Current Events - May 19, 2013

Flippant Obama: Not ‘distracted by chasing every fleeting issue’

As Americans begin to wake up to the massive cover-up that took place in the aftermath of the attack in Benghazi and struggle to grasp the extreme abuse of power by the IRS, the president said in a speech Friday that he will not be “distracted by chasing every fleeting issue.”

In the face of these still emerging scandals, President Obama suddenly wants to talk about the economy.
While speaking at a factory in Baltimore, displaying the “galling political hubris” that former Gov. Sarah Palin spoke of in a scathing Facebook post Thursday, Obama tried to pivot to jobs and the economy.

While “others may get distracted by chasing every fleeting issue that passes by,” he said, “the middle class will always be my number one focus, period.”

Does this mean that Obama views the IRS terrorizing citizens because of their political views as a “fleeting issue?” Even as it emerges that his administration was aware of this well before November’s election and sat on the information?

Or that he sees misleading the country on what really took place in Benghazi to protect his political fortunes as a “fleeting issue?” We report, you decide.

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/05/19/flippant-obama-not-distracted-by-chasing-every-fleeting-issue-70383

Obama Aide: 'Irrelevant Fact' Where President Was During Benghazi Attacks

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer said it's an "irrelevant fact" where the president physically was during the Benghazi terror attack on September 11, 2012.

Host Chris Wallace reminds Pfeiffer that Obama didn't really talk with Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, or Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that night. "He was talking to his national security staff," Pfeiffer insists.

Asked about whether the president entered the Situation Room, Pfeiffer says, "I don't remember what room the president was in on that night, and that's a largely irrelevant fact."

Pfeiffer then argues that Wallace's questions about the president's handling of the Benghazi terror attack are "offensive."

UPDATE: Here's a full rush transcript of the exchange:

WALLACE: let's turn to benghazi. he had a meeting with panetta in the afternoon, heard about this on an unrelated subject, wanted them to deploy forces as soon as possible. the next time he shows up, hillary clinton says she spoke to him at around 10:00 that night after the attack at the consulate, not the annex, but the attack at the consulate had ended. question, what did the president do the rest of that night to pursue benghazi?

PFEIFFER:  the president was kept up to do throughout the entire night, from the moment it started till the end. this is a horrible tragedy, people that he sent abroad whose lives are in risk, people who work for him. i recognize that there's a series of conspiracy theories the republicans are spinning about this since the night it happened, but there's been an independent review of this, congress has held hearings, we provided 250,000 pages of -- 250,000 pages of documents up there. there's been 11 hearings, 20 staff briefings. everyone has found the same thing. this is a tragedy. the question is not what happened that night. the question is what are we going to do to move forward and ensure it doesn't happen again? congress should act on what the president called for earlier this week, to pass legislation to actually allow us to implement the recommendations of the accountability review board. when we send diplomats off into far-flung places, there's inherent risk. we need to mitigate that risk.

WALLACE: with all due respect, you didn't answer my question. what did the president do that night?

PFEIFFER:  kept up to date with the events as they were happening.

WALLACE: he didn't talk to the secretary of state except for the one time when the first attack was over. he didn't talk to the secretary of defense, he didn't talk to chiefs. the chairman of the joint who was he talking to?

PFEIFFER:  his national security staff, his national security council.

WALLACE: was he in the situation room?

PFEIFFER:  he was kept up to date throughout the day.

WALLACE: do you know know whether he was in the situation room?

PFEIFFER:  i don't know what room he was in that night. that's a largely irrelevant fact.

WALLACE: well --

PFEIFFER:  the premise of your question, somehow there was something that could have been done differently, okay, that would have changed the outcome here. the accountability roof board has looked at this, people have looked at this. it's a horrible tragedy, and we have to make sure it doesn't happen again.

WALLCE: here's the point, though, the ambassador goes missing, the first ambassador in more than 30 years is killed. four americans, including the ambassador, are killed. dozens of americans are in jeopardy. the president at 4:00 in the afternoon says to the chairman of the joint chiefs to deploy forces. no forces are deployed. where is he while all this is going on?

PFEIFFER:  this has been tested to by --

WALLACE: well, no. no one knows where he is, who was involved, the --

PFEIFFER:  the suggestion of your question that somehow the president --

WALLACE: i just want to know the answer.

PFEIFFER:  the assertions from republicans that the president didn't take action is offensive. there's no evidence to support it.

WALLACE: i'm simply asking a question. where was he? what did he do? how did he respond in who told him you can't deploy forces and what was his president?

