Patterico's Pontifications

1/20/2014

Refuting Robin Abcarian’s Kinda Sorta Defense of Her Column

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 12:13 pm



As promised, this is my post addressing Robin Abcarian’s kinda sorta defense of her recent column. As you know, I recently blasted Abcarian on her partisan discussions of Benghazi and the IRS scandal, in two posts. Part One is here, and Part Two is here. The summary is here. The closest Abcarian came to defending her column was to retweet creepy banned troll timb:

Screen Shot 2014-01-19 at 12.54.13 PM

You’ll be shocked to learn that the evidence provided in the links does not show that I was wrong or that Abcarian was correct. The links back up what I originally said: while words like “progressive” or “occupy” showed up on BOLO (be on the lookout) lists, there is no evidence that they were used to actually target left-leaning groups. Moreover, there is no truth to Abcarian’s implication that the Inspector General did not look at the targeting of progressive groups because Issa gave him directions to focus only on conservative groups.

The beginning of the first link sounds concerning, as lefty Sam Stein and his pal Michael McAuliff portray the matter:

The inspector general behind the critical report about the IRS’ targeting of tea party groups acknowledged Thursday that the information in his report was not complete.

J. Russell George, the IRS inspector general, told the House Oversight Committee that only in the past few weeks has he become aware of documents showing that the IRS screened progressive groups in addition to conservative ones. George said he was “disturbed” by the fact that these documents were not provided to his team of investigators prior to the audit’s release and that he was continuing to investigate the issue.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? But if anyone reads the piece all the way through — and, more importantly, actually reviews the testimony that is the subject of the piece — one comes away with quite a different impression: namely, that the IRS told George that the groups they had actually targeted for extra scrutiny were tea party and conservative groups . . . and that the numbers bear this out. While it is true that George said the IRS had not disclosed all relevant documents before the audit was completed, there is no evidence whatsoever that the IRS’s treatment of left-leaning and right-leaning groups was equivalent, as Abcarian claimed.

The thrust of the reporting at the two links centers around the testimony of Inspector General Russell George at a July 18, 2013 hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Rather than relying on the lefties at HuffPo for the content of that testimony, I offer to you the official testimony itself. It’s all on YouTube videos at this House.gov link.

George’s testimony, before he was questioned, is here. Here is a critical quote from George:

With respect to the 298 cases that the IRS selected for political review as of the end of May 2012, three have the word “Progressive” in the organization’s name. Another four used quote “Progress” Unquote. None of the 298 cases selected by the IRS as of May 2012 used the name “Occupy.”

I know you have questions and so do we on the other Be On the Look Out listings, but from the date of the May 17th, 2012 document until we issued our report one year later, IRS staff at multiple levels concurred with our analysis citing “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” and “9/12” and certain policy positions as the criteria the IRS used to select potential political cases.

Here’s how the HuffPo lefties characterize that:

George spent his testimony and statement defending some of the original findings. He noted that of the 298 cases provided by the IRS for his office’s review, 96 of them involved tea party or conservative groups. Seven involved ones with “progressive” or “progress” in their name.

Note how Stein and McAuliff partially obscure the fact that only three groups targeted had the word “progressive.” Three. And none had the word “occupy.” None. Stein does not mention that, either.

The above quote from George makes it clear that according to the IRS itself, the additional scrutiny was targeted at tea party and similar groups. George made clear in his testimony that he didn’t set out to limit his audit to tea party and conservative groups, and that his report focused on the treatment of those groups because those are the groups that the IRS said they had set aside for increased scrutiny. This fact was reinforced by Assistant Inspector General Gregory Kutz in a statement made at 46:33 in this video (which has only 415 views as of the publication of this post) from the hearings:

I just want to say, what Mr. George submitted at the beginning of the hearing is called the BOLO Advocacy Cases iterations. It was given to us May 17, 2012 and represented by the IRS to be the entire set of BOLOs that were used for political advocacy. We’re not making this up, we submitted it for the record. If IRS was doing something beyond that, they never made it apparent to us in an entire year of doing an audit. So I just want to make that clear. If other people were misused, we’re very concerned about that, but IRS is the one that asserted to us in this email and the document that Mr. George submitted for the record that the entire population of BOLOs used for political advocacy is on the document that says “tea parties” until Lois Lerner changed it to “advocacy” in July 2011. I just want to make that clear. That’s a key piece of evidence for us and they never changed their story for a year. When Ms. Lois Lerner came up May 10 she didn’t apologize for anything else except what the evidence that she gave us. I just want to make that clear to everybody.

