The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Our Lawless President: Obama’s IRS Thuggery Certainly Was No Coincidence

Posted on | May 17, 2013 | 27 Comments

Dan Collins calls attention to Obama’s dog-whistle tactics, as described by Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as “less than reputable” to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. . . .
The president derided “tea baggers.” Vice President Joe Biden compared them to “terrorists.” In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. “Nobody knows who’s paying for these ads,” he warned. “We don’t know where this money is coming from,” he intoned.
In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: “All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.”

Ed Morrissey politely refers to “circumstantial evidence” that the IRS was in the tank for Obama’s re-election. Of course, they managed to keep a lid on the scandal until after the election:

The IRS commissioner “has known for at least a year that this was going on,” said [NBC’s Lisa] Myers . . . “[W]hat would have happened if this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”

Just another random coincidence, you see? But at least one member of Congress is having none of these lame-ass “I don’t remember” excuses:

 

Category: Barack Obama, Scandal, Taxes, Tea Party

Obama #IRS Scandal Amnesia

Posted on | May 17, 2013 | 16 Comments

VIDEO: ‘I Don’t Remember’ Who
Targeted Conservatives, Ex-IRS Boss
Testifies in Scandal Hearing

It would be a gross understatement to say that ex-IRS acting commissioner Steven Miller was an uncooperative and unhelpful witness at today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing. Everything about the IRS scandal can apparently be divided into two categories:

  1. Things Steven Miller does not know;
    and
  2. Things Steven Miller can not remember

Despite this, some actual information got pried loose today:

The hearing’s one clear revelation came when Mr. Miller conceded that the I.R.S.’s apology for targeting was prompted by a question planted by the agency last Friday at an American Bar Association meeting. At that meeting, Lois Lerner, the head of the I.R.S.’s division overseeing tax-exempt organizations, was asked about an inquiry of the targeting issue, eliciting an apology that quickly leaked out of the closed-door session. The I.R.S. then scrambled to issue a formal release on the issue.
Mr. Miller divulged that the exchange was not an impromptu apology but a planned exchange between Ms. Lerner and Celia Roady, a tax attorney at the Washington law firm Morgan Lewis. That revelation only underscored the ham-handed way the scandal has burst into view.

Great: The only questions anybody at the IRS can answer are the questions asked in a “planned exchange” set-up.

 


Category: Taxes

Jahar, the Teen Idol Terrorist

Posted on | May 17, 2013 | 45 Comments

Irrationality comes in many varieties, including tribal loyalty, religious fanaticism and anti-social alienation:

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left a note claiming responsibility for the April 13 attack, reports CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.
Sources tell Miller that Tsarnaev wrote the note in the boat he was hiding in as police pursued him, and as he bled from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier shootout between police and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The note, scrawled with a pen on the interior wall of the cabin, said the bombings were retribution U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims collateral damage in the way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” the note added.
Dzhokar said he didn’t mourn older brother Tamerlan — the other suspect in the bombings — writing that by that point, Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise — and that Dzhokar expected to join him there.

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch examines Dzhokhar’s theology of jihad and declares it orthodox: This fanatical loyalty to one’s fellow Muslims transcends all other obligations, so that the Chechen immigrant can attack innocent civilians in America, the nation that gave refuge to his family, because of U.S. military action in Aghanistan and Iraq — and become a martyr in paradise as a result.

As insane as this belief may seem, is it any less rational than the lovestruck admiration of Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev fans?

Since his arrest in April, 19-year-old Tsarnaev has grown into a bit of an online heartthrob, with supporters setting up special Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr pages in his honor, using the hashtag #freejahar. The fans declare his innocence, refer to him by his nickname of Jahar, write about how they wish they could get in touch with him (and, in one case, “curl up and take a nap” in his soft hair), publicize items like hand beaded “Free Jahar” bracelets, and note that he’s “beautiful,” “hot” and “too pretty to be guilty.” One Kansas teen even told the New York Post that she was going to get a Tsarnaev quote tattooed onto her arm, though she soon after changed her mind.

