Patterico's Pontifications

7/15/2012

Axelrod: Unlike Romney, Obama Doesn’t Use Tax Shelters

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:03 pm



At the verrry end of this Washington Times piece we see this:

Mr. Axelrod also hit Mr. Romney hard on taxes, pointing out that the United States loses $100 billion a year to offshore tax havens such as Switzerland.

“We know Gov. Romney takes advantage of these,” he said. “I’m not suggesting that he’s done anything illegal, but what I am suggesting is that he’s taking advantage of every loophole.”

“The president could do those things, but he doesn’t do those things,” Mr. Axelrod added.

April 13, 2012: Obama Sets Up Tax Shelter for His Kids:

President Obama and his wife, Michele, gave a total of $48,000 in tax-free gifts to their daughters, according to tax records made public on Friday.

The president and his wife separately gave each daughter a $12,000 gift under a section of the federal tax code that exempts such donations from federal taxes.

There is nothing illegal about the president’s taking advantage of this tax shelter, but it does raise eyebrows given that he has lamented the myriad tax exemptions used by the wealthy—“millionaires and billionaires” like himself—to pay less in taxes.

Time for Axerod to raise his own eyebrows!

296 Responses to “Axelrod: Unlike Romney, Obama Doesn’t Use Tax Shelters”

  1. Someday many years from now, kids will ask,”where did the term Axelrodding come from?”, and parents will explain that it’s simpler than saying that someone is has a pathological lying disorder.

    Just amazing…

    the bhead (a31060)

  2. The real question is how long the media will let Axelrod get away with this.

    Patterico (feda6b)

  3. I predict sometime in 2025, we’ll get the hard-hitting reporting on this long after it’ll do any good whatsoever.

    Pious Agnostic (ee2c24)

  4. The question to me is whether Axelrod is that stupid. I know Axelrod is that dishonest.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  5. the United States loses $100 billion a year to offshore tax havens such as Switzerland

    so if we had a more competitive tax system than Switzerland we’d not only have 100 billion more monies a year we’d get monies from overseas too?

    what’s stopping us?

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  6. The real question is how long the media will let Axelrod get away with this

    Answer: 11/7/2012 or not until BO is re-elected, then our media darlings will start to ask some of the tough questions when it is safely within BO’s second term. That is how they will try to save face.

    Ipso Fatso (7434b9)

  7. Axelrod looks to much like Charles DeGaulle to be trusted.

    jasond (0b7791)

  8. Axelrod looks like someone I would not trust around my kids. Creepy dude.

    Old Coot (6417f5)

  9. Unlike Nixon, Democrats don’t tape conversations in the white house, or keep enemies lists or….

    Except when they do, like JFK, LBJ, FDR…..

    The media has always fallen for this drivel.

    C. S. P. Schofield (df34af)

  10. Romney does the tax shelter thang. The 0bama’s henchmen are just tax frauds. I’d prefer an honest tax shelter than just “forgetting to push the right button on TurboTax”!

    Milwaukee (9ce3f5)

  11. It is all about “fairness” and not about revenue (I would argue it is about control…):

    Candidate Obama was asked by Charlie Gibson from ABC News why he supported an increase in the capital gains tax rate, given an historical record that repeatedly shows the government losing revenue as a result.

    Replied Obama, “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

    BfC (fd87e7)

  12. The real question is how long the media will let Axelrod get away with this.
    Comment by Patterico — 7/15/2012 @ 12:15 pm

    — ANSWER: However many days there are between now and the day after Election Day.

    Icy (dd502a)

  13. So according to Axelrod BO doesn’t take any advantage of tax shelters. What about a deduction for a mortgage? What about any retirement accounts BO and his wife have? What about charitable deductions? It would behoove Romney’s people to go through BO’s tax returns and point out all of the deductions our beloved leader, Peace Be Upon Him, has taken through the years and then gleefully point out what a hypocrite he is for taking any tax deductions given his belief that the government is the best option for spending private capital. I hope they do it.

    Ipso Fatso (7434b9)

  14. so if we had a more competitive tax system than Switzerland we’d not only have 100 billion more monies a year we’d get monies from overseas too?
    what’s stopping us?
    Comment by happyfeet — 7/15/2012 @ 12:28 pm

    — The tax-and-spend-ocrats, that’s what . . . or “who”.

    Nah, stick with “what”.

    Icy (dd502a)

  15. ______________________________________________

    Time for Axerod to raise his own eyebrows!

    And even more so when a bigger irony — so thick it can’t be cut with even the sharpest knife — involves another person in the current White House, the same guy who will be overseeing the introduction of Obamacare and the IRS’s need to enforce it (and, btw, the Secretary of the Treasury also performs the role of head of the IRS):

    powerlineblog.com, April 2012:

    Instead of the Buffett Rule, How About the Geithner Rule?

    President Obama has now admitted that the “Buffett Rule,” formerly the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, is a silly gimmick that will raise hardly any money for the treasury. (Actually, it might cost the federal government money, as increases in the capital gains rate have been known to do.) So how about if, instead, we start talking about the Geithner Rule, which is: everyone pays what he owes under existing laws?

    Most tax evaders don’t wind up in prison. In fact, some wind up working for the government. Take Tim Geithner. Geithner, Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, is a tax cheat. When he worked for the International Monetary Fund, the fund did not pay withholding taxes on his income, but rather paid Geithner a specifically-designated additional amount which Geithner was supposed to use to pay self-employment taxes. Geithner kept that money, but didn’t pay the taxes.

    When the IRS audited Geithner, he paid what he owed for 2003 and 2004. But he didn’t pay what he owed for 2001 and 2002. Why? Because the statute of limitations had run on those years, so the IRS couldn’t sue him to collect the money or charge him criminally for failing to pay it. Only when he was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury did Geithner go back and pay what he owed for 2001 and 2002.

    Geithner is not the only tax cheat working in the Obama administration. As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out repeatedly, no fewer than 41 of Obama’s White House aides owe back taxes to the IRS, adding up to $831,000. But they aren’t alone: 638 Congressional staffers owe another $9.3 million, and federal employees, altogether, owe $1 billion in back taxes.

    Warren Buffett may be eager to pay more in personal income taxes–not that he is actually mailing any checks to the treasury–but his company, Berkshire Hathaway, is embroiled in long-running battle over its IRS tab. Experts [say] Berkshire Hathaway may owe an additional $1 billion.

    Mark (b7a6e9)

  16. lying liars lie… what a surprise.

    redc1c4 (403dff)

  17. The question to me is whether Axelrod is that stupid. I know Axelrod is that dishonest.
    Comment by SPQR — 7/15/2012 @ 12:27 pm

    — He isn’t stupid, but he is counting on what he regards as ‘the stupidity of the average voter’ to allow him to get away with his dishonesty.

    Icy (dd502a)

  18. Time for Axelrod to raise his own eyebrows!

    Where is teh Richard Gephardt when we need him?

    Colonel Haiku (f6ead4)

  19. Obama was thinking about tax shelters; but, since his financial advisor is doing a dime at the Federal Shelter for Bad Boys . . .

    Icy (dd502a)

  20. Where is Mitt Romney?? Why isn’t he raging about the hypocrisy non-stop instead of getting hooked up in the bullsh*t baiting of Bain? It’s getting really frustrating to not hear some non-stop push back from his campaign. Now that they’ve meekly demanded an apology from Cutter and got slapped down with a “no apology”, we don’t hear anything more…. get the gloves on, man.

    McCain was Mr. Nice Guy and look what happened. Is this the path Mitt is going to take, too, in hopes that a misplaced sense of gentility and decorum will be enough to draw in voters? Obama and his team play hard and dirty and relentlessly so. We need to stop being surprised and shocked at the hypocrisy and expect it in more brazen outlandishness – and then hit back aggressively with the truth. The left knows it can get away with it – who will hold them accountable? So, why not hit back twice as hard. It seems like “aggressive” is a dirty word on Team R. Stop letting the left bait Romney to a defensive position and get on the freaking offense. This is getting ridiculous.

    I guess I’m not alone in the frustration.

    Dana (292dcf)

  21. This argument is ungood. The Obama parents gave their own money to their offspring. The tax authorities take a piece of gifts, starting above $12k/year. There are complicating issues, like 529 plans, but in general, it amounts to the Obamas doing what anyone would do and think right: giving money, and not expecting to have to pay tax just to do it.

    That does not compare well to avoiding taxes in off-shore companies. Neither is illegal, but even the average voter would approve Obama’s acts, which are available to all, while average voters would tend not to like Romney’s acts, which are unavailable to most.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  22. Just Some Guy, nonsense. The tax code taxes gifts. But there are exclusions if you follow the tax law, such as the gift tax exclusion. Likewise, Romney took advantage of an exclusion to avoid a tax just like the Obama’s did.

    The idea that some exclusions are different than others is horse manure.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  23. Just Some Guy,

    I understand it’s an issue of optics, however, given the economy we have, $48,000 gifts to children isn’t small change. This might difficult for the out-of-work middle class/lower-middle class individual to approve of as well as Romney’s taking advantage of loopholes.

    I would think both are a no-go and would cause resentment in a segment of our population.

    Those that already resent Romney and his wealth aren’t going to go into fits over this. It may just solidify their view.

    However, those who are wavering re Obama and the state of the economy, may see this indeed as hypocritical, considering he is attempting to be the every-man candidate working class I feel your pain candidate.

    Dana (292dcf)

  24. Axelrod is the scum who magically comes into possession of sealed divorce records. Don’t be surprised if he magically comes into possession of Romney’s tax records.

    drjohn (5eb558)

  25. When the people start to realize that there are a separate set of rules for those in power, Anarchy will seem like not only a good idea, but the only choice.

    I could care less where Romney keeps what belongs to him. I could care less how much Obama gives his kids. But when the average citizen realizes that the rich and powerful don’t have to pay the same taxes we do, more and more people will opt out of paying theirs as well.

    And what a glorious day it will be…

    Ghost (6f9de7)

  26. I am assuming that they found all these “secret” bank accounts and companies by reviewing public records and Romney’s 2010 (or whatever) tax returns.

    When will see Obama’s school records (and his sources of funding), campaign funding records (including all of those foreign credit card contributions), his medical records (we saw Bush’s dental x-rays from his military days). And what about his spouse’s no-show job at the university medical center which seemed to track Obama’s political career.

    BfC (fd87e7)

  27. SPQR said: “The tax code taxes gifts. But there are exclusions if you follow the tax law, such as the gift tax exclusion.”

    You make it sound like some fancy loophole. It’s not. The IRS charges taxes– real money– for individual gifts >$12k per person per giftee. It’s really that simple. If you give your kid a car worth $20k, you’re on the hook.

    Of course, it’s badly enforced, except on the rich, because most people don’t have enough money to get into this kind of tax trouble.

    It’s not complex. It’s actually quite sinister, and something most non-wealthy people don’t encounter: the government demands to take money from people just because they give money to their kids (or others)!

    The Obamas went under the limit so as to roll some money downhill to their daughters. Painting that as a tax dodge is ridiculous.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  28. Just Some Guy, it is a “fancy loophole” as its used as a way to avoid estate taxes.

    The Obamas are “dodging” estate taxes just as much as Romney is “dodging” taxes. No more. No less.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  29. SPQR, how is either party “dodging” taxes? Do you propose that upon your death, your >$12k bequest should rightly be a taxable thing?

    That’s something worth arguing about!

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  30. Actually, upon death, the taxes don’t come in until much higher– $1m or so. But let’s say you see a homeless person on the street, and you talk to him for a minute and decide that $20k would really put him on the road to a great life. Should that be taxed?

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  31. Let’s say Bill Gates walks down a street in Detroit. He keeps running into kids who are trying hard, but stunted by crappy schools and bad parenting. Bill doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands to set up a fund, so he decides to start making out $50k checks, just for the hell of it, asking each kid to use it for education and to get ahead in life.

    Tax it!

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  32. Just Some Guy, you seem to not understand some basic things. For example, do you think that the Obama’s are worth less than a $1 million?

    Secondly, if you had ever actually done an estate tax return, you’d realize that the gift tax exemption has significance in estate planning.

    Your comments remains just silly and nonsensical. The Obama’s use of the gift tax exemptions are just as much, and as little, “dodging” taxes as Romney’s actions.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  33. Just Some Guy, I also find it very instructive that you don’t even know what the current estate tax exemption is.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  34. SPQR, I don’t understand taxes and all?

    There is a big myth in America about estate planning. Even conservatives like to think that the rich keep getting richer and pass it all on to their kids with no penalties. It don’t work like that, SPQR. It’s pretty complex.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  35. But let’s say you see a homeless person on the street, and you talk to him for a minute and decide that $20k would really put him on the road to a great life. Should that be taxed?

    … so he decides to start making out $50k checks …

    Both are taxed currently. You really don’t get this, do you?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  36. SPQR, what’s the current estate tax exemption? Quick, now!

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  37. Just Some Guy, I do estate planning. Please inform me more …

    sheesh, what an idiot.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  38. SPQR, you said “Both are taxed currently.” No, not true. The taxable event is the gift, and it falls on Mr. Gates. He pays. The lucky Detroit kid pays nothing. You really don’t get this, do you?

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  39. Just Some Guy, the estate tax exemption is five million (to oversimplify) … at least for the next six months.

    You really need to figure out when you are clueless.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  40. Just Some Guy, I wrote that both are taxed. I meant that both situations are taxed, not both parties.

    Grow up.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  41. SPQR, do you know what a tax is? Doesn’t seem like it. Both situations are taxed? Please explain.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  42. I’m a fast reader and a fast typist. Please go on.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  43. Just Some Guy, no, you are a clueless troll.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  44. SPQR, I’m not trying to embarass you. No, wait, I am!

    The point is important, though: the government takes money from people who try to give money to other people, even when the gifts are to their kids. The Obamas are doing what any idiot would do and does do.

    If the electorate knew about the gift tax, it would repeal it. The estate tax, too, by and large. They are both theivish acts.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  45. Based on recent evidence, even the lefty trolls are cruising on fumes. It’s kind of sad to watch them go through the motions when they know they support a miserable failure.

    Ag80 (b2c81f)

  46. Ag80, I hope so. I’m voting Romney.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  47. Comment by Dana — 7/15/2012 @ 1:29 pm

    What Romney has to do every time he’s asked about it is to of course say it’s inaccurate but also say that Obama is focusing on Bain because he wants to change the subject from his own failed record. In other words counter punch. That’s what Walker suggested in your linked article.

    His commercials responding to the Bain attacks which I’ve seen on TV take a different tack, accusing Obama of dishonesty, which is not bad either. But they can say both I think.

    Gerald A (b00ac1)

  48. Just Some Guy, that’s your point? Really?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  49. Overseas tax shelters….

    It will be interesting to see how much of the “stimulas” money that went to “green energy” and was used to “purchase” alternative energy components overseas will be channelled back into the campaign coffers of Teh Won.