PFEIFFER:  the president was in the white house that day, kept up to date by his national security team, spoke to the joint chiefs of staff earlier, secretary of state, and as events unfolded he was kept up to date.

 http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-aide-irrelevant-fact-where-president-was-during-benghazi-attacks_724882.html

Outgoing IRS Chief: Taxes Voluntary

On Friday, former acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, said that America’s tax system is “voluntary.” 
 During the hearing, Rep. Devin Nunes (D-CA) said in passing that the U.S. tax code is a "voluntary system." Miller simply responded, "Agreed."
 This line has been used before by none other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Interviewed by Jan Helfeld in 2008, this is how the conversation went:

Helfeld: If the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare benefits to others, how will the people whose money is being taken feel about the government?

Reid: Well, I don’t accept your phraseology. I don’t think we force people-

Helfeld: Taxation is not forceful?                                                                           

Reid: Well, no ..

Helfeld: It’s voluntary?

Reid: Quite the contrary. Our system of government Is a voluntary tax system

Helfeld: If you don’t want to pay your taxes, you don’t have to?

Reid: Of course you have to pay your taxes

Helfeld: The government will force you to pay or they will fine you or imprison you.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/17/IRS-Chief-Taxes-Are-Voluntary

The Complete IRS Scandal Timeline in Spreadsheet Format

A huge thank-you to Doug Ross of the invaluable Director Blue website for compiling a complete timeline of the IRS scandal. So many lies and misleading statements have already been made that the American public must evaluate Obama administration representations clasely, and compare them to the known record. Here it is:



http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/the_complete_irs_scandal_timeline_in_spreadsheet_format.htm

Lawsuit: EPA Conducted Gas Chamber-like Experiments on Elderly, Infirm at University of North Carolina

[T]he EPA has been conducting human experiments on people by piping diesel fumes from a running truck mixed with air into their lungs at a North Carolina university. The agency has ginned up yet another green crusade — the lethal dangers of diesel fumes. They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps in Poland.

Not surprisingly, the EPA is now in the process of being sued for conducting dangerous experiments on human guinea pigs. The courts will decide whether or not serious laws and practices were violated, including the international Nuremberg Code that was set up after sixteen Nazi doctors were executed for medical terrorism. After the barbaric fallout of Nazi Germany, where many people were treated like experimental animals, the Nuremberg Code was designed to be an international governing set of principles to regulate the practice of human experimentation. The whiff of the Jewish holocaust is therefore unmistakable.

...
The EPA’s Disturbing Human Experiments
By Arnold Ahlert. If the shocking allegations contained in a lawsuit filed last Friday by responsible science advocate Steven Milloy are accurate, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a major scandal on its hands. As reported by the National Legal and Policy Center, Milloy initiated litigation in U.S. District Court in Virginia, based on evidence he accumulated via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He alleges that the EPA engaged in disturbing experimentation that deliberately exposed human beings to airborne particulate matter the agency itself considers lethal. The experiments were conducted at EPA’s Human Studies Facility at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That EPA administrator Lisa Jackson permitted this heinous experimentation to occur under her watch shocks the conscience,” said Milloy.
 
The suit accuses the EPA of paying as many as 41 participants $12 an hour to breathe in concentrated diesel exhaust, for as long a two hours at a time. The exhaust was directly piped in from a truck parked outside the Chapel Hill facility. According to the lawsuit, the fine particulate matter, called “PM2.5,” was piped in at levels 21 times greater than what the EPA calls its “permissible limit.”

Yet even that phrase is misleading. In testimony delivered to Congress in September of 2011, EPA chief Lisa Jackson claimed that exposure to fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns–or less–was lethal. ”Particulate matter causes premature death. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” she testified at the time.

Milloy learned about the experiments last year, after reading about them in a government-supported scientific journal. In June, he filed a complaint with the North Carolina Medical Board, accusing Drs. Andrew Ghio and Wayne Cascio, both of whom were employed by the EPA, along with Dr. Eugene Chung, who worked for the University of North Carolina, of violating EPA standards of conduct in human research and the Hippocratic Oath. “During these experiments, the study subjects were intentionally exposed to airborne fine particulate matter (‘PM2.5′) at levels ranging from 41.54 micrograms per cubic meter to 750.83 micrograms per cubic meter for periods of up to two hours,” Milloy wrote to Dr. Ralph C. Loomis, president of the NC Medical Board. “The EPA also believes that PM2.5 is carcinogenic to humans,” he added.

