News & Articles

A news junkie, I try to watch as many Congressional hearings as I can. Much better than reality TV and almost equal to meerkats on Animal Planet. It’s great fun to watch the Academy Award-level acting as the camera-huggers and the “used car” experts act through their one-act reality plays to make some minor point. But last week I noticed that beady eyes were focused with greater intensity, sagging jowls were quivering in real anger instead of feigned, arm-waving gesticulations were crisp and threatening, and Senator Phoghorn’s voice was shaking in righteous anger, equaling any sobbing TV evangelist’s mind melt. All sphincters seemed exceedingly tight and at the ready.
   It was so emotionally overpowering I thought both Republicans and Democrats were preparing to declare war on some nefarious country that had sent huge drones to destroy Washington. And they did declare war–on their very own Internal Revenue Service. This orphan stepchild of the Supreme Court and Congress was threatening to destroy their campaign stashes, their flying-around money, their three-martini lunch dough! This is all-out, to-the-political-death war! The Best Congress Money Can Buy displayed absolute Holocaust fear that their million-dollar donors with tax-exempt scams could disappear.

And Then The Great Intimidator Faced A Trifecta Of Impeachable Offenses!

    During this trifecta of “SCANDAL!” in Washington composed of Benghazi, the IRS investigation, and the Justice Department chasing “heroic” AP reporters, important policies that really count such as immigration, guns, tax reform, income inequality, budget deficit, and the national debt went unnoticed. The Beltway boys and girls, ranging from Congress to reporters, joined the mosh pit of politics instead of paying attention to the country’s real business-while even skunks poll better.. The Republican House has spent 15 percent of its time repealing Obamacare for the 37th time under the direction of that great Dominionist  Michele Bachmann. Slick Willie Clinton had it right when he said the present Republican leaders “couldn’t organize a two-car funeral procession.”
   Barack Obama, the “let-us-reason-together” community organizer, who for some reason still thinks he can use reason dealing with the Know-Nothings of the No Party-Republican Party, was called “The Great Intimidator” by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. That was another laugh of the week by the Elmer Fudd of the Senate who has been desperately trying to get rid of a black president for five years. The Great Intimidator?! Does Obama kill flies and pull legs off spiders? No way. He is so practical, if given the choice of being a proctologist or a dentist, he would choose proctology because there are more germs in the mouth.

Let’s Get To The Great Disaster Of Benghazi First

   Yes, we lost four Americans, including the ambassador, in the consulate at Benghazi. Well, stuff happens when hundreds of millions of Arabs, Muslims, and nomadic tribes are happily torturing and killing each other in the Middle East. Remember that “democracy” we were bringing to Iraq? That’s the war Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman, always desperately searching for TV cameras, say we “won” with the “Petraeus surge.” No one has told us what we have won yet.  Stability? I see “democrats” from the Shite and Sunni tribes are still killing each other with gusto every day in Baghdad, Basra, and other cities. Sixty Shites were car-bombed to death (only 147 wounded) in Baghdad two days ago by Sunnis. I think the Shites will get “even” soon. Muslims have been forever killing each other in a 1,500-year world-wide religious civil war. We can’t expect them to quit in just a century. These tribes evidently live by William Faulkner’s proverb: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”  But I digress.
   The Republicans are trying to tie a dead cat to Hillary Clinton’s rear-end because of 2016 by using Benghazi. Aw! The pleasures of yelling “political cover-up!” Instead of determining how to defend our 294 embassies and consulates in some of the most gawdawful disorganized  countries in the world, we have Congressional idiots exchanging blows and insults about CIA talking points, State Department talking points, White House talking points, and analysis by Faux News and MSNBC. Politics is getting so ugly it makes monster-truck and survival shows look sane. Train wreck descriptions no longer suffice. Republican Chairman Darrel Issa of the Benghazi hearing reminds me of Snidely Whiplash, the diabolical enemy of Dudley Do-Right. He should grow a black handlebar.
   Where were all these Republican patriots during the George W. Bush Debacle-Decade when our embassies and consulates were attacked 64 times, with seven attacks rather serious in an international sense?  Benghazi? Big deal.
2002-U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan attacked, 10 killed, 51 injured.
2004-U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan, two killed, nine injured by Al Qaeda suicide bombers.
2004-U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, eight killed by attackers who bombed gates.
2006-U.S. Embassy in Syria, men stormed embassy yelling “Allahu akbar!” (God is Great).
2007-U.S  Embassy in Athens attacked by anti-tank grenades by unknowns.
2008-U.S. Embassy in Serbia, 300 rioters entered embassy and torched it.
2008-U.S. Embassy in Yemen, 16 killed by two car bombs detonated outside embassy.