    The Billion$ that were shovelled out the Energy Dept door (and other portals in the Beltway) will probably make the “address challenged” credit-card donations of the ’08 cycle look like chicken-feed when they start showing up in this year’s campaign. Plus, I wouldn’t doubt that a significant portion has already been set-aside for “honoraria” for Post-WH speaking engagements by the World’s Greatest Speech-reader.

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  50. Comment by Ag80 — 7/15/2012 @ 3:00 pm

    What with the Million$ that the U.S. Taxpayer is shelling out to support Barry & Michelle’s life-style,
    what exactly does he have to be miserable about?
    But, you’re absolutely correct:
    He is a Failure – but we’re the ones who are being made miserable!

    AD-RtR/OS! (2bb434)

  51. Sorry just some guy. I can see I misunderstood where you were going.

    Ag80 (b2c81f)

  52. Irony, it’s crunchy like skippy peanut butter;

    http://www.senseoncents.com/2010/02/president-obama-and-robert-wolf/

    narciso (ee31f1)

  53. Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is not tax evasion; rather, it’s a legal and rational exercise of self-interest.

    It stuns me that the Dems can build their opposition to Romney around the fact that he’s a rich businessman. Hell, he’s no richer than Teddy Kennedy was, and has less than half of John Kerry’s net worth. But the Dems are masters of ignoring any and all cognitive dissonance.

    Finger-pointing by and at candidates aside:

    The real problem, of course, is the commonly shared sense of many Americans that there are special rules and loopholes that are deliberately obscured and preferentially available to some people, but not others. The solution to that problem is to dramatically rationalize and simplify the entire business and personal tax codes, doing so in a revenue-neutral fashion that lowers basic rates while eliminating almost all exemptions, deductions, credits — “loopholes.”

    There is no principled argument against doing this, but there are very compelling unprincipled barriers to it actually happening. Of course, it can’t possibly happen if the Dems have the White House or a majority in either chamber of Congress. Even if Obama is defeated and the Dems lose the Senate, though, there are large numbers of politicians on both sides of the aisle in both chambers who will resist real tax reform precisely because they’re bought and paid for already by some combination of the special interests who benefit from the current system.

    Beldar (8554bf)

  54. X for me and mine, but not for thee and thine. Some people, even Constitutional Law Scholars just don’t get the idea of the rule of law.

    htom (412a17)

  55. Is it time to quit allowing the use Constitutional Law Scholar and Barack Obama in the same sentence? I think maybe it is.

    elissa (ed6295)

  56. Mittens has trouble counterpunching democrats. I wonder what the strategy team is working on? More apology notices?

    mg (44de53)

  57. The real issue is that ALL TAXES are fundamentally about taking money from people who earned it (for certain values of earned, in some cases) and giving it to people who didn’t; i.e. government functionaries. True, some of it does, eventually, find its way into the hands of people who are not government parasites, but that is increasingly a pretext.

    Some government is necessary, at least to me (a fifty-ish gout sufferer with bad teeth and no great facility with firearms). And, no, I don’t want to get involved in a huge debate on what is necessary and what isn’t. And if some government is necessary, then some taxes are necessary. But we could trim the federal budget with an axe for years before we had it pared down to a reasonable size.

    So Axelrod’s argument, even if it were true (which it isn’t) is that Obama is too stupid to keep the government from picking his pocket any more than he has too.

    C. S. P. Schofield (df34af)

  58. eyes of a dead fish
    body made for a tutu
    Rahm Emanuel

    http://cdn.stripersonline.com/c/cf/cf9bd4f8_rahm_ballet_01.jpeg

    Colonel Haiku (5e5f6c)

  59. Great post.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  60. I understand what Sammy is saying about dirty national politics going on for a long long time. He’s correct that it did not start with Barack Obama. However, with respect to these candidates and this campaign, (and like all the ones preceding it where Obama ran) it’s Chicago politics all the way. The “narratives” and shenanigans and payoffs and ugly games and personal destruction that got Obama on the ballots and elected in Illinois and to the US senate and to the presidency (and to speak at the convention as an “unknown”) is the Chicago way. Look who were his main surrogates on the morning shows today. Axelrod and Rahm. Look who is his most influential ear and “adviser” in the white house besides Michelle–Valerie Jarrett. In every way this thuggish administration epitomizes Chicago Democrat/Union politics at its worst.

    elissa (ed6295)

  61. It stuns me that the Dems can build their opposition to Romney around the fact that he’s a rich businessman. Hell, he’s no richer than Teddy Kennedy was, and has less than half of John Kerry’s net worth. But the Dems are masters of ignoring any and all cognitive dissonance.

    I think this begs the question – not “why” can the Dems build their opposition against Romney’s wealth, but how is that they know we on the right will let them get away with it? Why is the GOP so predictably weak that our side consistently ends up on the defensive?

    The Dems have set up their own hypocrisies and all Romney has to do is simply point it out – constantly, and without a tone of pettiness. Just a matter fact Now there they go again

    Dana (292dcf)

  62. Egyptians pelt Hillary Clinton motorcade with tomatoes… ‘Monica, Monica’ chants taunt…
    They throw shoes…

    No!… not teh shoe treatment!

    Colonel Haiku (0fc727)

  63. when all said and done
    may Bubba declare chubwa
    on teh Kimberlin

    Colonel Haiku (0fc727)

  64. Obama camp holding fundraisers in Switzerland Sweden France and China. But I’m sure none of the contributions represent the interests of, you know, foreign banks or corporations, because that would be wrong. Corporations aren’t people and moneyed interests shouldn’t be influencing American elections.

    elissa (ed6295)

  65. Use the “foreign sourced funds” to pay for the event/travel costs/overseas campaign–And send 100% of the “legal citizen” money back to the US.

    Problem solved.

    BfC (fd87e7)

  66. Problem? What problem? There’s no controlling authority. Throw your shoes, one at a time, in opposite directions. Now toss your pants over here.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  67. ________________________________________________

    Just Some Guy, no, you are a clueless troll.

    Not sure why the word “troll” is applied to people who merely have a different POV, even if it’s a nonsensically liberal one. To me “troll” is someone who purposefully incites arguments for the sake of arguing, who likes to create flame wars. But even more so in this instance, assuming I’m reading the following comment correctly—meaning that JSG supports the idea of dumping the gift tax and estate tax.

    I recall the former type of tax getting some celebrities in trouble for the swag they were receiving from appearing on awards shows, while the latter, in effect, is a “Our Condolences, and, muhahaha, Screw You” note from the IRS upon the death of a family member.

    If the electorate knew about the gift tax, it would repeal it. The estate tax, too, by and large. They are both theivish acts. Comment by Just Some Guy — 7/15/2012 @ 2:59 pm

    Mark (b7a6e9)

  68. Mark, trolling is conduct, not point of view. And the taxation of award show swag was not based on gift tax.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  69. Mark, swag (stuff we all get, in this context) is taxed as income to the receiver (and at full retail, last time I got hit with this; sometimes there are special versions of a product with a retail price of $0.01 or $0.00 that used to be used to avoid this, but now that’s not allowed?) I’m told (but do not know if this is correct) that if I was to sell the swag, the income from that sale would also be taxed.

    htom (412a17)

  70. Seriously, though, doesn’t Axlerod look like some buffoonish foil on “I Love Lucy?”

    Ag80 (b2c81f)

  71. The real question is how long the media will let Axelrod get away with this.

    Comment by Patterico — 7/15/2012 @ 12:15 pm

    The media has given this ugly Fascist a wide berth.

    AZ Bob (1c9631)

  72. 71.Mark, trolling is conduct, not point of view.

    Mark, you silly little thing. You must sniff out trolling carefully. If you smell things that make you think we primary commenters are wrong, then RUN AWAY! If it smells good, then you can feed, but be careful.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  73. BTW, isn’t Axelrod’s facial hair outlandish? OMG!

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  74. I’m not trying to say most of you (save Mark and a few others) are idiots. No, wait, I am trying to do that! But never mind.

    Just Some Guy (3b087f)

  75. JSG making friends wherever he goes

    Icy (de8c71)

  76. I understand what Sammy is saying about dirty national politics going on for a long long time. He’s correct that it did not start with Barack Obama.

    — Problem is, nobody here claimed that it started with Barack Obama.

    Sammy is not above erecting straw men.

    Icy (de8c71)

  77. _______________________________________________

    Mark, trolling is conduct, not point of view.

    SPQR, strike my original assumption. You were correct. I got played like a fool. LOL (at myself).

    Mark (b7a6e9)

  78. JSG is just too smart for us. That ole “No, wait…” switcheroo got me every time. We may have met our Waterloo. It sure was a swell ride, though.

    Gazzer (3545c1)

  79. “Sammy is not above erecting straw men.”

    Icy – Or using words which he later claims were really euphemisms for something else which even then don’t make sense as euphemisms.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  80. Time for Axerod to raise his own eyebrows!

    He should take those three ferrets off his face before coming on camera, don’t you think?

    Smock Puppet, 10th Dan Snark Master and CRIS Diagnostic Expert (8e2a3d)

  81. So this government that creates all these tax “loopholes” and shelters, this is the same government we should put in charge of more stuff?

    MayBee (df59c2)

  82. Mittens and his progressive lackey’s better buy a sack of balls or this election is kaput.Why are we being forced to watch another juan Mclame senario?

    mg (44de53)

  83. How is this a tax shelter?
    It is not a tax shelter. Obama gave his children cash that he already paid personal tax on. He limited the amount given to prevent gift tax.
    If this is a tax shelter, everyone who has ever given someone anything, and not paid gift tax, is engaged in a tax shelter.
    This post is incredibly deceptive, at best.

    Peter Clark (395f63)

  84. Peter Clark,

    Taking advantage of the gift tax exclusion by making gifts under $13,000 is a tax shelter. The Obamas have reduced their taxable estates by $48,000 with no adverse federal estate or gift tax effects.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  85. Because giving a gift to your daughter is the same as using an offshore account to skirt your tax bill.
    .

    tye (23c02c)

  86. You could also say that the Obamas are skirting estate and gift taxes by making annual gifts under $13,000 each, but the reality is that tax shelters are simply legal methods to reduce a taxpayer’s tax liability.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  87. Something tells me that Romney’s Swiss accounts had more than 24G in them…

    I also believe Romney won’t release his records because they will show an astonishingly low effective tax rate which will cause a major backlash among the middle class. Remember, he can’t get elected and begin his war on the middle class without first courting their vote.

    tye (23c02c)

  88. From a site lusting after my heart:

    http://www.jammiewf.com/2012/obama-you-dont-hear-me-complaining-a-lot-about-whats-been-said-about-me/

    Franklin Marshall Davis’ bastard spawn doesn’t appreciate our criticism. Bet he doesn’t return to Chicago after the walkover.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  89. DRJ: I understand your argument, but the numbers involved with each just don’t equate. The Obamas most likely were interested in giving their daughters anice nest egg to start. Sure, there’s a small tax break involved and I’m not going to. Pretend that I’m completely sure of their intentions.

    While it is totally legal to use offshore accounts to get out of taxes, the majority of Americans who do not have access to that will not be pleased. Thjs won’t sit well with independents.

    tye (23c02c)

  90. I accidentally hit send before I had a chance to edit that last one.

    tye (23c02c)

  91. tye,

    Most parents want to help their children and I assume the Romneys do, too, don’t you? Thus, perhaps their goal is also to help their children and families.

    And we know the Romneys tithe to their church and donate to charities, so perhaps that also motivates their desire to avoid tax liability. Perhaps they want to be in charge of who and what their money benefits, instead of letting the government take the money as taxes and decide how to spend it.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  92. That’s fine. That story will most definitely resonate with conservatives. How about the independents? How about the middle class? If I’m paying 35% and a millionaire (is he only a millionaire?) like Romney is using fancy rich people methods to pay a much smaller rate than I am…. sounds to me like we have the same rules, but since I don’t really have that access we don’t.

    tye (23c02c)

  93. Liberals lie, they lie all the time.

    Kevin P. (97b78a)

  94. The Obamas have made annual gifts of $24,000 to each daughter since 2007, which means each girl now has $144,000 excluding interest. That’s a nice little nest egg for 12 and 15. How will independents feel about that?

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  95. And don’t forget those $5,000 annual gifts listed on the Obama’s Schedule A to that well-known charity, Sidwell Friends.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  96. Note that politicians are the least ethical people on the planet, generally.

    John ‘Effin Kerry, in the final weeks ahead of Obamacare’s passage moved tens of millions out of HMOs into Big Pharma. He did not miss a trade, made money on every move.

    Willard is no choirboy but he doesn’t have to be versus Lucifer’s Anointed, bin Dunham.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  97. ibn Dunham*

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  98. Compare those numbers (tax on $300,000) which can easily be explained through giving a gift to your daughters to the unknown amount that Romney has hidden from the government for tax purposes. Again, this will not be an easy sell for independents. Independents will figure out that Romney is stashing a lot more than $24,000 in those accounts. It’s not illegal, but not exactly patriotic to snake your way through the tax code.

    tye (23c02c)

  99. 99- After the swift boat attacks I think we ought to leave Kerry alone.

    tye (23c02c)

  100. tye,

    If you read between the lines of this Hill article, people seem to think anyone who makes more money than they do is rich. That could be a problem for Romney with Democrats and independents who don’t earn much money, but only if those voters believe in class warfare. However, it’s also possible those voters are independents or Reagan Democrats who care more about jobs than income inequality.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  101. 101. et al.: “Independents”, be it known, are a bimodal population, 40% of the electorate. Only a quarter, 10% of the electorate are ‘party switchers’, more socially “moderate” than Republicans, less fiscally profligate than Democrats.

    This particular Indie would term the average ‘conservative’ voting Republican a piker.

    Indies are united only in despising the majors unequally.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  102. I will have to check that article out. Thank you for the link.

    tye (23c02c)

  103. 102. As vile and detestable as Kerry is, he is no BHO.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  104. How about the middle class? If I’m paying 35% and a millionaire (is he only a millionaire?) like Romney is using fancy rich people methods to pay a much smaller rate than I am…

    So, Tye, do you think the same government that makes the rules that rich people use to their tax-rate advantage is going to do a better job for the middle class if we just give them more things over which to rule?

    MayBee (df59c2)

  105. 103. “That could be a problem for Romney with Democrats and independents who don’t earn much money, but only if those voters believe in class warfare.”

    Rather than highlite the danger for Romany I think the play he’s making is to appear sufficiently harmless as to provide no alarm. “Moderates” may not vote for Willard but neither will they be motivated to chose to double down on stupidity.

    It’s like playing to decimate the field in chess(not the proper terminology). Trade pieces early with a pawn advantage.

    A number of Obots will find in the booth they just can’t.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  106. The Obamas could give much more to their daughters, or they could refuse to take the tax advantage they get from giving their daughters money.

    They don’t. They tax advantage of the tax code, an action frequently referred to as using “loopholes”.

