The Big Lie: ONLY Conservative Groups Targeted by IRS? That’s not true.

Last week, the GOP unveiled its latest stalking horse: the idea that someone in the White House ordered city-level IRS offices across the country to single out “Conservative” organizations seeking “tax-exempt status” for additional scrutiny. And not just ANY “Conservative” groups, but “T.E.A. Party” groups. Set aside for a moment the fact that for YEARS the Tea Party has denied being a Republican or even “partisan” organization, as far as “scandals” go, this one is pretty weak tea (pun intended). To buy into this absurd conspiracy theory, one must believe that the White House decided that delaying the approval of “501(c)(4) status” for Conservative groups (because remember, despite “targeting” them, they APPROVED their applications anyway) was a priority worth risking criminal prosecution and possible impeachment for “abuse of power” 18-months before President Obama even began his reelection campaign. Hearings in the House last week revealed that this was little more than a bureaucratic snafu of overworked local IRS staffers looking for “shortcuts” to process a flood of Conservative groups seeking “tax-exempt” status in the wake of the “Citizens United” decision. Republicans could already feel the issue slipping away last week as polls showed the President not losing any ground over the issue. So over the weekend, Republicans started to declare that “ONLY Conservative groups were TARGETED by the IRS”. Why? Because if “ONLY” Conservative groups were targeted, that must mean someone consciously singled them out because of their political beliefs. And “targeted” sounds much more malicious than “singled out”. Problem (for them) is, IT’S NOT TRUE. It’s an absolute total lie. Plenty of “Liberal” groups received the same additional scrutiny, and in one case, was actually denied their application for 501(c)(4) status (unlike EVERY. SINGLE. CONSERVATIVE group, who were ALL approved.) Yet they are making the claim everywhere (even the floor of the Senate) without anyone calling them out for lying, hoping to push the false narrative that something dastardly was afoot at the IRS… an organization Republicans have been vilifying for decades. “Liberal” groups applying for tax exempt status also received additional scrutiny, but not as many were scrutinized as “Conservative” groups only because far fewer of them applied.

But first, some background: in 2011 following the Citizens United decision, the IRS did indeed start cracking down on “political” organizations seeking 501(c)(4) protection as a way to illegally conceal their donors. That’s the “fraud and abuse” portion of the “waste, fraud and abuse” Republicans say they’re always on the lookout for. One of those “tax loopholes” Mitt Romney suggested we close before we raise anyone’s taxes.

It’s a sad sad day when Fox “news” is the lone broadcast network to point out the fact that the IRS did not focus exclusively on “Tea Party” affiliated groups for extra scrutiny:

Fox Debunks Lie That ONLY Conservative Groups Targeted by IRS (1:15)

Rep. Paul Ryan later claimed in the interview that “the White House released private confidential tax information to the public”. Whose? Ryan never says and Wallace never asks, but after some digging, according the the NYT:

The 2010 incident involved an offhand comment by the White House economist Austan Goolsbee that Koch Industries had not paid corporate income taxes because it pays taxes through the personal income tax code. As it turned out, that was not true, but the assertion was made in a discussion of tax reform ideas, not politics.

So that “confidential tax information” wasn’t even real. It was one guy repeating something he had “heard”… NOT “factual tax information” provided to him by the IRS.

IMPEACH! (Which reminds me, last weeks Op/Ed on all the uninvestigated Bush Era scandals was so popular that I was still updating it as recently as Saturday, so check it out again if you haven’t been back recently.)

On ABC’s “ThisWeek”, interminable Conservative douchebag George Will said accusingly yesterday:

[One must believe that IRS targeting] “JUST HAPPENED to fall disproportionately on Conservatives” [without malice or forethought].

Yes George. Conservative Groups did indeed “just happen” to receive a disproportionate amount of scrutiny because a disproportionate amount of APPLICANTS were Conservative.

Something to consider: If you were going to comb through 70,000 applications (Cincinnati in just one year) for “tax free status” and wanted to target “Liberal” groups specifically in your brute-force search of political organizations masquerading as charities, what keywords would you choose? Words like “Liberal” or “Progressive” to be sure. Maybe “Democratic” too though “Democracy” is no sure thing. But what else? What other Liberal “political” keyword might you include in your search to “target” Progressive groups? If you can think of even one more, you’re a better man than I am, Charlie Brown. But when it comes to Right-leaning groups, besides “Conservative” or “Republican” there’s “Tea Party”, “Patriot(s)”, “Militia”, “(fair, flat) Tax (fairness, etc)” … heck, I think even “Freedom” has been co-opted by The Right as their own personal brand. And in the immediate aftermath of the “Citizens United” decision, Conservatives were applying for “tax exempt status” en masse because… not only do they despise paying taxes (read: paying for the government services they use), but 501(c)(4)’s are not required by law to disclose their contributors, allowing them to operate in total secrecy… just the way Karl Rove (et al) likes it.

So is it any wonder Conservative groups were so easily caught up in the drag-net (and I use that term almost literally.) These local under-staffed IRS offices used a quick & dirty search using obvious political keywords to filter the “suspicious” applicants from the genuine ones.

And being dragged into this Dog & Pony Show is ObamaCare via “Sarah Hall Ingraham”. If you’ve never heard of her before now, you are forgiven. She was the evil genius in charge of overseeing just who did & did not qualify for “tax exempt status” when this “scandal” was taking place (2009-2012). That would be the same evil genius that “targeted” Conservative groups only to then go ahead and give them 501(c)(4) status anyway. Ingraham is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office… basically, the person tasked with “enforcing” the insurance mandate with absolutely no power to actually do so. So naturally, Republicans are freaking out because… well… I’m not exactly sure. Why do Republicans ever freak out? Do they think she’ll only enforce the Federal mandate against Conservatives (read: whites) and let everyone else (read: blacks/Mexicans) slide? Because if the current IRS ”scandal” is any indication, the people most likely to skate are Conservatives. Do they believe she’s incompetent? Then they should be thrilled that someone was appointed to the job that could take down ObamaCare for them. CLEARLY they aren’t worried that she’s SO competent that she’ll make ObamaCare a roaring success. So what’s their problem? There’s just no pleasing these people.

Personally, the REAL IRS “scandal” is that ANY political group has received tax-exempt status. Who “targets” an entire group of people for additional scrutiny and then goes ahead and approves them anyway? WORST. SCANDAL. EVER.

(Postscript: Since my departure from Crooks & Liars a few weeks ago, if you are missing my weekly live-blogging of the Sunday Talk Shows, you can now follow my updates on Facebook and Twitter. I didn’t do this earlier because the people I accused of being “petty & childish” were checking up on my Facebook page to see if I was saying anything bad about them. Pretty much says it all, don’tcha think? I believe enough time has passed where I can safely resume my duties without worrying that I might be assisting them in any way.)

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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May 20, 2013 · Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: fake scandals, myth busting, Partisanship, Politics, Taxes

Okay Wingnuts, Ya Wanna Talk Impeachment, Let’s Talk Impeachment

Since 2006, I’ve had two bumper stickers in the rear window of my car (affixed with Scotch Tape). The first reading “End~~less~~This War” from MoveOn.org that… fittingly… blew out of my car window last month when the tape cracked & dried with age, and the other reading: “Support Our Troops. Impeach Bush-Cheney”. Every once in a while someone asks me why I haven’t removed it since neither are still in office, and I explain to them that “you don’t have to still be in office to be impeached. An impeachment is a trial that takes place in the House [of Representatives]. They can still be impeached.” Right wingers have been hot to impeach President Obama almost quite literally from the day he took office. But ask them specifically what “high crimes or misdemeanors” President Obama himself is supposedly guilty of, and you’d be hard pressed for an answer, but the latest reason is “Benghazi”. What was the crime there? “Coverup!” they cry. Not the actual incident itself, but what they perceive is the White House’s unwillingness to “reveal the truth about what really happened” (ie: gross incompetence.) Gee, I can’t imagine why… two months before the election, the White House was reluctant to hand Republicans anything they might use as a political weapon (remember, Romney and the GOP were already trying to make an issue over just when the President finally called the attack “terrorism”.) John McCain had to be coaxed out of hiding for the 832nd time to appear on one of the Sunday shows yesterday to parse words like the petulant sore-loser he is, and claim Obama didn’t actually call the Benghazi attack “terrorism”, but just “demonstrations LIKE the one in Benghazi acts of terror.” (Can you hear my eyes rolling?) Right-wingers even LOVE to cite the date of the incident as: ”9/11″… NOT ”9/11/2012″… oh no, just ”9/11″. “Can you believe what happened on 9/11 on President Obama’s watch???” they cry! “They ignored all sorts of warnings, turned a blind eye, and now four Americans are dead! Impeach him!” they say without a hint of irony. Okay Wingnuts, you wanna talk “impeachment”, let’s talk Impeachment.

I’ve been mulling this project for months now, but the always excellent “Rachel Maddow Show” pretty much forced my hand last Friday following her own tackling of the subject:

Conservatives have been desperate to “impeach” since day one. (13:15)

But perhaps even better was her all-too-brief rundown of just a few of the “scandals” that took place during the Bush Administration (I put “scandals” in quotes only because no one in the media actually called them “scandals” at the time, nor did they pursue any of them with the same ferocity as the the non-story of “Benghazi” today).