Jahar is “too pretty to be guilty”? Such a decadent superficiality — the erotic obsession with physical beauty — is symptomatic of a cultural pathology, a potentially fatal sickness in the West.

Are good looks and fame are all that matter, so that even a bloodthirsty mass murderer can become a “heartthrob”?

Psychologist Jill Weber, author of “Having Sex, Wanting Intimacy: Why Women Settle for One-Sided Relationships,” told Yahoo! Shine that Tsarnaev may attract certain young girls because he’s a bad character, and because that’s both excitingly rebellious and also provides a chance to “help” someone.
“Similar to the fascination teen girls have with vampire characters in movies and books, dark characters are a way to forge a separate identity and to defiantly (or rebelliously) declare oneself as independent of authority figures,” she noted. “Some of this is normal teen development, but being drawn to a criminal is a dysfunctional way to forge independence.”
She added that girls who are hyper-socialized “toward caring about the feelings of others to the expense of their own are more easily drawn to relationships with dysfunctional or even sociopathic men,” and have difficulty seeing that certain men are simply unhealthy.

“Similar to the fascination teen girls have with vampire characters in movies and books” — uh, how recent is that? Were teen girls fascinated by vampires in, say, 1950? Was the film career of Bela Lugosi a result of teen girls identifying with “dark characters”? Or is it the case that this obsession is a symptom of a sick society?

Psychologically healthy people do not manifest this kind of “fascination” with monsters. A devotion to “dark characters” as a means of “forg[ing] a separate identity” is indeed, as Weber says, symptomatic of defiance toward “authority figures,” and any Christian would recognize that God is chief among the authority figures whom such teenagers are defying. Perhaps some pastor will be inspired to write a sermon about this, but I’m a journalist, not a preacher.

Defiance of authority — adolescent rebellion against one’s parents — is an immature, selfish and anti-social tendency, and adults in a healthy social recognize it as such. For decades, however, our decadent cultural elite have justified teen rebellion as legitimate. The consequence of indulging defiant youth is a phenomenon Midge Decter analyzed in a 1975 book, Liberal Parents, Radical Children.

Nearly four decades later, many adults in America are so confused about their own values that teenage rebellion manifests itself in ways that are incomprehensible and nihilistic. This is what the 1999 Columbine massacre really should have taught us. If “authority” has nothing more hopeful to offer youth than pep rallies, “popularity,” and the prospect of still more schooling — all the cool kids must go to college — is it really so surprising that some kids become alienated, submerge themselves in violent fantasy and, occasionally, go on murderous rampages?

Say what you will about Jahar Tsarnaev, his motivation was not more irrational than that of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

The inchoate rage of alienated youth expresses itself politically in the perpetual adolescent rebellion of adults who refuse to grow up. What else can we conclude about the anarchistic impulses of the Anonymous hackers and Occupy protesters?

Progressives, willing to accept as legitimate the grievances of any potential allies in their war against The System, organized anti-banking mobs that attracted dangerously violent rapists and other criminals. Once a movement begins to demonize cops — and the Occupiers were as much anti-cop as they were anti-anything else — bad things predictably will happen, including women being raped in tents by smelly hippies.

Or consider, as further evidence, a few recent revelations about members of the “progressive netroots community”:

Are these typical progressives? It would be unfair to say so, but all of these kooks and criminals were accepted as members — and in some cases, recognized as leaders — of a movement that persistently accuses conservatives of complicity in extremist violence. From the 2009 death of a Kentucky census worker to the Tucson massacre to the Aurora shooting spree, wherever there are victims, there are progressives trying to blame right-wingers for their deaths.