    Once Obama leaves office, what do you think his tax advisors will tell him to do with his millions?
    Invest only in US companies? Pay the full tax rate possible on every penny? Keep all of his money with someone like his patriotic friend, John Corzine?

    MayBee (df59c2)

  107. “Remember, he can’t get elected and begin his war on the middle class without first courting their vote

    tye is repeating Fauxcahontas’ rhetoric now.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  108. tye,

    It’s not patriotic to legally avoid paying taxes? Now you’re preaching to your base.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  109. Not patriotic to legally avoid taxes … you sure, tye? Can I get Turbo Tax Geithner’s opinion on that?

    SPQR (b30c98)

  110. If I were a democratic party strategist I would play the angle that while Romney was avoiding his taxes. Our boys in the service were walking around without proper armor due to underfunding. Swift boating’s a b*tch. Thank Karl Rove.

    And one could most certainly argue that paying your taxes is a civic/patriotic duty.

    tye (d36084)

  111. The point being that President Obama engages in perfectly legal tax avoidance strategies too; while smoking his dope, snorting his coke, and eating his dogs.

    luagha (1de9ec)

  112. Geithner illegally did not pay his taxes, Kerry fraudulently claimed his luxury yacht was in another state to illegally dodge Massachusetts taxes and tye thinks that legally avoiding taxes is an issue.

    This is the brazen hypocrisy of Democrats.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  113. 99- After the swift boat attacks I think we ought to leave Kerry alone.

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012

    You guys seem to have a huge problem with democrat politicians facing the music. Facing journalism and scrutiny.

    Kerry ran heavily on his service in Vietnam. His claims were vetted. He was shown to be disgraceful. This accurate exposure was deemed an unacceptable thing and now is referred to as though it’s something that Kerry was victimized by.

    Now we see Romney, whose candidacy is based heavily on Bain’s success, brought under scrutiny for anything about that success people might not like.

    After looking over that issue and comparing it to Obama’s record, Romney looks like the right one to vote for. But I’m OK with any candidate coming under scrutiny, unlike Tye, who seems to think it isn’t OK for some candidates.

    I think this explains why Tye is overlooking millionaire Obama’s tax avoidance.

    Obama got rich by being a connected politician who wrote books about himself. Romney got rich in business. Both pay the lowest tax they can, as does everyone in this thread and we all know it.

    Dustin (73fead)

  114. My guess is that Romney’s financial records would be eye opening to the middle class. No tax breaks for you… only my rich friends who already hide the bulk of their wealth in other countries. You don’t have to be a liberal to find that distasteful.

    tye (d36084)

  115. I’m not going to argue the Kerry deal here. Suffice it to say that any Democratic candidate has the right to play as dirty as they want. I’m sure we could find a Democratic Karl Rove to round people up to swear that Romney is into drugs and hookers. Who cares if it’s true. Rove didn’t care and it worked.

    tye (d36084)

  116. Daschle, Mr. Sebelius, and one other were unavailable for comment, it’s funny when a single
    big player, evades taxes, the World Bank suspends the entire country’s borrowing privileges,

    narciso (ee31f1)

  117. tye’s fantasy life, wherein Karl Rove is the master villain, is rather bizarre.

    Here’s a clue, tye, Kerry really did fraudulently register his yacht in another state. Geithner really did fail to pay required taxes on income.

    Your bizarre belief that those are figments of Karl Rove’s evil conspiracy is just more evidence of your failure to get past seventh grade.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  118. #118, Well, there you have it, Suffice it to say that any Democratic candidate has the right to play as dirty as they want.

    Just what the American voter wants to hear from people who’re asking us to trust them with high office.

    ropelight (39bde3)

  119. Is Tye, the figment of our imagination, after some bad chinese food.

    narciso (ee31f1)

  120. I’m not running for high office ropelight. I’m not actually Obama.

    tye (138f36)

  121. Ok, let me see if I have this straight.

    1. Romney uses “tax shelters.” Which we know about because he’s not hiding his income, and presumably if we know about it so does the IRS.

    This is supposed to be bad.

    2. Obama hires tax cheats. Obama will force me into a risk pool so my premiums can pay for the health care of some of the millions of uninsured he keeps talking about, then will lie to my face and say it’s really about “personal responsibility. While Senators are bragging on the Senate floor about how they’ve engineered a massive wealth transfer masquerading as “personal responsibility.”

    And if I don’t join the collective, Obama will tax me. Then lie to my face that it’s not a tax.

    Hmm. That’s some tough choice I’ll be facing in November.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  122. 118. “I’m not going to argue the Kerry deal here.”

    Certainly not, staying on message is key. Regardless of the post.

    “Suffice it to say”

    Improper phraseology, to one and all.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  123. I love the ‘Romney needs to release all records because I bet we’ll find The Truth!!!!!!!’ meme from democrats who rolled their eyes at such request about Obama practically minutes ago.

    Sure, of course we should see all of Romney’s records. And it’s even worse that we haven’t seen Obama’s yet, as he’s been prez for a while and has some interesting connections requiring scrutiny.

    But yeah, let’s have both presidential candidates agree to release all records, answer all questions, and make sure we elect the least bad one.

    Dustin (73fead)

  124. You can’t blame Obama for hiring a tax cheat unbeknownst to him… just like the voters of Massachusetts can’t be blamed for electing a hooker fiend.

    tye (138f36)

  125. Steve’s right.

    The democrat party doesn’t have any credibility on lawful tax evasion if the IRS is currently run by an unlawful tax evader Treasury Secretary.

    Dustin (73fead)

  126. The democratic party*

    tye (138f36)

  127. You can’t blame Obama

    I hear that one a lot. Generally about his decisions, as is the case this time.

    And who is the Treasury Secretary today? Is it someone we all know unlawfully skipped paying his taxes? Yes. But you can’t blame Obama. For anything.

    It’s amusing how the kool aid just sloshes right out of some partisans. In the same breath they treat all Republicans like devils as they refuse to accept even proven problems with democrats (or vice versa).

    Dustin (73fead)

  128. Tye seems determined to be banned.

    JD (f5b0a4)

  129. But, it’s for the chilllllldren.

    See? BHO wins and will get to call the naysayers mean and extreme.

    Ed from SFV (3b0f25)

  130. There’s not much democratic about Obamacare or billing all democrat party programs to people who can’t vote yet (and many of whom haven’t been born).

    Calling the democrat party “democratic” is Orwellian and dishonest.

    Dustin (73fead)

  131. “You can’t blame Obama for hiring a tax cheat unbeknownst to him”

    tye – Sure you can. Obama chose to go ahead with Geithner’s nomination after he discovered he was a tax cheat. Now it turns out he was at the center of this big LIBOR fraud as well.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  132. 131- hey I’m just doing a little swift boating. The water was nice enough for you to take a ride in 04. Not now?

    tye (138f36)

  133. And just to reiterate: Obama’s cabinet pick over the IRS is a tax cheat.

    The democrat party’s credibility on its freakout that Romney lawfully arranged the lowest tax rate like anyone would = zero.

    Dustin (73fead)

  134. But you can’t blame Obama.

    All of this is Bush’s fault.

    Dustin (73fead)

  135. Maybe if Romney had broken the law when reducing how much tax he paid, instead of going by the book, Obama would have given him a cabinet position?

    Dustin (73fead)

  136. Swiftboating – For normal people definition: the revelation that a candidates own claims of valor are exaggerated. For Democrats: claiming that the truthful discussion of a Democratic candidates’ own claims is illegitimate because that candidate got caught exaggerating and fabricating.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  137. why does obama have to resort to swiftboating when he has a record to run on?

    he should up and tell people how he made the food stamps flow like wine and honey and about all the multiplier effects… America has never seen such a food stamp bounty in all of history!

    And yet all obama wants to talk about are these silly SEC filings he doesn’t even understand.

    Someone please to explain.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  138. “I’m John Kerry… and I’m REPORTING FOR DUTY!”

    LOL.

    Dustin (73fead)

  139. 134- ohhh the tax thing is an argument from four years ago. Yawn.

    tye (138f36)

  140. 141- gwb reporting for duty. LOL
    i heard the skies over Omaha were especially perilous.

    tye (138f36)

  141. “The Obamas have made annual gifts of $24,000 to each daughter since 2007, which means each girl now has $144,000 excluding interest. That’s a nice little nest egg for 12 and 15. How will independents feel about that?”

    DRJ – Don’t forget that under various of President Class Warfare’s proposals the income on the maxed out gifts made under those loopholes will be potentially taxed at lower rates than to Michelle and Barack, costing the government even more money.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  142. ohhh the tax thing is an argument from four years ago.

    ?

    Are arguments just tricks for winning elections, or are they principled views on issues?

    Why would we just ignore something because it pertained to a different election?

    This reminds me of how Bill Clinton’s draft dodging was no big deal, yet Kerry’s service to his country was the most important thing a few years later (And laid the ground for the disgusting Rathergate lie).

    It’s like you’re a nihilist. I gotta ask: why even support democrats in the first place if you have to flip your arguments based on what the election theme is?

    Dustin (73fead)

  143. tye, if you are ridiculing George W. Bush’s air national guard service, you are (still) a moron.

    The F102 interceptor had the highest accident rate of any USAF aircraft. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots.

    To repeat, you are a moron.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  144. Oh goody! A big bowl of class warfare to enjoy with a cup of coffee to start the new week*.

    *I started to use the phrase “work week” up there, but thought better of it because under this president’s policies (and of others of his party) for far too many millions of Americans Monday is just like any other day of the week. I sorta think that jobs, optimism, and getting the nation back on a better more positive track is what people are going to be voting for in November. Axelrod’s petty little class envy meme looks stupid, weak and desperate and is making even many democrat pols nervous as they watch the Obama campaign’s narcissism and infantilism dragging down the ticket.

    elissa (43f6a3)

  145. “134- ohhh the tax thing is an argument from four years ago. Yawn.”

    tye – The Bain argument is from 2002 when he ran fro Governor. Double yawn.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  146. Indeed, elissa, the real “war on the middle class” is the devastation that Obama’s policies have wrought on their income, their increasing tax burden and the employment prospects of their children.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  147. Business and taxes baffle democrats and regurgitards such as tye.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  148. If you look in the dictionary under “lying weasel”, that’s the picture.

    Space Cockroach (8096f2)

  149. He’s like the ‘ferret’ with the nut, in ‘Ice Age’

    narciso (ee31f1)

  150. this campaign is boring so far

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  151. You can’t blame Obama for hiring a tax cheat unbeknownst to him

    Seriously? You can’t blame Obama because he didn’t do a thorough background investigation on someone he nominated to his cabinet?

    Then you can’t blame Romney for anyone he hired at Bain, or anything that Bain did.

    What a putz.

    Chuck Bartowski (3bccbd)

  152. Did I read up thread somewhere that somebody doesn’t like it much when rethuglicans refer to their political opposition as the “Democrat” party? Lol. No really. LOL

    elissa (43f6a3)

  153. 139. Swiftboating – For normal people definition: the revelation that a candidates own claims of valor are exaggerated. For Democrats: claiming that the truthful discussion of a Democratic candidates’ own claims is illegitimate because that candidate got caught exaggerating and fabricating.

    Comment by SPQR — 7/16/2012 @ 8:08 am

    I love it; liberals hate the truth so much they come up with what they hope are derogatory terms for it.

    What’s next? Elizabeth Warren was “cherokeed” because some cherokees took offense that some WASP faked a claim to Indian heritage so she could get an affirmative action job with attendant promotions?

    By the way, do you remember that episode of MASH where Major Burns tried to put himself in for a Purple Heart by claiming he got a “shell fragment” in his eye during combat? And it turned out the “shell fragment” was from an egg he was trying to cook when he got freaked out by the sound of some distant artillery fire?

    Kerry’s tales of heroism reminded me of nothing so much as that show. Hawkeye Pierce, the original “swiftboater.”

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  154. i heard the skies over Omaha were especially perilous.

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 8:14 am

    In the F-102, yes, it was tremendously perilous. The AV8B Harrier is know as a particularly dangerous jet to fly, and the Delta Dagger had a higher death rate than even that.

    Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG

    IOW, much more dangerous than sitting in your parent’s basement typing on the internet.

    TomB (4a72e4)

  155. ____________________________________________

    I’m not going to argue the Kerry deal here.

    Yep, nothing worse than the stench, phoniness and hypocrisy of limousine liberals. But the following, noted in some posts above, really is a minor flap compared with the apparently blatant tax cheating done by Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury and current head of the IRS.

    Again, the ironies associated with — and the two-faced nature of — the left are too thick to cut with even a thick knife.

    bostonherald.com, July 2010:

    Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.

    Isabel – Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage – was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine. But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern.

    Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven – like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau – for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners?

    Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

    Mark (9f519d)

  156. ==Seriously? You can’t blame Obama because he didn’t do a thorough background investigation on someone he nominated to his cabinet?==

    Chuck, this inevitably happened when the “Office of the President-elect” had already used up its resources and worked its staff’s fingers to the bone on oppo research to expose the world to McCain’s “affair” with a lobbyist and Sarah Palin’s fake pregnancy. I mean people can only be reasonably expected to do so much!

    elissa (43f6a3)

  157. 99- After the swift boat attacks I think we ought to leave Kerry alone.
    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 5:30 am

    — After the anti-Mormon attacks I think you ought to leave Romney alone. Fair?

    If I were a democratic party strategist I would play the angle that while Romney was avoiding his taxes. Our boys in the service were walking around without proper armor due to underfunding.
    — Your willingness to lie so easily should put you at the top of the list for that position. Apply today!

    And one could most certainly argue that paying your taxes is a civic/patriotic duty.
    — Since Romney has paid more in taxes AND given more to charity in one year than you will during your entire lifetime, I guess that makes Mitt some kind of super-patriot, huh.

    My guess is that Romney’s financial records would be eye opening to the middle class. No tax breaks for you
    — Yeah, it’s too bad the middle class gets no tax breaks for things like marriage, or having kids, or home ownership, or running a home-based business, or any of that other ‘American Dream’ stuff. Oh wait . . .

    only my rich friends who already hide the bulk of their wealth in other countries.
    — If YOU know where it is, then he hasn’t done a very good job of ‘hiding’ it.

    I’m not going to argue the Kerry deal here. Suffice it to say that any Democratic candidate has the right to play as dirty as they want.
    — Yet another variation of the “he started it!” excuse.

    I’m sure we could find a Democratic Karl Rove to round people up to swear that Romney is into drugs and hookers. Who cares if it’s true. Rove didn’t care and it worked.
    — You’re a bit confused: Barry Soetoro was drugs, Slick Willie was hoes.

    I’m not running for high office ropelight. I’m not actually Obama.
    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 7:44 am

    — If you WERE Obama you would be running for office while high.