Dr. David Schnare, a former EPA litigator who is now director of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit, painted a detailed and chilling picture of exactly how the experiments were conducted. “EPA parked a truck’s exhaust pipe directly beneath an intake pipe on the side of a building,” he revealed. “The exhaust was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air and then piped directly into the lungs of the human subjects. EPA actually has pictures of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight into his lungs.” Read more from this story HERE.

http://joemiller.us/2012/10/lawsuit-epa-conducted-gas-chamber-like-experiments-on-elderly-infirm-at-university-of-north-carolina/#ixzz2TlEuJ7Tk

 

Will the scandals hurt Obama and the Democrats?

They won't among a large group of Americans--and that explains a lot about our nation and about why Obama was elected.

Scandals may be multiplying as quickly as the national debt has under President Obama but he can be rest assured: his base is oblivious to all the news, to facts and to the damage he has inflicted on them and the rest of us. This willful ignorance will help insulate Democrats from suffering in the midterm elections.

Jim McTague writes an insightful column in Barron's:

Will the young voters tune out because of the scandals? Michael Hais and Morley Winograd, who have written three well-received books on the millennials and their impact on the Democratic Party, believe the scandals will have almost no effect on this generation. For one thing, the millennials do not share their parents' suspicions of big, intrusive government. Hais and Winograd say that the millennials see a role for the federal government to set down rules of behavior, like parents, for them to follow.

WHAT ABOUT THE JUSTICE Department's seizure of AP's phone records? Millennials don't appreciate the concept of a "fourth estate." They don't read newspapers. They glean their information from social media. A book about millennials published last year by Paula Poindexter, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that millennials describe the news as "garbage, one-sided, propaganda, repetitive and boring." Furthermore, she said, they don't feel that being informed is important.

Benghazi? They don't watch any television news, let alone Fox, which has been highlighting the topic. The IRS/Tea party story? They are pro taxes--that's why they voted for Obama. They are anti-GOP because the party stands in the way of the Obama agenda, which they supported. If Obama cleans up the bureaucracy, as he started to do last week when he tossed out the IRS commissioner, then that's good enough for them.

This is  sadly, not surprising to many people who did not for Obama. This generation has been referred to as millenials but I think author Jason Mattera has a better way to describe them "Obama Zombies" (see his book, "Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed my Generation.") For them the massive popularity of zombies in TV hits such as " The Walking Dead" and books such as the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z (opening in movie theatres next month) might as well be self-portraits as much as horror and sci-fi tales.

I wrote about how Obama and his team deliberately cultivated and addressed this "zombie" market in "Obama Trolling for the Knucklehead Vote." His base--and the base of much of the Democratic Party-lives in a bubble of unreality. He reaches them by appearing on TV shows such as David Letterman (where he dismissed any sort of problem with the national debt, knowing the audience won't care to fact-check this fiction), Entertainment Tonight, Pimp with a Limp, and trash mags that are fit for pulping immediately upon their publication. They don't want "no facts;" they just want to be entertained. Or they just want whatever the modern-day equivalent of MTV may be.

Of course, this is one major reason Obama from 2007 onwards devoted so many resources into social media, Twitter, Web work, You Tube videos. He was force-feeding this generation one distortion after another -  enough that they gobbled them up like so much manna from heaven, Why bother with watching real news when one can be amused by the fun-house mirror of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show?  Why bother reading informative articles in reputable news outlets when one can read all one needs to know in Rolling Stone? 

Indeed , why bother reading anything more informative that has more than the 140 alphanumeric length of a tweet? Really, is there anything worth "knowing" that can't be expressed in some clever formulation of symbols (4 for for). The best text message that can characterize this benighted generation that elected Obama is to not characterize them as Millenials, or the Zombie Generation, but to give them the moniker of the "IDK" generation. As noted, they do not think being informed is important. Apparently, the Obama administration believes the same.

In an ear that is awash with information-much of it free-they choose to remain blissfully ignorant. Coddled and praised since they were in the crib, oblivious about the need to get degrees in fields that will lead to jobs-they would rather in many cases freeload off mom, dad, or the welfare state they have voted into power. The Greatest Generation that came back from war with a burning desire to lift themselves up has been replaced by a group of people who have little or no desire to do the same. They have led a life of comfort so they never realized the need to educate oneself, generate a work ethic, learn about taxes and the economy, and develop and cultivate the ideals and values needed to become productive people-to become citizens in the best sense that honor our heritage

.