The anti-social ideology of the Left promotes paranoia, and the #FreeJahar mob’s belief in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s innocence involves conspiracy theories as twisted as the 9/11 Truther stuff of Zeitgeist that inspired Tuscon shooter Jared Loughner’s madness. Matthew Feeney at Reason magazine pointed out how a writer at Truther nutjob Alex Jones’s InfoWars peddled a Boston “inside job” theory:

What appear to be private contractors, wearing unmarked, matching uniforms and operating an unmarked SUV affixed with communication equipment near the finish line of the Boston Marathon shortly after the bomb blasts – can be seen beforehand, standing and waiting just meters away from where the first bomb was detonated.

Nearly a month after the bombing, the InfoWars kookery is still online without apology or retraction, an expression of the childish irresponsibility of those who promote such nonsense. Speaking of childish irresponsibility, the New York Times:

[Dzhokar Tsarnaev] was popular — “he had a lot of girls hitting on him,” said Junes Umarov, 18, a close friend who is also of Chechen descent — but even other close friends could not say whether he had a girlfriend. . . .
Mr. Umarov has known Mr. Tsarnaev since 2004, shortly after his family came to the United States. Young Dzhokhar sometimes stayed at his home for weeks during summers, goofing around with Junes and his siblings.
Visits to the Tsarnaev household were different. “Every time we went to Dzhokhar’s house, his brother would make us work, do a bunch of push-ups, get us in shape, because we were staying inside playing video games all day,” Mr. Umarov said. “His brother never gave him wrong advice. So he looked up to his brother.” . . .
One night, exactly one month before [the Boston Marathon bombing], Mr. Tsarnaev appeared at Mr. Umarov’s home in Chelsea, not far from Cambridge, with a friend. They carried a load of fireworks. The three chatted about college over burgers at a Five Guys restaurant and then headed for Admiral’s Hill, a former Navy barracks on the waterfront, to set off the fireworks: pinwheels, Roman candles and other largely innocuous types.
Then they went home. “That’s the last time I saw Dzhokhar,” Mr. Umarov said.

Really? You’re going to report as unquestioned fact Junes Umarov’s claim that he knew nothing of Dzhokhar Tasnaev’s Islamic radicalism? How are you different than these legions of lovestruck teenagers swooning over their “too pretty to be guilty” #FreeJahar idol?

UPDATE: You saw this coming, right?




 

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Culture, Terrorism

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.17.13

Posted on | May 17, 2013 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Second IRS Official Resigns As Obama Appoints New Commissioner

New acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Wurfel

New acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Wurfel

Head of tax-exempt and government entities division Joseph Grant goes under the bus

Obama Claims Ignorance Of IRS Targeting Probe
President denies knowing about TIGTA report

Pelosi Claims GOP Attacks On Obama Based On Fear
“And because he’s strong and because he’s effective, they make him the object of their political action…But I have great confidence in him.”



POLITICS
House Group Hammers Out Bipartisan Immigration Deal Despite Democratic Brinksmanship

Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Douchenozzle

Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Douchenozzle

Group comes to an agreement despite Becerra’s grandstanding, but will it survive the House Judiciary Committee?