This is a point that bears repeating, I think. Once again: Lois Lerner kicked off public interest in this by apologizing for the treatment of Tea Party groups. From USA Today, May 12, 2013:

The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for subjecting Tea Party groups to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election, but denied any political motive.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews. Her remarks, which came at an American Bar Association gathering, were first reported by the Associated Press.

Lerner didn’t apologize for targeting progressive groups. She apologized for targeting tea party and 9/11 groups.

As for Stein’s second link, this quote, I think, says it all:

Congressional Republicans have continued to argue that the screening was politically motivated, scandalous and worth further investigation. They’ve noted, correctly, that more conservative-leaning groups received scrutiny than did Democratic ones. And they’ve argued that even on the BOLO lists, IRS agents were told to apply enhanced scrutiny to Tea Party organizations.

Issa spokesman Ali Ahmad told The Huffington Post via email, “There is no comparison between screening applicants for a known bad actor that was having its tax exempt status revoked after inappropriate conduct had come to light with systematic screening for groups who were subjected to inappropriate and disparate treatment above and beyond other groups simply because they had ‘Tea Party’ in their name. The fact that Emerge was initially approved for tax exempt status, but had it revoked after its improper behavior came to light, underscores how much more stringent the IRS was with Tea Party applicants.”

So, the claim was that these links would prove I was wrong and Abcarian was right. Is that so? Let’s review what Abcarian said:

Sure, conservatives went crazy after the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s famous May 2013 audit found the IRS may have flagged groups with “tea party” in their names for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

But that’s because Issa had asked the inspector general to look only at how tea party-affiliated groups were treated. He didn’t care to know, as we later found out thanks to Democrats on his committee, that the IRS was also flagging applications from liberal groups that used terms such as “progressive,” “medical marijuana” or “healthcare legislation.”

This was addressed in the testimony, and George said precisely the opposite of what Abcarian claims. I am going to break my Politico boycott here because they have by far the best summary and quote on this particular point:

One of the more dramatic moments of the hearing came when Connolly asked George about statements Karen Kraushaar, his top spokesperson, made to the media about the narrow scope of the IRS audit.

George said Kraushaar “misspoke” as she sat directly behind him.

“It was not with my authorization and she misspoke,” George said.

Kraushaar previously told media outlets, including POLITICO, that the inspector general didn’t expand the scope of the audit requested by Issa to include liberal and progressive groups. She said the inspector general was asked “to narrowly focus on Tea Party organizations.”

So the testimony at the actual hearing referenced by timb’s link refutes Abcarian’s claim. What happened, as George repeatedly explained at the hearing, was that he was looking at all groups that were targeted, and went where the evidence led him.

Robin Abcarian, is that all you got?

P.S. I wish I had noted where this came up, but one of the Congressmen made reference to Ms. Lerner’s statement that receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS is a “behavior changer.” That is something first broken on this blog, in this post. The person who gave me that tip — and they know who they are — can be proud that their tip ended up being discussed in a highly public hearing in Congress on an important issue.

68 Responses to “Refuting Robin Abcarian’s Kinda Sorta Defense of Her Column”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (68d1df)

  2. What? tl;dr?

    Patterico (02a377)

  3. Timb misrepresenting what a link says? Hardly man-bites-dog news.

    Chuck Bartowski (11fb31)

  4. “What? tl;dr?”

    Patterico – No, it’s shorter than most of Steve57’s comments. 🙂

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  5. Robin Abcarian and timb, united at last in common purpose. This is more exciting than when Winger and Whitesnake toured together. It’s as if there is one giant vortex of half-witted thinking.