We Need To Draft The Sons And Daughters Of
Reporters And Congressmen So They Know There’s A War On

  In all this bloody screaming about freedom of the press in the AP “SCANDAL,” reporters and government leakers seem to have forgotten we are at war with Islamic fundamentalist crazies around the world. Some say at least in over 60 countries. As evidence of that we have had about 6,000 KIAs, 22,000 wounded, and over 300,000 with PTSD fighting Crusade #15 for a dozen years. And we have to keep our eye on the blackmailer- extortionists in North Korea so they don’t surprise us in some dark alley when we are not looking. Some government leaker leaked we had prior knowledge of North Korea missile launchings. Why should we tell our potential enemies how and when we are spying on them? The leaker leaked important classified information and should be punished for doing so. Obama has said he is not interested in punishing the reporter. But the Justice Department should prosecute the leaker to the hilt.
  In the other case of the foiled Al Qaeda airliner bomb plot in Yemen, government leakers told reporters, for some reason, how we stopped those plans. Why should we tell our enemies how we did that? So they can devise new, more innovative bomb attempts? Don’t these leakers and reporters realize we are at war?  Before subpoening the phone records of AP reporters the Justice Department conducted 550 interviews and surveyed thousands of documents trying to find out who spilled the beans. We have thousands of troops at a thousand bases in hotspots and thousands of foreign service employees scattered in hellholes in that same world. Let’s protect them the best we can.

   Presidents and Congressmen For Sale
Or Rent At The Great Washington Slave Market And Auction

    Chief Justice John Roberts, in writing for the majority in the funeral picketing case, said: “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and-as it did here-inflict great pain.”  The real tragedy is, at one time speech was “free” in this country. Speech is not free at all now because over the years our Supreme Court has not only put a price on it, they have opened up the floodgates of millions and billions to the rich for the purchase of presidents and Congressmen at the great Washington auction.
   Back in 1913, political parasites, many of them in Congress, passed the Revenue Act creating social welfare nonprofits. Supposedly these nonprofit organizations were limited exclusively to promoting social welfare. Even in the beginning, how do you separate the promotion of social welfare from the ideological trickery of politics? How do you separate social welfare subjects such as poverty, education, health polices, and pensions from politics? You don’t, if you have any judgment at all. Then somebody (Gee, do you think it might have been members of Congress?) Sneaked into the IRS “work rules” that nonprofits had to lobby “primarily” for social welfare. Suddenly, nonprofit social welfare organizations could spend 49.9 percent on politics! Can you imagine the millions of lawsuits over what is “social welfare” and what is “political?” The only solution is to eliminate all these tax-exempt scams. Social welfare nonprofits flooded $256 million into 2012 elections! Why should middle class taxpayers pay more taxes so Washington politicians can pocket “tax exempt” money? It’s almost time to sharpen the pitchfork tines in public to get them to behave.
   So the IRS, put in an unconscionable Catch-22 situation, went through the motions of approving and disapproving 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s. Then the Supreme Court raised the price of “free speech” to Wall Street levels by removing the limits that corporations, individuals, and unions could “donate” to politicians. This is the outfit that claimed corporations are actually people! I love Robert Reich’s statement about Roberts’s definition: “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.”
   Why did the Republicans have so many crazies like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich,  Rick Santorum, “Good Hair” and “Bad Brain” Rick Parry,and “9-9-9”Cain running for president in 2012?  One casino guy spent $94 million trying to buy the presidency for Newt or Mitt.  Why should we have billionaires and corporations putting down large tax-exempt down payments on their lackeys running for the presidency and Congress?

We Need To Add A new Mental Disorder To The DSM Manual:
“Political Almighty Dollar Intoxication Syndrome”

   The new “Bible” of mental disorders, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has 947 pages, describing such confusing conditions as Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome, Binge-Eating Disorders, and Caffeine Intoxication. The Party of No and a few Democrats are so obsessed with the IRS SCANDAL Big Pharma and the American Psychiatric Association had better come up with some drugs and treatment regimes to counter the effects of the Political Almighty Dollar Intoxication Syndrome it is spreading so quickly. Both IRS government workers and political operatives are driving themselves crazy trying to figure out how to separate social welfare organizations from political organizations. Meantime, politicians seeing that they may be separated from their mother’s milk, are really sweating it out.
   Polls show that the general public doesn’t give a single damn about the big IRS SCANDAL even if the Republicans are screaming “Obamagate” and “Impeachment” like it was the scandal of the century. “Fire the IRS management!” yells Speaker John Boehner. What overreach! The Supreme Court and the Congress created this mess and there is no way to solve it except to remove all tax-exempt rules. That they will never do. That’s why Congress has a 79 percent disapproval rating with the public. The disdain of the public is becoming electric.
   Meanwhile the Republican crazies continue to sling charges without having any evidence that would stand up even in a kangaroo court.  The reincarnation of Senator Joe McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, accuses Commie Obama of becoming Richard Nixon. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the global warming hoaxer, is “yelling “Impeachment!” Michele Bachmann could replace the three witches in Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” with plenty of lies left over. She says the SCANDALS are worse than Watergate. Mike Huckabee ( God has stopped talking to Pat Robertson once a week and has switched to Huckabee) says Obama will not fill out his term. Joe Biden better get ready.