Bush era scandals that went uninvestigated (2:38)

Rachel’s “partial list” of Bush-Era scandals (additional info added by me, in parenthesis):

Cheney’s secret “energy task force” that invited oil & coal company executives to the White House to write the Energy Policy for the entire nation (a meeting whose records are still classified to this day.)

The multi-million dollar “no-bid contracts” to Halliburton (the company Cheney was the CEO of before becoming VP, and still holds stock in to this day, which performed many basic tasks and provided basic services/supplies at huge markups… including $20 icecube trays.)

The outing of covert CIA Agent Valery Plame (not just exposing her, but jeopardizing the life of every overseas contact she had ever worked with, and completely destroying the CIA front corporation that she worked under, Brewster/Jennings… an invaluable intelligence asset which took tens of millions of dollars and YEARS to establish), and the trashing of the reputation of both her and her husband, who dare question President Bush’s reasoning for why we needed to invade Iraq.

Cheney’s Chief-of-Staff, “Scooter” Libby, found guilty (unless you watch Fox), convicted on five of six counts, for his role in the outing of Ms. Plame (Libby was convicted for “obstructing” the investigation. We still… to this day… do not know who authorized him to leak that information to the press.)

President Bush then commuted Libby’s sentence (someone say “coverup”?), allowing him to avoid jail.

Abu Ghraib and the systematic torture & murder of prisoners held in U.S. custody overseas under the direction of “Top Brass” in the Bush Administration.

The NSA illegally wiretapping Americans without a warrant (or even showing “just cause” after the fact.)

The firing of eight (Republican) U.S. Attorneys (for refusing to prosecute Democratic organizations for alleged “voter fraud” after finding “no basis” for the Bush Administrations claims) by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (who was yet another example of Bush nepotism having been Bush’s friend in Texas) and replaced with attorneys more to their liking.

Administrators at the MMO (“Minerals Management Organization”)… appointed by the Bush Administration… accused of systemic corruption including bribery, sex, and even “snorting crystal-meth off the toaster.”

White House produced “fake news” clips (scripted by the White House and cast with actors using fake names, pretending to be legitimate newscasters) which were then distributed across the country (and played during evening news casts without attribution as if they were legitimate news stories and not propaganda); and the mass-submission of identical newspaper editorials praising the Bush Administration, written by the military and distributed to newspapers across the country as genuine letters from readers (not once but twice);

The Bush White House selectively editing scientific reports (by spin-doctors with no actual proficiency in the science whose reports they were editing) on subjects like “climate change” (leading Bush’s own Surgeon General to blast him and his “anti-science administration.”).

Karl Rove violating the “Hatch Act” in 2006 by hosting & funding political strategy sessions IN the White House and on the tax payers’ dime to get Republicans elected across the country.

A Conservative blogger and gay male prostitute going by the fake name of “Jeff Gannon” (supposedly passing an FBI background check) not only being allowed into the White House press room repeatedly but even allowed to ask the president (leading) questions (about what a wonderful and misunderstood guy President Bush was.)

(The botched handling of) Hurricane Katrina that left over 2,000 people dead (with dead bodies floating in the streets), and thousands more stranded in the New Orleans Superdome for days afterwards with no electricity, minimal food and no working plumbing after appointing yet another Bush crony (Michael “Heck’uva Job Brownie” Brown) with NO Emergency Management experience to head FEMA, whose last job was head of The Arabian Horse Association. (I would also add, cutting funding for strengthening the levies… approved during the Clinton Administration then CUT by the Bush Administration. Government funding for rebuilding the city afterwards was likewise never forthcoming and much of the city is still a ghost town to this day.)

…to name just a few.

I personally would add to that list:

Most know about the infamous “August 6th [2001] PDB {Presidential Daily Briefing)” by the CIA entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S.”, but most do not know the Bush Administration received no less than EIGHT prior warnings that an attack by alQaeda inside America was imminent. After ignoring report after report, the August 6th PDB was given a title the CIA believed would be “impossible for Bush to ignore”. Ha! He sure showed them!
There was the exposing of British informant Muhammad Noor Khan for political gain, forcing the Brits to close their investigation into the London bombings before they could fully ascertain who was behind them, infuriating British Intelligence.
Allowed [politically connected] members of the bin Laden family to flee the U.S. after 9/11 before they could be questioned.
Various Bush admin officials repeatedly ignored subpoenas to appear & testify before Congress.
Declared waterbording or any form of torture just short of “permanent physical injury or death” as “legal”.
The stovepiping of information, manipulating intelligence, and willfully ignoring facts that contradicted what they wanted to hear, and then repeatedly lying to the American people about what they already knew not to be true, all in an effort to make a case for war with Iraq. (Note: In the section just above on the eight warnings prior to the August 6 PDB, one of the reasons given for not believing there was a legitimate threat from alQaeda was that (quote) “alQaeda was only pretending to be planning an attack to distract the U.S. from Saddam Hussein. Think about that for a moment. BEFORE 9/11, the Bush Administration was already focused on Iraq… something they have repeatedly denied, and alleging a connection between (Suni) Saddam and (Shia) alQaeda. Bush’s Treasury Secretary John P. O’Neill said upon resigning in 2004 that Bush was already “talking about invading Iraq from day one” of his administration. And I’ve already shown you the video of Bush threatening Saddam Hussein over his “weapons of mass destruction” at the VERY BEGINNING of his 2000 campaign.)

ADDENDUM (5/14): I almost forgot about the nearly $12 BILLION DOLLARS that just up & vanished in Iraq shortly after the start of the Iraq War; relying on an informant called “Curveball“ (whom British and German Intelligence had already deemed as “unreliable and highly questionable”) as their source re: Saddam’s WMD program; their invitation of Ahmed Chalabi to the 2004 State of the Union… a man they later denounced as “an Iranian spy” after his claims of Saddam’s “stockpiles of WMD’s” didn’t pan out; the 2005 IRS audit of an Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA for daring to preach an “anti-war” message before the 2004 Election (unlike Obama, the Bush Administration themselves actually used the IRS as a weapon to target Liberal groups like the NAACP and Greenpeace); and I’m sure there are dozens more I’m forgetting.

The entire basis for the Iraq War and the assurances of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” alone is worthy of a Congressional investigation. Claims that “everyone [else in the world intelligence community] believed the same thing”, have been thoroughly debunked.

This latest pathetic attempt to turn “Benghazi” into something that might lead to the impeachment of President Obama (or, dare they dream, resign in disgrace ala Nixon) is as transparent as their motives. But think for a moment what this “impeachable offense” actually was. An American consulate (not “embassy”) fell victim to a preplanned attack by alQaeda (sound familiar?) But unlike the FIRST 9/11, there were no actual warnings of an impending attack other than the fact it was the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. Conservatives claim “the U.S. should have been on high alert on the anniversary of 9/11. There had been NO attacks on the anniversary in 2009, 2010 or 2011. Yet somehow, the Obama Administration “should have seen it coming” in 2012… an attack by alQaeda on an obscure consulate NOT in the Libyan capitol of Tripoli but in Benghazi hundreds of miles away (American troops WERE on guard at the embassy in Tripoli) “They didn’t immediately send fighter planes or an ARMED drone when reports came in that the consulate was under attack”, the Nutters cry. The nearest U.S. Air Force Base was nearly 500 miles away in Sigonella, Italy (Eastern Sicily):

Distance from nearest AFB to Benghazi: 465 miles:

(click to enlarge)

For reference, 500 miles is basically an hour away. No fighter jet could have arrived at the Benghazi consulate in time to save the lives of those who died… a fact Obama’s chief accusers readily admit. And the only reason the military even had planes THAT close is because the Obama Administration put them there.

Then there’s the alleged “cover up” after the fact of “what they knew and when”, but to date, NO ONE has been able to explain just what harm might have befell the Obama Administration if they had just “admitted” what we now know to be true: that this was a pre-planned “terrorist” attack and not a ”spontaneous demonstration” (information that does not change the facts of the case one iota.)

During the Clinton Administration, we all remember how the GOP hunted Bill Clinton for his entire presidency with investigation after investigation until they finally found something that would stick… eventually settling for… not an actual “crime”, but “lying under oath” about an affair in a hearing that was only taking place BECAUSE of the partisan witch-hunt to “get” Bill Clinton. Had he of just ignored that subpoena the way a half dozen Bush officials did, he never would have been under oath (but then they would have impeached him for refusing to respond to a subpoena.)

In 2006, Nancy Pelosi infuriated millions of Democrats by promising to “take impeachment [of Bush] off the table” in order to assuage voters (supposed) fears that a Democratic Congress… if given control in the mid-term election that year… would not do to President Bush what the GOP did to President Clinton in HIS final two years in office.

The difference is, the Bush Administration actually NEEDS to be investigated (yes, present tense) whereas the multitude of Clinton investigations were frivolous (the White House cats’ Xmas Card mailing list? Seriously???) But the GOP never shows ANY such concern of being seen as “petty” or “vindictive” because THEY ARE “petty” and “vindictive” and EVERYONE KNOWS that. So when they abuse their power and start calling for “impeachment” over the latest imagined “scandal” to drool out the mouth of some Right-Wing radio loon, it’s not only not a surprise, but EXPECTED (I am convinced the only thing holding them back right now is that they don’t control the Senate.) But heaven help us if a Democrat dare suggest impeaching (or even just investigating) a Republican president!