    JVW (709bc7)

  6. Did timb ever pass the Bar exam or is he a paralegal?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  7. hey now: don’t be insulting us paralegals… 😎

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  8. redc1c4 – Wouldn’t think of it.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  9. He did stay at a Holiday Inn express once,

    narciso (3fec35)

  10. i stayed at a Navy Inn…

    nothing safer than a motel on a military base. 😉

    redc1c4 (abd49e)

  11. now who woulda thunk
    teh progs at teh huff po place
    would lie thru their teeth

    Colonel Haiku (ef18da)

  12. this abcarrion
    she’s both arrogant AND dumb
    does it proggy-style

    Colonel Haiku (ef18da)

  13. sonuva biscuit
    Abcarrion is racist
    racisty racist

    Colonel Haiku (ef18da)

  14. if you put a prog in a pan of water and heat the water on a stove, teh prog will boil, too stupid to jump out

    Colonel Haiku (ef18da)

  15. poor little prog gets the short end of that stick, seems to me

    happyfeet (c60db2)

  16. Mr. Feets – She’s hiding the rest of the stick somewheres. Don’t ask me wheres.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  17. shifty lil moppet int she

    happyfeet (c60db2)

  18. They just a buncha Muppets

    Colonel Haiku (e17944)

  19. As noted near the end of this post, the IRS already admitted to its campaign being directed at the Tea Party.

    Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

    They apologized for targeting a political view for hard treatment, treatment that hampered political activism against the IRS’s interests. Classic, obvious, indefensible abuse of power.

    It’s a settled issue, but the rewriting of history is endless. Those who argue the IRS didn’t do what it apologized for are well aware they are engaged in propaganda.

    Dustin (303dca)

  20. “Those who argue the IRS didn’t do what it apologized for are well aware they are engaged in propaganda.”

    Dustin – Yup. If they want to argue the IRS also targeted liberal groups for the same harsh treatment it is kind of obvious to point out they never apologized for something they did not do.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  21. The inspector general behind the critical report about the IRS’ targeting of tea party groups acknowledged Thursday that the information in his report was not complete.

    J. Russell George, the IRS inspector general, told the House Oversight Committee that only in the past few weeks has he become aware of documents showing that the IRS screened progressive groups in addition to conservative ones. George said he was “disturbed” by the fact that these documents were not provided to his team of investigators prior to the audit’s release and that he was continuing to investigate the issue.

    Sounds bad, doesn’t it?

    The first two sentences saying…

    1) The information in the initial report was not complete.

    and

    2) Documents were not provided.

    sound bad, and the third, about documents not being provided, passes over most people’s heads.

    The key points are these:

    1) The reason he did not know was NOT

    A) Because Darrel Issa or other Republicans charged him with looking only into a unfair treatment of conservative groups

    OR

    B) He didn’t want to find out

    but

    C) The IRS = Lois Lerner never told him. Documents were not provided.

    Now the question might be why was this semi-exculpatory information not provided??

    The answer would be it is not so exculpatory, and it might even be more damaging. It could be that this makes things look even worse, and furthermore, points responsibility at higher-ups.

    Only to people with a glancing knowledge of this whole matter could it seem exculpatory.

    In fact the whole matter of the BOLO list is a diversionary issue.

    Yes, the BOLO list at some point also collected names of groups seeking 501(c)4 status with the word progressive in their names.

    But at a later stage, all groups on the BOLO list were not treated the same way.

    Somebody was arbitrarily picking and choosing whom to go after.

    Which applications to slow walk, to ask more questions of, etc.

    And these were overwhelmingly the conservative leaning groups.

    This is worse than just doing a text search for Tea Party etc, and then handling them all the same way.

    Maybe even the few ones that that were targeted that had progressive in their titles, were not in conformity with what the SEIU or the DNC would like to see happen.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  22. Somebody was arbitrarily picking and choosing whom to go after.

    It wasn’t arbitrary, Sammy. They were targeting people who were conservative because their political views is opposed to those who run the IRS, as well as the administration.

    I used to wince at paranoid types talking about the surveillance state and political corruption from on high touching on the lives of everyday folks. That was naive of me.

    And this is something I would hope most Americans could unite on. Ms. Abcarian doesn’t want to live under this kind of corruption when democrats aren’t running things, does she? Hoping the corruption is good enough to keep political opposition down is a short sighted strategy. That will only work to a point.

    We live in interesting times, at least.

    Dustin (303dca)

  23. Typical timb really, brazenly misrepresent his links from dishonesty usually but often utter incompetence.

    And of course Abcarian probably did not bother to even read, which reinforces her partisan stupidity.

    SPQR (768505)

  24. Robin Abcarian, is that all you got?

    I guess you can call her or similar types of people “progressive” or “leftie,” while I think the less sugar-spun term would be “leftwing loon.” And not even (as is true of many on the left) a truly humane, compassionate, caring, open-minded leftwinger at that.

