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
But first, some background: in 2011 following the Citizens United decision, the IRS did indeed start cracking down on “political” organizations seeking
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:
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
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
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
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?
(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.)
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May 20, 2013
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Mugsy ·
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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 “EndlessThis 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:
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:
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).
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
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

(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
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
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
(Democrats think they must promise to NOT impeach to get elected. Republicans campaign on the
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
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Mugsy ·
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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

(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
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
The NRA’s 142nd Annual Convention wrapped up here in Houston Sunday with a final speech by celebrity gun-nut (and
…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.)
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May 6, 2013
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Mugsy ·
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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
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: “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:
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
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
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 lastsix-and-a-half years, live-blogging highlights from the major network Sunday talkshowsfor 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 the2012 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 Liberaltalk-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 theReply-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 theReply-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
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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
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
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
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)
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
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.
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April 22, 2013
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Mugsy ·
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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

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
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

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
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
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.
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April 15, 2013
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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
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
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
Military analysts currently expect a possible missile test to commemorate the 101st birthday of the country’s founder,
And where does that leave us? Waiting for his successor, Kim Jong-Bama.

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April 8, 2013
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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”
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 “
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
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 “
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.
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April 1, 2013
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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
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
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
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
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
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Mugsy ·
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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
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
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:
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
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
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
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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?
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):
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
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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
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
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
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 beover 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.

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March 11, 2013
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Mugsy ·
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Posted in: Economy, Jobs, Partisanship, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity, Taxes