    You can’t blame Obama for hiring a tax cheat unbeknownst to him… just like the voters of Massachusetts can’t be blamed for electing a hooker fiend.
    — Well of course not! To have properly vetted someone would involve taking personal responsibility for something, and we all know that no good Democrat is going to do that.

    Icy (de8c71)

  158. The F102 interceptor had the highest accident rate of any USAF aircraft. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots.

    To repeat, you are a moron.

    Comment by SPQR — 7/16/2012 @ 8:20 am

    Damn you to hell for stealing my thunder, and damn me for typing so slow.

    And yes, tye is a particularly vile kind of moron, ridiculing dead fighter pilots.

    TomB (4a72e4)

  159. ___________________________________________

    liberals hate the truth so much

    I still can’t help but snicker when I recall the left getting so defensive and resentful about criticism aimed at Michael Dukakis for his policy of releasing convicted murderers on weekend furloughs. As though that controversy was somehow above criticism and an unfair dig at a politician.

    Liberals started to use the tagline of “Willie Horton” not as a way to illustrate a proper, fair slam at a Democrat/liberal, but as a controversy tinged with — in their mind — the unfairness and dishonesty of “swifboating.”

    Mark (9f519d)

  160. TomB is right.

    The men who died piloting F-102A were not cowards or less heroic than other veterans who died for their country.

    What was your MOS, Tye? You must be a pretty stout badass to roll your eyes at someone’s military service. Just kidding. Those few truly badass veterans I’ve met have never behaved that way. That’s how insecure people behave. Either those who washed out as privates or never served in the first place.

    Unfortunately, I don’t think military service is a de facto prerequisite for the presidency these days. I think it should be, but I’m well out of step.

    Dustin (73fead)

  161. 131- hey I’m just doing a little swift boating. The water was nice enough for you to take a ride in 04. Not now?
    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 8:04 am

    — Compare and contrast this ^^^

    With this:
    134- ohhh the tax thing is an argument from four years ago. Yawn.
    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 8:11 am

    and this:
    141- gwb reporting for duty. LOL
    i heard the skies over Omaha were especially perilous.
    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 8:14 am

    — If it’s something that ‘our side’ did in the past it’s fair game. If it’s something their side did it’s old news.

    Hypocricize much?

    Icy (de8c71)

  162. Some question how the Obama administration can make so many hypocritical accusations and remain above being held to account. Consider the outsourcing accusations which have already been proven false by factcheck dot org, while the Obama administration counters with taxpayer cash to green jobs being outsourced by his administration. And here Axelrod is complaining about one rich guy using tax loopholes while contending our millionaire President doesn’t while he clearly does. The answer to why they keep up the hypocritical accusations is because they can. The press doesn’t want to upset the apple cart of the Obama reelection campaign. There job isn’t reporting the news or questioning hypocrisy, there job is reelecting the president.

    Duude (6d3b30)

  163. Outsourcing, Duude? The Obama administration is outsourcing our space program. A Russian spacecraft took our astronaut to our Space Station last week.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  164. Dats Our Prez! Slashing NASA’s budget while simultaneously hiring thousands more IRS employees.

    Icy (de8c71)

  165. 131- hey I’m just doing a little swift boating. The water was nice enough for you to take a ride in 04. Not now?

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 8:04 am

    What do you mean by swift boating?

    Gerald A (b00ac1)

  166. I see that the Big Lie approach continues apace.

    physics geek (6669a4)

  167. For those keeping score at home, Hot Air has a new update and progress report on last month’s hideous Obama bridal registry fundraising scheme. It’s worth a read. (Hint: surprisingly, it’s not going over very well.)

    elissa (43f6a3)

  168. 101. Compare those numbers (tax on $300,000) which can easily be explained through giving a gift to your daughters to the unknown amount that Romney has hidden from the government for tax purposes. Again, this will not be an easy sell for independents. Independents will figure out that Romney is stashing a lot more than $24,000 in those accounts. It’s not illegal, but not exactly patriotic to snake your way through the tax code.

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 5:29 am

    What independents won’t have any trouble figuring out is that you’re a fool, and so is anybody else who tries to run with this obvious BS. Hidden from the government? Are you serious? He told the effin’ IRS, dude. He reported these accounts and paid taxes on them. If he hadn’t, that would be illegal. Only a complete idiot can work into a single paragraph both that Romney was hiding money from the government AND that he did nothing illegal.

    Congratulations. You made the cut.

    102. 99- After the swift boat attacks I think we ought to leave Kerry alone.

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 5:30 am

    Right. We need to leave Kerry alone. Sure, he attempted to prostitute his overly inflated record for votes. But that was sooo long ago and, ok, he threw those medals away. Once. When that was the politically advantageous thing to do. Then reacquired them as the political winds shifted and throwing away your medals while lying his ass off along with some other fake veterans during his “winter warrior” tour wasn’t the same hot idea it once was.

    No, we don’t need to talk about that.

    We need to talk about whether Mitt Romney cut some kids hair in high school 50 years ago. That’s front page news. Because people are talking about it.

    Independents won’t have any trouble figuring this out. The joke’s on you.

    You can’t blame Obama for hiring a tax cheat unbeknownst to him

    A reading from the Book of Obvious; only someone completely in the tank for Obama buys this guys’ crap anymore. Yeah, we can’t blame Obama. Just because all those other administrations used that obscure, little-known device called a “background investigation” because, and I’m sure this escaped your eagle-like gaze, EVERY prior administration has been blamed for precisely this kind of thing doesn’t mean we can hold the amateur Chicago Jesus to anything remotely resembling a standard of competence.

    I mean, if he could sit through 20 years of sermons from Reverend Wright and not have a clue what the guy was spouting off about then I’m sure he’d miss little details about his Treasury Secretary’s taxes.

    At least, that’s how it looks to you, tye. But here on planet Earth any creature with an IQ of a venus flytrap or higher realizes that Obama doesn’t check for facts because he doesn’t have any use for facts. You’d buy it if he tells you no one in his campaign was even aware that they were collecting illegal donations from Palestinians. The rest of us realize his campaign disabled the security features on his web site that would have made them aware of those donations precisely so he could collect them and claim ignorance.

    He lies about Romney being a felon for making false claims to the SEC about whether or not he was in charge at Bain. Just likes he lies when he insinuates he didn’t report his “secret” Swiss accounts. Which is an especially amusing lie when at the very moment he’s using it his campaign is conducting a fundraiser in Switzerland with George Clooney heading things up.

    Complete idiots lap that up.

    The rest of us realize he’s actually in charge of the SEC and the IRS, and if Romney actually committed some misdeeds we’d damn sure know about it. Joe the Plumber exposed Obama’s lying socialist nature in a two minute conversation, and the next day we knew about his taxes.

    These things just fly by you without ever attracting your attention, don’t they?

    But if anyone’s lying to the American public about whether he was or wasn’t in charge of something, it’s King Putt.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  169. Comment by SPQR — 7/16/2012 @ 9:09 am

    Outsourcing the space program to the Russians, great call. To quote Lloyd Bentsen, “[He’s] no Jack Kennedy”.

    I suggested two answers to “tye” last week, and were this a republic or democracy he would be gone, but as a benevolent dictatorship, our host, almost as kind as Painted Jaguar’s Mummy, allows such rudeness to be present.

    Which calls for me to reprise my second suggestion, for those so inclined, that we give the ignoring treatment. But again, I know some enjoy whack a moletroll, though others are annoyed wading through it to find the thoughtful stuff.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  170. Comment by DRJ — 7/16/2012 @ 5:38 am

    In the Dem/Lib/Left/Prog lexicon, anyone with a job in the private sector is “rich”!
    Gov’t employees are “struggling public servants”, and those receiving “transfer payments” are beneficiaries of the safety net.

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  171. fter the swift boat attacks I think we ought to leave Kerry alone.

    After the sba’s, he should have been staked to an ant-hill in the Mekong Delta, and left to rot.

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  172. Tye steps on his crank yet again:

    36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes

    Ooooops.

    TomB (4a72e4)

  173. 146- you’re claiming gwb’s patrols over Nebraska to be more dangerous than Kerry actually being shot at in patrols in Vietnam. Oh sweetie…. read that again… if you were saying this as 5 year old child it would be darling. As an adult, not so much…

    tye (9c7f7d)

  174. Quit lying

    JD (f5b0a4)

  175. ___________________________________________

    progress report on last month’s hideous Obama bridal registry fundraising scheme

    Speaking of which, I notice the Obama campaign has been inserting a variety of small ads into any number of websites. One of the recent ads is something about the reader, in order to wish Barack “happy birthday,” should click on the link. Lame and silly — and I’d feel no differently even if Obama were a rock-ribbed Republican — a mix of a weird cult-of-personality and the dumbing down of the presidency.

    We live in the age of bad reality TV and a bad-reality-TV White House.

    Don’t cry for us, Argentina.

    Mark (9f519d)

  176. MD, the interesting question, of course, is why “tye” keeps posting.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  177. Has John Kerry ever given the Swift Boat Veterans the apology he owes them, Tye?

    Dustin (73fead)

  178. It is amusing to me that in the same thread in which we are claiming Kerry inflated his war record for votes (lie) we are lauding dubya for flying a plane over Nebraska (when he bothered to show) with a slightly higher than average crash record. You call me a hypocrite? Ha!!!

    I drive to work every day. Cars crash. We are currently in a war. I am a war hero. I used the same logic you used to laud dubya. Fools.

    tye (27423b)

  179. 146- you’re claiming gwb’s patrols over Nebraska to be more dangerous than Kerry actually being shot at in patrols in Vietnam. Oh sweetie…. read that again… if you were saying this as 5 year old child it would be darling. As an adult, not so much…

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 9:53 am

    Odd, the term “Kerry” is not even in that post. It merely shows you do not know what you are talking about when you ridicule fighter pilots for being in a safe job.

    TomB (4a72e4)

  180. Today’s narrative, and whenever there’s not another faceplant available:

    http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/16/news/economy/zombie-economy/index.htm?iid=Lead

    We’ve been growing, boomer’s have been cashing in and retiring, every one else is doing worse, the dog ate my homework, granmama #9 died suddenly, we had no friggen idea how bad it really was,…

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  181. Almost a year ago, 26/7/11, Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker posted an article related to John Kerry’s campaign spokesman and his claims of valor.

    Kerry spokesman stripped of Silver Star

    John F. Kerry almost became president running on the basis of his alleged heroism in Vietnam. Thanks to the efforts of a group of truth-tellers, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, the serious holes in the fantasy narrative propounded by the Kerry campaign came to the attention of enough Americans that John Kerry was not the first faux-Irish President of the United States.

    One of Kerry’s enablers in propounding his imaginary heroism was a man named Wade Sanders, who himself held a Silver Star, and who introduced Kerry to the Democratic Convention. Scott Swett, who was central to the unraveling of the Kerry storyline, tells us that the Kerry enabler has been exposed for what he is. His Winter Soldier site has the details:

    John Kerry was introduced at the 2004 Democratic National Convention by Wade Sanders, a retired Navy Captain and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy who served as a Swift Boat officer in Vietnam. Like Kerry, Sanders was the recipient of a Silver Star for gallantry in action. During the 2004 campaign, Sanders functioned as Kerry lead attack dog against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, repeatedly denouncing the veterans on the air as liars and comparing them to Nazi propagandists.

    Wade Sanders is now in Federal prison, serving a 37-month sentence for possessing child pornography. Now the Navy Times reports that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has revoked Sanders’ Silver Star. The highly unusual decision appears unrelated to Sanders’ felony conviction. A Navy spokesman cited “subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself.” John Kerry has to be hoping this doesn’t become a trend.

    Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/kerry_spokesman_stripped_of_silver_star.html#ixzz20o2F61js

    ropelight (39bde3)

  182. remember when that dude flew off the luge track at an incredibly fast speed and bonked his head on a pole and died?

    this when-did-he-leave-Bain thing isn’t like that.

    It’s just boring.

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  183. 182. Bud o’ mine, retired Lieutenant Cmdr., exec of destroyer escort, said between fly boys and his peers he always gave more credit to the former.

    First son sonar tech, second marine air traffic, third not ready.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  184. ____________________________________________

    the interesting question, of course, is why “tye” keeps posting.

    I’m not being sarcastic or glib when I wonder if people like him are genetically the way they are. IOW, is their brain intrinsically wired to the left? So much so that no matter what reality and tough truths confront them, in order to satisfy their liberal emotions, they can’t help but adhere to some leftist way of thinking.

    I was talking to two dyed-in-the-wool Democrats several days ago, and, believe me, a ton of bricks could fall on their head and they’d still be rock-ribbed liberals. However, I notice they have more recently taken the tack of harping on the negatives of Romney instead of tinkling over and touting the wonderful qualities of Obama, as they did back in 2008 or not even too many months ago.

    Mark (9f519d)

  185. MD–As you know, I am on board with both the “ignore him” and the “don’t let him threadjack” approach. I think his presence today though, in a strangely unexpected way has been unusually helpful in parsing this campaign. The smallness, idiocy, hypocrisy, pettiness and utter weakness of all the left’s current campaign talking points when viewed in toto through the lens of tye’s various “sayings” can only reassure the rest of us. It boggles the mind how far off the mark the Axelrod campaign is from where Americans’ minds and pocketbooks are.

    elissa (43f6a3)

  186. 180- I didn’t realize that being slandered and having your presidential candidacy ruined by lies required an apology. Do the families of the murdered have to apologize to the murderer in your world? Only if they’re republicans?

    tye (27423b)

  187. I didn’t realize that being slandered and having your presidential candidacy ruined by lies required an apology

    It doesn’t. But doesn’t John Kerry owe the Swift Boat Vets an apology? He should get on his knees and apologize to them.

    Dustin (73fead)

  188. Unintentional irony alert. Calling someone a “felon” is kind of slanderous, isn’t it?

    But see, that is what trolls are about. I think that this one doesn’t even, well, think.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  189. It boggles the mind how far off the mark the Axelrod campaign is from where Americans’ minds and pocketbooks are.

    and where their fears and anxieties are

    people are scared, and they’re not scared about Romney’s investment choices they’re scared their kid will never find a job and they’re scared about what happens if they lose theirs and they’re scared their parents are running through their retirement monies too quickly cause they can’t earn a return on their retirement fund in food stamp america

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  190. “I drive to work every day. Cars crash. We are currently in a war. I am a war hero. I used the same logic you used to laud dubya.”

    tye – You admit you get paid by the government to comment here?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  191. But again, I know some enjoy whack a moletroll, though others are annoyed wading through it to find the thoughtful stuff.

    Comment by MD in Philly — 7/16/2012 @ 9:44 am

    Hmm. I hope that wasn’t aimed at me. I thought the self-immolating argument tye was trying to advance was so laugh out loud ridiculous it deserved ridicule. And so I thoughtfully held up for public ridicule the notion that one can hide an investment from the government and not be doing anything illegal.

