Obama lost without his 'prompter'

By Thomas Lifson
Yesterday’s presentation by President Obama on his dispatch of 300 Special Forces to Iraq (which isn’t “boots on the ground” somehow – will they be forced to wear flip-flops?) was pathetic. When he is not reading prepared text from his teleprompter, he studs his presentation with “uh” -- the sign he is lying, making stuff up to sound good without giving away the game.

Blame Game: Obama Insists He Bears No Responsibility for Chaos in Iraq

By Guy Benson
..... Of course a political solution is the goal, but the country's on fire right now, with hardcore militants controlling massive swaths of land and threatening to lay siege to the capital city. Iraq's political situation isn't the issue at the moment:

Guy Benson @guypbenson Follow

He's talking like Iraq isn't in total, bloody chaos already. Promoting 'political solutions' seems wildly besides the point right now.

11:58 AM - 19 Jun 2014

If the extremists' march continues, there will be no country remaining to govern, and in its wake will be a failed state awash with anti-American, anti-West jihadists. ...Asked by CNN's Jim Acosta whether he regrets the failure the secure a status of forces agreement (SOFA) needed to make that happen, Obama insisted that there's nothing to regret because it wasn't his fault:

It is true that the Maliki government tossed up roadblocks to an acceptable SOFA in 2011, a decision they likely regret. It's also true that Maliki's leadership has left much to be desired. But the United States of America was not a helpless bystander in the SOFA negotiations. The Obama administration was a derelict, disinterested actor. Despite months of efforts from some US officials, the White House pulled the plug on wrapping up a needed SOFA prior to all options being exhausted:

As recently as August, Maliki's office was discussing allowing 8,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops to remain until next year, Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie said in an interview with The Cable. He told us that there was widespread support in Iraq for such an extension, but the Obama administration was demanding that immunity for U.S. troops be endorsed by the Iraqi Council of Representatives, which was never really possible. Administration sources and Hill staffers also tell The Cable that the demand that the troop immunity go through the Council of Representatives was a decision made by the State Department lawyers and there were other options available to the administration, such as putting the remaining troops on the embassy's diplomatic rolls, which would automatically give them immunity.

... But being correct on that judgment (again, based on public opinion) does not absolve him of his dead-wrong assessment of the Iraq surge, nor does it let him off the hook for Iraq-related decisions he's made as Commander-in-Chief. He campaigned for that office. He promised to withdraw the US from Iraq safely, while protecting our extremely hard-fought gains there. He's failed to deliver, and the world is less safe because of it. "Bush was wrong in the first place" is a compelling political argument. But Obama took over and made decisions of his own, for which he is responsible. Don't forget that Obama inherited a relatively stable Iraq.

White House Learned of Lerner's Crashed Hard Drive 6 Weeks Before Congress

By Susan Jones
In sworn testimony Friday, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted that the IRS told the Obama administration about Lois Lerner's missing emails in April, six weeks before telling Congress, even though Congress had subpoenaed Lerner's emails as part of its investigation into the alleged muzzling of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status before the 2010 election.
"The IRS knew in February, or maybe even in March, and Treasury and the White House knew at least in April -- but Congress and the American people didn't find out until June. Were you purposely not telling us?" House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp (R-Mich.) asked Koskinen. "Were you purposely not revealing this to the American people?"
"No, as I told you...our original thought was to complete the Lois Lerner email production--complete the review of what other custodians (IRS employees) had a problem, and produce a report to you, laying it all out," Koskinen said.
"So why did the IRS inform the Executive Branch agencies, the White House, the administration, but kept it secret from the Congress, who was conducting an investigation?" Camp asked.
"We were not keeping it a secret," Koskinen said. "It was our public report to you that has in fact provided you this information, there's been no attempt to keep it a secret. My position has been, when we provide information, we should provide it completely. If we provide you incomplete information, people sometimes are tempted to leap to the wrong conclusion, not based on any facts, so we thought it would be important to give you the full description--
"It's okay for the White House and Treasury to leap to a conclusion six weeks before the Congress," Camp shot back.