Uzbek National Held In Bomb Plot


Arson Not Ruled Out In West, Texas Fertilizer Blast

Marshals Lost Track Of Terrorist Suspects In Witness Protection

Ft. Campbell Sex Abuse Response Chief Arrested In Domestic Dispute

Judge Lets Arizona’s Refusal To Issue Driver’s Licenses To Illegals Stand

Senate Committee Endorses Perez On Party-Line Vote

Michele Bachmann Revels In Obamacare Repeal Vote

BLM Takes Heat Over Revised Fracking Regulations

Senate Unanimously Confirms MIT’s Moniz As New Energy Secretary



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Briefly Rises Above $95, Slips In Asian Trade On Continued Crappy Economic News: NYMEX $94.90, Brent $103.78
Walmart US Sales Weak, Outlook Below Analysts’ Forecast
Claims For Jobless Benefits Rise Sharply
American Airlines Offers Early Boarding To Passengers Traveling Light
Massachusetts Loses 1400 Jobs In April, Unemployment Remains At 6.4%
Yahoo In Talks To Acquire Tumblr
Congress Wants Answers From Google On Privacy Impact Of Glass
WinPhone Steals Third Place From BlackBerry
Facebook Struggles To Satisfy Investors About Mobile Earnings
Tim Cook Tells Congress How To Tap His Overseas Cash
Pebble Nabs $15 Million In Funding, Outs PebbleKit SDK And PebbleSports API To Spur Development
Apple Fights Back In E-Book Antitrust Case
“Metro: Last Light” Is A Dark, Gritty Shooter
Using Science To Reform Toxic Player Behavior In “League Of Legends”
PSA: The Original “Karateka” Is Now Available For iOS And Android



SPORTS
Pacers Can’t Close The Deal

Paul George and Jason Chandler scramble for a loose ball

Paul George and Jason Chandler scramble for a loose ball

Knicks get lucky, take Game 5 85-75

Exit Becks: David Beckham Retiring At Season’s End

Short-Track Legend Dick Trickle Commits Suicide, 71

Bruins Take Game 1 From Rangers In OT

M’s Prevail Over Yankees After Pettitte Leaves With Injury

Giants Climb Out Of 6-0 Hole To Beat Rockies

Reid Ryan To Replace George Postolos As Astros President

Verlander Rocked For Eight Runs In Tigers’ 10-4 Loss To Rangers

Sharks’ Torres Suspended For Series After Head Shot On Kings’ Stoll

Nats’ Wednesday Night Loss To Dodgers Overshadowed By Injuries To Detwiler, Ramos



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
The Prime Of Miss Emma Watson

"...oozes old school glamor." Oh, yes.

“…oozes old school glamor.” Oh, yes.

The W interview.

Kanye West Rants At Surprise Adult Swim Concert: “I Ain’t No M*****F***** Celebrity”

Warrant Issued For Former NFL Star Chad Johnson’s Arrest

Prince Harry Is The One For Me, Says Miss USA

“It’s Always Sunny” Actress Mariann Gavelo: “My Ass Is Unreal”

SOS SNL!

Avril Lavigne: “Men Like A Chase!”

Bea Arthur Nude Painting Sells For Nearly $2 Million

Will.i.am On New Britney Spears Album: “We Start Next Week”

Chloe Moretz Parties Poolside In Hollywood



FOREIGNERS
Obama Stays Cautious On Syria As Erdogan Presses For Urgency
Russia Says Iran Must Take Part In Proposed Syria Talks
With Steel Magnate Sharif Back In Power, Pakistan Looks To Build
Hollande Vows Reform As Critics Grow Louder
Sectarianism In Iraq Stoked By Syrian War
Venezuela Hopes To Wipe Out TP Shortage By Importing 50 Million Rolls
Pope Francis Blasts Global Financial Order As “Cult Of Money”
Hamas, Hezbollah Members In NY Cigarette Smuggling Ring
Russian Economy Grows At Slowest Rate Since 2009



BLOGS & STUFF
Leather Penguin: Whites Defend Federal Profiling Of Minorities
First Street Journal: From Around The Blogroll
Fred Bauer: When Pencil Pushers Attack
Sarah Palin: Scandalous Hat Trick
Chicks On The Right: Is It Just Me?
Allahpundit: CIA Asked AP Not To Expose Yemen Terror Plot Bust Until White House Could Crow Over It
Lonely Conservative: Well, Now We Know Why DOJ Was Spying On The AP
WaPo Fact Checker: Boxer Claim That GOP Budgets Hampered Benghazi Security Gets Three Pinocchios
Conservatives4Palin: IRS Official Who Oversaw Unit Targeting Tea Party Groups Now Heads Obamacare Office
Powers Line: Meet The New Oppressor, Same As The Old Oppressor
Sense Of Events: Obama Critics Need To Stick To The Mountains And Ignore The Molehills
Stanley Kurtz: Obama’s Bulworth Fantasy
Peggy Noonan: This Is No Ordinary Scandal
National Review: Scandal Is Not An Agenda
Mary Katherine Ham: Good News! John Edwards Is Returning To The Speaking Circuit
LifeNews: Planned Parenthood’s New Abortion Ad Campaign? “Your Baby Will Thank You”
Weasel Zippers: DC Considers Mandatory $250K Insurance Policy For Gun Owners
Just One Minute: Obama’s Outrage On IRS – Hey, I Might Get Audited Someday!