They are the walking dead. And, like a lot of dead people in Chicago, they will continue to vote for Democrats till Kingdom Come.

And the rest of us will be paying the price for many years to come.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/will_the_scandals_hurt_obama_and_the_democrats.html#ixzz2TlG1Y400

 

Just Following Their Leader

The IRS scandal has shocked decent Americans, of every political stripe, to their core.  Did the President know about this specific wrongdoing?  Hopefully, we'll soon find out.  But Kimberly Strassel is right when she says that the IRS officials -- now disgraced before their fellow citizens -- were actually only following the orders that came, publicly, from the top.

Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.
Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do.

Indeed.  Anyone remember his speech to Latino voters in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections?  It contained this telling excerpt:

If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder . . ."

And there it is, clear as day -- the President's governing philosophy in a nutshell: Punish our enemies and reward our friends.  That appeal -- that definition of government -- describes so much of what has happened since this President has taken office, including
Distribution of stimulus funds: - (from USA Today)

Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election.

Favoring unsecured union members over secured bondholders in Chrysler deal - & threatening dissenters - (from Michael Barone)

This, of course, is a violation of one of the basic principles of bankruptcy law, which is that secured creditors — those who loaned money only on the contractual promise that if the debt was unpaid they'd get specific property back — get paid off in full before unsecured creditors get anything. Perella Weinberg withdrew its objection to the settlement, but other bondholders did not, which triggered the bankruptcy filing.
After that came a denunciation of the objecting bondholders as "speculators" by Barack Obama in his press conference last Thursday. And then death threats to bondholders from parties unknown.
The White House denied that it strong-armed Perella Weinberg. The firm issued a statement saying it decided to accept the settlement, but it pointedly did not deny that it had been threatened by the White House. Which is to say, the threat worked.

Kathleen Sebelius threatens president of American Health Insurance Plans -  (from Michael Barone)

Or as [Karen] Ignagni [President of American Health Insurance Plans], the recipient of the letter [from Sebelius], says, "It's a basic law of economics that additional benefits incur additional costs."
But Sebelius has "zero tolerance" for that kind of thing. She promises to issue regulations to require "state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases" (which would presumably mean all rate increases).
And there's a threat. "We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014."

DOJ Raids Gibson Guitar (from PowerLine)

It has come out that Juszkiewicz is a Republican donor, while the CEO of one of his principal competitors, C.F. Martin & Company, is a Democratic donor. Martin reportedly uses the same wood, but DOJ hasn’t raided them, leading to speculation that the Obama administration is sending a warning to Republican businessmen that they had better not oppose his re-election, lest they face criminal investigations. Normally such speculation would not be credible, but Eric Holder has politicized the Department of Justice to a point where such questions must be taken seriously.

Administration Officials Routinely Threaten the Press (from The New York Post)

Finally, this week, reporters are pushing back. Even Jonathan Alter — who frequently appears on the Obama-friendly MSNBC — came forward to say he, too, had been treated horribly by the administration for writing something they didn’t like.
“There is a kind of threatening tone that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” Alter said this week. During the 2008 campaign swing through Berlin, Alter said that future White House press secretary Robert Gibbs disinvited him from a dinner between Obama and the press corps over it.
“I was told ‘Don’t come,’ in a fairly abusive e-mail,” he said. “[It] made what Gene Sperling wrote [to Woodward] look like patty-cake.”
“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c--t, a--hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”

Benghazi Whistleblowers Threatened (from Investors Business Daily)

The president knew full well what was being asked. But it's never good to reveal knowledge of what his underlings are doing to make him happy.
As Fox News reported Monday, "At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress."
One unnamed State Department official has even felt the need to tap aggressive former Senate Intelligence Committee Republican counsel Victoria Toensing.
She revealed Monday that threats have been made by administration officials against the whistle-blowers "specifically about Benghazi ... and not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA."

NLRB Drops Complaint Against Boeing after Union-Friendly Deal  (from The Wall Street Journal)

On Wednesday, the International Association of Machinists approved a new contract with Boeing in which the company agreed to make its 737 Max jet with union labor in Washington state. Yesterday, after getting the machinist all-clear, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped its lawsuit against Boeing's investment in South Carolina.
Has there ever been a more blatant case of a supposedly independent agency siding with a union over management in collective bargaining? . . . 
As for the NLRB, its decision to drop the case so quickly after the machinists cut their deal exposes how politically motivated the Boeing suit was. The NLRB is supposed to be a fair-minded referee in labor disputes, making sure neither side breaks the law. But the board put its fist squarely on the union side to make Boeing pay a price for moving one of its 787 assembly lines to a right-to-work state, to make sure Boeing never did that again, and to demonstrate to any other unionized company that its investment is at risk if it makes the same decision.