(Democrats think they must promise to NOT impeach to get elected. Republicans campaign on the “need to impeach” to get elected.)

And as I’ve shown you, the list of Bush Era scandals worthy of investigation is/was long.

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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May 13, 2013 · Mugsy · 3 Comments - Add
Posted in: fake scandals, myth busting, Partisanship, Politics, Rants, rewriting history, Right-Wing Insanity, Unconstitutional

Five Year Old Boy Shoots, Kills Toddler Sister. So which one was the “bad guy with a gun”?

Last December, with the echos of gunfire from “Sandy Hook” still ringing in our ears, NRA Spokesman Wayne LaPierre proudly declared, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!” Last Friday in Jerkwater, Tennessee (not its real name), the parents of two young children (Caroline, aged 2 & her brother, turning 5 that same day) decided to celebrate by giving this FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD a loaded firearm… this firearm (see photo below)… for his birthday. According to witnesses, the loaded weapon “accidentally” discharged, striking and killing his young sister almost instantly. The weapon in question? A Crickett .22 “Synthetic Youth Rifle” made just for “children”, purchased at Wal*Mart (“Crickett”, what a darling name):

A Birthday present for a five year old?

(click to enlarge)

Note the circled areas: “Must be 18 years old” and “Don’t forget your hunting license.” This young boy had not attained either, yet the parents still placed a loaded deadly firearm in the hands of a pre-schooler with disastrous results.

Well who could have seen THAT coming?

Caroline’s uncle called it “a tragedy that no one could have seen coming.” [ibid] Guess that answers THAT question.

Caroline died at her home before help could arrive. Her family says she is in “a better place” now. Hard to disagree with that.

Two lives were destroyed that day. Not just the fatally wounded toddler, but her young brother as well, who will now live the rest of his life with what could very-well be his earliest memory… him accidentally shooting & killing his young sister. The very idea that this weapon is marketed to children is disturbing enough (and while the Wal*Mart ad specifies “18 or older”, a Google image search shows dozens of children barely out of diapers wielding these firearms), but consider the culture & mindset of any group of people that thinks this is an appropriate gift for a five year old child? The argument goes that “if you expose children to firearms at a young age, teaching them responsibility and care, you remove the ‘mystery’ that attracts mischief that so often results in tragedy.” Yet, here we are.

So I find myself wondering:

The Newtown shooter’s mother also “exposed her child to guns at a young age” and look how THAT turned out. Lanza’s mother took her son to the rifle range and taught him to shoot her Bushmaster 223 believing it would maker son (quote) “more sociable”. THAT sure worked like a charm! He shot her in the head with her own assault rifle while she slept before taking off for the local Elementary School to mow down another 20 first Graders and six Teachers.
Doesn’t the same logic apply to “Sex Ed” and “Drugs”? The same people arguing that “early exposure takes away the lure of mystery” and teaches children to be more “responsible”, are the same people arguing “abstinence only education” when it comes to sex and “just say No” when it comes to drugs… two issues than can be every bit as life-ruining (even deadly) as guns.
If “more guns” are the solution, might this tragedy have been prevented if only we had armed the 2-year old? Was the five year old the “bad guy with a gun” we were told to look out for? Did he need that rifle to fend off burglars ala ”Home Alone 37″? Should we have armed the toddler so she could have defended herself? Who was the “bad guy” in this debacle that could have been prevented if only he had been shot first? (I’ll give you a second on that one.)

Undoubtedly, some Right-Winger will go after me for “making light of such a tragedy”, but rest assured, I am NOT. (As my redneck step-father used to say, “I’m as serious as a fart in church.”) I am highlighting “absurdity” with “absurdity”. This was not an unforeseeable tragedy that no one could have prevented. Those parents need to go to jail and their surviving son taken away for his own safety.

The NRA’s 142nd Annual Convention wrapped up here in Houston Sunday with a final speech by celebrity gun-nut (and all-around douchebag) “Ted Nugent” imploring:

…an enthusiastic crowd to increase NRA membership 20-fold as the “culture war” over guns continues.

“I want to show them how much we will fight for freedom.”

Remember that this is a “man” that defecated in his jeans for two weeks to avoid “fighting for our freedom” in Vietnam. And if you dare express your First Amendment right to protest gun proliferation, you take your very life into your hands as these “lovers of freedom” turn their aggression towards you… quite possibly at the point of a gun… as they try to shut you down.

So tell me how “more guns” in this situation might have prevented this tragedy? Because I can sure as hell tell you how LESS guns would have prevented it.

(Maybe this will make the decision easier: The “Crickett”? Also available in pink.)

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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May 6, 2013 · Mugsy · 4 Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Guns & Violence, Right-Wing Insanity

Republicans Seem Eager to Invade Syria Over WMDs On Ten Year Anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”

In 2006, three years after “Mission Accomplished”, the GOP controlled Congress set aside $20 million dollars in the 2007 Defense Budget for “a victory party” to celebrate the end of the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. (note: the linked story is dated ”2009″ because it was updated, but I’ve had it bookmarked since October 2006, as the date in the URL confirms.) It seems that the only people that didn’t know that Iraq had turned into the very “quagmire” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld dismissed as even a possibility before the war began, were the people that cheerleaded us into that war. The invasion of Iraq was a horrendous mistake, and the voters let them know it in a big way in the mid-term election that year, switching control of BOTH houses of Congress over to the Democrats. Rumsfeld was fired and a Republican critic of possibly invading Iraq in 1991 (Robert Gates) was nominated to take his place. That anger over being mislead into a costly and totally unnecessary war of choice with no exit-strategy after 5-1/2 years played a significant part in Barack Obama’s decisive victory over John McCain in 2008. In December 2011, President Obama successfully pulled the last American combat troop out of Iraq, a move supported by 75 percent of all Americans. And now, almost ten years to the day (May 1st) of President Bush’s “Top Gun” moment off the coast of San Diego to announce the end of a war that would continue for NINE more years, with recent news that traces of “Sarin nerve gas” have been found in tissue samples of victims in Syria’s civil war, the same chicken-hawks that couldn’t wait for us to invade Iraq are now suggesting this phantom “red line” that President Obama understandably drew in the sand on Syria, has been crossed and demands military intervention.

Except that that was NOT the “red line” President Obama drew in the sand:

President Obama (8/21/2012): “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around and being utilized.”

“Clearly the red line has been crossed” announced both Fox’s Chris Wallace and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during yesterday’s Sunday Talk Shows. John McCain was out there as well last week, once again eager to embroil the U.S. military against yet another Middle-Eastern nation, declaring that it was “clear” that “a red line has been crossed.”

NO! It is NOT “clear” AT ALL! What was reported last week was NOT “a whole bunch” of chemical weapons, as NBC’s roving warzone reporter Richard Engel pointed out on The Rachel Maddow Show Friday night:

Engel: “There are some holes [in the case against Syria having used Sarin].”

Engel: “What doesn’t make sense however is: Why? and How?, you don’t use Weapons of Mass Destruction to do minimal killing [less than two dozen people].”
…
“Imagine: A nuclear weapon… we’re gonna make just an acorn-sized one and see what the world does. That seems strange.”

While there is little reason to doubt that Syria does indeed have “stockpiles” of chemical weapons, it has never been confirmed. Syria began pursuing chemical weapons in the 80′s to counter Israel’s development of nuclear weapons, but has never actually used them in combat [ibid]. No inspectors have been allowed in to document Syria’s stockpile of WMD’s. It all sounds a tad too familiar:

Saddam: “I lied about Weapons to scare off Iran.”

So a brutal dictator with a “stockpile” of chemical weapons used just enough of his Weapon of MASS Destruction to murder only a handful of people that were nowhere near the capitol? Why? Was it just a test? Could someone… a member of the resistance or maybe even a rival nation… have been trying to draw the U.S. into a war with Syria? Might a member of the opposition have been trying to develop their own homemade Sarin gas in an experiment gone horribly awry? We just don’t know. These scenarios might be unlikely, but we DID just arrest a man Saturday that sent homemade Ricin nerve toxin through the mail, so the possibility that the Syrian government didn’t in fact actually “cross that red line” must be considered before using military force against yet another Middle-Eastern nation. But as Bill Kristol said on yesterday’s Fox “news” Sunday: “Ya gotta do what ya gotta do” (invade Syria for “crossing the red line”.)

There are a LOT of unanswered questions before we do something like use military force against another country. It’s heartening to see that the lessons of Iraq were not lost on our current Commander-in-Chief even if his opposition has the memory of a goldfish.

Editors’ aside: My departure from “Crooks & Liars”:

First some background…

If you are a regular visitor to Mugsy’s Rap Sheet, you probably know that last year I was asked if I’d like to be a volunteer contributing editor to the popular video blog “Crooks & Liars”. The offer was made out of appreciation for my weekly contribution to their “Sunday Morning Bobbleheads” thread for the last six-and-a-half years, live-blogging highlights from the major network Sunday talkshows for 3-4 hours nearly every Sunday morning since 2006. However, that wasn’t the first time I was asked if I’d like to be an Administrator. Back in 2008, I turned down the same offer because I wanted to focus on getting my own blog better established first… a move I later regretted because M.R.S. was not achieving the numbers I had hoped. So when the offer was made again during the 2012 Election Season, I said yes. I was given low-level Admin access, shown how to create posts of my own, and added to the “Team” mailing list. This is useful for people seeking “help” researching a particular topic or needing help finding a photo/video (of which I was able to provide several times). I was pleased to help in any way I could.