FMJRA deadline is tonight. Send us your linkagery.


Category: Live at Five

‘Hate-F*ck’ Hoaxer Meg Lanker-Simons Has Criminal Record for Gun Incident

Posted on | May 16, 2013 | 39 Comments

When last we checked in on Think Progress award-winning blogger Meg Lanker-Simons, the progressive feminist was charged with making a fake Facebook threat to “hate-f*ck” herself. Now it turns out that “Meg Lanker-Simons” is the alias of a dangerously crazy criminal formerly known as Meghan Michelena, who in 2006 pleaded guilty to aggravated assault after getting fired from a Wyoming radio station:

According to court records, she was charged in November 2005 in District Court with aggravated assault.
Lanker-Simons, then Meghan Michelena, pleaded guilty to the charge in May 2006 as part of a plea agreement, records indicate. . . .
Lanker-Simons walked into an Albany County radio station she’d been fired from with a Glock 22 .40 caliber handgun.
She confronted a man who had decided to terminate her, the affidavit reports. The man also told her, the court documents state, that she would not be rehired.
Lanker-Simons “pulled a semi-automatic pistol from her purse, waved the firearm around and pointed (the) firearm at (the man),” according to the affidavit.
The man, according to the affidavit, said he was “in fear for his life.” . . .
She was sentenced to six years of probation in July 2006.
The probation sentence was subject to numerous stipulations, including . . . undergoing counseling . . .
Court documents state she violated probation by being “unsuccessfully discharged” from a residential treatment program.
In April 2007, she was again sentenced to probation with the stipulation she complete a treatment program in Utah.

Uh, “counseling” and “residential treatment program” — do these terms sound to you like legal euphemisms for a trip to the nuthouse?

Katherine Timpf at Campus Reform reminds us:

In 2012, Lanker-Simons’ blog Cognitive Dissonance, which has since been taken down, won an “honoree” award from the liberal group Think Progress for “live blogging the entire GOP primaries.”
Lanker-Simons was also in the news in 2010 when she was a plaintiff in a successful lawsuit against UW after it retracted its invitation to have Bill Ayers speak on campus.
According to a Facebook page that apparently belongs to Lanker-Simons she is a member of the University of Wyoming Gender & Women’s Studies group as well as the school’s chapter of The Nonviolent Communist.

“Nonviolent,” not so much.

It would be wrong to generalize from the example of Meghan Michelina (a/k/a Meg Lanker-Simons) to conclude that all progressive bloggers are in need of a “residential treatment program.”

Nor would it be fair to suggest that all Women’s Studies majors are potentially dangerous gun-wielding lunatics.

However, I would suggest, as atypical as Michelina/Lanker-Simons may be, on a scatter-chart of progressive feminist bloggers, her particular dot is not really that far from the main cluster.

She is the visible tip of a vast submerged iceberg of craziness.

Not every feminist is a criminal or a psychopath, and if every progressive blogger were locked up in the nuthouse, the burden on our mental-health system might prevent adequate treatment for genuinely crazy people who haven’t yet discovered the Internet.

 


Category: Crime, Feminism

Dubious Categories of Fame

Posted on | May 16, 2013 | 13 Comments

Ace of Spades has at times discussed the bizarre delusion of becoming “blog-famous,” as if someone with a blog could get a double mastectomy and thereby enjoy fame equivalent to being Angelina Jolie who is (you may have noticed) a Hollywood movie star.