    That’s only not illegal if you’re Timmy Geithner or Chuck Rangel. For the rest of us, hiding money from the government as well as any proceeds from that investment is illegal. It always has been, although the IRS and DoJ did have an amnesty period for people who were actually hiding money as long as they came clean and paid all their back taxes.

    Romney was not one of those people. The insinuations that the Obama administration is making, and that tye is so gullible as to believe and repeat like a parakeet, is patently absurd. As tye demonstrates, you have to be completely incapable of forming a coherent thought as a prerequisite to buying into it.

    This administration lies so casually they apparently are deaf to the fact their lies are obvious falsehoods. Completely unbelievable if you have two brain cells to rub together.

    Now they’re insinuating Romney lied to the SEC, and thus may have committed a felony. Of course, it’s just a vile rumor their spreading, and as they spread it they attempt to wash their hands of it by claiming only Romney can say if he committed a felony. Not even the WaPo will attempt to put lipstick on this pig for their boyfriend in the WH.

    First of all, HELLO! The feds are exactly the people who get to say if Romney committed a federal felony by lying on his SEC filings. That’s we we have an SEC, to ride herd on that sort of thing.

    And guess who theoretically is the chief executive over the SEC? As well as the DoJ and IRS?

    These guys prosecute people for lying on these filings all the time. Even a difference of opinion will get you into hot water. There was a company in Texas that the SEC accused of lying to its shareholders in a a required communication. Actually the company had a perfectly valid position on the likely success of a new venture, but the SEC won and now a couple of former executives have felony records.

    So for the Obama administration to insinuate Romney is a felon is basically to admit they’re a bunch of clueless incompetents who don’t even know what the role of the federal government is let alone how to perform it.

    I find he irony especially delicious because recall what the Obama administration and the rest of the Dems in the peanut gallery did following passage of ObamaCare. When companies such as Caterpillar and AT&T announced huge losses to their stockholders as a result, the all accused them of lying for political purposes.

    Apparently the community organizer in chief wasn’t aware, then, that lying when making a required disclosure to shareholders is a criminal offense. The only possible explanation is that they don’t realize that not everyone gets to lie with impunity when committing on-the-job misfeasance, malfeasance, and non-feasance while collecting a fat paycheck like politicians can get away with.

    I enjoyed the spectacle as these fools made very public fools of themselves; threatening to hold hearings and put these “corporate fat cats” on the spot and “expose” their lies. Things built up to a crescendo as these people played to their base, all the while not realizing the joke was on them.

    Then it came to its inevitable, obvious conclusion. And by that I mean I’m sure it came as a complete surprise to tye and his fellow lobotomy patients. Somebody finally took these idiots aside and told them these CEOs actually have to know the rules as there are consequences for them if they don’t. That they weren’t lying, they were announcing the losses as required, and in fact they’d be committing a crime if they were lying.

    Those hearings quietly got cancelled. I’m sure the Obamatons still haven’t figured out why.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  192. 180- I didn’t realize that being slandered and having your presidential candidacy ruined by lies required an apology.

    Comment by tye — 7/16/2012 @ 10:18 am

    What lies are that?

    TomB (4a72e4)

  193. Odd, the term “Kerry” is not even in that post. It merely shows you do not know what you are talking about when you ridicule fighter pilots for being in a safe job.

    Comment by TomB

    Tye said something about Bush’s job that was simply untrue. Tye has to pretend you said something you didn’t in order to avoid the fact he was proven wrong.

    No one said Kerry being deployed briefly to Vietnam was safe. Of course that’s one of the reasons Kerry collected enough purple hearts to go home very quickly… something his brothers in arms deserve an apology for.

    Fear is natural and I do not agree with the draft. Kerry never should have been there in the first place. People like him can get the good people killed. Kerry’s behavior in France was disgusting and in my opinion a severe betrayal he also owes his brothers an apology for.

    Dustin (73fead)

  194. For those who can’t listen to Rush Limbaugh he just played a montage of media dingbats all comparing the swift boating of Kerry to what’s happening to Romney.

    Gerald A (b00ac1)

  195. I guess the “GWB reporting for duty” comment would have been funnier if GWB had actually been like Kerry and said that in his convention speech.

    MayBee (df59c2)

  196. The only time Bush seemed to be crowing about his service was when he donned a flight suit.

    Which I think is a reasonable thing to criticize. For the most part, I thought Bush was pretty humble about his service. I wish that attitude would come back in style, but everyone’s a narcissist these days.

    Dustin (73fead)

  197. 196. No one said Kerry being deployed briefly to Vietnam was safe. Of course that’s one of the reasons Kerry collected enough purple hearts to go home very quickly… something his brothers in arms deserve an apology for.

    Fear is natural and I do not agree with the draft. Kerry never should have been there in the first place. People like him can get the good people killed. Kerry’s behavior in France was disgusting and in my opinion a severe betrayal he also owes his brothers an apology for.

    Comment by Dustin — 7/16/2012 @ 10:25 am

    Dustin, all good points. I highlighted the parts I believe bear repeating. He was clearly a self-promoter and and “army of one.” He went to Vietnam clearly to advance his political career, put himself in for awards that he did not earn, and then for all intents and purposes abandoned his command as soon as he could catch a flight out.

    Seriously, his first Purple Heart was for a self-inflicted wound. Not an intentional one; one of his own grenades went off too close to the boat. None of the other two men with him reported taking enemy fire. In fact, the flat out denied that they had taken any return fire at all. The medical officer who treated him the next day for his “injury” was frankly amazed the piece of shrapnel from Kerry’s own grenade was still attached to him as it barely broke the skin. Kerry must have been really careful about preserving it so he could ensure it became a “matter of record.” The doc pulled the shard out before it fell out, then put a band-aid on “our hero.”

    No other officer would have done this. That’s why Kerry reminds me so much of the Frank Burns character in MASH. But it’s not really a laughing matter because the Navy didn’t send him their to collect medals. He had an obligation to his crew, but rather then fulfill that obligation he left them in a lurch just as soon as he was trained.

    Basically, if you’ve ever served then Kerry practically puts up a neon sign saying he’s a Blue Falcon. Which is “code” as the first word really stands for “buddy” and the second one beginning with “f” I’m sure you can figure out.

    Basically, I’m guessing he did his crew a favor by ridding them of his worthless carcass. I’m sure they weren’t sad seeing the back of him when he left. It’s remarkable to me that the very story of his “heroism” screams out that he was a waste of space as an officer.

    Of course, he went on to prove he wasn’t worthy of the uniform but entirely deserving of the Blue Falcon epithet during his “winter soldier” period of disgrace.

    Then he showed his lack of character again while running for President. His campaign manager wrote that Kerry told him he was “chilled” when Edwards told him he climbed up next to his dead son and laid next to him on the slab in the morgue, and promised the lad he would pay tribute to him by “serving” humanity.

    Kerry was “chilled” because Edwards told him that he had never spoken to anyone about that event until Edwards unburdened himself to Kerry. What was so chilling was Edwards had already told him that story, word for word, a couple of years previously. It turns out Edwards was a liar who was telling everyone that story when it could advance his interests. That he was telling so many people that story, each one whom Edwards assured was the only one who he told it to, that he couldn’t even keep straight who he had already told.

    And what did Kerry do after Edwards exposed himself as a liar and a fraud? Why, Kerry chose him as his running mate.

    Like attracts like, I suppose.

    I’m sure tye will be along any minute to claim you can’t blame Kerry for picking a liar and a fraud for his VP.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  198. tye, your fantasy life where the Swiftboat vets were liars is of a kind with the rest of the falsehoods you keep telling yourself.

    A friend of mine spent a FULL deployment in riverine ops in Vietnam. He is a lifelong Democrat and his opinion of Kerry was 90 % expletives. He voted Republican for the first time that year.

    But all of that is your attempt to hide Obama’s utter failure as President.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  199. What Axelrod does not want to talk about is that retail sales in the US dropped for the last two months.

    Obama – utter failure.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  200. Tye is playing Pied Piper again, leading everyone off the topic (Obama’s hypocrisy) to discuss the Swift Boat Vets.

    Chuck Bartowski (3bccbd)

  201. _____________________________________________

    I read the following and can’t help but go, “oh, my. Meanwhile, the sun is hot, the South Pole is cold.”

    This to me, in a nutshell, is the epitome of so much that reflects leftism and the nature of far too many liberals.

    John Kerry was introduced at the 2004 Democratic National Convention by Wade Sanders, a retired Navy Captain and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy who served as a Swift Boat officer in Vietnam…. During the 2004 campaign, Sanders functioned as Kerry lead attack dog against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

    Wade Sanders is now in Federal prison
    , serving a 37-month sentence for possessing child pornography. Now the Navy Times reports that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has revoked Sanders’ Silver Star. The highly unusual decision appears unrelated to Sanders’ felony conviction. A Navy spokesman cited “subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself.”

    Comment by ropelight — 7/16/2012 @ 10:11 am

    Mark (9f519d)

  202. Mr. Cap’n Ed says it was the *third* month of declining retail sales Mr. SPQR

    he has a picture

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  203. happyfeet, he is right. I was qouting Bloomberg News which often flaks for Obama.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  204. He went to Vietnam clearly to advance his political career

    Comment by Steve57 — 7/16/2012 @ 11:01 am

    I’ve read that when he volunteered for a Swift Boat command none had ever been sent to Vietnam. Then some time after that they started deploying them there. AFAIK he did not intend to go to Vietnam as his supporters claimed.

    Gerald A (b00ac1)

  205. Gerald, when first sent to Vietnam, the Swift boats were intended for coastal patrol and were thought too large for riverine ops. They spent months in quiet “blue water” operations before being ordered into the hotter action of “brown water” ops. A friend of mine spent his deployment in the smaller PBR boats like the one in the film Apocalyse Now.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  206. 190- dubya ought to get on his knees and apologize for using nepotism to shirk his duty to the American people. I’m sure that his defense of Omaha is of little consolation for the wives, sons, and daughters whose fathers died defending princess dubya’s freedom.

    Conservatives in general believe that the rich don’t have to do the dirty work in America. Paying taxes? Let the middle and lower classes do that. If it doesn’t leave them enough for dinner let them join the army and die protecting rich people’s tax breaks.

    tye (31bb43)

  207. Your claims are lies, tye. Again.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  208. the top 20% of income earners paid 70% of federal taxes in 2007, according to the most recent data available from the Congressional Budget Office

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  209. Recycled Nixon: Would you buy a used car from this man?

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  210. That is one example of what a liar tye is, happyfeet. The “rich” pay more income taxes in proportion to their share of income. I’ve posted those statistics often here.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  211. Getting back to the topic, my little troll:

    “…Paying taxes? Let the middle and lower classes do that….”

    First, 50% of Americans pay no Federal income taxes. Whoops!

    Then: how do you feel about tax shelters? Or raising political money overseas?

    Oh, that’s different, of course?

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  212. I bet the Obama girls will join the military. Then they can pay for their own college and donate to the US Treasury all that money their parents gifted them.

    MayBee (df59c2)

  213. AD, Mickey Kaus reports today on how GM is in trouble, so don’t buy a new car either.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  214. JP Morgen economists predict 1.5 % GDP growth for Q3 this year.

    The US can’t afford Obama.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  215. Chuck B. @#203–

    Are you sure you didn’t mean to say “pie-eyed piper”?

    elissa (a7a5f1)

  216. Short sale action on NYSE at nearly an all time high in anticipation of a disasterous Q3 for business.

    The US can’t afford the six months it is going to take us to get rid of Obama.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  217. I seem to recall Rezko gave Dog a sweet deal on his Chicago corner lot Victorian.

    Don’t suppose he declared the diff versus market as income?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  218. 210. Your claims are lies, tye. Again.

    Comment by SPQR — 7/16/2012 @ 11:42 am

    Point being, they’re not even good lies. They’re transparent, incoherent, self-defeating lies.

    Of course, that’s what this administration gives it’s water carriers to work with. So tye isn’t even starting out with good material. And he certainly isn’t smart enough to make up better crap on his own.

    I like how Mark Steyn characterized these idiotic attacks that the circular firing squad known as the Obama campaign. He calls them democratic exploding cigars. They keep blowing up in their faces.

    This is the guy telling Romney that he needs to be more transparent:

    WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama accepted an award for making the government more open and transparent – presented to him behind closed doors with no media coverage or public access allowed.

    The discrepancy between the honor and the circumstances under which it was delivered bothered open-government advocates in attendance, they said Thursday. They were even more perturbed when they discovered later that the meeting hadn’t even been listed on Obama’s public schedule, so there was no way for anyone to know about it.

    Axelrod’s clown car of a campaign is beyond parody.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  219. Steve57-
    No, I wasn’t referring to you.

    Elissa and others, yes, sometimes clarifying the ridiculous claims of some can be enlightening, it’s just that tye went over the limit last week and deserved some repercussions.

    regarding swiftboating, Kerry, etc….

    I don’t care if Kerry won a Medal of Honor, for real, legitimately…
    I also don’t care if GWBush fled to Canada to skip the draft and had his status cleared only through jimmy carter’s pardon of those who did so…

    John Kerry slandered the US military and I believe technically committed treason by associating with the N. Vietnamese while still being linked with the US military. Even if he didn’t commit treason, the principle is the same, and for him to try the “John Kerry reporting for duty” was obscene, only outdone by the way the press let him get away with it. If “they” thought his behavior was acceptable, they should have exposed his behavior- his Dick Cavett interview, etc., for all to see bright and clear.

    His hypocrisy was quick to be seen when he once again slandered the troops in Iraq after he lost the election. Kerry running as a war hero was an obscene joke because of his behavior once out of active duty, no matter how heroic his service was (which it wasn’t).

    Cryin’ out loud, doesn’t anybody remember anything pre-1980?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  220. SPQR- thanks for your many good comments

    tye, FWIW, back in the 60’s there was this island called Cuba that was a puppett of the USSR (soviet union, I think it is in Wikipedia) that we almost went to nuclear war over under JFK. What Bush and others doing was protecting nebraska and the Gulf states from Soviet made bomber attacks coming from Cuba

    Is there You tube of Kruschev pounding his shoe? Do you know who Kruschev was, tye?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  221. Comment by SPQR — 7/16/2012 @ 11:50 am

    My response to Insty’s post about GM:

    “New Government Motors:
    You just have to wonder when NGM will be returning to the Bankruptcy Court?
    Will it be before or after President Romney fire-sales the Federal Government’s stock?”

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  222. nice to see Portman manning up about the stupid law of the sea treaty

    oh do stop sobbing, Lugar, it’s unseemly

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  223. We haven’t even had time to talk about the emperor’s undoing of the Clinton legacy last week because of this other nonsense…

    look there, squirrels, otters, platypi…whatever…

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  224. 146- you’re claiming gwb’s patrols over Nebraska to be more dangerous than Kerry actually being shot at in patrols in Vietnam.
    — Actually, no one made that claim. You, on the other hand, falsely claimed that GWB never did anything dangerous during his military service.

