In writing about the IRS Tea Party Snooping Scandal, Ace’s CDR M asks a question about the official response which could also apply to administration’s response to the Benghazi talking points:

Does anyone in position of authority know anything in this administration?

Once again, conservatives should not let up on this issue until we know who sanctioned the targeted investigations  – and who crafted the crazy things they asked Tea Party groups.

Basically, the excuse the Obama team is offering is that, oh, we’re not corrupt, we’re just incompetent.

—-

*And the Benghazi talking points doctoring.

UPDATE:  Seems they know a lot.  Just caught this on Yahoo!’s home page, AP Exclusive: IRS knew tea party targeted in 2011:

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

Ed Morrissey has more.

Some signs of the times:

35 public educators indicted in a massive cheating scandal. Are they unionized, by any chance? Why, yes they are.

Obama pushes banks to make subprime loans. It was a big part of the earlier housing bubble, folks, that government wanted the banks to abandon prudent lending practices. But lefties don’t need to learn from the past. When our new housing bubble bursts, they’ll just blame the banks’ alleged “greed” again.[1]

Stockton, CA bankruptcy moves forward. Old news, but worth noting. Why Stockton? Picture the busted housing bubble, combined with California-style public employee unions / pensions, mismanagement and unemployment.

Government-funded researchers wanted to prove that whites do more mass shootings – and they fluffed it. As Bob Owens notes, Asians (both Far Eastern and Middle Eastern), Hispanics and blacks are all over-represented in mass shootings, meaning that whites are kind of under-represented. But the white ones get more media coverage, for some reason.

Gun control news:

• Obama will sign a U.N. small-arms treaty, even though the Democrat Senate rejects it. “Constitution, shmonstitution” as the saying goes.
• Biden admits to wanting the whole enchilada.
• Holding Hollywood to account for gun violence still seems like a weird thing to do. In other words, lefties haven’t been doing it.
• Democrats try for indirect gun bans, that is, burdening gun ownership to the point where it will become impractical for many. The proposed mandatory gun insurance would be anti-poor (i.e., regressive).

UPDATE: A guy got a sub-prime auto loan, by giving up his gun. Sub-prime lending as gun control, a leftie wet dream!

([1] Actual greed would be if the bank wanted to be paid back, when it made a loan. Also known as stringent lending. It’s a good thing.)

Sorry, that headline is a bit of sarcasm.

In Greece, the statists wanted to get some tax revenue, and to protect the environment. Killing two birds with one stone, they quadrupled taxes on heating oil. Smart, right? But did it work?

…the smell of wood smoke lingers everywhere at night…few residents here can afford heating oil…Overnight, the price of heating a small apartment for the winter shot up to about $1,900 from $1,300…

…the government seems to be losing money on the measure…Many Greeks…are simply not buying any heating oil this year…[the government] appears to have lost…about $190 million…in revenue…Meanwhile, many Greeks are suffering from the cold.

Closer to home, Gov. Pat Quinn of IL thinks it’s time for a $10 minimum wage.

“It’s obvious the governor feels such an increase will be good for the economy and good for workers who drive our economic growth. So many people are struggling to make ends meet earning the basic minimum wage — and these ends never get met,” the source said.

Problem is: minimum wage hikes kill jobs. Illinois’ lower-wage workers are going to suffer (not gain), if the measure passes.

Will statists ever learn that government can’t simply decree good outcomes? Probably not: they don’t want to learn it.

Did John Kerry really say “I have some big heels to fill?”  Yes, yes he did.  (H/T Michelle Malkin)

Maybe he didn’t want to make any jokes about pantsuits.  As if the thought of John Kerry playing the part of Secretary of State weren’t bad enough, now we’ve got to imagine Kerry playing the part of Secretary of State in drag.  In all truth, though, by using this sort of humor to introduce himself, he only reminds many of us (especially those of us who didn’t vote for him in 2004) about this photo.

The administration has hit the “reset button” with the State Department once again, and somehow I don’t expect the second go-around will be any better than the first.