Paul Ryan to IRS Commissioner on "Lost" Emails: I Do Not Believe You, No One Believes You

By Katie Pavlich
...Koskinen tried to assure lawmakers the IRS isn't engaged in a cover-up and isn't misleading Congress, despite failing to disclose massive data loss and a "hard drive crash" until asked about where emails belonging to IRS officials and officials outside of agency were located.
"This is a pattern of abuse, a pattern of behavior that is not giving us any confidence that this agency is being impartial," Ryan said. "You ask taxpayers to hold onto seven years of their personal tax information in case they are audited and you can't keep track of emails past six months?"
"I do not believe you. This is incredible," Ryan stressed.
"I have a long career, that's the first time anyone has said they don't believe me," Koskinen responded.
"I do not believe you," Ryan shot back.
The exchange came shortly after Republican Rep. Kevin Brady outlined multiple instances of the IRS either lying or misleading the American people about the targeting of conservative groups, pointing out the bogus claim this was a low-level operation that took place in Cincinnati, when officials in Washington D.C. were leading the charge.
"Mr. Commissioner, why at this point, should anyone believe you?" Brady asked. "This is the most corrupt #IRS in history."

IRS commissioner: You know, e-mail isn’t necessarily an “official record”; Update: IRS Manual says it is

By Ed Morrissey
...The manual reference is clear, emphases mine:

1.10.3.2 (08-30-2012)
Security/Privacy

Email messages are official documents and should reflect this perspective. Email communications can be offered as evidence in court and can be legally binding. Before sending an email, you must consider how it reflects on the Service’s image and take into account privacy, records management, and security factors. …

1.10.3.2.3 (07-08-2011)
Emails as Possible Federal Records

All federal employees and federal contractors are required by law to preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency. Records must be properly stored and preserved, available for retrieval and subject to appropriate approved disposition schedules.

The Federal Records Act applies to email records just as it does to records you create using other media. Emails are records when they are:

Created or received in the transaction of agency business

Appropriate for preservation as evidence of the government’s function and activities, or

Valuable because of the information they contain

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy. More information on IRS records management requirements is available at http://erc.web.irs.gov/Displayanswers/Question.asp?FolderID=4&CategoryID=5 or see the Records Management Handbook, IRM 1.15.1 http://publish.no.irs.gov/IRM/P01/PDF/31421A03.PDF).

An email determined to be a federal record may eventually be considered as having historical value by the National Archivist prior to disposal. Therefore, ensure that all your communications are professional in tone.

Please note that maintaining a copy of an email or its attachments within the IRS email MS Outlook application does not meet the requirements of maintaining an official record. Therefore, print and file email and its attachments if they are either permanent records or if they relate to a specific case.

Maybe Koskinen should read his own manual.

First, Obama Raised Spending, Then Hiked Taxes, Killed Jobs, Halted Wage Growth, and Now He's Pushing Inflation!

By Donald Lambro
Consumer prices jumped sharply last month, rising more than previously forecast for just about everything we buy, from a gallon of gas to the food we eat.
It's bad enough that over the past six years Americans have had to suffer from painfully weak economic growth, too few jobs, flat wages and rising taxes, under President Obama's policies. But now we're facing rising inflation that economists say will only get worse.
Consumer prices increased at more than a 4 percent annual rate in May, rising for the second month in a row, pushing inflation in the past year to its highest level since 2012, according to the Department of Labor.
Food prices alone rose 0.5 percent in May, the sharpest rise in three years. They're up by 2.5 percent in just the last 12 months, the fastest in almost two years.
Energy prices were rising at an even faster rate, up by 0.9 percent -- led by higher electricity and gasoline rates. The reason: administration regulatory policies that have pushed up utility costs, stymied oil exploration and blocked completion of the Canadian oil pipeline.
...Don't expect to see a panoply of news stories on the nightly network news shows about any of this.
The highly paid producers, anchors, writers, reporters and technicians who put together the nightly news never experience any impact from inflation. Especially those who are on expense accounts.
But, then, you would have to search long and hard to discover the last time Obama has addressed this subject at any length.
He's been too busy feeding inflation through ever higher federal spending bills, imposing thousands of new, costly business regulations, and higher taxes sprinkled through Obamacare, along with a mountain of corporate welfare subsidies for special interests that in turn drive up prices and keep them there.
"The quagmire of regulations grows worse, making it much easier to start businesses and hire workers in Asia than America," Morici says.
Obama's latest proposal to boost incomes for mid-to-low income workers is to raise the minimum wage across the nation.
But countless economic studies show that this will only encourage more businesses to cut their payrolls.
Banks are shifting to online transactions. Supermarket counters are becoming increasingly automated where shoppers check themselves out with the swipe of a credit card. That's only the beginning.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office crunched the numbers and said Obama's retro-idea would destroy at least 500,000 jobs and possibly one million.
Thank goodness his plan is going nowhere in Congress where even many Democrats think it is a terrible idea that will kill more jobs than he already has thus far.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Grants Itself Authority to Shut Down Any Business at Anytime