Hollywood movie stars are famous, by definition.

A blogger who became a Hollywood movie star would also be famous — not for blogging, but for starring in movies.

TV defines fame. People on  TV are legitimately famous. That’s it. Nothing else counts. So the notion that your blogging will make you a celebrity is a delusion. Famous people on TV may have blogs, but it isn’t the blogging that does it, it’s the being-on-TV thing.

Successful is one thing, famous is another, and it’s important to keep the difference between those concepts clear in your mind.

This is not a random meta-philosophical musing, but is instead inspired by the phrase “Internet celebrity” in a headline:

Internet celebrity sought
in Clark man’s murder

A desire to be famous as “Kai the hatchet wielding hitchhiker” — gosh, I don’t know, maybe it’s a sign you’ve got problems. Or something.

 

Category: Crime

CNN Now Aiming for Zero Ratings

Posted on | May 16, 2013 | 46 Comments

The Third-Place Cable Network Nobody Watches™ has decided to give America’s Least Popular Cable News Personality™ a special assignment: “White in America.” Paul Bedard reports:

CNN correspondent Soledad O’Brien, known for her “Black in America” documentaries that sometimes irk viewers, is now turning her cameras on whites. . . .
“We’re not just working on ‘BIA,’ but also developing a ‘White in America.’ Stay tuned for that one.”
Her statement came in reaction to a . . . story about her appearance in a short video posted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, based in part on a speech she gave to the college about race and her “Black in America” series. She was just named a distinguished visiting fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

(“Distinguished visiting fellow” — take that, you haters!)

In [her] speech she said that some whites don’t want to talk about race. “People would sometimes, when I give speeches, stand up and say, ‘You know, I think your black America documentaries [are] divisive. I think like, you know, listen, we shouldn’t think of ourselves as African-American. We’re Americans, and everybody should stop separating themselves out.'”
She continued: “First of all, it’s only white people who ever said that — ‘if we could just see beyond race.’ ” And she said her reaction goes like this: “OK, white person, this is a conversation you clearly are uncomfortable with, and I have no problem seeing race, and I think we should talk about race.”

“We should talk about race” — talk about it constantly, because that’s all Soledad O’Brien ever wants to talk about because that’s the only thing she seems to know anything about.

 

Category: CNN

As You Can Perhaps Imagine, This Has Been a Rough Week for Charles Johnson

Posted on | May 16, 2013 | 39 Comments

The World’s Least Credible Blogger™ has been tying himself into laughable knots of hilarious self-contradiction lately, attempting to defend President Wiretap Benghazi Failure against . . . Well, facts.

Facts have always been optional with Obama, who has relied on his media-generated force field to survive all previous encounters with unfortunate reality. Obama’s fawning fanboy Charles Johnson fancies himself an apostle of Scientific Truth (and imagines his antagonists are all ignorant bigots), but the relentless drip, drip, drip of scandalous facts the past few days have been quite hard on CJ’s self-image.

Case in point: Diary of Daedalus catches CJ attempting to redefine the word “bogus” as “vastly overblown,” so as to dismiss as false or exaggerated the accounts of how Tea Party groups and other conservatives were targeted by the IRS.

Why, in a span of 38 minutes Tuesday afternoon, would Charles feel the need to attempt this redefinition? Maybe that’s when he got a look at “Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review,” by Michael E. McKenny.

Once you read that, you realize this isn’t a “claim” made by conservatives, or something “alleged” to have happened: It’s a straight-up fact, and one that doesn’t fit within CJ’s worldview.

And man, it’s just been a cruel, cruel week for CJ’s worldview.

Scroll down Diary of Daedalus and enjoy the ridiculous failures. That is to say, if you still remember who Charles Johnson is. Or rather, was.

 

Category: Charles Johnson, Diary of Daedalus
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