Patterico's Pontifications

5/14/2013

Drip, Drip, Drip: More Conservative Groups Targeted By IRS Than Previously Revealed

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:05 pm



At least the Obama administration was transparent about this whole IRS thing.

They admitted it . . . except, they had to, because a report was coming out.

They said it was just local Cincinnati people who did it . . . except, it was Washington people too.

They said there was no political agenda . . . except, they leaked tax information about conservative groups to a liberal media outlet.

They said it was just low level people who were involved . . . except, top officials knew about it in 2011.

And now, we learn:

They said it was just 300 groups . . . except, it was maybe more like 471.

Well, they’re bad at math, dontcha know.

Well, at least they’re being transparent. Nobody has been fired or disciplined, but at least one person has been promoted.

Yup, they’re transparent. Transparent liars and thugs.

77 Responses to “Drip, Drip, Drip: More Conservative Groups Targeted By IRS Than Previously Revealed”

  1. and one of the main culprits this time has a track record of doing the same thing for Clinton

    http://washingtonexaminer.com/irs-boss-of-tea-party-probes-targeted-anti-clinton-group-in-1990s/article/2529533

    redc1c4 (403dff)

  2. America is all kinds of corrupt it’s like one of them third world countries

    it’s so embarrassing

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  3. Christian Adams, the DOJ whistleblower, also was audited.

    narciso (3fec35)

  4. Narciso, just imagine W.Bush was involved in this type of filth.

    Gus (694db4)

  5. 4. Narciso, just imagine W.Bush was involved in this type of filth.

    Comment by Gus (694db4) — 5/14/2013 @ 8:38 pm

    If George Bush and Dick Cheney had thrown a three-legged race so a couple of make-a-wish foundation kids visiting the WH for a Fourth of July picnic could get a trophy, that would have been a scandal calling their integrity into question.

    On the other hand if documents leak showing that the ammo used in the attack on the Benghazi attack was actually shipped to Libya from DHS stockpiles in the states that’ll be a non-issue.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  6. People generally don’t risk their career lying to Congress to protect a screwup below them in the organization. It certainly doesn’t seem logical to me that three people would do so.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  7. IRS leaked info on conservatives:

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Progressive-Group-Says-IRS-Gave-Them-Confidential-Docs-On-Conservative-Groups

    Sen. Harry Reed made a big deal in the 2012 election that he had a tip that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years.

    An investigation into the IRS should include what they told Harry Reed. Get that sucker under oath.

    AZ Bob (c11d35)

  8. Well, they’re bad at math, dontcha know.

    You’ve heard of “Ebonics”??

    Well, this is the new version of “math” called “Algebro”…

    Smock Puppet, 10th Dan Snark Master and Gender Bïgǒt (e69dc9)

  9. 6. People generally don’t risk their career lying to Congress to protect a screwup below them in the organization. It certainly doesn’t seem logical to me that three people would do so.

    Comment by crosspatch (6adcc9) — 5/14/2013 @ 9:02 pm

    Maybe there was no screw-up below them in the organization.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  10. That is an independent organization and Teh One could not be expected to be responsible for actions of low level staffers in Cincy, and even though he has no control over the IRS who will implement ObamaCare, he has instructed Jack Lew to take care of this, kind of like how those State Dept people got disciplined by getting lateral assignments after their paid leave.

    Anyone think Holder could do an impartial investigation?

    JD (b63a52)

  11. Obama created the environment, the tone, that created the permission structure that allowed these low level staffers to attack the evil racist bitter clinger teabaggers.

    JD (b63a52)

  12. Maybe there was no screw-up below them in the organization.

    You should change your handle to Sherlock. 🙂

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  13. it reminds me back before this all started how early one morning some whore LA city employee was gonna ticket this guy who had parked in the loading zone out front where i worked

    this was back when i smoked

    and i watched him walk to the back of the car to get the license plate number, and when he saw his holy food stampness’s likeness on a sticker he put away his little pad and got back in his car

    and i knew right then i was living in a third world city

    which I already kind of knew cause of i have time warner internet

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  14. If they were not screwing it up, it was intentional; perhaps they should rethink that part of this story.

    htom (412a17)

  15. …Teh One could not be expected to be responsible for actions of low level staffers in Cincy…

    No truer words, JD. Hence the “special task force” they stood up in DC so the political appointees could be directly involved.