    I drive to work every day. Cars crash. We are currently in a war. I am a war hero. I used the same logic you used to laud dubya. Fools.
    — Got some bad news for ya: just because you make “vroom vroom” sounds and hold your hands like you’re steering, the lady sitting in the the big chair at the front of the short bus is actually doing the driving.

    180- I didn’t realize that being slandered and having your presidential candidacy ruined by lies required an apology.
    — Now you know.

    Icy (de8c71)

  225. tyke should read this:
    http://thedonovan.com/archives/002441.html;

    or this:
    http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0185.shtml;

    this stands out:

    “…These close air support missions were also quite dangerous since they required low-level flight over armed ground troops. A total of 15 F-102 fighters were lost in Vietnam. Three were shot down by anti-aircraft or small arms fire, one was lost in air-to-air combat with a MiG-21, four were destroyed on the ground during Viet Cong mortar attacks, and the remainder succumbed to accidents.

    Such accidents were commonplace even under peacetime conditions given the inherent risk to a pilot’s life during any flight aboard a high-performance military jet. ANG members of the period who we’ve been able to locate indicate that only highly qualified pilot candidates were accepted for Delta Dagger training because it was such a challenging aircraft to fly and left little room for mistakes. According to the Air Force Safety Center, the lifetime Class A accident rate for the F-102 was 13.69 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours, and the rate was especially high during the early years of the plane’s service.

    This poor safety record may have been due in part to a deadly flaw in the aircraft’s design that caused an engine stall and loss of control under a certain combination of angle of attack and airspeed frequently encountered during takeoff. According to a former F-102 pilot we’ve interviewed, this problem caused the plane to roll inverted and resulted in several fatal crashes. Numerous accidents were also encountered during landing because of the plane’s steep angle of attack and high airspeed that reduced the pilot’s visibility and reaction time. These factors have traditionally been two of the primary disadvantages of delta wing aircraft and explain why the pure delta wing design was later abandoned. Today’s delta wing aircraft are typically equipped with leading edge extensions or canards and fly-by-wire control systems that improve safety and performance. Luckily, F-102 operators overcame these deficiencies thanks to good pilot training and control lockouts that prevented the plane from reaching extreme conditions, and the F-102 went on to become one of the safer fighters of its day.

    Regardless, the F-102 was still far more dangerous to fly than today’s combat aircraft. Compared to the F-102’s lifetime accident rate of 13.69, today’s planes generally average around 4 mishaps per 100,000 hours. For example, compare the F-16 at 4.14, the F-15 at 2.47, the F-117 at 4.07, the S-3 at 2.6, and the F-18 at 4.9. Even the Marine Corps’ AV-8B, regarded as the most dangerous aircraft in US service today, has a lifetime accident rate of only 11.44 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. The F-102 claimed the lives of many pilots, including a number stationed at Ellington during Bush’s tenure. Of the 875 F-102A production models that entered service, 259 were lost in accidents that killed 70 Air Force and ANG pilots…”

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  226. Not for nothing was it called “The Widowmaker”…

    Space Cockroach (8096f2)

  227. #88 is exactly right. Obama should be impeached.

    milowent (009b1e)

  228. Comment by MD in Philly — 7/16/2012 @ 12:32 pm

    Cryin’ out loud, doesn’t anybody remember anything pre-1980?

    I remember Watergate. Most of what we know as Watergate didn’t happen. We had a lot of false accusations against Nixon. There were some things that were true too, particularly his character. And some things that were bad that people pretended otherwise, like his isolation.

    They made accusations about his income taxes. none of that true.

    Just recently Woodward and Bernstein, on the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in,tried to argue that Nixon knew of the coverup. Getting the details, it was just as I suspected.

    The “proof” that Nixon knew of the payoffs to the brgkars was a March 21, 1973 tape. However, that tape clearly shows:

    1) Nixon did not know of any previous payoffs to the burglars.

    2) Nixon was lied to by John Dean. John Dean was asking for permission – but he had already given the money!

    3) Nixon was not told that Hunt was threatening to reveal anything about Watergate – but about the quite separate matter – yes, quite separate matter despite attempts to obfusticate this – quite separate matter of the break-in into Ellsberg’s psychiatrists’ office, which, although very clearly illegal under black letter law, and not at all allowed under the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as Senator Sam Ervin pointed out to John Ehrlichman, was nevertheless thought of by Nixon as a national security type thing, and not a crime that he or anybody else had committed.

    4) Nixon was suddenly informed about this and okayed to “buy time” – maybe even was playing alon with John Dean.

    All other contact with the Watergate burglars was done by John Dean at his won initiative there wass nobody higher in rank responsible.

    And by the way, Nixon did prevent false accusations against himself from being made (or sustained) by NOT burning the tapes.

    From the obituatry of John Caulfield, published kast month by the New York Times:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/jack-caulfield-bearer-of-a-watergate-message-dies

    By all accounts, in January 1973, Mr. Caulfield met with James McCord Jr., a former C.I.A. officer and one of the burglars in the Watergate break-in, to tell him that the White House was prepared to grant him clemency, money and a job in return for not testifying against members of the administration and accepting a prison sentence.

    Mr. Caulfield further told Mr. McCord that the president knew about their meeting and that its outcome would be transmitted to him.

    Testifying before the Senate Watergate committee in 1973, Mr. McCord said he was told that the clemency offer had come from “the highest levels of the White House.” Mr. Caulfield also appeared before the panel.

    The account appeared to link Nixon directly to efforts to cover up the White House’s involvement in the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972, the event that would lead to Nixon’s downfall.

    But Nixon denied the allegation, and transcripts of White House tapes did not show that he had been behind the offer. John W. Dean III, the White House counsel, told investigators that it was he who had authorized Mr. Caulfield to broach the matter with Mr. McCord, though Mr. Dean insisted that he had done so with the president’s knowledge.

    Can you imagine what people would be saying if Nixon had destroyed the tapes?

    Every single conversartion that John Dean had with Richard Nixon was recorded. Nixon never offered any clemency to anybody.

    And he was manipulated in the “Smoking gun” tape. He actually went along with hiding something that was already known: the fact that the burglars had worked for CREEP. As is argued in “Silent Coup” (which may be wrong about a lot of things) John Dean had clearly claimed to have discussed things with John Ehrlichman that he had not discussed so Ehrlichman was later in a meeting where he had no idea what was going on.

    Yes, this has been going on since Watergate, not Iran contra.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  229. Only the first line in the message above is a quote from MD.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  230. John Dean was, and is, a lying little bastard – and that’s the nicest thing I can say about him.

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  231. 190- dubya ought to get on his knees and apologize for using nepotism to shirk his duty to the American people.
    — A completely unsubstantiated lie, as per usual.

    I’m sure that his defense of Omaha is of little consolation for the wives, sons, and daughters whose fathers died defending princess dubya’s freedom.
    — Bringin’ the noise, bringin’ the hate.

    Conservatives in general believe that the rich don’t have to do the dirty work in America.
    — And this includes us NOT-rich conservatives?

    Paying taxes? Let the middle and lower classes do that
    — Conservatives want lower taxes for everyone. Here, let me put it in a way that will thrill and inform you:
    Conservatives want to ensure equality for the collective!

    If it doesn’t leave them enough for dinner let them join the army and die protecting rich people’s tax breaks.
    — All of a sudden having a government job is a bad thing?

    Icy (de8c71)

  232. What’s really wrong about the Axelrod Swiss bank intimations, is that things have changed, especially in Switzerland, and now honest Americans living in Europe are running into real trouble.

    http://www.aca.ch/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=466&Itemid=2

    http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/10/the-dark-side-of-anti-swiss-bank-account

    There is a link to a PDF of a April 2012 letter there

    In anticipation of the approaching dates when FATCA will apply, many FFIs have informed American clients that they are closing their accounts. These account closings relate to investment accounts, but also to retail accounts.

    It is not just bank accounts of Americans resident in the United States, but also Americans working and residing overseas in the country where the FFI operates that are being closed.

    Americans working abroad are also losing access to foreign pension plans and foreign life insurance contracts. Prepaid credit card companies are refusing Americans. Americans married to foreigners are being taken off of what was formerly a joint bank account, putting the American spouse into a very precarious financial position. American students studying abroad cannot open a bank account to pay tuition and living expenses and receive funds from the United States. Americans moving abroad for professional reasons face the same problem. U.S. companies aiming to establish presence abroad to sell U.S. products find it difficult to access FFIs.

    Furthermore, foreigners who move to the United States for professional reasons face forced closing of accounts in their country of origin, including demands to immediately liquidate their mortgages. FATCA leads to a severe decrease in the mobility of individuals towards the United States and of Americans towards the rest of the world.

    The reaction of the FFIs is normal self-defense on their part. It is comparable to the the reaction of U.S. domiciled banks which, following the passage of the Patriot Act, refuse to accept as clients Americans resident overseas because they have a foreign address. The reaction to FATCA is all the more radical because FATCA carries the threat of a confiscatory 30% withholding on the sale value of U.S. securities for the entire institution.

    Americans living abroad apparently, since 2001, have had difficulty opening a bank account in a U.S. based bank – and now they’ll have trouble opening up foreign bank accounts.

    It’s really imposisble now for tax evasion to take place – and it’s intimated Romney did that?

    Senator Durbin says there is another reason. The value of the Swiss franc.

    But I think there was a statement from the Romney campaign that this related to managing investments abroad – it was diversification – owning stock and businesses in iother countries.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  233. That April 2012 letter says:

    Americans find the complexity of filing tax forms with the IRS overwhelming and out of reach.

    It is impossible to insure that tax returns are totally compliant without competent professional tax specialists.

    In many foreign countries such services are not
    available. When they are available, they are very
    expensive, easily $ 2,000 or more, creating a heavy, unfair burden on all budgets, particularly since generally no U.S. income taxes are due.

    The general rule is foreign taxes are deductible. If the foreign taxes are higher no tax is due.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  234. 15. Well, to be fair Turbo Tax didn’t take account of his situation.

    He took care of income taxes but forgot about self-emplyment (Social Security and Medicare) tax.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  235. Comment by BfC — 7/15/2012 @ 2:08 pm

    And what about his spouse’s no-show job at the university medical center which seemed to track Obama’s political career.

    I believe that medical center was an Axelrod client. Axelrod probably got the job for Michelle Obama himself. In effect, actually, he lowered his fee to the hospital in exchange for this job.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  236. 27. Comment by Just Some Guy — 7/15/2012 @ 2:34 pm

    If you give your kid a car worth $20k, you’re on the hook.

    There’s also a lifetime exclusion, and support wouldn’t count anyway or otherwise all the food and toys should count too, no?

    I don’t know if anybody totals it up – this may be a case where the law is more struct tnan practicality permits.

    The idea is that gifts shouldn’t be used to avoid estate tax.

    Of course, it’s badly enforced, except on the rich, because most people don’t have enough money to get into this kind of tax trouble.

    It’s not complex. It’s actually quite sinister, and something most non-wealthy people don’t encounter: the government demands to take money from people just because they give money to their kids (or others)!

    The Obamas went under the limit so as to roll some money downhill to their daughters. Painting that as a tax dodge is ridiculous.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  237. I heard/read from somewhere the theory that the whole watergate break-in was about a personal issue concerning dean and had nothing to do with Nixon or the election, and then Dean covered up his tracks by making it look like he was the guy “coming clean”.

    And Alexander haig was spying on nixon for the Joint Chiefs of staff

    oh my,…

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  238. # paragraphs there are not mine, staring from Of course, “it’s badly enforced”

    The problem would happen years later, when calculating how much could be given and still fall under the lifetime cap. I don’t know if, in theory, people are supposed to keep records.

    Once they’ve hit the lifetime cap, then it becomes a different story.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  239. I mean, it always seemed to me that if watergate had anything to do with the election and politics and such, Nixon deserved to be impeached for stupidity, as there was no reason for “dirty tricks” even if one was prone to do such. why cheat in a basketball game if you are up by 40 with 10 seconds left?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  240. MD above has a good point. Obama illegally ended work requirements for welfare that was a great success from the Clinton administration reducing welfare roles.

    Obama wants more dependency on govt largesse not less.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  241. RE: Swiftboating.

    The veterans were going to get together and talk about John Kerry’s slander, but then they discovered that the citations on his medals did not comport with the facts (perhaps a widespread problem during the Vietnam War) and they got distracting into going after that.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  242. Other news today, Obama failed to submit a budget on time. Probably for the twin reasons of the Democrats failing to pass a budget to hide their immense spending from the public and because Obama’s budgets fail to get even Democratic votes.

    SPQR (b30c98)

  243. Kerry running as a war hero was an obscene joke because of his behavior once out of active duty, no matter how heroic his service was (which it wasn’t).

    Cryin’ out loud, doesn’t anybody remember anything pre-1980?

    Comment by MD in Philly — 7/16/2012 @ 12:32 pm

    I think the country agreed with you about Kerry’s candidacy being an obscene joke.

    But what I found so remarkable was that by bragging about his his record he revealed that he was a disgrace as an officer.

    He saw more combat than anyone in his crew. Which is odd, as they were all on the same boat. Of course, he spent Christmas in Cambodia while the rest of his crew spent it in Vietnam so I guess in Kerryland anything’s possible.

    Still going by the standard that a good naval officer takes care of his people, he was a lousy naval officer. Instead of writing himself up for Purple Hearts every time he got a splinter he should have been writing up his crew for awards. That is, if they were seeing all that combat Kerry claims he saw. Which they weren’t.

    The amazing thing, and this goes for the current President and why I believe this discussion is relevant to the topic at hand, is they all display this amazing combination of arrogance and stupidity that blinds them to just how bad their “messaging” is.

    It occurred to millions of voters that John Kerry’s candidacy was an obscene joke for myriad and painfully obvious reasons. It would never occur to John Kerry, he’s so self-absorbed and clueless.

    Just like it never occurred to John Kerry that the fact that Silky Pony was an obvious, sleazy fraud might be a lousy pick for veep. It didn’t even occur to Kerry after he was “chilled” when the Breck girl lied to his face when prostituting his own dead son’s memory to advance his political career.

    A normal human being would consider such an act to be a disqualifying factor. John Kerry is not a normal human being. Which is no doubt why he thought that his “war story” would be a selling point. It not occurring to him that telling the American public you ran out on your crew at your earliest opportunity instead of doing your whole tour might instead inform the electorate how likely it’d be that he’d let them down, too, just the first chance he has. Then spread lies about you raping and killing innocents.

    With a bunch of other frauds. This guy just can’t help picking liars and frauds to team up with. He’s been doing it his whole life. Then he wonders why people don’t trust him.

    Which brings us back to Axelrod’s media creation, Barack Obama. I believe if there’s a wikipedia entry for “self-absorbed mixture of arrogance and stupidity” then Obama’s picture would be on the page. He attacks Romney over certain topics that, if you’re interested, you can leaf through his book and discover he’s even worse on those very topics.