I continued to live-blog the Sunday Morning thread each week, and during the busy election season, I even found time to write several posts. When the Sandy Hook massacre occurred last December, I volunteered to live-blog a one hour “discussion” on “gun control”, citing my unique position of living in Texas, having been raised around guns and gun-owners that are extremely protective of their “Right to Bear Arms”.

But as an unpaid volunteer, I was not a frequent contributor to the site. Who exactly can afford to spend hours upon hours during the work week monitoring the Conservative News Outlets and scrounging the web for choice comments from random insane Right-Wingers when they’re not being paid to do so? Hell, I only update THIS site once a week, and I do that on Sunday evening (which it now is as I write this). C&L has a lot of “editors”, but most of them do not post every day (I dare say I’d be surprised if some contributors post even once a month.) One of the reasons I finally agreed to join the team was that I often heard my favorite Liberal talk-radio hosts quote stories they had read on “Crooks & Liars” on their radio shows, reaching tens of thousands. My hope then was to have something I wrote quoted on the radio and perhaps translate into traffic to my own site. But unfortunately, I quickly discovered that if your story isn’t Breaking News, the chances something I wrote would appear on C&L during the daytime hours was close to nil. Timing the appearance of ones post was a lesson in futility. Even posting the night before provided no increased likelihood that my posts would appear early the next day. Being a bit of an historian, I sometimes wrote on a subject a day in advance of the anniversary of such & such, then having to carefully monitor the site to make sure my post did not go up too soon. A posts that announces: “Today is the anniversary of…” looks kind of stupid if it appears a day too early or around 7pm when the day is nearly through and the fact “Today is the anniversary of…” is already old news. The long delay between submitting a story and it actually appearing on the site long after the height of the talk radio day was over negated any benefit I had hoped to gain from my writings, providing me with less & less incentive to contribute.

Anyway, two weeks ago following the Boston Bombings, I did not post anything or provide any research on any of the stories being covered that week. The bombing took place on a Monday and an arrest was made by Friday. It was, as you know, a frenetic news week, and while I wasn’t able to provide any “scoops” from my home in Texas, I was still the recipient of a growing flood of “Team” email every day… something I can understand and fully appreciate… when it is people seeking legitimate help.

I was already directing my “Team” mail to a separate Inbox, but that didn’t alleve me of the burden of going through every message looking for ones of people seeking help. At first the amount of mail was manageable, but despite checking my mail just before bedtime (10pm), I awoke last Wednesday morning to find an astounding TWO-HUNDRED & TWENTY-SIX messages waiting for me. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but after reading my 12th “Thankyou” and “Your Welcome”, I sent a brief note to the Team asking them: “if a message does not need to go out to everyone, to please take a moment to change the “Reply-To” address to the person you are responding to, and don’t just click ‘Reply’. There is no reason to send a ’Thankyou’ intended for ONE person to everybody on the Team mailing list.”

Am I wrong?

I quickly received a terse response from “Nicole Belle”, one of the higher-ups at C&L (and incidentally the Moderator of the Sunday Bobbleheads thread) telling me that I ”had not contributed enough during last weeks’ Boston Bombing” to start telling “us” how to run “our” business. The response seemed a might over-the-top for such a mild (and polite I might add) request. And the “us” really irked me since the clear implication was that I was still considered an “outsider”.

Not being a hypocrite, I sent Nicole a polite reply to her personal address rather than the Team Account explaining that I was only requesting that team members show a little consideration before replying, and I didn’t feel that was deserving of such a hostile response. I also noted that her “you” vs “us” characterization of me in response was disturbing, and that if she felt the amount of time I was “volunteering” was “inadequate”, to please let me know and I’d “do what I could to rectify the situation” (meaning, relieve her of the burden of having me as an unpaid contributor.) Telling a volunteer that they didn’t “volunteer enough” was particularly galling. For all she knew, that was the week I started driving my mother to Chemo each morning and was stuck at the hospital waiting for hours. (It’s not my job to provide you with content each day, Ms. Belle.) She responded with a nasty reply, telling me she was “done with me” and would be removing my name from the group email account. Oh, and did I mention that she changed the Reply-To address of her response back to the “Team” mailing list just so she could have an audience while she told me how difficult and time-consuming it is to change the Reply-To address?

Again, I replied privately to Nicole and again she changed the Reply-To address so she could attack me publicly, saying I had been removed from the Team mailing list. She told me of how she herself regularly receives “something like 400 emails every day and [C&L founder] John Amato regularly receives over 5,000 [ListServe messages a day].” Well, that’s not MY problem. I didn’t make Nicole sign up for all those mailing lists, and if she has a problem with them, then she can always unsubscribe. I was only trying to control my tiny corner of the world. (I found it curious though that she would complain to me about the amount of mail she receives each day after attacking me for doing the same thing.) I mentioned to her that it seemed my suggestion would not only benefit me, but apparently her as well.

Fortunately, there were other members of the team that showed deference towards me, and The Big Cheese himself, John Amato, asked if I wanted to be removed from the Mailing List. I told him, “No,” only that it would be nice if people didn’t address messages to Everyone that were intended for just one person, to help cut down on the amount of unnecessary mail we all receive each day. Again, I didn’t (and still don’t) feel I was asking too much of anyone. I assume John had my email added back to the mailing list because I continued to receive “Team” email.

Last Thursday, one of the messages I received mentioned something I felt I could help with, so I replied and my Server quickly responded that I ”didn’t have the right to send messages to this account.” I was still receiving “Team” email, but couldn’t respond to them. So what was the point? I quickly concluded that the sole purpose of sending me messages I could not respond to could be for no other purpose than to “annoy me”. Unable to send a ”Team” email, I sent an email to the personal address of all the primary members of C&L telling them to “discontinue my relationship with them” if the sole purpose of sending me email I could not respond to was “simply to annoy me”. A short while later, I received a friendly reply from a supporter telling me an “error” had been made by adding the wrong one of my email addresses to the mailing list (which confirmed to me that Nicole had indeed deleted me from the mailing list and was ordered to add me back), which is why my replies were being rejected, but, I was told, “the problem was now fixed and I should be able to contribute again.” I tried again about an hour later but my message was still being rejected. I visited the C&L website to find all my Administrator privileges had been revoked.

A few weeks before being asked aboard last year, I noticed one Sunday that I seemed to be the only one posting to the “BobbleHeads” thread for several weeks in a row. So I wrote John to express my concern that I seemed to be “monopolizing” the Sunday Thread and would be willing to back off for awhile until traffic resumed if they’d like. I quickly received a reply telling me that it was perfectly fine to keep live-blogging my weekly highlights. It wasn’t until I was asked to join the Team a few weeks later that I discovered that the Sunday Show highlights I had been reporting each week were being sent to everyone on the Team mailing list that same morning to provide others with post-ideas throughout the week… as I had hoped. I was told around that same time how everybody there “freaked out” when I had offered to take a sabbatical weeks before because they had all come to depend upon my weekly contributions.

“If C&L does not want my input, they certainly don’t need my continued contributions to the Sunday Morning Bobblehead thread”, I decided Friday. (A simple demonstration of Nicole’s pettiness can be seen in the fact that… I was later told… she had deleted my post to the Sunday Morning thread yesterday where I let everyone know I would not be doing my weekly highlights anymore. I used no profanity and even noted that it would be inappropriate for me go into detail of my dispute with her on their site. And despite receiving a number of replies from friends telling me I would be missed, I was told she posted yet another nasty and dismissive response before deleting my post.)

So following my “excommunication” by Nicole, I knew that there was absolutely no reason for me to continue providing assistance to someone that didn’t appreciate my contributions to the team. Crooks & Liars financially profited from my assistance each week, for which I received nothing in return other than hostility and called an outsider that wasn’t volunteering enough to be considered part of the team.

And that is why I am no longer contributing to their site. – Mugsy

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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April 29, 2013 · Mugsy · 10 Comments - Add
Posted in: Middle East, Politics, rewriting history, Right-wing Facism, Terrorism, War

Defenders of 2nd Amendment Quick To Throw 1st to the Wolves

Who could have seen last week coming? Certainly not my Sunday Night post, which was quickly upstaged by a deadly bombing in Boston and a fertilizer manufacturing plant explosion here in my home state. Also last week, even the pathetic watered-down gun-control bill with over 90-percent support couldn’t get past a Wingnut minority in the U.S. Senate… well, correction, technically it DID pass, winning “54 to 46″… which in any NORMAL government would have been enough to become law. But not in our now-dysfunctional government where it now takes a SUPER MAJORITY to pass ANYTHING the minority objects to. Bill Maher had it right last Friday when he said, “Senate Republicans sent a clear message to the terrorists last week. If you want to kill a lot of Americans, use a gun.” Gun advocates call the defeat “a victory for the 2nd Amendment!” But then ask them what we should do instead and the answer is invariably: “Censor/ban violent videogames and movies! Block dangerous websites! Don’t allow Muz’lims to build that Mosque!” Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s declare (our particular brand of) Christianity the official religion. “Free Speech”? There’s a zone for that! Isn’t that interesting?