DOJ Official Threatens AL about immigration law (All Alabama)

Thomas Perez, the man nominated as Labor Secretary by President Barack Obama, threatened to revoke federal funding for Alabama police and sheriffs if they enforced provisions of the state’s controversial immigration law. . . 
“We certainly perceived that as a threat,” said Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran. “He was basically putting us on notice that he would cut off our grants if he didn’t like the way we enforced the law.” . . .
Cochran said the meeting was disturbing because the Alabama Sheriff’s Association was already on record opposing the law, and that some sheriffs had even filed affidavits supporting legal challenges to the law in federal court.
“He was lashing out at us about these tactics, but yet he had no evidence that it ever happened,” Cochran said. “It really put us in a dilemma as far as how to respond.”

Walpin-Gate (from The Washington Times)

Without appropriate documentation or good reason, President Obama has fired a federal investigator who was on the case against a political ally of the president’s. Mr. Obama’s move has the stench of scandal.

 80% of Energy Dept. "Green Loan" Programs Went to Obama Backers (Peter Schweizer via Doug Ross)

..But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies...

...In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.

No doubt there's more, much more -- Hugh Hewitt asks readers if they remember "Regional EPA Administrator Al Armendariz who was forced out after a tape of his argument on the need to "crucify" the regulated community? Or the Sacketts who prevailed 9-0 in their case against the EPA when it got to the Supreme Court, or the little Lutheran school Hosanna-Tabor, persecuted by the EEOC until the Supreme Court put a stop to that by another 9-0 vote?

With all of this happening, too, it's shameful -- but hardly surprising -- that the IRS would get in on the act.  After all, the call had come from the top: In this administration, "we're going to punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends."

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/05/18/just-following-their-leader-n1600446

Capital Powerball: Scandals Grease Washington's Wheels

After running an errand at the Courthouse, I decided to pop into the Barrister Bar and Bistro for a quick bite. The place was packed and Charlie, the maitre d', shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "There's a huge party here this afternoon, but I can seat you at the bar if you don't mind."

I didn't mind and was happy to see that my favorite bartender, Joe, was at work.

I pulled out USA Today and read until he was free: "After February 2010, the IRS didn't approve a single Tea Party tax-exempt application until spring 2012, although it approved dozens of comparable applications from liberal groups." Some coincidence, I thought. Just after Citizens United, the President's outrageous temper tantrum about it at the State of the Union address, his constant demonizing of his opponents, the tea party in particular, and demands by key Democrats including Senators Baucus, Franken, Schumer, Reid, and Levin that the applications for 501(c)(4) status by the president's opponents be subject to harsh scrutiny.

"Place is jammed. I've never seen it so packed. What's up?" I asked as Joe placed my vodka tonic in front of me. "Looks like every former U.S. Attorney in town is here."

He pressed in closer so that he wouldn't be overheard.

"Celebration of the scandals. They are about to make more money defending these clowns than they ever dreamed of. Second terms are always more lucrative for them than first, but this is the ultimate jackpot. Like winning the Powerball."

The bar was mirrored so even with my back to the crowd I could see what was going on. In the center of the room at a round table sat one of the president's biggest campaign bundlers, an extremely well garbed man -- hand-tailored navy suit, lustrous silk tie, crisp shirt and glittering cufflinks -- with a great haircut. He was seated with a group of well-sloshed men and women all of whom were drinking heartily.

Suddenly everyone stood up for the toast.

"Here's to Joe," began his colleague. "We asked why we should support Obama after that disastrous first term and he said, 'Cast your crumbs upon the water and you'll get fig newtons back.'"

"And he was right!" came a shout from the rear and a wild round of applause followed.

Aside from the circular table in the middle where George and his cronies sat, there were seven tables
.
"What are the colored badges for?" I asked.

"They signify which scandal defendants they are representing so they can exchange useful procedural and related information without disclosing who they are representing or breaching client confidentiality. The orange tag means the attorney is representing someone in the Benghazi scandal."

"I see seven -- probably Petraeus, Clinton, Rice, Donilon, Brennan, Nuland, Rhodes. And the blue badge?" I asked, sipping the drink.

"IRS scandal," Joe whispered, wiping the counter to appear more inconspicuous.

