Far East Cynic

Yes Virginia, these people are that crazy.

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.

  1. I wonder if you read Glenn Greenwald? A lefts leftie to be sure and he rants against Obama for many things, including drone attacks and the arrest of whistleblowers etc etc.

    JFK, RFK, LBJ. MLK, SLA, riots, bombings, Yippies, Chicago 7,watergate, Kent State, Geroge Wallace.. etc etc…Now THOSE were intresting times, not the penny ante crap that you rant about now. The Republic was REALLY in danger THEN…

    the gods of anarchy ruled, or so it seemed…and yet and in spite of feckless pols and newsies, the common sense and good nature of the BULK of the american people prevailed..stupid and ignorant we maybe,  but we endured.

    "you will not be punished for YOUR anger,  you will be punished BY your anger"

    "Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely will find peace"

    Buddha

  2. Actually I do read Greenwald-and I agree with him about 60% of the time. I do think-in the case of the IRS deal, Occam's Razor applies. The Congress set it up for the IRS, not the FEC to supervise these organizations, and then ( probably on purpose) provided inadequate quidance on what was and what wasn't tax exempt. There is credible evidence however that once the IRS higher ups knew what was going they stopped it.

  3. I think a sizeable number of us can see what the road to ruin looks like following the fiscal policies embraced by the hardcore and soft core left. It led to Detroit today. It's ineluctable. You seem to have this charming belief that it will somehow turn out different. If only you could take everybody's money the way they have in Argentina…

    Obama won't be impeached. Not now certainly. (Democrats own the Senate) but perhaps. None of us will be holding our breath. What do we 'win' if Obama is imipeached? Biden.

    But me? I'm really hoping for an overwhelming landslide against the Ruling Party in the midterms. You remember who that is right? That'd be the ones running the White House and Senate and all the massive machinery of the Executive Branch.

  4. Not me-I am hoping for a backlash against our Galtian overlords and a lot of teabaggers get tossed out on their asses. The problem is that the gerrymandering that occured during redistricting kind of prevents that, but don't kid yourself-plenty of people are upset at our do nothing Congress full of Teabag Douchebags.

    Actually if you were paying attention the fiscal policies I advocate are working. Tax restoration is helping to bring the deficit under control and it is becoming quite apparent that austerity actually kills people. And spare me the bullshit about Argentina-when people use that example, I know they are ignorant. There are huge differences between their history and ours.

  5. Rand, Cruz, Rubio, just a little foreshadowing of what will come. Galtian overlords? Surely you mean the Senate. You want to talk gerrymander. Fine, look to the wastelands in all the formerly major industrial cities. Reliably redistribuitionist illiterates who vote the democratic party line religiously. Speaking of ignorant, take a gander at: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/what-happened-to-argentina/.  It's from your own mothership so you can take it to the bank. See the part where it says they fucked up and elected redistributionist socialists to power for over 70 years. Kind of like Detroit when you think about it.

    That sequestration sure is a killer aint it. And all that austerity sure didn't mean spending less. It only meant slowing down the rate of increase in spending….and for what? More Detroits?

  6. "Rand, Cruz, Rubio,"-three useless dipshits who deserve nothing less than a good beating. (BTW why don't you use all three last names? It should be Paul, Cruz, and Rubio).

    And I hate to tell you-but sequestration is causing real problems, at least where I work. Remember that when Israel goes nuts next year and we could have prevented it-but we didn't have then money.

    One other point about Detroit. It is the soverieign right of Americans to elect the government they wish, is it not? Where exactly does it specify in the Constitution that the state executive can take over if they fuck things up? If that is a governmental principle then I want the Army to invade Sout Carolina.

     

  7. Like the silly name. Why else?

    current govt would not cross the street to pee on Israel if it was on fire. Israel will get all the help from this admin that our man in Libya got.

    Our sovereign rights were trumped ages ago by the courts and the civil war. Just think though, it sets us up for a new Social War. Just like Rome.

     

     

     

  8. "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."

  9. Skippy.

     Psychological Projection. Look it up. You're Guilty of it.

  10. The state has the right no, the DUTY, to protect its citizens from its own worse impulses. The question is as always, does the state have the WISDOM to govern effectively, and more honestly then the government it replaces and MICHIGAN has the legal right to do what it did.

    What do you mean when Isreal goes nuts? you mean Iran? please explain, as usual I am perplexed? 

    Theres no waste in the DOD? over 700 BILLION dollars and they can not find 10% REALLY?

    wow..i doid not realize that the penatgon was run so effectively, like the LCS or the F-35 or the land warrior system or the ten year quest to find an new aerial tanker or the plus TEN NEW camo uniforms within a year or…BUT it seems that the cuts are not SMART cuts but across the board..and congress is to blame for other things like MAKING the DOD buy more UNNEEDED Abrams tanks..