    If you’re gonna politicize an agency like the IRS you can’t leave it up to the careerists in podunkville to do the job right; that takes close supervision.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  16. 12.

    Maybe there was no screw-up below them in the organization.

    You should change your handle to Sherlock. 🙂

    Comment by crosspatch (6adcc9) — 5/14/2013 @ 9:32 pm

    Thanks, but I just paid for another batch of “Captain Obvious” business cards.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  17. 13. …and i knew right then i was living in a third world city

    which I already kind of knew cause of i have time warner internet

    Comment by happyfeet (8ce051) — 5/14/2013 @ 9:47 pm

    That experience right there should make you skeptical of the story the people of Benghazi were spontaneously inspired to demonstrate because of a video.

    You think Time Warner is bad in LA, imagine what service is like in Libya.

    They’ll see that video sometime after they get the second season of “Kojack” wrapped up. Maybe 2018.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  18. here is a song called julia it’s about riding bikes in the desert and the girl don’t love you and you have a hat

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAYmT2mY648

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  19. Electricity is not very stable in those parts, as Niessen’s Brendan Mills, noted in ‘Taken’

    narciso (3fec35)

  20. narciso, electricity is apparently not very stable in these parts.

    http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/05/13/exploding-manholes-set-cars-on-fire-cut-power-in-brooklyn/

    NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Several manholes exploded in Brooklyn on Monday, setting cars on fire and sending people running for their safety.

    As CBS 2’s Alice Gainer reported, dozens of families were left without power following the explosions in Bushwick on Monday afternoon. As late as 9 p.m., power was still out for several customers, and smoke was still billowing on and off from one of the manholes that exploded.

    …Con Edison reported 153 customers were without power Monday night, according to 1010 WINS. Power should be restored to all customers by 11 a.m. Tuesday, Con Ed said.

    Thankfully Bloomberg has addressed the real issues facing New Yorkers. The Big Gulp, public display of tobacco products, and fining businesses into bankruptcy for selling teensy tiny little gun-shaped cigarette lighters due to his zero tolerance policy for weapons. Which should put him in good stead the next time his snow plow workers get drunk and go to sleep instead of clearing the streets.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  21. 19. Electricity is not very stable in those parts, as Niessen’s Brendan Mills, noted in ‘Taken’

    Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 5/14/2013 @ 10:12 pm

    But yeah it’s really hard to watch even a movie trailer if your video display and satellite uplink are powered by a bicycle-driven generator.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  22. pressure cooker manholes…

    and “manholes” is sexist.

    redc1c4 (403dff)

  23. I’m pinching myself raw, but I’d say when you’ve lost Andrea Mitchell you have reached that point in your lassitude when you’ve become a disgusting, painful liability to all who ever admitted support for your sorry azz.

    He’s basically burned every trick in the book and a freaking second term is all shot to hell. Did Soros pick this sh*thead? Who then?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  24. 24-Gary
    I believe the ill informed voters picked the pompous shithead.

    mg (31009b)

  25. I’m actually wondering if the only reason this crap is even coming out now (since he is safely re-elected) is so they can hammer the GOP for it if it happens under them. Because I seriously doubt most of the news people would care otherwise.

    DanH (d47dcc)

  26. im wondering how extensive the chilling effect will be for future groups

    dustin (3f1676)

  27. I wonder…
    Why so many things breaking all at once?
    I’m not sure anything has been as bad as F+F, where the feds instructed private citizens to break the law in essence to plant evidence for political purposes and cost many lives, including of a US official
    or
    dropping the prosecution of a voter intimidation case
    and other things that have been bad were ignored by the press
    such as
    making appointments without the approval of Congress
    ignoring fed court rulings (oil exploration in Gulf)
    persecuting states trying to protect their borders

    and in my mind there is nothing surprising, really, about the behavior of the IRS or the DOJ with the AP
    I mean, after slamming the Tea Party for being racist and dangerous domestic terrorists, what is wrong with a little anti-preferential clerical treatment???

    is it just the chickens coming home to roost, finally?
    distraction from Benghazi?
    The Clinton faction doing payback to Obama?
    just the reality that the IRS is an obvious and quantifiable thing?
    that the AP is making the mistake of getting the press, and they don’t like it

    anybody else wondering things are not quite what they seem?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  28. Is there a chapter in Rules for Radicals about this kind of occurence?