"Hmm," I thought, "Shulman, Ingram, Miller, Lerner, and some others to be named at a later date. And the red badge?"

"Small table -- must be Justice officials on the Associated Press scandal."

"Yeah, so far Holder and his deputy Cole. Will Cole cover for Holder who preposterously testified he recused himself because he speaks to the press, that he can't remember when he recused himself, and that he didn't follow the statutory mandate for recusal procedure?"

"You did notice," Joe laughed, "that the 'security breach' which Holder claims occasioned the wiretapping of reporters turns out to be AP waiting to publish until they got the CIA's approval but before the White House crowd could publicly pat themselves on the back for getting the underwear bomber?"

"Wasn't that something? The whole story is too flimsy to hold a drop of water and even the press can grasp this one."

Joe refreshed my drink and took my lunch order. "Yellow badges?"

"EPA -- selective fines and fees and fake e-mail accounts to avoid detection of secret coordination of the head of the agency and environmentalists."

"Brown?"

He placed a tablemat and the silver setting down, and leaned in. "HHS, Sebelius strong-arming those who are being regulated by her to kick in and make Obamacare operable."

"And that very long table of purple badges?"

"Whistleblowers."

The toast having ended, Joe flicked on the switch for some music. It was Theodore Bikel, a suitable choice:

And zere is singink, and zere is dancink,
And ze Russian vomen is alright;
Come to ze kretchma, zet's vere you'll ketch me(h)
Drinkink wodka every night.

Waiters circled the room with platters of caviar, foie gras, filet mignon, and lobster.

Joe signaled to the maitre d', who allowed in a crowd that had been gathering expectantly outside -- architects, real estate agents, jewelers, furriers, interior designers, high end merchandisers, luxury auto salesmen -- all of whom surrounded the tables showing pictures of their wares and taking orders.

"Aren't the voters of America great to D.C.?" Joe asked. "They send these clowns here and the clowns, in turn, pay us to keep them out of jail."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/capital_powerball_scandals_grease_washingtons_wheels.html#ixzz2TlTRg0cw

Wrong color in the wrong place

Family stopping to refuel attacked, beaten

(Editor’s note: Colin Flaherty has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse. WND features these reports to counterbalance the virtual blackout by the rest of the media due to their concerns that reporting such incidents would be inflammatory or even racist. WND considers it racist not to report racial abuse solely because of the skin color of the perpetrators or victims.) Videos linked or embedded may contain foul language and violence.

No one saw the sign that said, “No White People Allowed After Dark.” Maybe because it was dark. Or maybe it did not exist.

So when a white family pulled into a Baton Rouge gas station in a black neighborhood 10 p.m. Sunday night after a Mother’s Day celebration, they had no idea they were in danger. But they were.

Donald Dickerson, a black man, told them so, right before the assault began that would leave the father with a broken face, the mother unconscious, and the daughter badly bruised.

All because they were the wrong color in the wrong place.

WAFB television news captures the crime from police reports. The spokesman for the police department said a man wearing a pink shirt was in line trying to pay for gas when Donald Dickerson, 41, started making fun of him, leading to an argument.

“The defendant (Dickerson) approached the white male victim,” the police report stated.

It went on to read, “the defendant told him he was in the wrong neighborhood and he was not going to make it out.” The victim said that’s when he “was punched and knocked to the ground.”

At this time, his wife got out of the car and ran to help her husband. The victim said, “he continued to struggle with the defendant and was eventually knocked unconscious, which later he awoke in the hospital.”

His wife told police, “after running to help her husband, she remembers falling to the ground and (being) knocked unconscious.”

According to a close family friend, that’s when the couple’s teenage daughter got out of the car to check on her parents and, “observed a female punch her mother in the face, when her mother then fell to the concrete, hitting her head on the surface.”

The daughter was also punched in the face.

The man suffered a broken eye socket, a broken nose and several cuts on the face, said the police report.

Dickerson was charged with a felony and taken to jail. The other two involved in the assault were charged with misdemeanors, given tickets at the scene, and released.

No one has been charged with a hate crime.

Police have not identified the victim or his family. So no one has had a chance to ask if he was aware he was in a black neighborhood. Or if he ever heard of Routine Activities Theory. Otherwise known as R.A.T.

R.A.T. played a central role last year in a Chicago court room where the city had to pay a white woman $22.5 million after she was arrested, then released into a black neighborhood in Chicago.

She was assaulted and tossed – or jumped – from a seven-story building, leaving her with permanent brain damage.

Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson, one of the country’s top experts on R.A.T., testified the R.A.T. made it clear that a white person in a black neighborhood can reasonably expect to meet with violence.

The judge explained R.A.T. by saying the victim “was a white female in a predominantly black, poor neighborhood (and) she had a much higher risk of predatory victimization.”

Judge Frank Easterbrook went on: “She was lost, unable to appreciate her danger and dressed in a manner to attract attention. She is white and well-off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and, thus, a potential target for crime.”

The city said R.A.T. was thinly disguised racial profiling and had no business at trial. But at the trial, R.A.T and race were everywhere – no matter how hard the city worked to keep it out. No matter how dedicated local media were to ignoring it.

Easterbrook said the situation was so transparently dangerous that Chicago police “might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo.”

There is no indication that Dickerson knew anything about a competing theory called Critical Race Theory, popularized by one of Barack Obama’s professors at Harvard, Derrick Bell.

This theory says that white people, good or bad, are racist. As is every institution in America. Permanently.

For the more academically inclined, this explanation from the UCLA School of Public Affairs may be more complete:

Critical Race Theory recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.

This theory is popular with educators at all levels of school.

At first, the R.A.T. and C.R.T. might seem conflicting. But if you think about it, it is plain they both predict a similar result for white people who accidentally end up in black neighborhoods. At night. When there are no warning signs.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/wrong-color-in-the-wrong-place/ 

Did Huma Abedin ‘quietly’ step down as Deputy Chief of Staff in same month Bachmann letter sent to IG?

The title of a New York Times article by Raymond Hernandez reads, “Weiner’s Wife Didn’t Disclose Consulting Work She Did While Serving in State Dept.”. However, the headline for another story pops up in the eighth paragraph when a potentially very interesting claim is made. Take note of when Abedin allegedly stepped down as Deputy Chief of Staff for Hillary.
Via NYT:

Ms. Abedin reached her new working arrangement in June 2012, when she returned from maternity leave, quietly leaving her position as deputy chief of staff and becoming a special government employee, which is essentially a consultant. A State Department official said that change freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings for the rest of the year on her financial disclosure forms. Still, during that period, she continued to be identified publicly in news reports as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

Officials in the State Department and Clinton circles seem especially sensitive about the arrangement, and no one would speak about it on the record. Earlier this month, Mr. Weiner released a copy of the couple’s 2012 tax return showing that they had income of more than $490,000.

According to the Times’ sources, Abedin stepped down as Deputy Chief of Staff for Hillary in June of 2012 but continued to be identified as Hillary’s Deputy Chief of Staff – without any announcement by the State Department to the contrary – before Hillary stepped down as Secretary of State seven months later.

Something else happened in June of 2012 as well, the 13th to be exact. That is the date of a letter sent by Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), and Tom Rooney (R-FL) to the State Department’s Deputy Inspector General. That letter specifically named Huma Abedin and her familial connections to the Muslim Brotherhood:

“…the Department’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin, has three family members – her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.”

It is not clear if the letter had anything to do with Abedin ‘quietly’ stepping down at around the same time the letter was sent, largely because of the State Department’s secrecy.

The letter to the State Department’s IG office was one of five sent to various IG’s. Several individuals were named but by far, Abedin’s name caused the most controversy; her ties to the Brotherhood through her mother and brother – as well as her work at the IMMA – are indisputable.

Had an announcement been made in June of 2012 that Abedin was stepping down as Deputy, it clearly would have fueled the controversy. Nonetheless, two questions need to be answered:

1.) Why did Abedin step down as Deputy Chief of Staff when she allegedly did?
2.) Why was it kept secret for nearly a year?

As to the issue of secrecy, the subject of the New York Times article is Abedin’s refusal to disclose her consulting work while she was still at the State Department.

We have expressed – as have others – repeated interest in Abedin disclosing the contents of the Form 86 she should have completed prior to working as Hillary’s Deputy back in 2009.

It is also, indeed interesting that the news of Abedin’s ‘quiet’ departure comes at a time when the State Department is under quite a big microscope over Benghazi. Again, we have expressed – as have others – interest in knowing to what extent Abedin was involved in Benghazi-gate.

Then again, how silly of us. That was before we knew – as well as everyone else – that she stepped down in June of 2012.