By Katie Pavlich
Last week the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, through the power of Dodd-Frank, passed a rule giving the agency unprecedented power to shut down businesses, no matter what the reason, at any time it wishes through a cease-and-desist order. Further, the rule puts businesses at the mercy of the CFPB and they cannot go back into operation until government approval or a court ruling is made over an issue. Subsequently because bureaucratic decisions and court rulings take a substantial amount of time to happen, businesses cannot survive during those waiting periods. Here are the details (bolding is mine):

In a notice published in today’s Federal Register, the CFPB has announced that it has adopted its interim final rule on temporary cease-and-desist orders (C&Ds) without change. The final rule takes effect on July 18, 2014.
The CFPB is authorized to issue temporary C&Ds under Section 1053(c) of Dodd-Frank. That provision authorizes a temporary C&D as an adjunct to a cease-and-desist proceeding brought under Section 1053 against a covered person or service provider. A temporary C&D is effective immediately upon service and remains in effect unless modified or terminated administratively by the CFPB or set aside on judicial review.

The new rule comes on the heals of revelations the Department of Justice has been smothering firearms dealerships and other "high risk" entities out of business by "choking" banks and stripping funding through Operation Choke Point.

The Redskins Brouhaha Has Nothing To Do With Native Americans

By David Limbaugh
...In the end, this liberal crusade has little to do with protecting the sensitivities of Native Americans and everything to do with liberals setting themselves up as their guardians. Their practice of patronizing groups cannot yield to the facts. Their cause transcends reality. For the cause is not defending the oppressed or the downtrodden but about making themselves look wonderful with their latest piety.
Please do not think I am exaggerating. Isn't that the way liberals operate today? They imply, for example, that African-Americans are not self-sufficient or savvy enough to procure voter identification and so to require all people to produce such documentation is racist. Is their presupposition not a form of subtle bigotry?

...While the nation is beset with myriad administration scandals, a woeful economy, the Middle East on fire, an imploding health care system, an upside-down budget, etc., many liberals, especially the Washington bigwigs, are focusing instead on coercing a football team to change its innocuous name. Harry Reid actually said this issue is the nation's top priority. But do you think it's just an accident that Harry Reid et al. are harassing the Washington team instead of, say, the Cleveland Indians? Fear not, however; if their bullying campaign succeeds here, they'll seek to expand its reach.
In this era of Obama, in which lawlessness is in vogue, it's hardly surprising that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has officiously intermeddled into this nonissue, which is none of its business. This small cabal of bureaucrats has pulled the team's trademark because of the team's "disparaging" name.
Who do these mini-tyrants think they are? What makes them feel empowered to divest an entity of its legally valid trademark simply because they deem, way after the fact and in their own unsolicited and unauthorized discretion, that the protected name is offensive? Even those who insist on being offended by the name should be alarmed by this abuse of power. But they won't be, because the mentality that leads them to impose their will on Native Americans in the first place is the same mentality that leads to such abuses.
...The current brouhaha has nothing to do with Native Americans. They are merely props the left is exploiting in its latest self-serving exercise. It's about the growing intolerance and tyranny of today's left and what that means for the future of liberty -- thought, speech, religion and beyond. We'd better wake up and fight back.