You’ve probably heard this “battlecry” before:

“The second amendment is there to protect the first!” Yeah, but who’s going to protect it from YOU, the gun-wielding nuts that seem ready, willing and able to sellout the first amendment if it means they get to keep their toys? President Bush violated The Bill of Rights left & right for seven years all in the name of “security”… which reminds us of another once-popular Right-Wing battlecry: “Those who would give up essential liberty in the name of security deserve neither!” Yet, that’s EXACTLY what they did under George Bush because he let them keep their guns (well, actually, he didn’t, but IOKIYAR.)

Jon Stewart also rightly pointed out last week that when it comes to “terrorism”… a FAR less frequent crime… Republicans are prepared to move heaven & earth, trample every constitutional right from “Habeus Corpus” or “Miranda”, to “indefinite detention of American citizens without trial”, all to prevent the next attack. But when it comes to far more prevalent (and lethal) acts of gun crime, we can’t even agree to make it harder for convicted felons (or even an alQaeda terrorist) from going to a gun show and buying a semi-automatic assault rifle no-questions-asked.

Last week I Tweeted (are you following M.R.S. yet?):

Anyone notice the same R’s calling the gun control legislation “toothless” are the same guys with the pliers? bit.ly/16Yg2Nl @maddow

— Reporter Mugsy (@MugsysRapSheet) April 15, 2013

If there’s one person to blame for the inability of our government to pass even the most rudimentary and publicly popular piece of gun control legislation just four months after the slaughter of twenty 7 year olds and six teachers, look no further than Senate Majority Leader (for now) Harry Reid (D-NV) for refusing once again to reform the grossly abused filibuster. Senator Reid said recently that he “didn’t even have 40 votes” for an earlier form of the gun control bill to justify bringing it to a vote. Reid does not seem to understand that the “60 vote threshold” enables more people to vote “No”. If a Senator knows a bill is likely to fail because it won’t meet the olympian “60 vote threshold”, it’s a lot easier to vote No on a bill no one expected to pass anyway. Visa vie, few people want to be on the losing side having to explain why they didn’t vote for a popular bill. So arguing that you “didn’t have enough votes to reach SIXTY” is a canard because the ability to win over the 5 or so extra votes needed to pass is a LOT easier when they know you only need FIFTY (plus the VP) for something to pass.

But now, following their inability to pass even this “toothless” attempt at gun control, we hear Democrats adopting the rhetoric of the minority that obstructed them, saying “Yeah! Maybe we DO need to look at violent movies and videogames“… despite the fact these same violent movies and videogames are available in nearly every other country on Earth without the same bloody carnage seen in America day after day.

Republicans are now asking: “What is it about our culture that breeds such violence?” It couldn’t POSSIBLY be our balls-to-the-wall mega-macho gun culture where every idiot with a gun thinks he’s Wyatt Earp. Lord no! It must be those darned movies and videogames!

Postscript: Another popular battlecry during the gun-debate:

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” – Thomas Jefferson.

…is a fraud. He never said it. The closest he came was:

“No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands or tenements]“

…making NO mention of “government tyranny”. Just thought you’d like to know.

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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April 22, 2013 · Mugsy · One Comment - Add
Posted in: Crime, Guns & Violence, Partisanship, Politics, Right-wing Facism, Right-Wing Insanity

Attention GOP: You can’t dismantle gun reform then go around calling the bill “ineffective”

This Thursday will be the 20th Anniversary of the end of the raid on the “Branch Davidian” compound in Waco, Texas where religious gun nuts holed up with a messianic cult-leader decided that a BATF raid (following the murder of a BATF Agent that tried to investigate them for illegally transporting and selling guns across state lines) was a fulfillment of End-Times prophecy of the government coming to take their guns away. April 20th, Friday, will be the 14th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, where 12 students and one teacher were murdered and another 21 students were injured. April is a big month for “Deadly Rampage” anniversaries by nuts with guns. Today, following the worst school shooting in history, Republicans are making the rounds telling everyone that currently proposed legislation “would have done nothing to prevent the last four massacres“… those being Newtown, the Aurora/Batman theater shooting, the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI. What kind of legislation might then have actually mitigated those incidents? Two immediately spring to mind: a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity ammo clips… which WERE a part of the original bill. Who got those provisions removed? The same guys now calling the bill toothless.

The weapons used in the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre
The Columbine Weapons

Last week, Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe… the eye of every “GOP Crazy-Storm”… decided that enough time had passed since the Newtown Massacre that it was now okay to attack the parents of those murdered children, suggesting they are ignorant dupes, too stupid to realize President Obama is using them to push through gun legislation that would have “done nothing to save their children.”

Utah Senator Mike Lee said on “Meet the Press” yesterday that: “This bill, I believe, would do more to limit the rights of the law-abiding than it would to actually prevent violent crime.”

I’m sorry, but if your first reaction to the murder of 20 first-graders and six teachers is to think “Obama/Liberals are going to take our guns away”, your priorities SUCK.

Inhofe, Lee, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Joe McCarthy’s paramour Ted Cruz (R-TX) all vowed to filibuster the gun reform bill if it included an “Assault Weapons” ban… something that WOULD have likely had a direct impact on the number of children murdered that day. But do you think any of them are insisting we put that ban back into the bill so it would actually make the ban more effective at actually addressing those concerns? Of course not! Rubio even went so far as to suggest we need to weaken, not strengthen our gun laws. Because more guns means a safer society (it’s nonsense of course.) Thinking “more guns” is the solution to gun violence is like thinking the to solution to drunk driving is “more alcohol”.

Also on the Sunday talk shows yesterday, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said “only better mental health laws will ensure that the Newtown mass shooting victims did not die in vain … that’s why I’m focused like a laser on the mental health component.” The “Affordable Care Act” (aka: ObamaCare) provides funding to expand coverage of… you guessed it… mental health care. Cornyn’s position on The ACA: “Why ObamaCare Must Go”, by Sen. John Cornyn. The Senator also voted against including assault weapons in the current gun legislation and has no stated position on limiting high capacity clips/magazines… the two things that would most directly would have impacted the deadliness of recent mass shootings.

Why is it that owning a gun is a right but being able to see a doctor when you’re sick is a privilege? Gun nuts say the REAL threat is “the mentally ill”, but when you try to increase funding for mental health care they scream “Marxist!”

Former Congressman turned NRA Spokesman Asa Hutchinson last week called “driving 30 miles into town” to obtain a background check “too burdensome” for rural residents. More children must die because some #@!$% doesn’t want to be “inconvenienced” by having to drive a few miles into town? If your priorities listed in order are: “1) Avoiding two hours of inconvenience; 2) Dead Children… you seriously need to rethink your priorities. Why is it that so many “Pro-LIFE“ Republican gun nuts seem more concerned with their own “inconvenience” than saving the life of a child?

Gun regulations “infringe on people’s rights & liberty”, but regulating gay marriage and mandating vaginal ultrasounds are perfectly acceptable limits on our freedom. In America, Birth-Control and Marriage Licenses are harder to get than bullets. They actually say that “kicking God out of our schools” is more to blame for school shootings than the guns. If that’s so, then what’s the excuse for priests molesting children in our churches?

Last week, Texas voted to drug-test every welfare applicant because 2.6% of them are drug users, yet these same legislators oppose background-checks before buying a gun despite the fact that at least 2.6% of them are probably on drugs.

Last Wednesday, Rachel Maddow pointed out that the NRA came to the defense of a former convicted felon that was arrested after being caught with a handgun and AK-47 with 30-round extended capacity clip in his possession. The man argued that the law prohibiting him from owning a gun was unconstitutional. They won. Was that REALLY a law that needed overturning to protect YOUR rights? The NRA says, “We don’t need MORE laws, we just need to enforce the ones already on the books!” And then they spend the rest of their time getting those laws overturned, even rushing to the defense of convicted felons. Attention NRA Members: If you think the NRA exists to protect YOU and not The Gun Industry, think again. They just fought for and won the right of convicted felons in Louisiana to own assault rifles, making you less safe thus ensuring you’ll need to buy more guns to protect yourself.

As The Daily Show’s John Oliver recently pointed out:

“One failed attempt at a shoe-bomb and now we all take our shoes off at the airport. 31 school shootings since Columbine and no change in the regulation of guns.”

These Congresssmen say banning high-capacity magazines only inconveniences “responsible gun owners”. If you need 30+ bullets to hit your target, you probably have no business firing a gun. They say, “Criminals don’t obey gun laws”. So by that logic, why do we have ANY laws at all? We have laws against stealing. People still steal. We have laws against speeding. People still speed. They say the REAL problem is “mental health care”, but then actively oppose allowing the government to do anything about it. They say, “Guns don’t kill people! PEOPLE kill people!” So why then do they need a gun? They say “a gun is no more dangerous than a knife, a hammer, or a car!” Well then, if you have a knife, a hammer, or a car, why do you need a gun? We have Congressmen actively crippling sensible legislation that WOULD of had a DIRECT impact on some of the most tragic mass murders of our time, and then once they’ve kicked the legs out from under those bills, they go around and talk about how toothless the proposed legislation is.

GOP hypocrisy is nothing new, but sadly, the Media’s failure to call them out on it this time around means MANY more people are going to die.