     

  11. By the way Senator Coburn  released a report on the BILLIONS that the penatgon wastes or the stupid things it spends money on and the Washington Post has a list of possible ways to save BILLIONS in lieu of sequestration.

    "Penatgon wastes billions"

    Michigan Publc law 736 IS being challenged by the NACCP.

  12. Skippy,

    Doing a bit of independent research and not relying on the media to provide details, I don't think the Tea Party and their ilk were too far off.  So their applications were taking 2 to 3 years to get approved, if they had names that had Constitutional or some other off shoot in their name, So out of 298 organizations that were audited, 96 had those words in their names.  They went under further scrutiny asking to provide lists of donors to them.  While the other organizations who may have had the name of "Progressive" were allowed to breeze through. Even the president's brother's scam charity was able to get tax exempt status with a breeze.

    You can't tell me that two GS's in the Cincinatti office were the master minds behind all of this.  And the Acting IRS director has resigned and that is just the end of it.  Now I am not going to go down the rabbit hole and follow the likes of Glenn Beck and the others, but this is a scandal, and the misconduct has no excuse to be done by a governmental organization.

  13. CG-23 I looked it up. I don't think I am projecting anything.  And besides-you would have to know me a lot better to make the diagnosis. Tomasky is making a valid point here. Instead of rational critiques of an administration that has had triumphs and missteps, we are subjected to conservative media’s news coverage  that blows everything out of proportion. Its not right.

  14. Whatever Obama (and any of his subordinate agencies) will say or do will be used against him.

    I am expecting wole stew of the impeachment frenzy, down to the voting war cry "vote for us for the Senate so we can vote Obama out!"

    Some people at the Sal's place reminisced on how there was usually standing MEU in the 6th fleet that would come handy in the Benghazi attack. The wages of the "Incredible Shrinking Navy". I myself pointed out that sending platoon or so Marines or SpecOps (the forces US has at disposal right now) would only end in more bodies, but nobody listened. Some actually called out for flattening half of the Benghazi with airstrikes if needed.  That   dedicated CAS like A-10 or better AC-130 would be needed to do the job with minimum of collateral damage, nobody cared. Alas none were present in whole Europe. Welcome to the fighter mafia's ari force. 

  15. Maurice,

       I think a couple of points are worth noting. One, every time I have made a donation to a political candidate-they have recorded my information and made it clear it was releasable to the public record. Its probably different for 501 (C) 4's-but that is what makes them such a problem. I would submit the reason they went after those terms is that it was pretty easy to make the case that these folks were not "social welfare" organizations but political fronts."After all, some of these “tea party” groups are most likely not innocent nonprofit organizations devoted to the cultural significance of hot beverages — or to other, more civic, virtues. Rather, they and others are groups that may be illegally spending a majority of their resources on political activity while manipulating the tax code to hide their donors and evade taxes (the unwritten rule being that no more than 49 percent of a group’s resources can be used for political purposes). "

     

    The better solution is to use this event for a postive result-elimination of the tax exemption for all 501 (C) 4's.

     

     

  16. Ewok, I'm thinking of changing my avatar over at whossnames place for an anion. I must be the most negatively charged commenter ever over there.

    I disconnected the TV 3 years ago. Keeps me sane. Sliding over here from time to engage in spirited debate with Skippy also helps along those lines. It make me sad that his friends no longer come out to play here but any novelty of argument distresses them. Well, maybe not that evil Skippy guy. OTOH, he didn't write seiously about failing to obey the unwritten rules of the tax code so there is hope for him. If I were to advocate changes in the code I would probably have to come down on the side of lifting any/all restrictions of the right of Americans to speak freely, most particularly when it comes to electing legislators and other public officials. I don't see any reason for donors to be limited in what they give to elect officials. I'm as sincere a proponent of, "from each according to their means" as Skippies are.

    "…devoted to the cultural significance of hot beverages" nails the point I try to make here. Elitist, know better than thou liberal scumbags buy elected officials or get themselves elected to office, appoint all their like minded friends to the boards of control and then act all outraged and superior because some people consider that 99% of all things can be decided for and by themselves without the government interfering. So, since they're not billionaires they have to band together to fund their own man to run for office but they must be taxed for exercsing that right.

  17. Curtis,

    You have a long way to go to be the most negatively charged commenter at this site. You will need to join the crowd at another place to become a truly negative commenter and I am not talking about Phib's place-but another one neither of us are allowed to comment at any more. Those are some negative waves man! 🙂