Meanwhile, here at home, the “Department of Homeland Security” (in quotes because I can’t imagine it being any more ironically named at this point) is advising people faced with “an active shooter situation” to “huddle like sheep and die,” in the words of William A. Levinson at American Thinker.  Levinson writes:

The bottom line is that the Obama administration, of which DHS is a part, has published a training video whose guidance can easily kill anybody who relies on it.  These are the same people who want to tell us what kind of firearms are “reasonable” for us to own for self-defense.  FrontSight, by the way, posted an interview with a senior citizen who needed 11 rounds of 40 caliber — that’s one more than Dianne Feinstein and four more than Andrew Cuomo thinks he needed — to stop two armed home invaders
If huddling like a sheep doesn’t work, then DHS advises the use of improvised weapons like scissors.

And if scissors don’t work, I’m sure you can use things like tacks and glue on the floor, since those kinds of techniques worked so well in Home Alone.

Karl Marx wrote that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”  With events like the ones described above, it’s hard not to view these first few weeks of Obama’s second term as a farce, but I’m certainly not laughing.

HotAir kindly posts this picture of the good Senator:

As Ed Morrissey puts it:

…did no one ever tell Feinstein to keep her finger off the trigger of a firearm unless ready to shoot? Shouldn’t a politician attempting to lecture us on gun safety know something about it herself?

For the record, here are FrontSight’s Four Universal Firearms Safety Rules:

1. Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle (the front of the weapon) cover (point at) anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger OFF the trigger and, in fact, outside the trigger guard.
4. Be sure of your target and what’s in line with your target.

Feinstein appears to be violating (possibly) all four rules. She appears to be in a crowded room, on an elevated platform, with people spread out before her (such as the photographer who took the picture from one side), and small awareness of her gun possibly pointing down into some of the people (on the other side). And, her finger on the trigger. None of which is careful handling of the weapon, like it could always be loaded.

Two days ago, the Washington Examiner’s Byron York reminded us of a Democratic failure our friends in the legacy media tend to neglect:

Lawmakers are required by law to pass a budget each year by April 15, but there’s no provision to punish them, or even slightly inconvenience them, if they don’t.  In [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid’s case, the Senate last passed a budget in April 2009, 1,351 days ago as of Wednesday.

Not quite sure how to refine a google news search to compare the number of articles written about and amount of broadcast “news” time devoted to Todd Akin’s crazy comments on rape and those on the failure of Reid’s Senate Democrats to meet their legal obligations in passing a budget.

Seems the Missouri Republican fit the legacy media narrative about Republicans being fringe characters, but somehow Mr. Reid’s inaction is at odds with their conviction about the Democrats being the more responsible party.

Just a thought.

*crickets*

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

It is Sunday evening and I’ve had a very nice weekend away from the magnifying glass of politics. It has been a normal weekend: chores, laundry, dog walking & mindless television.

Sometime during the day, I started tweeting a series of ideas about where the Republican House of Representatives should go from here. My conclusion: Give Obama everything he wants.

Let’s pretend this is a parliamentary system. Let’s pretend the Democrats won and Obama was re-elected as Prime Minister. In that system, everything Obama wants would pass.

Let them have it. I’m not suggesting that Republicans of principle silence themselves and not warn about the consequences of Obama’s economic plans. Those Republicans would include Sens. Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz, Pat Toomey and Govs. Scott Walker, Susanna Martinez and Nikki Haley. Let them put their stakes of opposition forcefully and vocally in the ground.

But let the House GOP and the Senate GOP get out of the way and allow the Democrats what they want on the economy. No obstruction, perhaps a vote of “present”…. but no other sign of getting in the way.

We, as Conservatives, know that these economic policies are disaster. But Obama is right — Americans voted for higher taxes and more regulation — so let them have it.

We will win the long game. We should have allowed the economy to tank harder than it did in 2008 to begin with. And all that’s been happening since is kicking the can down the road.

So I’m in favor of a hard stop. Let the Democrats’ vision of economic “success” play itself out.

The result will be hardship the likes of which no American has faced since the 1930s. But so be it. Americans voted for it — let them have it.

Conservative policies will win in the long game.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

This falls in to the “WTF?” category.

“This administration simply can’t be taken seriously when it talks about debt and deficit reduction when it chooses to spend money researching ‘gaydar’,” said Christopher R. Barron, Co-Founder and Chief Strategist for GOProud – a national organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting freemarkets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights. GOProud is also the only national gay organization to endorse Mitt Romney.