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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April 15, 2013 · Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Guns & Violence, Money, Partisanship, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity, Unconstitutional

Kim-Jong W. Un

Last week on Facebook, someone I know asked: “Seriously. Does anyone know what North Korea is up to?” I answered back that “people smarter than I believe he is trying to prove to the military leaders appointed under his father that he can be just as ‘tough’ as him.” Oh, great! Yet another war-crazed “dictator” threatening military action to prove to the militaristic hawks in his Party that’s he’s not his father! Greaaaaaat! Where’ve we seen that before? Are we REALLY going through this again? I’m so SICK of world leaders “with daddy issues” threatening world peace just to prove how much they are NOT like their father. Haven’t we seen this movie before? So I’ve taken to renaming the North Korean leader “Kim-Jong W. Un”.

Perhaps the most commonly accepted explanation for why on Earth the “under 30″ North Korean boy king is behaving so erratically is because he is trying to convince the trigger-happy military leadership he inherited that he’s just as strong a leader as his dad… only that HE intends to do him one better and finish the job his father & grandfather started: The Korean War. Here in this country, that unfinished business was the 1991 Gulf War, where Poppy Bush kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait but never continued on into Iraq to remove the dictator from power. And as everyone that reads this blog well knows, Junior took office already tugging on that loose thread with no thought as to how to knit it back together after it unwinds.

There’s also the possibility that “Dubya-Un” started down this path trying to save face following a failed missile test one year ago. They probably still refer to Fearless Leader’s tragic failure as “4/12″ or “April 12th”. Reports are that at the time the young leader was busy reading “My Pet Yak” to a room full of child workers on the factory floor in Pyongyang.

Military analysts currently expect a possible missile test to commemorate the 101st birthday of the country’s founder, Prescott Il-Sung on April 15th.

And where does that leave us? Waiting for his successor, Kim Jong-Bama.

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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April 8, 2013 · Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: General, Politics, Seems Obvious to Me, War

Republicans Desire for Us the Worst of Every Society

Just a short hit & run on this holiday weekend folks. Have you ever noticed how Republicans seem to look at some of the most deplorable aspects of any society and say, “Hey! I like that!” I first noticed this after 9/11, when after we were attacked by religious zealots stationed in a middle-Eastern theocracy, Conservatives started “admiring” (for lack of a better word) the strict religious teaching methods of Madrassas, and the “dedication” of the very people they raged against. Don’t believe me? Check out the movie “Jesus Camp” where parents sent their young children to be “God Warriors” for Christ. President Bush famously referred to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan as “a crusade”. The anachronism of the Pro-”Life” Holy-Roller Party also being the Pro-gun, Pro-war, Pro-Death penalty Party is never lost on me. But lately, it seems to go beyond that.

Here’s something to think about: What do “Austerity” and “The Black Plague” have in common? In the mid 1300′s (yes, I promise to keep this short), a deadly disease swept through Europe killing millions. This was centuries before anyone knew of the existence of bacteria or viruses. “Illness” was either a punishment from God or inflicted by “Evil”. One of the ways people dealt with The Plague was to kill stray cats by the hundreds because cats were considered “minions of the Devil” or Hosts for witches that would then go about making people ill. The irony is that The Plague was actually being spread by fleas on rats, which the cats might have killed and kept the spread of the disease under control.

So, what does that have to do with “Austerity”, you ask? Right now in Europe, The UK is in danger of having their credit-rating downgraded again (last February, The UK’s credit rating was downgraded from “AAA” to “AA1″ because their economy isn’t growing like it should. Why? Austerity! While President Obama passed a ”Stimulus Package” of spending to stimulate growth in this country, the Brits went the other way and imposed economic austerity, deep spending cuts and raising taxes on the Poor. Now there is talk of a possible second downgrade barely six weeks after the first one, and the answer from Brittan’s ruling Conservative Party? Stay the course. More austerity. Once again, Europeans have decided that the “cure” for their ills is to do the very thing that… not only didn’t make things better, but in fact are almost guaranteed to make things worse.

And here in this country, Republicans who think “President Obama wants to turn America into Europe”, keep pushing European-style “austerity” in this country, demonizing Stimulus spending and thinking up ways to shift the tax burden from the Rich to the Poor.

Oh, but it gets better my friends.

Ever get the feeling many Republicans would like to see the return of “Jim Crow”? Ron and Rand Paul aren’t the only ones that think including “private businesses” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act” was a mistake. And now, we are… quite literally… hearing the same “separate but equal” arguments being made about “Same Sex Marriage”. “I’m comfortable with giving gay couples all the rights of ‘straight’ couples, from tax breaks to ‘hospital visitation rights’. Everything except the right to marry”, said GOP Spokesperson Ed Gillespi on “Meet the Press” yesterday. Adding that the GOP still supports an “anti-gay marriage amendment” to the Constitution. I’m still waiting for someone on that side to produce a convincing legal argument for why it is in the Federal governments’ interest to go to such lengths to prevent gays from marrying and the catastrophic consequences if they do, of such danger & magnitude that it demands amending the freaking Constitution.

Republicans do this amazing dance where they denounce the most obvious flaws in other societies, and then go right out and start advocating for us to emulate them.

Remember Gov. Romney’s “Razor-wired factory” story from his infamous “47%” video? He talked about how, in his “private-equity days”, he went to China to buy a factory and was stunned to see “razor wire” along the prison-like walls around the factory. When Romney inquired about it, he was told… and believed… that “the razor wire is there to keep people on the outside from getting IN, not the other way around.” He described the horrid sweat-shop conditions, even noting how some workers… once they got out for some national holiday or what have you… never returned, opening up spots for someone new. Now, if the jobs were so desirable, why would workers not return? Such a question clearly never crossed Mitt’s mind. Instead, he relates this anecdote to his $20,000 a plate guests as a GOOD thing, possibly even a model for work-conditions in America.

In China, underage workers are common-place. Children as young as 12 can be found working in factories. In this country, Newt Gingrich thinks they should be janitors. No OSHA in China or the third-world either. That’s just more “job-killing regulations!” No minimum wage. 12 hour workdays. Republican paradise.

There’s the “Free Marketeers” that want Government completely out of the way to let business do its thing. I believe it was radio’s “Sam Seeder” that first pointed out that the only purely “unregulated Free Market” economy on Earth is Somalia. “You want to see what an unregulated Free Market economy looks like? Move to Somalia!”, said Sam.

And of course, (yes, with “Godwin’s Law” in mind) Government run by & for the Corporations… also known as “Corporatism”… better known as “Fascism”… the worst of all possible societies which Republicans claim to despise and use as The Ultimate Parjorative in describing things they hate, is also something they seem quite eager to emulate. Think about it.

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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April 1, 2013 · Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, General, Middle East, Politics, Racism, Religion, Right-wing Facism, Seems Obvious to Me, Taxes, War

The Right’s Irrational Arguments Against Gun Control

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he would be dropping the “assault weapons ban” from the Senate’s bill to ban Assault Weapons. If that’s not insane enough, how about his reasoning for doing so: Because it would fall “well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.” AND WHOSE [bleeping] FAULT IS THAT, YOU PIECE OF [bleep]?” (Reid argued he has only around 40 votes. But I GUARANTEE you that if he only needed TEN more Senators instead of twenty, you’d find a LOT of people wouldn’t want to be on the losing side of that vote. Translation: It’s easier to oppose a bill you know has no prayer of passing.) So where does that leave Gun Reform? The argument against Gun Control goes something like this: Criminals don’t obey laws, ergo, we shouldn’t pass any laws prohibiting weapons of war from our streets because the only people affected by these laws are good law-abiding citizens… you know, the way murderers obey laws against murder. And we can’t keep a national registry of “what gun belongs to whom” so we can trace a weapon used in a crime back to its owner, because when you start keeping a list of who owns what gun(s), it just makes it that much easier for Obama’s Stormtroopers to target your suburban 3-bed 2-1/2 bath split-level with garden-gnome for a drone strike, or descend from the sky in black helicopters to bust down your front door and take your guns away!

Yes, these seem like perfectly sane & rational arguments to The Right.

As you well know, Democrats have been pushing for filibuster reform ever since the GOP wildly abused the power during the first two years of President Obama’s first term. When Senator Reid had the opportunity to do something about it in 2010, many of us were appalled when he said ”No”. Upon retaking control of the House in 2010, Republican Senators had backed off a bit, knowing that they could let a few bills they opposed slip through, confident in the knowledge that their colleagues in the House would kill it for them (without incurring the bad PR of being obstructionist asshats). But the problem didn’t go away entirely (not by a longshot), and 17 months later, Reid took to the floor of the Senate for a mea culpa, stating that his critics were “right” and he was “wrong” not to have reformed the filibuster when he had a chance.

So color everyone shocked when Reid balked at the opportunity YET AGAIN to reform the filibuster last January. His reasoning for doing so was basically a promise from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that Republicans would be on their best behavior. Honest & true! We double-pinky swear! So of course, Reid caves, and the GOP goes right back to their miserable obstructionist ways (what is it with Democrats who keep looking for a glimmer of conscience in Republicans?) Personally, I wonder if some Conservative Power-Broker didn’t threaten the lives of Reid’s family if he didn’t back off filibuster reform. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

Anyway, back to Gun Control:

If you listen to The Far Right on ANY issue, fear & paranoia reign supreme. But what kills me is that this is only true when DEMOCRATS control the White House. Which is nuts because the biggest violators of the Constitution, personal privacy and civil rights were The Bush Administration with Republican control of both houses of Congress. I keep an ACLU flier from the 2006 election pinned to my corkboard entitled, “It’s Been a Tough Six Years for the Bill of Rights”, marking just a few of the ways one-party rule under Bush violated and outright eschewed the Constitution at every opportunity, hand-picking lawyers that would tell them that what they wanted to do was legal, and firing those that did not. Yet it’s the Democrats that keep them in constant fear of “Big Brother” coming to take their hunting rifle away and have an “illegal alien” gay-marry them to a donkey… oh, and tax them to pay for it.