    Mark (9f2747)

  25. A select comment from someone at the Hot Air thread Narciso linked up at #24 pointing out that it will be YOUR guy or gal next:

    why would conservatives who constantly spout their hatred of the MSM (for good reason) want to give that media the satisfaction of taking down Christie?

    Every Republican the MSM drums out of the political arena just encourages and empowers them to do it again, and again, and again.

    So you don’t want Christie as the nominee. Fine. Let the political process sort that out. Or are conservatives so afraid that they won’t be able to stop Christie that they are willing to team up with the corrupt media to mortally wound him?

    If you refuse to defend Christie against the current media vendetta (or, as some here are doing, actually cheer them on) don’t be surprised when the eventual nominee is the victim of the same kind of treatment. Only much, much worse.

    Meredith on January 20, 2014 at 9:15 PM

    elissa (ddbda0)

  26. Well there’s no there, not even kindling at this time, elissa, by comparison with Benghazi, before Zarquawi directed the assasination of Ambassador De Mello, he started out killing Larry Foley,

    narciso (3fec35)

  27. Pat, I’m just glad that you’re back to smacking around the hacks at the LA Dog Trainer. I quit reading those so-and-so’s years ago, but it’s still fun to watch them tap dance when their grimy little fingers are caught in the cookie jar. Reminds me of the early days of this blog.

    Dirty Old Man (5b158d)

  28. I;m sure she finds this very sophisticated;

    http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/obama-al-qaeda-jayvee

    narciso (3fec35)

  29. Meredith is upset that people are teaming up to take down chris christie with the same media the jerseytrash piggyboi teamed up with to take down mitt romney?

    Okey dokey.

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  30. You should get together, share a cupcake,

    narciso (3fec35)

  31. I do not think that would be productive or even amusing

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  32. Somebody was arbitrarily picking and choosing whom to go after.

    22. Comment by Dustin (303dca) — 1/20/2014 @ 6:09 pm

    It wasn’t arbitrary, Sammy.

    Yes, of course. But from the standpoint of equal treatment under the laws, it was arbitrary.

    They were targeting people who were conservative because their political views is opposed to those who run the IRS, as well as the administration. </i?

    Right. That's how they exercising their whims.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  33. 26. The assault on Chris Christie isn’t about the 2016 election; it’s about the 2014 election.

    New Jersey Governor Chris Christie just became head of the Republican Governor’s Association, and he intends to spend this year raising money and campaigning for all sorts of Republican candidates nationwide.

    This scandal has he potential for cutting down on the amount of money he can raise and hs ability to help Republican candiidates.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  34. Meredith is a little naive, I think. The media were fattening up Christie to slaughter him once he had gobbled up enough GOP money and morale in 2016, but their bloodlust overcame them like the scent of blood in the water sends sharks into a feeding frenzy and they’re trying to eat him alive now. Once the frenzy subsides they’ll regret it and say, “We wish we had waited for the barbecue”. Any favor they are doing to Christie’s conservative critics is purely coincidental — like when you shoot at your neighbor’s dog and hit the skunk digging up his garden instead.

    nk (dbc370)

  35. 27. de Mello was the UN person in Baghdad, who was Larry Foley?

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  36. the AID representative in Amman, killed right before the war,

    narciso (3fec35)

  37. I think you maybe missed Meredith’s larger point, nk.

    elissa (ddbda0)

  38. Excellent posts on this topic.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  39. PS — I don’t know where you saw the “behavior changer” quote but Darrell Issa blogged it and credited you.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  40. Did timb ever pass the Bar exam or is he a paralegal?

    I hear he passed a Bar exam, but spent a week trying to figure out the best way to eat it first.

    Rob Crawford (45d991)

  41. I should have said that one of Issa’s staff posted on it at his blog.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  42. I think Meredith misses the larger point. “Empower” the media? When were they ever too shy to go after a Republican? “Let the political process sort it out”? That’s exactly what the media wants. For the Republicans to waste money and demoralize themselves in a bitter primary and leave them with a wounded candidate that they can savage. If we don’t protect Christie, we can’t “complain”* when the media goes after Cruz? The media will go after Cruz whether we protect
    Christie or not. And we won’t complain because we’re not whiny little bitches. We’ll defend. And we’ll have someone strong and easy to defend.

