Axelrod has (accidentally) sided with the Tea Party
This video is classic Chicago-style politics. Pass the buck, blame someone else, don’t look behind the curtain, just focus on the spin and everything will be fine.
Sad thing for David Axelrod is that he apparently doesn’t even realize he has just given the Libertarians and the Tea Party their winning 2014 election soundbite. Watch the video; you’ll see.
Yes, you did just hear Axelrod argue that that President Obama can’t possibly be to blame for the IRS scandal (and by logical extension – Benghazi, Fast & Furious, the Justice Department seizing two months of AP phone records, the brewing EPA scandal, etc., etc., etc.) because the government is “so vast” that it is impossible to track what happens in these diverse and sundry bureaucracies.
“So vast” were his words – e’nuf said.
But for those who might have missed the obvious … THAT”S THE WHOLE POINT!!! That’s exactly why supporters of limited government are pushing to have all of this addressed, taxes cut, the bureaucracy limited. Government has passed the point of accountability and effective, efficient, Constitutional service to “we the people.” By Axelrod’s own admission government has become a massive, gaping hole, where responsibility and accountability go to die – along with multiple trillions of our tax dollars.
When pro-big government socialists like Axelrod are openly admitting government is “so vast” that no one can know what it is doing, it really is time to cut budgets on a massive scale.
A seismic shift in the burden of proof from “tinfoil behatted” to the government
I posted yesterday about the gross miscarriages of justice by the “Justice” Department, the IRS, and the State Department. (Of course, I forgot to include the even more overt criminal acts carried out by the Justice Department as part of their Fast and Furious scandal where the federal government effectively supplied thousands of firearms to drug cartels. Those firearms were then directly involved in the death of US Border Guard, Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens.)
Today we are learning that the EPA routinely played politics in their handling of fee waivers for environmental groups and politically conservative groups. The Competitive Enterprise Institute noted today that,
It’s not just the IRS that treats groups on the right differently from the rest. According to documents obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency is in on it too.
Public records produced by EPA in response to a lawsuit filed by CEI under the Freedom of Information Act illustrate a pattern of making it far more difficult for limited-government groups – in particular those who argue for more freedom and less EPA – to access public records. …
EPA routinely grants … fee waivers to its favored left-wing groups who demand a more intrusive and powerful EPA, but systematically denies waivers for groups on the right, according to research compiled by CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner, author of “The Liberal War on Transparency.”
In a review of letters granting or denying fee waivers granted at the “initial determination” stage from January 2012 to this Spring, Horner found green groups, such as the National Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and EarthJustice, had their fees waived in 75 out of 82 cases. Meanwhile, EPA effectively or expressly denied Horner’s request for fee waivers in 14 of 15 FOIA requests over this same time.
It seems that many of the federal government bureaucracies are now infested with career employees who feel quite comfortable playing political games with citizens and taxpayers. The actions of these government employees necessarily lead reasonable people to believe that government is working hand in glove with left-wing political and environmental groups to further so-called progressive world views.
When even John Stewart is saying that the partisan, corrupt, and possibly even criminal behavior of these government employees is encouraging the very anti-government mindset that so many progressives have derided as lunatic fringe, you know that it is well past time for Congress to step in and clear up this mess.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barack Trek: Into Darkness | ||||
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Investigations, firings, fines/loss of pensions, and jail time need to become real possibilities for government employees and managers that refuse to follow the Constitution, legislation, and regulations.
Justice Department seizes AP phone records
I don’t care who you are, who you voted for, what you believe … etc. When you start adding these reports together, it’s time for reasonable people to start asking some serious questions about what is going on in our federal government.
The IRS has admitted to targeting conservative non-profits, and now this article indicates that the IRS may have released the unapproved applications from conservative groups to Propublica, a generally left-leaning news organization. Propublica admits to having published redacted examples of those applications.
Furthermore, the Obama administration abandoned consulate staff in Benghazi and then repeatedly edited their reports and talking points about the Benghazi attack for several weeks, prompting House investigations into their actions. Those investigations are ongoing, while the Obama administration claims they are politically motivated “circus.”
To top off the questionable performance of this current administration, we learned today that the Justice Department secretly collected two months of phone records for more than 20 separate Associated Press telephone lines last year.
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Of course no one should miss the sick irony of this all coming to light a short time after the President told Ohio State students that they should “reject the voices” that warn of government tyranny.
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
Bill Whittle: Merchants of Despair
I’ve been away for awhile, but had to break the fast for this video. Bill Whittle is in fine form with this edition of Afterburner.
This quote captures the theme of the video perfectly.
There is a wide, and growing, sense of despair in America today. A cloud of dismay that makes Jimmy Carter’s malaise of the late-70′s look like an utterly joyous romp in the park.
JD Hayworth debates David Callahan
Never heard of Demos or Callahan, but JD was in fine form for this interview. He absolutely demolishes Callahan – doesn’t even break a sweat.
And his closing line, “vote Democrat, it could always be worse” was classic.
Breitbart confronts bussed in “protestors”
It’s amusing to watch the union-directed rent-a-mob that was bussed in to protest the “hate” at Right Nation 2010. Rather than simply accept the cannard that any mob of angry left-wing ranters represents the will of the people, Breitbart walked over the the crowd and started asking them some simple questions. Not surprisingly, none of the protesters had any clue about why they were there, what their sign meant, who was “hating,” or how “hate” or “racism” was being shown by members of the TEA Party. None of them could or would explain why they were allowing themselves to be led around like sheep by the group leaders (Eugene Winkler and CJ Hawking) either.
Perhaps the most enlightening portion of the video was when one of the protesters (who was in the process of being whisked away from Breitbart’s questions by Winkler) loudly opined to her friends in the that she thought Breitbart was “gay.” Who would have thought that a group of big tent “progressives” who were there to protest the “hate” and “racism” in the TEA Party would so openly take pleasure in homophobic slurs?
The video is well worth watching in full because it clearly demonstrates the lack of rational thought, as well as the hate and bigotry that is present on the progressive side. It also demonstrates that the progressive protests we see on the news every night are very likely ready-made rent-a-mobs, bussed in by local unions and left-wing special interest groups.
To steal Nancy Pelosi’s term, they are Astroturf in every sense of the word and represent nothing more than the will of a few union thugs and left-wing activists.
NRSC supports O’Donnell and Paul
Looks like the big division that the MSM & Dems were hoping for ended up being much ado about nothing. Cooler and calmer heads have apparently prevailed.
“Let there be no mistake: The National Republican Senatorial Committee – and I personally as the committee’s chairman – strongly stand by all of our Republican nominees, including Christine O’Donnell in Delaware.
Time to get re-focused on November.
“Have you seen any people of color around?”
Classic video by Bob Parks of Black & Right that asks several attendees of the 9/12 Tax Payer March if they’ve “seen any people of color around?”
Best line in the video is by the fellow at the end (3:30),
We’re just all American citizens, trying to speak to our president … and tell him “get your hands out of our pockets.”
On the issues that matter most to you
Dick Morris has a new ad for Sharon Angle in Nevada. Excellent ad that moves beyond the fringe issues that Reid has spent multiple millions on as he tries to pretend he’s the mainstream candidate. Morris pushes all the money aside to ask where Reid and Angle sit on the issues that actually matter to the people on Main Street.