Bush supported more Gun Control than Obama

As I noted on here a few weeks ago, when you ask a Right Winger for their position on a buzz-word that the Right has demonized… like “gun control” or “ObamaCare“… they flat out oppose it… not just mildly… but violently & irrationally, and base their reasoning on a plethora of misinformation they heard listening to Glenn Beck or Fox ”news”. But then ask them how they feel about individual items IN those bills, and they’re all for it! Opponents of “gun reform” attend huge rallies across the nation, yet 87% of them support “background checks”, 82% support “temporarily” suspending the license of a dealer that can’t account for the whereabouts of 20 or more guns, and 81% disagree with the NRA that juveniles convicted of a serious crime needn’t wait ten years before being allowed to buy a gun (yes, the NRA opposes preventing gang-bangers from buying guns.) The NRA is in total misstep with its own members quite simply because the NRA doesn’t exist to represent the will of its members. It exists solely to represent the interests of gun manufacturers.

Listening to NRA President Wayne “Guns don’t kill people, violent video games do” Pierre blather on yesterday about how “gun laws” are used to oppress legitimate gun owners… and yet we should be “enforcing the laws already on the books” (because law enforcement has become too lax?) makes my head hurt. These aren’t rational people. There’s a reason the Republican leadership pushes “home schooling” and “faith-based education” (where you accept everything you are told on faith.)

And Democrats like Reid need to stop listening to them.

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March 25, 2013 · Mugsy · 3 Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Guns & Violence, Partisanship, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity, Seems Obvious to Me, Unconstitutional

10th Anniversary of the Iraq War, the Price of Gas, and the Mess We’re In Today

Tuesday marks the tenth anniversary of the saddest chapter of the George W. Bush presidency. Every disaster to follow… to this day… can be traced back to that decision to invade a relatively unarmed nation that had not attacked us, under the false pretense of “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Our exploding National Debt, our decimated economy (from gas prices that led to the mortgage crisis that led to the Wall Street bailout), to even our muted response to North Korea’s latest reckless provocation. It all goes back to the decision to invade Iraq. So on this inauspicious anniversary, we should pause for a moment to reflect on how it all ties in.

It all began, incredibly enough, back in April of 1993 when Former President George H.W. Bush (“Bush-41″), fresh off his reelection defeat to Bill Clinton, traveled to Kuwait to bask in his “greatest achievement” as president: Winning the “Gulf War” and kicking Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait (after we basically gave him the green light to do so). While in Kuwait, a plot to assassinate the former president by Saddam’s military was uncovered and thwarted. Newly sworn-in President Clinton responded by launching a missile strike on the HQ of Iraqi Intelligence, but that wasn’t enough for Bush’s son, “George W”, who never forgave… nor forgot… the attempt on his father’s life.

A group of Right Wing pro-military extremists… few of which had actually ever served in the military… calling themselves “Neo-Conservatives” (“neocons” for short) formed a group called “Project for a New American Century” (“PNAC”) and repeatedly urged President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein… a dictator that was in charge of the world’s fourth largest oil reserves, on the grounds he was developing “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (most notably Sarin nerve gas.) President Clinton did in fact take the bait several times, first launching a missile strike against what was believed to be an Iraqi “chemical weapons plant” in Sudan in August of 1998 that turned out to be nothing more than a pharmaceutical company making generic Tylenol for export to Iraq (in a program approved by the U.N.) and then again in December 1998 in response to Saddam’s continued refusal to comply with U.N. weapons inspectors. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott called the timing of the strike on Iraq “suspect” and “cursory”… “an effort by President Clinton to distract Americans from his pending impeachment.” After both strikes failed to turn up any evidence of WMD’s, the Clinton Administration never again claimed Saddam Hussein currently possessed “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (sans one remark by Sec. Albright in 1999 noting that UN monitors “had yet to verify” Saddam had been disarmed, and another mention in September of 2000 of not wanting Iraq to “reconstitute” its [defunct] WMD program.)

Why was Saddam refusing to cooperate with weapons inspectors when he had no weapons?

Shortly after his execution, Saddam’s closest American confidant while in captivity revealed that the Iraqi dictator admitted, “I lied about WMD’s to scare off Iran”… the country he had been at war with for eight years. If Iran knew that following the 1991 Gulf War he had been left defenseless, Iran would invade. If the U.S. believed he had WMD’s, so would the Iranians. Little did he realize he had more to fear from gullible American Neo-cons than he did from Iran.

It wasn’t until Texas Governor George W. Bush entered the Presidential race in February of 2000 that anyone started claiming Iraq “still possessed” and might be actively pursuing WMD’s.

Two Texas oilmen, George Bush & Dick Cheney, took office planning the invasion of Iraq & overthrow of Saddam Hussein “from Day One”. So single-minded focused on Iraq was he, Bush “ignored” the threat of alQaeda, despite multiple recent bombings including the attack on the USS Cole less than one month before the election.

Rather than go into the weeds regarding all the warnings President Bush ignored prior to 9/11, I’ll simply refer you to this NYT article. Worthy of note:

“[N]eoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled [re: warnings of a stateside attack by alQaeda]; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.”

Moving on…

The Bush Administration started cooking up a reason to invade Iraq from day one, but “9/11″ helped seal the deal, praying on the fears of a panic-stricken populace with daily warnings of another looming attack on the “homeland”. It didn’t matter that prior to “9/11″, President Bush’s own Secretary of State and National Security Adviser (Colin ”Slideshow” Powell and Condi ”Mushroom Cloud” Rice respectively) had already spent the preceding year reassuring people that Saddam had been “disarmed” and “no longer a threat”:

Barely two years in office, with the war in Afghanistan still going on and the economy in the toilet, people were asking if we could even afford to start a second war. The Bush Administration worked overtime to allay fears that the invasion of Iraq would not only “pay for itself” but possibly even turn a profit as the price of oil plunged from the heady highs of $30+ dollars a barrel to a more reasonable $18 dollars/barrel once Saddam was no longer in control of all that luscious oil (reminder, five years later, oil was hitting a then unimaginable high of $145/barrel, and still hovers close to $100 to this day.) “No blood for oil!” the people cried. “Blood for oil?”, asked the Bushies perplexed. Why on Earth would anyone think “Operation Iraqi Liberation” had anything to do with “oil”?

Current TV’s John Fugelsang recalled last week how much the war that was promised “to pay for itself in Iraqi oil revenues” actually ended up costing us (roughly $1-TRILLION dollars… not counting the economic catastrophe, the loss of over 4,000 American troops, or the future cost of caring for our wounded warriors:

Fugelsang on Iraq War cost:

Finally on the evening on March 19th, 2003 (just after midnight, March 20th Baghdad time), despite months of unimpeded UN weapons inspections, Bush gave the order to invade Iraq. Between 9/11/01 and 3/20/03, the price of oil barely fluctuated from its close of $28.03/barrel on September 8, 2001 to $29.88/barrel on March 20, 2003. Yet one year after “Mission Accomplished”, oil closed at $40/barrel after the Energy Department warned in April of 2004 that oil was likely to hit the lofty height of $51/barrel by 2025. Oil broke that “distant future 2025″ price by September. And you thought “Mission Accomplished” had something to do with the end of the war. Silly you.

As I described in detail about a year ago, the rising price of gasoline meant people had less money to spend elsewhere. And when people aren’t buying, companies need fewer employees, causing the economy to contract even more. To make matters worse, a deregulated banking industry took advantage of interest rates being cut to the bone after 9/11, and continued to rate “mortgaged backed securities” as ”AAA” even after newly unemployed Americans were defaulting on their Adjustable Rate Mortgages left & right as rates started to spike. Suddenly, the Bush Administration was faced with having to bailout Wall Street to the tune of $700 BILLION dollars… or about 40 percent MORE than the ENTIRE 2008 Federal Deficit. As a result, the Deficit exploded from just $459 Billion in 2008 to over $1.4 Trillion in 2009 (both budgets written by the Bush Administration as a ”fiscal year” stretches from October 1st to September 30th.)

So the Obama Administration took office after being handed a $1.4T Deficit. With the Bailout behind them, the next Deficit would only be around $500-Billion, but in May, “The Stimulus” added back $787-Billion to the Deficit for 2010. The following year, it was revealed that for the past seven years, the Bush Administration had been running two wars “off the books” funded entirely with “Emergency Supplementals” (PDF). In late 2010, despite the 2008 Wall Street bailout being behind us and the 2009 “Stimulus” over & done with, the wars were put on the books and the Deficit remained at the “over $1 Trillion” level until just this year with the latest budget coming in just under the $1T mark. And just as the Market was trained to accept $100 oil as “the new normal”, so will military spending in the hundreds of billions become commonplace even after the war in Afghanistan is over.

And here we are. Happy 10th Anniversary Everybody!

Now go put some air in your tires and cheat the oil companies out of a few bucks.