The Naked Self-Interest Of The Bureaucratic Class

By Jonah Goldberg
...In 1939, Bruno Rizzi, a largely forgotten communist intellectual, wrote a hugely controversial book, "The Bureaucratization of the World." Rizzi argued that the Soviet Union wasn't communist. Rather, it represented a new kind of system, what Rizzi called "bureaucratic collectivism." What the Soviets had done was get rid of the capitalist and aristocratic ruling classes and replace them with a new, equally self-interested ruling class: bureaucrats.

....Now I don't believe we are becoming anything like 1930s Russia, never mind a real-life "1984." But this idea that bureaucrats -- very broadly defined -- can become their own class bent on protecting their interests at the expense of the public seems not only plausible but obviously true.
The evidence is everywhere. Every day it seems there's another story about teachers unions using their stranglehold on public schools to reward themselves at the expense of children. School choice programs and even public charter schools are under vicious attack, not because they are bad at educating children but because they're good at it. Specifically, they are good at it because they don't have to abide by rules aimed at protecting government workers at the expense of students.
The Veterans Affairs scandal can be boiled down to the fact that VA employees are the agency's most important constituency. The Phoenix VA health-care system created secret waiting lists where patients languished and even died, while the administrator paid out almost $10 million in bonuses to VA employees over the last three years.
...Obviously, economic self-interest isn't the only motivation. Bureaucrats no doubt sincerely believe that government is a wonderful thing and that it should be empowered to do ever more wonderful things. No doubt that is why the EPA has taken it upon itself to rewrite American energy policy without so much as a "by your leave" from Congress.
The Democratic Party today is, quite simply, the party of government and the natural home of the managerial class. It is no accident, as the Marxists say, that the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the IRS, gave 94 percent of its political donations during the 2012 election cycle to Democratic candidates openly at war with the tea party -- the same group singled out by Lois Lerner. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the VA, gave 97 percent of its donations to Democrats at the national level and 100 percent to Democrats at the state level.
We constantly hear how the evil Koch brothers are motivated by a toxic mix of ideology and economic self-interest. Is it so impossible to imagine that a class of workers might be seduced by the same sorts of impulses? It's true that the already super-rich Kochs would benefit from a freer country. It's also true that the managerial class would benefit from the bureaucratization of America.

PK'S NOTE: Mainstream Media at its finest.

Outrageous media malpractice on Scott Walker 'accusations'

By Thomas Lifson

The media-Democrat complex has carried out another disinformation campaign targeting Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who stood up to government worker unions and won. As such, he is s grave threat to the institutional foundation of the Democratic Party, which launders government funds into political funds via the mechanism of mandatory union membership and dues for government workers, which are donated to the Democrats.
Headlines yesterday afternoon and this morning blare the message that Scott Walker is up to criminal activities. The vast majority of news consumers, who have only marginal interest in Wisconsin, politics, and information that does not concern sports, Kim Kardashian’s butt, or other distractions, get the message of corruption. Here is Google News’s summary this morning:

But the charges are specious. They have already been thrown out of court. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection explains:

The big breaking news in the “John Doe” anti-Conservative Wisconsin investigation is that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals released previously sealed court exhibits detailing accusations made at the time the Wisconsin prosecutors commenced the proceeding. (snip)
What is not being reported, is that multiple judges have found that the alleged criminal conduct was not in fact criminal even if the factual allegations were true.
....So the media headlines are all about the accusations — accusations which have been rejected multiple times by judges.

This is shameful, but highly effective. Walker is targeted because he is likable, has a spine, and has demonstrated to Wisconsin voters (and the nation) that standing up to government unions benefits taxpayers (who save money) and those union members who opt out, and save the large amount of money they were formerly forced to pay as dues.

PK'S NOTE: Did you think it was just the newspapers and TV? Think again. Guys, this is coordinated from all corners.