The National Science Foundation spent $30,000 supporting the “gaydar” study conducted by the University of Washington and Cornell University. “At a time when families – gay and straight – are being asked to tighten their belts and make tough decisions about spending because of the disastrous Obama economy it is an absolute insult to hear that federal tax dollars were spent ‘researching’ whether or not you can guess someone’s sexual orientation just by looking at them,” continued Barron.

This study was uncovered as part of the Wastebook 2012, which was released this morning by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). The Wastebook lists 100 wasteful spending projects totaling more than $18 billion.

For crying out loud… Anderson Cooper can just act as a gaydar proxy for the Obama Administration. He does so well being their bitch on every other issue.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

We are nearing the top of the hour of 10 o’clock here on the East Coast. The first big decision today — SCOTUS ruling on Obamacare — will be known within the next 30 minutes.

And later today, the U.S. Attorney General will be held in contempt of Congress in a bi-partisan vote.

It is an historic day in Washington, DC. Stay here for analysis and discussion all day long.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

This is your economy on Obamanomics:

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

According to Wikipedia (yes, consider the source)…. here is the definition of Stagflation:

In economics, stagflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high and the economic growth rate slows down and unemployment remains steadily high.

Well, under Barack Obama’s economic policies passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress from 2009-10…. we at least have two of those three.  And inflation is higher than most of us have been used to since at least the 1990s.

Bob Krumm says the USA is now Stag-Nation.

This is what a stagnant economy looks like.  The gain of 115,000 jobs is less than enough to keep up with population increases, and was below the median economic forecast for April.  The only reason that the unemployment rate “fell” to 8.1% is because the labor force participation rate keeps dropping.  If you stop looking for work, you aren’t unemployed.  But you’re not employed either.  You’re just “missing.”  You don’t count.

Welcome to the country we now live in:  the Stag-Nation.

And this from the bloggers at ZeroHedge:

It is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to
88,419,000.  This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

GP Ed Note: My post yesterday about the “invisible 86 Million” is now dramatically out of date…

Here are the official FedGov numbers:

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care, but declined in transportation and warehousing.

Household Survey Data

Both the number of unemployed persons (12.5 million) and the unemployment rate (8.1 percent) changed little in April.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.5 percent), adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.3 percent) showed little or no change in April, while the rate for blacks (13.0 percent) declined over the month. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.2 percent in April (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.1 million in April. These individuals made up 41.3 percent of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployedhas fallen by 759,000.

The civilian labor force participation rate declined in April to 63.6 percent, while the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, changed little.

Whether Obama & his team studied Martian or Marxist Applied Economics, one thing is clear: They didn’t learn any lessons from the unprecedented US economic expansion that resulted in the 1981-83 economic policies pushed through a Democrat Congress by Ronald Reagan.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Let’s imagine that George W. Bush’s Department of Justice had a program going that funneled weapons to the drug cartels of Mexico and then that directly to the murder of a US Border Patrol Agent. I have no doubt that the network news would be on full-scale nuke alert and heads would be rolling, including the President’s.

Now let’s imagine the truth:

In the growing Fast and Furious scandal, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death in Peck Canyon, Arizona was previously described as a chance meeting that led to a firefight: an illegal alien “rip crew” working for the Sinaloa cartel was hoping to find other illegal aliens and to rob them at gunpoint. Instead, they stumbled across a Border Patrol unit and murdered Agent Terry.

Last week, the Washington Times offered a new version of the encounter: they reported that the rip crew was not hunting illegals, but Border Patrol teams — with the intention of engaging them in combat.

Sources now tell PJ Media that neither version of events is accurate: the rip crew was not waiting for a chance encounter with other illegals, nor did the members intend to engage American law enforcement agents.

The rip crew was in Peck Canyon that evening with the intention of stealing money and drugs from a specific shipment of which they had prior knowledge.

Sources claim the Department of Justice has been trying for almost a year to hide the key information — how the rip crew knew the shipment was coming through that night.

