“I’m sorry, Ham Rove. One of us is dead meat and you already are.” — Stephen Colbert
<
p>Current Fox News guest.
Weirdly, he is on a panel with Dennis Kucinich
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Fox News Update: I was just informed that you can’t be masculine and liberal.
I technically have a full undergraduate degree in journalism. To prevent News madness, I might as well draw on those semi-honed instincts
The story of the day is the IRS “targeting” of 501c4 groups. I will let The Economist sum it up:
Facing a surge in campaign groups formed during Mr Obama’s first years in the White House, and worried that many were too political to merit tax-exempt status, inspectors hit upon the shortcut of targeting groups with names containing “tea party” or “patriot”. Later, when that triggered complaints of bias, IRS officials switched to scrutinising groups that wanted to change the size of the government or even criticise it, firing off demands to know who led each group, what they were saying in newsletters or on the internet, and even what their members were reading.
According to the Times today, we now know that some officials who knew this information after an internal inquiry sat on it for a few months before the election.
Here is a pithy bit of judgement on the whole situation, from the same Economist column:
Though the government has a right to police overly political non-profit groups, liberal groups appear to have endured less harassment. Worse than wicked, the IRS’s behaviour was stupid: faced by angry citizens with a Don’t Tread On Me loathing of taxes, the agency sent taxmen to tread on them.
This writer’s take on it seems about right to me. If, at some point, this scandal is tied to higher rungs of the management ladder in the executive branch, it will come to seem more and more Nixonian. More likely, it will emerge as a heavy-handed attempt at problem solving worsened by bureaucratic hemming and hawing.
None of this rudimentary understanding was improved by 8 hours of “news programming.” The hosts instead preferred to turn to make broad, paranoid assertions about the following:
The woman who was the head of the tax-exempt department at the IRS is now in charge of enforcing the tax portions of the Affordable Care Act. Scary because: Death Panels. Alternately, if it is a reward for services rendered, we’re approaching 11 on the Nixon scale. Strangely, they went with option 1. If you are going to speculate wildly about wrongdoings, why not go full moustache-twirl?
Giant-headed Neil Cavuto was angry at the stock market for not being adequately upset about the days events (it went up a smidge). I find this inexplicable.
Former White House press secretary Dana Perino claimed that this was an expression of the inherent liberalism of those in civil service, something which must be rooted out.
Observations
Perhaps civil service would be more conservative if y’all deigned to participate in it.
People tend to side with those that don’t bash them all day.
Why are liberals consistently treated like a tumor on the body politic? They aren’t an illness to be cured. They are half of the population of the United States, and your fellow citizens. If they act like petty, over-political tyrants, call them out for that, not for their position on the social safety net.
So, we spent an entire day speculating on an undeveloped story that may or may not go anywhere, ignoring the actually major and relevant stories about the Russians selling arms to the Syrians like amoral assholes, the sexual assault crisis in the military, and the president’s infrastructure proposal.
Cable news: All light, no heat.
“Disclosure: The two authors of this post are in the same office, sitting about five feet away from each other.” —
Do not miss. Easily the funniest thing I’ve seen this week.
Again. Please. Keep always reminding me about all the Important Things I miss out on by deliberately not ““keeping up”” with ““the news.””
Yikes.
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(via merlin)
(via merlin)
Histoire Naturelle des Indes
Illustrated manuscript, ca. 1586This work has been informally dubbed the Drake manuscript because the English explorer Sir Francis Drake is twice mentioned in the text and some thirty geographical references match his ports of call.
The Morgan Library
Muhammad Ali, Hulk Hogan, Cyndi Lauper, Liberace And Wendi Richter
Your first look at @JossActual ‘s new prequel series “Avengers: 1984”
Headed to north Georgia to visit my parents.
(Gonna hear soooo much Fox News over the next few days)