their job. Which was namely, to weed out hack political movements that are trying to circumvent both the letter and the spirit of the tax code, in order to hide the fact that their donations are not just from the grass roots.
Tea Partiers love to lecture you on how its not just one movement, but several. And they love the idea that it is a grass roots movement-not orchestrated at all. Never mind that it ignores the fact that the Tea Party was the rebranded rump of the Bush dead-enders. It was a convenient fiction that they all tell themselves in order to hide the fact that their policy prescriptions are nonsense, that they would directly suffer the most if their plans were enacted, and that they are in fact-being exploited by men a lot richer than themselves. The media conveniently cooperated too-clinging to the absurd notion that it was a genuine grassroots movement. And they cling to it still, "like turds to a moth-eaten pair of faux-Colonial breeches."
And so they are shrieking with glee that they may finally have the chance they have been dreaming about since January 20th 2009. They think they can , dare I say it, impeach Barak Obama.
Never mind that none of this hardly rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors"-never let the facts get in the way of a good, old fashioned, blood libel. The fact that they are so determined is enough to give any sober American pause. Pause and fear-that a significant portion of the nation's citizenry is so brutally demented.
I think the notion of impeachment is industrial-strength insane. There is utterly no proof that the President Obama even knew anything directly about the shifting Benghazi responses, let alone did something about them (yes, folks; under the Constitution, the President must do something). And as for the Internal Revenue Service story, from what we now know, those transgressions were committed by IRS staffers in Cincinnati who have never been closer to Obama than their television sets… Impeachment is crazy… and the idea that Obama has any direct culpability in either of these matters is, given what we know today, utter madness. Okay?
But this is my point: utter madness is what today’s Republicans do. You can present to me every logical argument you desire. Benghazi at the end of the day was a terrible tragedy in which mistakes, bad mistakes, were certainly made, and in which confusion and the CYA reflex led to some bad information going out to the public initially, but none of this remotely rises to the level of high crime. The IRS cock-up was just that, a mistake by a regional office. I get all this, and I agree with you.
But what we think doesn’t matter. I can assure you that already in the Pavlovian swamps of the nutso right, the glands are swelling. Theirs is a different planet from the one you and I inhabit….
… They do their base’s bidding, not America’s. How many times do you need to see them do this before you accept that it is the reality? And now there’s an added element. They want to gin up turnout among their base for next year’s elections. And if they gin it up enough, and the Democratic base stays home, they could end up holding the House and taking the Senate. And if they have both houses, meaning that the vote in the House would not be certain to hit a Senate dead-end, well, look out.
I hope the White House knows this. I hope they understand, I hope the President himself understands, that the fever has not broken and will not break. It might crescendo right up to his very last day in office. And yes, a lot of this Benghazi stuff is about Hillary Clinton. But not all of it. And the IRS thing, which Drudge led with for two days in a row and may yet be bigger than Benghazi, isn’t about her at all. If my worst fears are never realized—well, good, obviously. But it will only be because they couldn’t identify even a flimsy pretext on which to proceed. Never put the most extreme behavior past them. It is who they are, and it is what they do.
Yes they are that messed up and they are that crazy. These people are not caricatures-they really exist.
And that should scare the bejesus out of you.