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  29. That was the lesson of the Auto Task Force, dustin,
    discourage persons from even considering supporting the opposition,

    narciso (3fec35)

  30. Smock Puppet wrote:

    Well, they’re bad at math, dontcha know.

    You’ve heard of “Ebonics”??

    Well, this is the new version of “math” called “Algebro”…

    That is just sooooo racist! I hereby denounce you!

    The multicultural Dana (3e4784)

  31. Stewart, had a good rejoinder, ‘this from the department that counts the money’ blind squirrel gets the nut,

    narciso (3fec35)

  32. President Obama and his minions never thought that they could possibly lose the support of the professional media, so there was no need to worry about what they did; their sycophants would dutifully cover it up.

    But no one counted on the Administration doing something stupid to urinate off the media, and my guess is that they are still hoping that their lapdogs will fall right back into place soon enough; a week or so of righteous indignation, and the media will go back to fellating the President supporting the Administration line.

    And who am I to say that they’re wrong about that?

    The journalist Dana (3e4784)

  33. Obama was the Piper Pied
    Who cared if he really lied?
    The media might whine
    But they’d fall back in line
    Unless their love for him has died.

    The Limerick Avenger (3e4784)

  34. Well, they’re bad at math, dontcha know.

    Bet they know how many grams are in an ounce.

    nk (875f57)

  35. Liberals are so third world.

    Rodney King's Spirit (ae12ec)

  36. Could be a two-fer. If Barack Hussein Obama is impeached and removed, then Joe Biden becomes President, which means that Hillary Clinton can’t run in 2016. 🙂 Best outcome ever!

    The Dana who really isn't on drugs (3e4784)

  37. comment#27:

    anybody else wondering things are not quite what they seem?

    Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 5/15/2013 @ 4:57 am

    Yes.

    TG (151b93)

  38. He’s just so damn smart
    this President Passerby
    there is no there there

    Colonel Haiku (e807c3)

  39. Liberals are so third world.

    I can’t think of ONE society or community that is really dysfunctional — full of corruption, backwardness, crime and economic stagnation, that is of the right — or follows mainstream conservative thinking and policies. I know there are some stunted nations in the Middle East that reflect a peculiar mix of reactionary Sharia-law culture with quasi-Socialist form of economics, but those come the closest to being non-enviable places that aren’t also blatantly liberal or leftist.

    A nation that is very liberal, both culturally and economically, is like a workplace that gives out goodies to employees based on the honor system. Perks like free lunches or snacks, permissive break time, etc. That will work as long as enough people don’t exploit the situation, or eventually become corrupted with an attitude of self-entitlement. But human nature being what it is, the honor system always will be vulnerable to abuse.

    Mark (9ba6f2)

  40. We deserve the nation we’re ending up with.

    Too many people are philosophically and emotionally in bed with disreputable public figures like America’s Evita Peron (ie, Obama), etc. After all, sad to say, but we aren’t much different from an Argentina, Venezuela or France (ie, the people of the latter making matters far worse for themselves by recently putting into office a flat-out, garden-variety Socialist), or any other country that never learns that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

    usatoday.com, May 14: In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked. That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn’t be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

    In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

    Mark (9ba6f2)

  41. Who has Issa put in the crow bar hotel?
    No one, but he chairs another investigation.
    Insane republicans.

    mg (31009b)

  42. The blogs? The pro media bleats
    They are just scandal sheets
    They’re having fun
    But Obama’s the one
    Who cares if he really cheats?

    The Limerick Avenger (3e4784)

  43. Liberals throughout the IRS knew that the system was ripe for exploitation, in part because they observed the characteristics of the top echelon, including a Secretary of the Treasury (who, in turn, was head of the IRS), who was allowed to be selected by Obama in spite of the nominee’s checkered past.

    Humans don’t live in a vacuum, and when we see idiocy and lunacy all around us, we become either increasingly desensitized, cynical or dishonest (or all three of those things). IOW, keep in mind the attitudes that have poisoned no less than the US military, based on the story of Nidal Hasan and the Fort Hood massacre.

    The mindset that has corrupted the IRS, and the US military, and the media, etc, etc, is doing an end run on other things too.

    politicaloutcast.com, May 14, 2013: Last week, the California Assembly (same as House of Representatives in most states) passed Assembly Bill 1266 by a 46-25 vote. Currently, there are 54 Democrats, 25 Republicans and 1 vacancy. All 46 votes for the bill were Democrats as no Republicans voted for in favor of the measure.