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March 18, 2013 · Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Energy Independence, Middle East, Money, Politics, Right-wing Facism, Terrorism, War

Did Rand Paul get his “Killing Americans with Drones” Idea from a Sitcom?

Someone needs to ask.

The holdup of President Obama’s choice for CIA Director John Brennan came to a dramatic head last week following Senator Rand Paul’s high-profile 13-hour filibuster on the Senate floor, demanding that the president “answer a simple question: Can the President of the United States order the assassination of an American citizen on U.S. soil?”

I’m not here to debate the efficacy of the President’s choice of someone like Brennan to head the CIA, or whether or not Sen. Paul’s question has merit (remember, Cheney already gave himself the authority to shoot down a passenger plane full of Americans on 9/11), and no one seems to have mentioned the fact that U.S. embassies in foreign countries also count as “U.S. soil”, it’s merely the timing of Paul’s question that strikes me funny

I personally don’t watch the show, but Season 1, Episode 4 of NBC’s sitcom “1600 Penn” entitled “Meet the Parent” included a line in the opening scene that stuck in my memory (I edited up clips from that episodes’ opening of the line in question):

1600 Penn: “I have robots that roam the skies!”

The week prior to the January 24th episode, the network was running promos where the fictional “President Gilchrist” was threatening his daughter’s suitor with “robots that roam the skies.” Suddenly, Sen. Paul was declaring his intention to hold up Brennan’s appointment until he got an answer to the question. “Can a president use armed drones against Americans on U.S. soil?”

I did a quick Google News search, and interestingly, the first instance I can find of anyone asking that very question is The World Socialist Website (link) on February 9th. I doubt Sen. Paul is reading TWSW, but hey…

(The Right Wing “Twitchy” website run by perennial teanut Michelle Malkin that claims to “debunk Left-wing Tweets”, attacked MSN on February 11th for supposedly claiming the LAPD might use a killer drone to get that deranged cop that holed himself up in a cabin after going on a killing spree last month.)

“Loyal Liberal Lefties™” like myself have expressed concern over “domestic drones” for years mostly on privacy grounds, and RW paranoia over the use of drones within the U.S. has been a popular Tea Party talking point for years (going back to the use of drones on the U.S./Mexico border). The subject seemed to fall off the radar during the 2012 campaign, but the sudden concern over using “armed” drones “against American citizens” on the Right seems to have risen only within the past few weeks. NBC ran promos for its show between January 18th-24th. Senator Paul first announced his intention to block the Brennan nomination over drones on February 15th. A Google News Search for “drones kill American soil” going back to 2011 turned up nothing other than the links mentioned above.

In any case, I find it interesting… the “timing” anyway… that a sitting U.S. Senator may have held up the appointment of the head of the Central Intelligence Agency over a made up question about the President’s ability to “kill Americans on American soil”… a power that hasn’t been in doubt since The Civil War, and reaffirmed by a GOP that repeatedly passed/renewed The PATRIOT Act (that gives the President the power to detain an American Citizen indefinitely without charge… even “disappear” them to Gitmo or a foreign country to be tortured) over a line in a TV sitcom.

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March 14, 2013 · Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: fake scandals, General, Partisanship, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity, Seems Obvious to Me, Unconstitutional, War

Obama’s Successes Equal Failure in GOP-speak.

Back when I was in High School, there was this one kid that desperately wanted “the cool kids” to like him. And even though he had friends like me willing to hang out with him, he wouldn’t hesitate to abandon us for the greener pastures of “the in-crowd”… a group that lived to make his life miserable… in the futile hope that he’d convince them to like him. Of course, they never did. They happily invited him over, then instructed him to perform various tasks (from fetching food to doing their homework), all the while ridiculing him behind his back. We tried to tell him he was being used, but he’d have none of it, defending his “friends”, even taking the blame once for something he didn’t do just to keep one of the cool kids out of trouble. Pathetic. I got that same sick feeling in the pit of my stomach last week when President Obama invited a group of Republicans to dinner (again) in hopes of convincing them to stop hating him long enough to get things done. Everyone but Charlie Brown always seems to know Lucy is going to yank the football away, yet he keeps trying. But Lucy was just mean, not demented. It’s not like she went around afterward telling everyone how much better “The Easter Beagle” is at place-kicking. And such was the case on several Sunday shows yesterday. Repeatedly, Republicans pointed to their own failures as “evidence” that President Obama’s policies are a failure. First up, Paul Ryan:

Making an appearance on Fox “news” Sunday Ryan introduced his (third & latest) plan to destroy Medicare by dumping it off on the states, claiming this could save the Federal Government “$770 billion over the next ten years”. Republicans LOVE to play this game… not necessarily with “Medicare” but with ALL government programs… suggesting that the way to “save the Federal government money and reduce the Deficit” is to simply dump every social program off on the states. So YOU… the taxpayer… don’t actually pay less in taxes, you just send the check to a different location (your State Treasurer instead of the Fed). In fact, with the loss of efficiency that comes from consolidating all these programs in one place, there is a VERY good chance… ESPECIALLY if you live in an impoverished Red state… that you’ll end up paying MORE for these services. Meanwhile, Ryan and his ilk get to strut around like peacocks bragging about how they’ve “cut Federal spending” and “reduced the Deficit” without actually improving anything.

But that wasn’t enough. Chris Wallace noted that for the numbers in Ryan’s own budget to work out, he’s depending on the current rate of economic growth under Obama to continue for the next ten years, not plunge into the abyss the way it did the last time we had a Republican president whose solution to every problem was “tax cuts”. Economy good? Tax cut! Economy bad? Tax cuts plus Stimulus Checks! Ryan didn’t dare try and calculate his budget using the rate of economic growth under George W. Bush because he knew it would be impossible. They want us to return to Bush’s policies, but only Obama’s numbers make it possible. It’s not unlike when an insane person thinks they don’t need their meds while they are on them and feeling good.

Repeatedly for the past two months during the “Sequester” fight, I heard Republicans (most notably Speaker Boehner) argue that President Obama “got his tax hike” and therefore additional revenue is “off the table” as a means of closing an “$84 Billion dollar” shortfall in the Budget. Republicans previously put “closing loopholes” and “limiting deductions” on the table as ways to shore-up the Budget to avoid the Sequester. But now that President Obama “got his tax hike in January”, anything other than further budget cuts are off the table.

Problem is, President Obama did NOT get “his” tax hike. He wanted the tax hike to begin on incomes of $250K. Republicans held “the Fiscal Cliff” hostage in exchange for raising the starting amount to “$500K”. Extrapolating from one website that claimed starting the new top tax rate at $250K would raise “only $800 Billion in additional revenue”, and another report saying that starting the top rate at $450K will raise “$396 Billion” in additional revenue, that’s a shortfall of roughly $400 Billion… which would have MORE than made up for the “$84 Billion dollar budget gap”. So once again, Republicans are being obstructionist asshats over a problem of their own creation.

But ABC’s George Will took the cake. Whatever this guy is smoking, it must be strong stuff. On ABC’s “ThisWeek” yesterday, the Roundtable discussion turned to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report announcing that 236,000 jobs were created in February (the shortest month of the year BTW). Not only was this number well above what was “expected” (a number I could not find anywhere), but it’s more than twice the number of jobs the economy must produce each month just to keep up with population growth. The number of people filing new jobless claims fell as well, pushing the unemployment rate down to 7.7%… the lowest since December of 2008 at the height of the collapse on Wall Street. Add to that the fact the adjusted job-creation figures for December were revised up from 196,000 to 219,000 (though January was revised down from 157,000 to 119,000.) For comparison-sake, by this point in George Bush’s presidency, unemployment had gone from 4.2% to 5.4%. (set dates manually at link.) Under Obama, job creation is up, while unemployment, jobless claims and The Deficit are all shrinking… which makes the following comment by ABC’s “ThisWeek” resident Conservative hack George Will all the more mind-numbing:

WILL: If the workforce participation rate were as high today as it was just 12 months ago, the unemployment rate would be 8.3 percent. If the workforce participation rate were as high today as it was when Mr. Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be over 10 percent.

Think about what George Will is arguing here: job growth under Obama isn’t growing fast enough to to make up for the MILLIONS of jobs lost under President Bush, ergo Obama’s policies are a total failure and we need to return to the Conservative economic policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

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March 11, 2013 · Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Jobs, Partisanship, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity, Taxes

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Mugsy's Rap Sheet

Recording history for those who seek to rewrite it.

The Big Lie: ONLY Conservative Groups Targeted by IRS? That’s not true.

Okay Wingnuts, Ya Wanna Talk Impeachment, Let’s Talk Impeachment

Five Year Old Boy Shoots, Kills Toddler Sister. So which one was the “bad guy with a gun”?

Republicans Seem Eager to Invade Syria Over WMDs On Ten Year Anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”

Defenders of 2nd Amendment Quick To Throw 1st to the Wolves

Attention GOP: You can’t dismantle gun reform then go around calling the bill “ineffective”

Kim-Jong W. Un

Republicans Desire for Us the Worst of Every Society

The Right’s Irrational Arguments Against Gun Control

10th Anniversary of the Iraq War, the Price of Gas, and the Mess We’re In Today

Did Rand Paul get his “Killing Americans with Drones” Idea from a Sitcom?

Obama’s Successes Equal Failure in GOP-speak.

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