Criminal informants (CIs) are a common tool of law enforcement agencies. When agencies apprehend criminals, agencies often reduce or drop charges in exchange for information leading to the arrests of higher-ranking criminals. Earlier this year, reports claimed that Operation Fast and Furious weapons smuggled over the border were actually chosen by an FBI informant, and paid for with money provided by the federal government.

The rip crew knew to be in Peck Canyon that December evening because a CI working for the FBI found out about a smuggling run — from the FBI.

It is not clear if the information was provided intentionally, but a possible motivation for the FBI to provide the information is known to exist: the CI had previously lost a shipment of drugs, and wanted to regain the trust of the cartel with an offering of drugs or money. The other possibility is that the FBI mistakenly allowed the CI to discover the information.

The CI used this information to organize an ambush of the drug convoy. A source tells PJM that the FBI knew from wiretaps that the CI was using their information to set up an ambush.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — through its own CIs and communications intercepts — was also aware of the planned assault.

Neither the DEA nor FBI warned Border Patrol about the expected criminal activity.

This is completely outrageous. But the American news media is laying on their backs like supine sheep. Please call your Member of Congress & US Senator TOMORROW and demand that Attorney General Eric Holder resign and that President Obama be held to account for these crimes.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

YAY Arab Spring!!!!

Judges overseeing the vote count in Egypt’s parliamentary elections say Islamist parties have won a majority of the contested seats in the first round. The judges spoke on condition of anonymity because official results are expected to be released later Thursday.

They say the Muslim Brotherhood could take 45 percent of the seats up for grabs. The liberal Egyptian bloc coalition and the ultra-fundamentalist Nour party are competing for second place.

Together, Islamist parties are expected to control a majority of parliamentary seats by March. This week’s vote was the first of six stages of parliamentary elections that will last until then.

Obama = FAIL.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Bruce alerts me to a tweet from Michael Johns, “Remember when Biden said they used to call @joncorzine for advice?”

“The reason why we called Jon,” the Vice President said (at about 0:44 above), “is that we knew he knew about the economy, about world markets, about how we had to respond unlike anyone we knew.”  Later, the Delaware Democrat reports (at 2:00) that they talked with Corzine a “long time about what the elements of a national package should be.”

Indeed, Biden wanted to start a mantra about where “Jon was right.”  Doesn’t look like the defeated Democrat of a pretty blue state was right about this: MF Global Trustee Says Shortfall Could Exceed $1.2 Billion. According to the New York Times,

The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday.

. . . .

Regulators currently suspect that MF Global — at the time run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey — improperly used customer money for its own purposes in the days before filing for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 31.

Well, $1 billion is chump change to the Obama-Biden Democrats whose failed “stimulus” cost the country about 800 times that.   Can you imagine how much coverage the above clip would get if a top Republican had said this about a fellow partisan who led his company into a (possibly) billion-dollar bankruptcy?

Well, now we’re getting a better idea of what the “stimulus” failed; just look at the economic knowhow of some of the folk who designed it.

When our President is beholden to union special interests and a failed Keynesian economic dogma, most of us could have  did predict his “recovery” plans would have been a complete FAIL.

From Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com:

When running for President, Barack Obama decried the decline of American household income, which certainly dropped during the 2007-2009 Great Recession.  Since the recovery began in June 2009 — a recovery for which Obama has repeatedly claimed credit — that trend has gotten worse, not better.  A new report shows that the percentage of decline in household income during the so-called recovery actually doubled that of the recession:

During the recession, which economists say lasted from Dec. 2007 to June 2009, the median annual household income fell by 3.2 percent, from $55,309 to $53,518, according to a report authored by two former U.S. Census Bureau officials. But in the post-recession period from June 2009 to June 2011, the figure fell by 6.7 percent, from $53,518 in June 2009 to $49,909 in June 2011. …

The study found that during the post-recessionary period, families with just a male or female head with no spouse present saw a 7.3 percent decline in income compared to the 4.5 percent drop for married-couple households. Income for households with a head under the age of 25 fell by 9.5 percent, significantly more than the 5.5 percent decline for households with a head who is 45 to 54 years old.

Again, I repeat: Our President Spent $787 Billion Dollars Of Our Money And We Got Was This Lousy 9.1% Unemployment Rate (Forever…)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)