    AB 1266 states that public schools cannot discriminate in any way concerning the sex of the student. Both sexes are to have equal access to all offered courses, counseling and athletics. Any student can try out for any sport, regardless of their sex.

    But the kicker is this statement contained in the bill: “SECTION 1. Section 221.5 of the Education Code is amended to read:” “(f) A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and facilities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”

    In other words, any boy who claims he is a girl, even though he is anatomically still a boy, would be allowed to use the same locker rooms and showers that the girls use. On the opposite side, a girl claiming to be a boy but is still anatomically a girl would be allowed to shower with all the boys. They don’t even have to be undergoing any form of sex change therapy, just say they are the opposite sex from what they really are and they can parade around in all their glory in either locker room or shower.

    Mark (9ba6f2)

  44. Con groups, they are full of sass
    While Obama is nothing but class
    They’re learning it now
    Over table they bow
    As Obama shoves it up their ass.

    The Limerick Avenger (3e4784)

  45. Those are not really limericks, Dana. Throw in a refrain, and you’ve got an anthem.

    nk (875f57)

  46. Got it.

    Burning the USA
    Burning the USA
    He’s doing what
    Wright couldn’t
    Burning the USA

    nk (875f57)

  47. Do you really think they lost Andrea Mitchell? I keep hearing the same JourOlisty drumbeat about Benghazi being a clown kerfuffle compared to this extra-serious IRS situation.

    And then they circle back to “Bush Appointee” and secretly enjoy the highly effective targeting of groups with Dog-whistles for conservatism or contrary-to-the-Precious goals in their titles.

    SarahW (b0e533)

  48. I’m not sure at all that I trust their concern.

    SarahW (b0e533)

  49. Prez is all that, bag of chips?
    Teh media cartwheels back-flips
    Right played filleted and slayed
    Dems hands wring they’re afraid
    IRS here’s my ass use both lips

    Colonel Haiku (e807c3)

  50. I want to know more about the Barack H. Obama Foundation, approved in nanoseconds, led by goofy brother Malik Obama.

    I’m sure it’s all on the up and up. 😉

    Patricia (be0117)

  51. We have to get past this idea that we have to personally demonize the other guy in order to fight his policies. Let the Democrats be the party who demonizes the other side as evil.

    Timothy (b06896)

  52. Thanks for the advise.

    JD (ee8414)

  53. We have to get past this idea that we have to personally demonize the other guy in order to fight his policies.

    If Benghazi and the IRS’s treatment of Tea Party are administraton policies, and let’s not forget Fast and Furious, then this administration is evil. (The AP story, meh. I remember SWIFT. Fourth Estate, Fifth Colummn, what’s the difference?)

    nk (875f57)

  54. What nk said

    Colonel Haiku (e807c3)

  55. Report from the Daily Mail that a conservative group related to education had to list every single teacher they had trained. This is one of the reasons I believe there was something bigger going on. Why I believe this process was being used to create a database at the DNC. I can understand the IRS maybe wanting to know who many training sessions they had or how many teachers they trained in order to establish some sense of size of the operation to see if the money numbers match the reported scope. But wanting to know the exact names of those trained? Only three reasons I can think of that make any sense:

    1. Collect the names of people to harass in the future at IRS.

    2. Collect the names because DHS put out some sort of edict to more closely document membership in “conservative” organizations. Remember, they apparently believe the political right is a danger to the country according to the documents they have put out.

    3. The DNC is building a database of Republican “activists”.

    I am trying to think of some innocent reason why IRS would want exact names of people a group has interacted with and am having trouble coming up with one. This is a pattern. IRS has asked groups for the names of people who have spoken at their meetings and names of people who attended meetings. They are interested in exact names. Why?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324716/Document-IRS-ordered-conservative-educational-group-turn-list-high-school-college-students-trained.html

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  56. Why would 15 IRS agents want to steal the medical records of 10 million people that included very sensitive treatment to include psychiatric treatment?

    “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,”

    http://weaselzippers.us/2013/05/15/irs-accused-of-stealing-medical-records-for-10-million-americans-with-no-search-warrant-or-subpoena/

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  57. crosspatch asked:

    Why would 15 IRS agents want to steal the medical records of 10 million people that included very sensitive treatment to include psychiatric treatment?