    *Where is that Complaint Department for Unfair Media Attacks, BTW?

    nk (dbc370)

  43. And of course Abcarian probably did not bother to even read, which reinforces her partisan stupidity.

    Not just “partisan” stupidity. What’s her day job? A “journalist”, right? She’s supposed to do research, gather information, and present them to the public.

    She didn’t even bother to verify “evidence” sent to her by an anonymous loser. She simply accepted that, as it was presented as supporting her, it therefore supported her.

    In software development we call that “checking it in without making sure it compiles”.

    Rob Crawford (45d991)

  44. Well you could also call it working for CGI apparently.

    narciso (3fec35)

  45. Comment by Rob Crawford (45d991) — 1/20/2014 @ 8:11 pm

    She didn’t even bother to verify “evidence” sent to her by an anonymous loser.

    It makes her job very easy.

    In software development we call that “checking it in without making sure it compiles”.

    And what’s worse, she doesn’t react with concern when somebody raises the question that maybe the information she got on a silver platter is wrong or misleading. She still wants to use her (almost) ghostwriter.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  46. Re: Christie.

    What should concern everybody is whether you think this is true or not, and it doesnt look right.

    No way should anyone juump to the Governor, especially when it doesn’t make too sense for him.

    Rachel Maddow, incidentally, was focusing on this story in December from about the time wikdstein resigned.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  47. From her column: <

    Sure, conservatives went crazy after the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s famous May 2013 audit found the IRS may have flagged groups with “tea party” in their names for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

    But that’s because Issa had asked the inspector general to look only at how tea party-affiliated groups were treated. He didn’t care to know, as we later found out thanks to Democrats on his committee, that the IRS was also flagging applications from liberal groups that used terms such as “progressive,” “medical marijuana” or “healthcare legislation.”

    Here’s what’s wrong with this:

    1) It’s not that the IRS “may have flagged” but they did flag newly established groups with “tea party” in their names for extra scrutiny. Not all of them, not all, but certain subcategories.

    2) Important Error! The reason the IRS found special scrutiny was NOT because Issa had asked
    to look only at how tea party-affiliated groups were treated, and neither did the Inspector General, start out that way. Wasn’t there anyway a report already by the time Issa found out?

    3) While “we” may have later found out because f Democrats on the committee, that the IRS was also flagging applications from liberal groups, the Inspector General didn’t find out because of the Democrats. Or if he did, it’s only because the IRS had previously concealed it, but leaked to the democrats

    4) Important omission: All “flagged” groups or all collections of flaggings, were not treated equally after they were flagged.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  48. Not just “partisan” stupidity. What’s her day job? A “journalist”, right? She’s supposed to do research, gather information, and present them to the public.

    Exactly. Is there anyone who doesn’t believe that he or she could do Maureen Dowd’s or Thomas Friedman’s or E.J. Dionne’s or whatever liberal columnist-of-your-choice’s job? Replicating DNC/Media Matters/OFA talking points in an 800-word column twice a week would take at most — what? — about two hours? And it’s certainly not as if they seem to be making any effort at interesting or evocative prose. When future generations study the death of traditional opinion journalism they will no doubt wonder why so many junior varsity thinkers and hack writers were given such prominent placement in once-important newspapers. The answer of course will be because those columnists had the requisite opinions favored by those who thought of themselves as enlightened and sophisticated.

    JVW (709bc7)

  49. Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations who is overseeing the investigation, says many schools are rethinking how and what they report to the government. Receiving a thick questionnaire from the IRS, she says, is a “behavior changer.”

    The IRS Takes a Closer Look at Colleges
    .

    Tanny O'Haley (c0a74e)

  50. 31- vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting and espresso beans on top?

    mg (31009b)

  51. Cuomo sounds like the republican leadership going after conservative tea-baggers.

    mg (31009b)

  52. Comment by JVW (709bc7) — 1/20/2014 @ 10:29 pm

    Replicating DNC/Media Matters/OFA talking points in an 800-word column twice a week would take at most — what? — about two hours?

    That’s probably only about half of their columns, and they probably only echo what sounds interesting or persuasive to them. (sometimes it is persuasive only because of their ignorance)

    There’s a big effort going on here to say the opposite of the truh – to make the Republican Parrty more partisan and co-ordinated – than the Democratic Party. And that if the Republican Party is not that partisan, many people in it are at least deranged. It helps that they get stuck on stupid or bad ideas.