Perhaps Anthony Weiner’s decision to run for mayor of New York City might start bringing some interesting things to light after all.

http://shoebat.com/2013/05/17/did-huma-abedin-quietly-step-down-as-deputy-chief-of-staff-in-same-month-bachmann-letter-sent-to-ig/

A Little Trip In The Way-Back Machine

Once upon a time, Democrats were concerned with infringements on civil liberties, when the president abusing power was someone they opposed and when the deaths of Americans bothered them. It was a magical time called the 2000s, but it might as well have been a century ago because that party has since gone the way of the Dodo.

OK, Democrats never truly cared about those things in principle, mind you, but they at least paid lip service to the concept in a fairly convincing way.

To Democrats, when George W. Bush was president, he was personally responsible for the actions of soldiers he’d never met in a prison he’d never visited on the other side of the planet. Every job loss was a pink slip signed by him to enrich his Halliburton masters. Now that Barack Obama is president, the people he appointed to cabinet positions not only aren’t responsible for the actions of their subordinates, they aren’t responsible for their own actions. 

Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress this week about the panoply of scandals surrounding the administration and easily could have been mistaken for Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes – he saw nothing, knew nothing, heard nothing. It seemed as though the first thing on his calendar every day was to recuse himself from everything his department was doing, then lock himself in his office and refuse to talk to anyone. Yet, in the face of either corruption or incompetence, President Obama reaffirmed he has “complete confidence” in him with as much rationalization behind it as the White Star Line praising the captain of the Titanic for such a smooth first half of the voyage. 

There were some cracks in the media guard, temporary and subjective as they may be. Chris Matthews even took a break from throne-sniffing to express consternation at how President Obama is essentially the Vinnie Barbarino of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, thinking asking “Who? What? Where?” when faced with serious abuses of power by the government’s most feared domestic agency.

Lost on the media is the irony that the very people who have been trying to dismiss the IRS scandal as the work of “misguided mid-level rogues” would be buying out bullhorn supplies to shout their outrage had the parties been reversed. Even now, it seems like this is getting the coverage it has only because the alternative is to do some real follow-up reporting on the Gosnell verdict. 

And Benghazi? Forget about it. 

The media breathlessly reported a briefing memo President Bush got containing a general warning that al Qaeda might, at some future date, hijack planes as if it contained the words “World Trade Center” and “September 11^th” in 24-point type. Yet, in the face of prior attacks, attempted assassinations of diplomats and repeated pleas for adequate security, President Obama’s administration appeared unprepared and unconcerned for the safety of Americans. The media yawns. 

On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack we’ve ever suffered, this administration chose to ignore some very real threats from people who love anniversaries the way Hallmark does in a place that makes Lord of the Flies look like your average school playground. To do this was horribly negligent. To not even try to rescue Americans under attack makes it worse. To refuse to say who gave the “stand down” order to the military makes it worse. To assert the military couldn’t have made it in time anyway – as many in Congress and the media have done – is to pose as knowing how long the battle would last and to admit to not knowing what our military can do on even extremely short notice. 

But the media did wake up a little more than usual this week. Not when it was revealed reporters had been lied to and the White House was fully aware of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups a year ago, but when they found themselves being treated like – gasp – Republicans. 

When it was reported Sgt. Schultz had tapped phones at the Associated Press, one wondered if the throne-sniffers might realize that aroma they’ve been smelling isn’t daisies and that they, too, will be victimized if they get in the way of this politics-around-the-clock administration. Alas, it was not to be. 

Yes, rage was expressed, and even some tough questions were asked. But no dots were connected in anything other than pencil. Nobody in the MSM wanted to talk about a pattern of abuse of power. It was time for apologies and for the story to fade. Their sources got the message – clam up or be outed in ways they can’t even imagine. But considering how few reporters were even asking tough questions, it’s not so much a pool of reporters affected by this as a foot bath. 

The egregious affronts to liberty exposed in the last weeks will soon by mocked by Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart and all the other ignorance keepers. Memories will fade. And the press briefing room at the White House, momentarily populated by Edward R. Morrow wannabes, will wilt back into the room filled with Bagdad Bobs who’ve earned their place of respect just below Major League Soccer players and neck tattoo recipients in society’s eyes. 

I hope I’m wrong, I hope we see more glimpses of the type of skeptical media that existed way back in the 2000s, but I doubt it. It would be nice, though, to see the people who most frequently use the phrase “speak truth to power” actually exercise the meaning of it. Because somewhere along the line the “Fourth Estate” became a Fifth Column. It’s a shame too – because, as we saw this week, they do have the ability to do journalism in them. 

http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2013/05/19/a-little-trip-in-the-wayback-machine-n1600275/page/full