    One of the provisions of the stimulus bill and Obaminablecare was that all medical records have to be computerized, ostensibly so that physicians can access the past medical; records of patients they have not previously treated. Those records have to be transferable, presumably over the internet, with the appropriate safety precautions to prevent unauthorized parties from obtaining medical records.

    One of the provisions was a standardized format, which required the calculation of body mass index. Now, your doctor has you weighed every time you go in, and he can tell just by looking whether you are overweight, so there is no particular need for the physician to have a BMI calculation in medical records. If he wishes to know if you weight has changed since your last visit, he can look up your weight.

    So why have a required BMI calculation? The only rational reason is so that those records can be searchable for BMI, and that’s not a factor in the care of the individual.

    It is illegal to check such records when you don’t have a legitimate reason, but it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that corporations which receive hundreds of applicants wouldn’t have some outfit on the side which checks such records for BMI — we don’t want to hire fatties; they cost too much! — and tobacco use, past drug treatment and psychiatric treatment. The notion that there is any computer/internet safeguard that can’t be hacked is fantasy.

    The realistic Dana (3e4784)

  58. This had nothing to do with Obamacare, it was probably about correlating claimed medical expenses with actual treatment. But the IRS apparently went on a fishing expedition to pull millions of medical records.

    IRS can pull anyone’s records if they suspect cheating, it just requires a subpoena. In this case they simply sucked 10 million people’s treatment records in.

    Why? What justified that? Even after they were warned that the records were protected information.

    Then put that in context with this:

    Maxine Waters: Obama’s database will have information about “Everything on every individual”.

    http://weaselzippers.us/2013/05/15/flashback-maxine-waters-says-obamas-database-will-have-info-about-everything-on-every-individual/

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  59. Also, remember back when OFA wanted people to report the names of friends and others who posted anything anti-Obama on the Internet?

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  60. Under Obamacare the IRS needs only to verify that you have qualifying insurance, they don’t need your treatment records unless you are claiming medical expense deductions and they want to verify that.

    Relatively few Americans actually claim itemized medical expenses.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  61. These are features, not bugs, to the totalitarian fascist Left.

    JD (ee8414)

  62. lies, damned lies, statistics, and deliberately omitted information…

    FWIW, HIPPA was more about clarifying what kind of data could be mined and analyzed by insurance companies, pharmacies and manufacturers, etc., etc.
    it had little, if anything, to do with protecting individual records, which were already protected by existing law
    and it had little, if anything (as far as I know), to do with security of computerized records from hackers or unauthorized access

    Know everything about everybody, make everything illegal, then bust who you don’t like. yeah.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  63. I better not see my crush err transference for my psychologist on ProPublica or there will be trouble.

    nk (875f57)

  64. I am very down on EMR right now, if only because the slightest off grid moment seems to provoke panic and irritation in medical offices.

    None of the systems is ready for prime time; inflexibility, propagation of error, interference in specific doctor patient (or caregiver-patient) relationships, information no longer belongs to an individual to divulge for his or her own good as he or she sees fit, requirements that doctors gather and share information whether they need it or not, that can be gathered and shared with third parties who should not be entitled to it. I can remember when EMR was the single biggest reason to reject Hillarycare. How did we get to the point where this is ok with anyone?

    Frankly I think the trend is toward a tyrannical nightmare out of dystopian science fiction.

    SarahW (b0e533)

  65. I don’t think the three at the IRS were necessarily lying to cover a specific person. It might be more abstract than that. They might have been lying to protect a philosophy of intentionally stacking the IRS with activist partisans.

    Now people will say “But Dough Shulman was a Bush appointee!”. That doesn’t mean he was a Republican. Shulman donated $500 Democratic National Committee in 2004.

    I also believe Obama could be completely truthful in his statement that he had no specific knowledge that this specific thing was going on. But I believe he is responsible for setting conditions where activist partisans are brought into government and for the use of the civil services as a political weapon against opponents.

    They are possibly protecting something larger than an individual here, they are possibly protecting a larger overall strategy.

    crosspatch (49bf90)

  66. The President is so out of the loop on this stuff, he has to read about it in the paper, just like you and me.

    rochf (f3fbb0)

  67. But before one can stack government with partisan activists, they first must stack the press with partisan activists so they don’t expose what is going on with the government.

    crosspatch (49bf90)

  68. “I am very down on EMR right now, if only because the slightest off grid moment seems to provoke panic and irritation in medical offices.”