    Now all this is because of campaign finance reforms, and political consultants.

    Campaign finance reform and regulation makes it difficult for anyone to run indepedently – and it’s allowe for national committees and other canoddates to contribute large sums to campaigns.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  53. 51. Comment by mg (31009b) — 1/21/2014 @ 3:33 am

    Cuomo sounds like the republican leadership going after conservative tea-baggers.

    He’s tryng to outmaneuver de Blasio. He is now proposing universal state-wide pre-K paid for entirely by the state out of existing revenues.

    Bill de Blasio will not like that, as it removes his reason to raise taxes. He has already claimed that state funding is insecure, as it can be taken away.

    Of course, in de Blasio’s own propsal, the dedication disappears after five years.

    The real catch in de Blasio’s proposal, though, is, if the economy, or Wall Street at least, does well – and there is every expectation that it should – his tax should raise a lot more money than projected, and than needed to fund pre-K, which is not actually all that much, so he will have alot more money to play with.

    The whole pre-K idea is agimmick to raise taxes.

    And that’s not where extra attention in education should be paid. And there’s no extra education going on anyway. Pre-K is useless unless its followedup for a seven or eight years, and subsequent curriculum adjusted accordingly.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  54. 52. This used to go on in France, especially in the court of Louis XIV. Such a woman is called a courtesan. Of course only one husband was official, usually one of the less important ones.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  55. 54. The Davis campaign knows it is lying – both about her biography and about the (boo!) Republican being involved in getting the reporter interested

    This is the BIG LIE: The Republicans are more partian than the Democrats.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  56. Although “tea party” applications were sent to a team of specialists that looked into potential political cases, Russell says, “progressive” groups were sent to a different team within the IRS for processing.

    This point is, of course, lost or not known.

    As I said, this fact could have made things look worse to the IG than if it was only known that “Tea Party” groups had been put on a BOLO list, so it was kept hidden, only to be trotted out as a defense later, and pitched in such a way so that disparate treatment of the different BOLO lists got lost.

    It’s the Democrats who pitch (false) stories. The Republicans rarely pitch even true stories, and when they do, it may have easily detectable mistakes. You have to wary, also, of the guilty people trying to get false facts into the narrative.

    When people lie, they are prepared for detection of errors, usually with more lies and claims, but not so when they are trying to alert people to what they think may be the truth. Then they get surprised and have no comeback.

    The more back and forth there is, the less penetration of the truth among the general public.

    Sammy Finkelman (4227f2)

  57. Settle down, Sammy. You have the majority of the comments on the “Recent Comments” widget on the sidebar.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  58. Has the most comments on every thread also. The most words too he has. The posts from Spammy, Yoda always skips and never reads. Inane and insane they mostly are. Into exile, I wish he would go!

    Yoda (557254)

  59. “It’s the Democrats who pitch (false) stories. The Republicans rarely pitch even true stories”

    Sammy – Can you explain the difference in meaning, in English, between your statements above, please?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  60. “It’s the Democrats who pitch (false) stories. The Republicans rarely pitch even true stories”

    Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/21/2014 @ 11:24 am

    Sammy – Can you explain the difference in meaning, in English, between your statements above, please?

    The first sentence says that Democrats try to get false (negative) stories (about Republicans) into the press. The second says that Republicans rarely try to get true (negative) stories (about Democrats) into the press.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  61. 53, 54. After going on 6 year’s in JEF’s war on Affirmative Action, we have Abortion Barbie leading the War Against Women.

    gary gulrud (05efc5)

  62. “The first sentence says that Democrats try to get false (negative) stories (about Republicans) into the press. The second says that Republicans rarely try to get true (negative) stories (about Democrats) into the press.”

    Sammy – Thank you, but that was not really much of a help.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  63. Robin Abcarian thinks that a couple closed lanes on a bridge is “worse” than four dead Americans in Benghazi.
    Those two lanes of traffic were re-opened, but those four dead Americans will never come back.

    What a broken moral compass she has.

    Elephant Stone (6a6f37)

  64. Sammy – Thank you, but that was not really much of a help.

    what else did you expect from him?

    redc1c4 (abd49e)


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