    He’s like a teen-aged girl with a Facebook page. When older entries scroll off the front page, he thinks it’s gone and forgotten. Then minutes after it disappears down his memory hole he’s contradicting himself. Like tye, who can contradict himself in a single comment. Or he’s bragging about what he thinks is an accomplishement when he’s just displaying his own incompetence or malevolent nature. Like Kerry.

    He’s an absurdity wrapped in a scam wrapped in a contradiction wrapped in a lie wrapped in an ego the size of France (another dig at Kerry, if you missed the allusion). And the fact that he thinks he’s slick just adds to the hilarity.

    Like Kerry, his wounds are self-inflicted. Also like Kerry, he’s inflicting those wounds by accident. It’s great. I can’t help but enjoy watching this bumbling idiot stumble through this campaign. With a supporting cast of thousands of dunces who think they’re doing him a favor by giving him the full Leni Riefenstahl treatment.

    I had to give up reading The Onion as all their spoofs are quickly overtaken by real-life events.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  244. Sammy, the tapes were under subpoena, if Nixon had destroyed them he would have been charged with criminal obstruction.

    And, it wouldn’t have saved him from exposure anyway, there were several copies well out of Nixon’s reach and he knew it. Otherwise, I’m convinced Nixon and anyone with half a brain would’ve trashed the tapes and hunkered down to take the heat.

    ropelight (39bde3)

  245. Comment by Steve57 — 7/16/2012 @ 2:08 pm

    Well said!

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  246. Comment by MD in Philly — 7/16/2012 @ 1:59 pm

    I mean, it always seemed to me that if watergate had anything to do with the election and politics and such, Nixon deserved to be impeached for stupidity, as there was no reason for “dirty tricks” even if one was prone to do such.

    The probability of a landslide only became apparent after the nomination of McGovern. Nixon had authorized “dirty tricks” in a general sort of way, which included spying on opponents through the planting of informants.

    Now they had a spy in the McGovern campaign by the name of Tom Gregory. Earlier he had been in the Muskie campaign. He was run by Robert F Bennett – later Senator from Utah. The Senator from Watergate I called him.

    It is a good hypotheses that Gregory in fact didn’t want the place to be bugged, and it may even be a possibility that the McGovern campaign
    had an “anti-plumbers” group (headed by ??) and had turned him as well as McCord – which is basically the Democratic trap theory that Danny
    Casolero had been working on off and on for years before he was killed in 1991 (maybe not coincidentally the year before the 1992 Presidential election.) But I doubt that things worked exactly that way. More likely, Bennett already had a prior arrangement with someone in the McGovern campaign. After all, that wasn’t the only sabotage.

    Gregory was supposed to plant a bug in the McGovern campaign headquarters, but Gregory kept on reporting all sorts of hitches that prevented any bug from being placed there, in spite of the fact he had entry there. Made up stories, probably.

    Bennett, communicated with Edward Bennett Williams, but was careful to leave a paper trail so that he could claim that he did it on behalf
    of the CIA. I don’t think so. I think that was just his excuse.

    Edward Bennett Williams in 1972, was the lawyer
    for the Washington Post and DNC, not to mention of course ALSO many organized crime figures like Frank Costello and Jimmy Hoffa and Eddie Levinson, the man who sued to get warrantless bugs declared illegal (the case arose out of the bugging of the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas
    and was settled in 1968 with the contents of what was overheard being sealed at the same time as the tax evasion case was dropped. Henry Petersen, who was a career civil servant before he was promoted, claimed at the time that he didn’t even know that the skimming case was being ended until it over. Johnson was still President then, of course.

    “Bennett suggested and co-ordinated the DeMott interview regarding Chappaquidick; Bennett coordinated the release of Dita Beard’s statement
    from Denver, after contacting Beard’s attorneys at the suggestion of a Hughes executive; Bennett suggested that Greenspun’s safe contained
    information of interest to both Hughes and the CRP; Bennett asked for and received from Hunt a price estimate for bugging Clifford Irving for
    Hughes; Bennett coordinated the engagement of political spy Tom Gregory by Hunt and discussed with Gregory the latter’s refusal to proceed with bugging plans on or about June 16, 1972.

    I think this is from The Senate Watergate Report, 1974 Dell Paperback edition, volume 1, page 732, Minority Report on CIA Involvement, submitted at the request of Senator Howard Baker.

    Bennett quit just before the break-in.

    So anyway Liddy was going to go ahead and plant a biug from the outside. Then John Dean stepped in and ordered that first they go into the Democratic National Committee. I think his purpose was to get the burglars caught before they got a big into the McGovernm headquarters and found out some really interesting stuff.

    I suspect Thomas J. Gregory had advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in – and of the proposed break-in at the McGovern campaign headquarters,

    He quit a day or two before June 17 after speaking to Bennett.

    Bennett is the man who tried to get Hunt and Liddy to burglarize Hank Greenspun’s office (the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun) in February,
    1972. This is one of those things, by the way, that point to organized crime having been behind Watergate.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  247. Comment by ropelight — 7/16/2012 @ 2:13 pm

    Sammy, the tapes were under subpoena, if Nixon had destroyed them he would have been charged with criminal obstruction.

    No, he could have destroyed them before they were subponaed, on the day Alexander Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of the White House taping system. It would not ahve been a good idea for him, however. After that people could make up any story.

    And, it wouldn’t have saved him from exposure anyway, there were several copies well out of Nixon’s reach and he knew it. Otherwise, I’m convinced Nixon and anyone with half a brain would’ve trashed the tapes and hunkered down to take the heat.

    Nixon kept the tapes in order to prove his innocence because he didn’t consider himself guilty of any crime. He did a pretty sloppy job of defending himself..

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  248. Steve57, ya nailed it.

    ropelight (39bde3)

  249. Of course, he spent Christmas in Cambodia while the rest of his crew spent it in Vietnam so I guess in Kerryland anything’s possible.

    That partivcular story he didn’t tell in 1971 or 1972, but only after the movie “Apocalypse Now” came out, which he decided he could say was about him.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  250. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/

    During the on-going Vietnam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade Green Beret who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  251. At least as far as the element of going into Cambodia was concerned.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  252. Comment by SPQR — 7/16/2012 @ 1:59 pm

    Obama wants more dependency on govt largesse not less.

    Obamacare expands Medicaid instead of making insurance available another way.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  253. Sammy, Butterfield’s so-called revelation was pure Kabuki theatre. It was a theatrical performance for the viewing audience.

    All the real work was done well before hand and well behind the scenes. Nixon’t head was already in the noose and all the escape routes were closed off long before Butterfield pulled his Gomer Pile impression on national TV.

    ropelight (39bde3)

  254. Much of what we think we know about Watergate, as Max Holland found out, is either from biased sources, or untrue;

    narciso (ee31f1)

  255. 255. Obamacare expands Medicaid instead of making insurance available another way.

    Comment by Sammy Finkelman — 7/16/2012 @ 2:44 pm

    The dems tried. But now that the SCOTUS ruled it unconstitutional for the feds to deny medicaid funding to the states to force them to expand Medicaid that particular scam is in danger.

    The incentives for the states to expand medicaid just aren’t there. The only reason Obama and his henchmen had to to try to expand medicaid is so they could temporarily provide increased federal dollars for Medicaid. Then over time withdraw the additional funding, shifting the costs of the program to the states and then claim ObamaCare is reducing costs. Instead of just shifting the costs off the feds books.

    Of course, it’s sort of axiomatic that if the feds have to force states to expand Medicaid by threatening their current funding then it’s not really a good deal for the states.

    The fraud that is ObamaCare is falling apart. Now these scammers can’t hide the true costs of the program by forcing the states to pay more for it. And what’s becoming known as the “senior swindle” has been exposed by the GAO. Not only does it reveal more fully just what a massive shell game the democrats are playing on the country, it’s likely illegal:

    Now that Americans are becoming more acutely aware that Obamacare would be funded in large part through higher taxes, it’s all the more crucial for President Obama to keep voters from discovering the overhaul’s other principal source of funding — its Medicare raid.

    Fortunately for Obama, his administration recently launched the $8.35 billion Senior Swindle, a taxpayer-financed “demonstration project” to hide the vast majority of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until after what he likes to call his “last election.” Unfortunately, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) — the independent, nonpartisan congressional watchdog — has identified this “demonstration project” as a sham. And now, in a newly released letter, the GAO raises continuing concerns about the gambit’s legality.

    …The GAO also previously observed that the demonstration “does not…conform to the principles of budget neutrality.” That’s a polite way of saying that the administration is running up the national debt by another $8.35 billion in order to boost Obama’s reelection prospects.

    …“Our findings during the course of our evaluation of the demonstration…raised concerns about whether the demonstration falls within HHS’s section 402 authority, and resulted in our solicitation, by letter of January 10, 2012, of the views of the General Counsel of HHS regarding this issue. By letter of February 10, 2012, the Deputy Director of the Center for Medicare within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) responded to our inquiry. CMS’s response, however, does not explain how the MA Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration comports with its section 402 authority. To the contrary, as [is] discussed in detail below, we remain concerned about the agency’s legal authority to undertake the demonstration….

    …“Section 402(a)(1)(A) provides the Secretary broad authority to modify methods of payment under Medicare to establish additional incentives to increase the economy and efficiency of services provided under the program by carrying out experiments and demonstration projects. This authority, however, is not unlimited….[D]emonstrations under which these payment changes are initiated must meet the criteria set forth in the statute. CMS has not established that [these necessary]…elements [are] present in the MA Quality Bonus Payment Demonstration.”

    …The GAO notes that there have been 85 other Medicare demonstration projects conducted in the 17 years since 1995. According to the GAO, Obama’s $8.35 billion gambit will cost more than all 85 other Medicare demonstration projects combined.

    Bloated, massively expensive, and probably illegal. That, in nutshell, is the national tragedy that is the Obama administration. When the Obama administration isn’t using that nutshell to hide the pea from the taxpayers they’re running this shell game on, that is.

    I think it’s beautiful. It’s another one of Mark Steyn’s exploding democratic cigars. The Obama administration is accusing Romney of committing a felony while filing documents with the SEC, something not even the press can stomach despite their bromance with the Preezy.

    And while they’re making false charges of illegality against Romney their own illegal conduct is coming to light. Everything this guy touches turns to crap. And he’s proud of it. He won’t shut up about his “accomplishments.”

    Other than a greatly improved golf game and apparently firing everyone in the protocol section at DoS who used to be able to tell prior administrations how to say “reset” in Russian or display the flag the flag of the Philippines without turning it into a distress signal, I don’t see what King Putt’s accomplished.

    I mean, certainly nothing that’s actually good for the country.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  256. This is just one example,

    Yet Galbraith disclosed that he was Bernstein’s source for an Oct. 6 story that touched upon the Watergate role of Robert D. Odle, Jr., the director of administration at the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP). This means that a Williams, Connolly lawyer was a source then in at least two Post stories, notwithstanding the denials made then and ever since. (In Leak, I reveal that Galbraith was also the tipster who first told Bernstein about Alfred C. Baldwin III, the “lookout” who fled the scene the night of the burglary.)

    narciso (ee31f1)

  257. Axelrod: Unlike Romney, Obama Doesn’t Use Tax Shelters have to worry about keeping his affairs legal

    I thought I’d fix that Axelrod quote.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  258. BHO is the Black, Male, Lillian Hellman:

    “Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including the ‘and’ and the ‘the’.”

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  259. Here’s the other segment I was referring to;

    Juxtaposing the Hoback notes with the printed page shows similar alterations. In ATPM, Hoback is quoted as saying, “But Sally [Harmony, burglar Gordon Liddy’s secretary]—and others—lied.” In the notes, however, Harmony is cited twice; but in neither instance does Hoback assert Harmony (or anyone else at the CRP) flatly “lied.” (Nor would Hoback even have known that for certain, since the testimony of every witness before the grand jury was sealed). In a similar vein, Hoback is quoted in ATPM as saying about Robert Odle, in response to a question about his rumored involvement: “Certainly not in knowing anything about the bugging. He’s a glorified office boy, [deputy CRP director Jeb] Magruder’s runner.” In the notes, however, Hoback simply states there is “no reason to think Odle [is] involved”—without the pejorative characterization.

    narciso (ee31f1)

  260. narciso, Bernsteine was OSI and deeply involved in clandestine operations against Richard Nixon’s Administration.

    He was part of a special sub-group under Operation Mockingbird run by WaPo editor Ben Bradlee who was also OSI before he started running CIA propaganda efforts first in Europe and later as a major CIA asset for domestic gate-keeping and manufacturing public opinion.

    ropelight (39bde3)

  261. No, he’s a read diaper baby, ‘Comrades’ who never forgot Nixon’s role in staking the great revolution,
    plus he was a slimy little weasel, as Nora Ephron
    found out, and ‘fictionalized’ in Heartburn,

    narciso (ee31f1)

  262. @narciso. Did you leave something out?

    Who is Galbraith? Who is Hoback?

    ATPM = All the President’s Men.

    Look at the footnote on the bottom of page 112:

    (speaking as of Sept 28, 1972)

    No dissatisfied FBI employee had ever come to Bernstein or Woodward offering information

    That would seem to exclude Mark Felt as a source. Deep Throat had already appeared. Notice they put Bernstein first.

    I suppose Woodward could say:

    1) Mark Felt did not go to him, he came to Mark Felt

    2) Mark Felt did not offer any information – it had to be badgered out of him

    3) He wasn’t disatisfied.

    Sammy Finkelman (244b5e)

  263. Nobody can claim that they don’t know who 0bama really is or what he really stands for. He is full of admiration for illegal immigrants and people on foodstamps or other welfare, but he has difficulty disguising the contempt he holds for those who do not take but are productive. He said as much in the “speech” he gave in Roanoke, Va.

    Colonel Haiku (ef9f3a)

  264. Hoback was the CREEP book keeper, Galbraith was the W&C lawyer, whose firm was the Post’s counsel,

    narciso (ee31f1)

  265. 79. Icy Problem is, nobody here claimed that it started with Barack Obama.

    Sammy is not above erecting straw men.

    This is not a straw man. The issue was over whether this was gutter Chicago politics, or some other kind of gutter politics, not of the type practiced in Chicago.

    There’s more coming. Attacks are on the way for potential vice presidential nominees.

    This was put on line because of reports that Romney might pick a vice-president this week:

    http://veepmistakes.com (put up by a group not officially connected to the campaign)

    Sammy Finkelman (244b5e)

  266. 257. Much of what we think we know about Watergate, as Max Holland found out, is either from biased sources, or untrue;

    Comment by narciso — 7/16/2012 @ 3:25 pm

    That’s the case about a lot more than just Watergate. Most things I read in the paper, or see on TV news, simply presume is not true. You left out a third possibility; that the reporters are simply incapable of grasping the facts and just get it completely wrong. Which I figure happens more than simply lying due to their biases.