    SarahW – My internist went electronic about five years ago and apart from the initial hiccups training the nurses and admins in how to use the system, I don’t notice a difference. He’s member of a group practice of eight physicians who are probably a decade younger than me so there is a generational acceptance factor which helps.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  69. Does anybody remember who said this?

    We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

    Obama never laid out what those national security objectives were, did he? Welcome to the IRS, our new unofficial Ministry of Internal Security’s primary intelligence collection agencies defending the “we” consisting of those on the left from it’s enemies.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  70. *…the IRS, one our new…*

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  71. Yeah, now might be a good time to stop any additional ammunition purchases by DHS. Besides, they have enough stockpile on hand to last them for a while.

    crosspatch (49bf90)

  72. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) was on Fox and he made a salient point. The WH gets these IG reports before they’re released to the public or even to Congress. Which makes perfect sense. Does anyone really believe the President of the United States finds out the results of an IG investigation into one of his executive branch agencies along with the rest of us? The entire purpose of an IG investigation isn’t to produce a press release. It’s to look into some sort of institutional failure, perhaps involving deliberate wrongdoing, and then to make recommendations to the boss, who can then fix the situation.

    Whoever the hell the boss is in this administration.

    So unless the President only learns that the Treasury dept.’s IG sent over to the WH an advance copy of the report on the IRS investigation if he catches that interview on TV, then the whole time he was pretending there was some question about the allegations being true and claiming we had to wait for the report, he had the report.

    No doubt the top officials at the IRS knew the results of the report which explains their preemptive apology for the wrongdoing.

    The purpose of this rant is to point out a pattern of behavior. Barack Obama is psychologically incapable of dealing with facts that don’t fit his own personal narrative and has to pretend uncertainty exists where none does. The IRS apology alone would have been enough for him to quit pretending there was an “if” he could attach to the wrongdoing. Knowing the WH had the IG’s report while he was pretending he didn’t know “if these allegations are true” makes him part of the scandal.

    He did the same thing when it came to Benghazi; he had to pretend there was a fog of war that made the lack of even an attempt at a response to the attack and his later absurd talking points somehow appear acceptable at the time.

    But just as with the IRS targeting, the officials at the WH knew the facts on the ground in Benghazi on the night of 9/11/12. Which is why instead they turned to the CIA for an intelligence assessment. To pretend there was uncertainty where none existed.

    Somebody needs to nail Carney to the wall and ask when the WH received the IG report. Let he and the rest of the administration try to lie and say “we saw it when the rest of you saw it.” Then maybe the MFM can be goaded into asking when they knew what was being reported from the people on the ground in Benghazi and we might see some progress on that front as well.

    Steve57 (9b1cdb)

  73. Is the entire administration populated by PhD’s?
    They certainly know how to pile it higher and deeper.
    It’s going to be a long, long, 3-years, 8-months, and 5-days.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  74. We have to get past this idea that we have to personally demonize the other guy in order to fight his policies. Let the Democrats be the party who demonizes the other side as evil.

    I think this is more sarcasm from Timothy. I can probably guess where he’s from and the point he’s trying to make.

    I’ll go ahead and piss off Timothy by saying I generally agree with the statement that he makes, even though he makes it ironically. One thing that separates the crowd I like to travel with from the crowd I don’t is that I prefer people who don’t declare others evil because of the political beliefs they hold. That’s what the left does. Some elements of the right, too. Let others do that. I don’t like to.

    What is different is when someone demonstrates through their actions that they are willing to behave in an immoral way, and cynically use power for shameful political ends that they know will badly harm our children’s future — or, perhaps worse, openly abuse power.

    Obama, through his actions as President, has clearly shown himself to be willing to be the former type of abuser of power. It is starting to look like he may be the latter sort as well.

    There are those, of course, who claim they knew this about him all along. Maybe they did. Or maybe they would have said this about any Democrat who took this office. I don’t know. That argument is far more important to others (including, I suspect, Timothy) than it is to me. I live in the here and now, and I certainly don’t like what I see in this President.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  75. As someone put it somewhere recently, we’re looking at Mr. Pink style trolling, in other words.

    I suspect.

    Patterico (9c670f)


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