Dinesh D'Souza's 'America' banished from New York Times best seller list

By Paul Bedard

The New York Times best seller list hasn’t waited a millisecond to put Hillary Clinton’s book atop its influential chart after just a week of sales, but has totally ignored another top 10 hardcover from noted conservative and critic of President Obama, Dinesh D’Souza.
His new book, on sale for three weeks, isn’t just absent from the top 10 lists already set for the next two Sundays, but totally missing from the list of the nation’s top 25 nonfiction hardcovers despite having sales higher than 13 on the latest Times chart.
According to sales reports provided to Secrets, D'Souza's new book “America: Imagine a World Without Her,” sold 4,915 in the first week and 5,592 in the second week. Had it been included on the upcoming June 22 Times hardcover nonfiction list, it would have ranked No. 8, and then No. 11 on the June 29 list that puts Clinton's sales at 85,721. The lists are widely circulated in the publishing industry before they go public.
The Times is somewhat mysterious in how it calculates its list, but it includes several books selling well under 3,000 copies in a week. A spokeswoman said, “We let the rankings speak for themselves and are confident they are accurate.”

....“They are part of the propaganda arm of the Obama administration,” D’Souza told Secrets from Philadelphia where his book and movie bus tour had stopped before traveling to Washington Friday. His “Obama’s America” was a NYT No. 1 best-seller.
“It’s their newspaper and they have a right to rig their list anyway they want, but if they are doing it, people should know,” he said.

GOP's Business Wing Sends Tea Party a Chilling Message

By John McCormick and Greg Gireaux
It’s all about protecting loyal friends and eliminating a few troublemakers.
That’s the business community’s goal in U.S. House elections amid a power struggle between the limited-government Tea Party movement and more traditional Republicans. While control of the Senate is November’s main prize, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending heavily in select House races, including one in Idaho where the Republican primary is tomorrow.
The nation’s largest business-lobbying group hasn’t said how much it will spend in the 2014 election, though it probably will exceed the $33.8 million in 2010. The Chamber has already aired television ads in more than 20 House and Senate races, and it’s expected to intervene in key districts to defend pro-business House Republicans against Tea Party opponents, or to help business-friendly challengers unseat Tea Party incumbents.
The aim is to send a chilling message to the Tea Party’s most zealous members, as well as bolster Republicans who have been loyal to House Speaker John Boehner and taken tough votes, such as those to raise the federal debt ceiling.

School Superintendent: Censorship Of Republicans, Vatican Fine If Not ‘PERVASIVE ENOUGH’

By Eric Owens
Earlier this week, The Daily Caller reported on a Connecticut high school

senior who discovered that his taxpayer-funded school’s Internet firewall was censoring the state Republican Party, the National Rifle Association’s homepage, anti-abortion groups and even the Vatican.
The school district

superintendent, Jody Ian Goeler, has now tried to explain himself. It’s not pretty.
“The district is trying to determine the reason for the inconsistency and if bias is pervasive enough to justify switching to another content filtering provider,” Goeler said, according to a press release obtained by TheDC.
This stance is a slight improvement from the superintendent’s previous position. The Nonnewaug High School

senior, Andrew Lampart, said Goeler had previously informed him that some political sites and, apparently, the Vatican must be blocked to prevent “hate speech” from seeping into the school.

On-the-Run Terrorist Group ISIS Seizes Non-Existent Stockpile of WMDs in the ‘Over’ Iraq War

By Kyle Becker
The Iraq War is supposed to be “ended,” or so the administration claimed, but the heavily armed “terrorist army” ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) is rampaging through Iraq and has taken control of a chemical weapons complex. The Telegraph reports:

The jihadist group bringing terror to Iraq overran a Saddam Hussein chemical weapons complex on Thursday, gaining access to disused stores of hundreds of tonnes of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin.
.Isis invaded the al-Muthanna mega-facility 60 miles north of Baghdad in a rapid takeover that the US government said was a matter of concern.
.The facility was notorious in the 1980s and 1990s as the locus of Saddam’s industrial scale efforts to develop a chemical weapons development programme.

As reports have stated before, there were “wmds” in Iraq, but there has been dispute over how dangerous they were, and speculation that the most toxic and potent chemical weapons were smuggled to Syria. About that:

Isis has shown ambitions to seize and use chemical weapons in Syria leading experts to warn last night that the group could turn to improvised weapons to carry out a deadly attack in Iraq.

Even CNN reported that these chemical weapons were still “dangerous.” Wait, wasn’t that the rationale for the Iraq invasion? Preventing terrorist groups like the Sunni extremists in ISIS from getting their hands on wmds? Even old chemical weapons containing mustard or sarin could be improvised for explosive devices.