    Not that simply lying due to their biases doesn’t happen a lot. When I was in the Navy I had a reporter tell me that if he couldn’t get the story of my command he’d just make things up and try to force the command to respond.

    And this was a guy who worked for Stars & Stripes.

    Other reporters weren’t so upfront about it, but they do it nonetheless. I know I’d never do an interview (should I ever become important enough to get interviewed) without my own camera in the room to counter the deceptive edits I would know are in the works.

    These hacks will interview for hours just to get a quote they can use out of context in some “gotcha” sound bite. If they don’t get the sound bite they’re after in whatever time you’ve scheduled they’ll feign having a friendly interest in whatever topic you’re discussing (which may have absolutely nothing to do with the story your quote will find its way into) until they get it.

    What I don’t understand is why CNN, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, Al Reuters, et al still have an audience or readership at all. How many tapes do they have to edit, pictures do they have to photoshop, or how many dictators do they have to carry water for by broadcasting and printing unfiltered propaganda before people catch on to the fact they routinely doctor photos, deceptively edit tapes, and carry water for dictators. They have since before Duranty brought home a Pulitzer to the NYT for reporting raw Soviet lies as if they were news back in the 1930s.

    But that’s only when they’re not getting the story wrong due to sheer incompetence. Let’s face it; if you’ve ever watched Soledad O’Brien struggle to grasp even uncomplicated concepts you realize that this is one ditz who shouldn’t be employed to attempt to explain things she can’t understand to others. And she’s just the tip of the ditz iceberg.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  267. What Axelrod was notable for before in Chicago was whitewashing politicians, and astroturfing, along with the defense of and practice of moderate amounts of patronage. Not building a case for the “prosecution” of political opponents.

    They may be doing that now, but these ideas didn’t come out of Chicago, that I know of.

    Sammy Finkelman (244b5e)

  268. @narciso Who is Max Holland and what did he write?

    Sammy Finkelman (244b5e)

  269. Steve57-

    I don’t know how Kerry almost won if a good section of the country thought his reporting for duty was an obscene joke. I think the people that understood that were people who would have not voted for him anyway. I guess whoever it was that said the media was good for 15% of the vote going to Kerry was referring (purposefully or not) to what would have happened had kerry’s past been accurately covered. I knew a very smart and usually reasonable young doctor who thought it was great that someone could both be a war hero and a thoughtful critic of the military. I guess I would find that great too, but Kerry was no hero and his critique of the military was not thoughtful.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  270. Finkelman, its your claim that Axelrod had nothing to do with the dirty tricks against Ryan in the Senate campaign?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  271. Comment by MD in Philly — 7/16/2012 @ 1:56 pm

    #

    I heard/read from somewhere the theory that the whole watergate break-in was about a personal issue concerning dean and had nothing to do with Nixon or the election,

    This is the thesis of the book:”Silent Coup”

    I think it’s correct that John Dean was responsible for the Watergate break-in, but he did it to get the burglars caught before they got a chance to put a bug in the McGovern campaign headquarters. The efforts to prevent that had failed. Tom Gregory had run out of excuses. That is, Liddy was now going to go ahead without him.

    and then Dean covered up his tracks by making it look like he was the guy “coming clean”.

    Dean tried to prevent the investigation from going beyond the burglars. Whatever he did, before and after, he always sought to attribute responsibility to others. He “came clean” when he was caught although I thought he might have been Woodward’s source since he had the FBI 302s.

    And Alexander haig was spying on nixon for the Joint Chiefs of staff

    Thahat’s also Silent Coup. John Dean wrote awhle book in 1982 devoted to the idea that Alexander haig was “Deep throat” In 1976, in Esquire he had told Friend of Bill Taylor Branch that Deep Throat was David Gergen and in his 1982 book “Lost Honor” he lied about what was in the article in the 1976 Esquire. He could do it because it was not indexed in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature except as a series of columns by Taylor Branch, of which this was one.

    oh my,…

    Sammy Finkelman (244b5e)

  272. This might have been posted earlier, but as Alanis
    Morissette might say;

    http://www.volokh.com/2012/07/13/over-30-of-president-obamas-2009-2011-gross-income-came-from-foreign-sources/

    narciso (ee31f1)

  273. I don’t know when Silent Coup came out, what i heard was an interview with James Rosen about his book, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.

    Having once seen most of The Recruit, along with Three Days of the Condor and knowing that truth is often stranger than fiction, who knows what really happened in Watergate?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  274. narciso- always great links

    so, the president gets more money from foreign sources than his salary as president????

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  275. What Axelrod was notable for before in Chicago was whitewashing politicians, and astroturfing, along with the defense of and practice of moderate amounts of patronage. Not building a case for the “prosecution” of political opponents.

    Huh? Seriously. Ask Obama’s primary rival who dropped out of the US Senate race when Axelrod discovered what was in his divorce records despite the fact that they were sealed. And Ryan, Obama’s GOP rival in the general election who the Axelrod machine torpedoed in the same way. Getting his filthy paws on these sealed records, then twisting arms at the Chicago Sun-Times so that they could have their lawyers get them unsealed and legally print the content Axelrod unlawfully obtained.

    Axelrod is certainly notable for building a case to prosecute political opponents. In the press.

    Of course, Chicago is such a cesspool and everyone who works for the Illinois “combine” is really on the same team despite party affiliations that Axelrod may not be as good at his job as he thinks he is. He’s never had to be.

    Which is my segue into this Irony Alert:

    David Axelrod: No role in firm’s deals

    It’s perfect. They’re trying to smear Romney over his role in Bain’s operations despite the fact he was unquestionably on a leave of absence to work on the Salt Lake Olympics.

    Now Axelrod is trying to counter the unquestionably true fact that he never left the PR firm that represents two corporate entities that are trying to get his old bud Rahm Emmanuel to approve a couple of sweet deals for them.

    D avid Axelrod — the top campaign adviser to President Barack Obama — sold his ownership stake in ASGK Public Strategies in 2009, when he became a senior White House adviser.

    But Axelrod didn’t cut his ties to the Chicago public relations firm completely. He still has an office there. His name is on the door. His old partners are still paying him the five annual $200,000 payments they agreed to when they bought him out.

    …Axelrod says he had no role in landing those contracts and isn’t involved in the work ASGK is doing for Citibank, which wants to help finance Emanuel’s highly touted Chicago Infrastructure Trust, or for the Cubs, who want Emanuel’s help in financing a major renovation of Wrigley Field.

    Right. He had no role in anything the company that’s paying him, where he still maintains an office, and where he still spends time does.

    But he wants you to believe the opposite about Romney. What a maroon!

    My favorite part:

    “If you think hiring Axelrod’s old firm will get you special access or privileges, you are sorely mistaken,” says spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton. “No person or company has an inside track into City Hall.”

    They actually think people will buy this crap. About Chicago! Rezko County and Blagojevich Ville all rolled into one.

    So, we’re finding out that Obama’s “Senior Swindle” is most likely illegal. And that Axelrod is trying to claim he’s not responsible for what the firm he helped found and where he still works ever does while accusing Romney of running the show at Bain on less evidence.

    And how dare anyone think that Chicago pols are corrupt influence peddlers!

    But Romney may have committed a felony.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  276. “The issue was over whether this was gutter Chicago politics, or some other kind of gutter politics, not of the type practiced in Chicago.”

    Sammy – Yes, then you decided to come up with a Finkelman definition of Chicago gutter politics and that since what Obama’s campaign was doing did not meet your definition, it did not meet the definition of Chicago gutter politics.

    A nice strawman that.

    There was also the claim that “So here the idea is that merely combativeness or accusations is gutter politics.”

    No, that is something you invented along with the claim that combativeness was a euphemism for something else. A combative campaign may include low road type accusations, but does not have to. Most people think of a combative campaign as being aggressive, feisty, in your face, or similar words to that effect.

    “If you interpret the meaning of “gutter politics” as low road, then it’s OK.”

    Yes, sleazy, slimy, underhanded, dishonest, undignified.

    Campaigns like that are conducted in Chicago all the time. In fact, as elissa pointed out last night, Obama managed to get the sealed divorce records of his opponents released or leaked in one campaign, resulting in their withdrawal. Who cares that the records were sealed to protect the children of the couples. That’s slimy.

    The whole notion that anyone claimed that these tactics were invented or only practiced in Chicago was invented by you on the thread.

    “Do you know what that is? Saul Alinsky tactics. (He always proposed limiting the target)”

    Sammy – Do you know where Alinsky was born and spent a lot of his life working?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  277. Well the Recruit was ‘loosely’ based on the Harold Nicolson affair, TDC which was abridged from SDC, was Grady’s own invention, and involved an even more nefarious plot.

    narciso (ee31f1)

  278. And how dare anyone think that Chicago pols are corrupt influence peddlers!

    Steve57 – Before or after Operation Greylord? Also, please use a bagman for plausible deniability.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  279. MD in philly, I think that the fact we’re talking about how Kerry almost became President instead of recalling how miserable his years in office were is evidence that sufficient numbers of people found his candidacy to be a sick joke.

    Of course, while sufficient the numbers are still inadequate. That anyone could vote for the Kerry/Edwards ticket is in itself a sick joke.

    I thought the Kerry/Edwards ticket epitomized the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic party. We knew Kerry was a disgrace to the uniform and a backstabber. One could argue, as the democrats do now, that we didn’t have confirmation like we do now that Edwards too was a self-absorbed lying fraud. But that’s true only if you were willfully blind. And Kerry doesn’t even have that excuse, as Edwards told him to his face that he’s a lying fraud. That’s what Kerry found so chilling. Yet not disqualifying; he still chose Edwards as a running mate. He couldn’t have cared less about Edwards being a lying fraud.

    The democrats practically boast about how lying frauds can rise to the top of their party hierarchy. And Obama proved that he could actually get elected to office on that basis.

    But that’s what I found interesting about this Hinderaker post on Powerline:

    Can a Candidate Lie His Way to the Presidency?

    The obvious answer is yes. Kerry almost did it, and Obama succeeded. But Hinderaker explores the question of whether an incumbent President, having lied his way into the office, can lie his way to a second term after establishing a track record.

    Axelrod could create the media fiction that was Barack Obama 2008. Barack Obama the Chicago pol wasn’t a blank slate, but new improved “made for TV movie” that was the Presidential candidate was. Or at least the press was willing to go along with the fraud. And they weren’t shy about admitting it. A writer named Gabriel Shermen wrote an article for The New Republic back in June or July of 2008 stating the press was fully aware that what Axelrod was selling under the Obama brand name was a bit of a lie. That they guarded his actually history like the crown jewels, and that anyone in the press who poked around to deeply into Obama’s past made the campaign’s enemies list.

    And that maybe if the Obama campaign didn’t start treating reporters better they might actually look into his past that they were were so concerned about.

    But of course that never happened. After 3 years in office his praetorian guard in the press is still guarding the crown jewels, and the only way we’ll ever hear anything even mildly unsavory about Obama is if he or his ghost writers put it into one of his “autobiographies.” Because the press ain’t gonna do it.

    They’ll send reporters to Romney’s church to try to dig up dirt on him, print unverified and unverifiable stories about what he may or may not have done 50 years ago in high school, and mindlessly repeat baseless smears just as fast as the Obama campaign can concoct them.

    But the only time they’ll deign to discuss Obama’s past is to lecture us about how you can’t hold Obama accountable for anything.

    As far as your young doctor friend, the only people I’ve met who think Kerry was ever either heroic or a thoughtful critic of the military learned everything they know about the military from Dan “fake but accurate” Rather or Soledad “the ditz” O’Brien.

    In other words, to think that you’ve got to know just about nothing about the military. And what little you think you do know is wrong.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  280. Federalism, daleyrocks. There’s the national gutter (Obama) state gutter (Blago) and city gutter (Rahm).

    Hmmm, I wonder if those three are connected in any way . . .

    Icy (c1b9a9)

  281. Dead fish-eyed Rahm can pirouette around all the dead bodies.

    Colonel Haiku (ef9f3a)

  282. The Problem In A Nutshell: Annualized GDP Growth Of 1%; Annualized US Debt Growth of 21%

    SPQR (26be8b)

  283. “Federalism, daleyrocks. There’s the national gutter (Obama) state gutter (Blago) and city gutter (Rahm).”

    Icy – I did not understand the purpose of starting a pointless argument erected on the foundation of multiple strawmen and pretending to ignore known corruption and sleaziness in Chicago politics.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  284. In other words, to think that you’ve got to know just about nothing about the military. And what little you think you do know is wrong.
    Comment by Steve57 — 7/16/2012 @ 6:16 pm

    True, and lots of people fall into this category. What they know of Vietnam they learned from historic clips of Walter Cronkite.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  285. What they know of Vietnam they learned from historic clips of Walter Cronkite.

    I read a couple of books back in the ’80s that definitely cured me of any temptation to idolize anyone in the press. Or for that matter in academia. “MiG Pilot” by Viktor Belenko and “The Spike” by Arnaud de Borchgrave and Robert Moss.

    “The Spike” is a novel by a couple of reporters that’s based upon the realities of the news business at the time. And the realities were that the Soviets were pretty successful getting the western press to go along with their disinformation program. They could get stories that were helpful to the USSR into the press, and their willing accomplices would kill or “spike” stories that weren’t. Eason Jordan’s self-serving and dishonest confession in the NYT back in 2002 that CNN was Saddam Hussein’s willing propagandist for years reminded me that “The Spike” isn’t as outdated as one might think.

    Of course, it is dated in certain respects. Editors don’t have the absolute power to control what is and isn’t news by what they choose to publish or keep away from the public. But they think they ought to be the arbiters of what is and isn’t allowable discourse, and they still act like it.

    Belenko’s book was eye opening because as he discussed how he grew to realize that he had been lied to and propagandized for years, the techniques used on him, and how he learned to see through it before deciding to defect along with his Foxbat, I realized I was being subjected to similar techniques. Not just by the press, but by college professors as well.

    Naturally the professors didn’t appreciate the fact that I was onto them and their cherry-picked when not outright made-up “facts” designed to turn students into right-thinking socialists. But I didn’t expect better from them, and in any case it was more a lesson in which professors to avoid. Not all of them thought college should be nothing more than a commie factory.

    Steve57 (65d29f)

  286. Icy – I did not understand the purpose of starting a pointless argument erected on the foundation of multiple strawmen and pretending to ignore known corruption and sleaziness in Chicago politics.

    — I don’t understand it either; but then, we’re only the pawns in Sammy’s game.

    Icy (c1b9a9)

  287. Ah, layers within layers.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  288. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Blair_Hull

    Someone writes there it wasn’t Axelrod who provided David Mendell the lead about Blair Hull.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  289. It is perfect time to make a few plans for the future and it’s time to be happy. I’ve read this put up and if I may just I wish to suggest you few interesting things or tips. Maybe you could write next articles regarding this article. I wish to learn more things approximately it!

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