Good Lord.

tÂ’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union. The NTEU. A left-wing union representing 150,000 employees in 31 separate government agencies, including the IRS. A union that not only endorsed President Obama for election and re-election, but a union whose current president, Colleen Kelly, was a 14-year IRS agent and now is both union president and Obama administration appointee (of which more in a moment).

It’s about 94% of NTEU union contributions going to Democrats in the Senate and House in 2012 — candidates who campaigned as vociferous opponents of the Tea Party.

And the recently released report from the Treasury Inspector General? You will not find a single reference to the NTEU. Whose members are both player and referee in the exploding controversy over the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

Which raises the obvious question: how many NTEU members were involved in the writing of the Inspector GeneralÂ’s report?

...

LetÂ’s first see how the IRS/NTEU game with the Tea Party and conservatives is played, shall we?

In the 2012 election cycle, the IRS union gave its money this way:

For the U.S. Senate:
Total to Democrats: $156,750
Total to Republicans: $1,000

For the U.S. House:
Total to Democrats: $391,062
Total to Republicans: $23,000

We have gone from having a country with a government to having a government with a country.

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (290)
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The article isn't all that bad. In fact, if you read it, you'll generally agree with it.

That headline, though. The headline itself is bien pensant concern-trolling.

Why?

Because when someone tells you something that's perfectly obvious, and imputes to you ignorance of the perfectly obvious, it's a kind of passive-aggressive superiority move.

This is 75% the reason I despise leftists' concern-trolling-- it's not that I disagree that "racism is bad." It's that it's an insult for a leftist idiot to presume to tell me that, as I did not know, and am in need of his instruction on the matter.

I've got nothing against NR -- or not much, anyway -- but I also resent the lecturey, chiding tone of that headline.

So, anyway. Headline aside, the actual article isn't so bad. Especially as it's advice to Republican office-holders, who are, in fact, rather a dim lot, and may need some guidance.

We urge them to do so with vigor, but also with a keen sense of the limits of political scandal. Republicans must guard against the temptation to count on scandal to deliver election victories in 2014 and 2016.

It is a lesson they should have learned in 1998.
 Republicans expected to make large gains in Congress that year but ended up losing five House seats and standing pat in the Senate. The problem was not so much that Republicans “overreached” in pursuing the impeachment of President Clinton, as the conventional wisdom has it. The Republicans that year did not really run on a promise to remove Clinton from office — or on any other agenda. Their strategy was to assume that the scandal would redound to their benefit, and that they merely had to sit back and let victory rain oÂ’er them. It didnÂ’t.

The current lot should not make the same mistake. Democratic scandal does not take the place of a Republican agenda. It does not reform the tax code or reduce the debt or ease regulatory burdens on small business. It cannot substitute for a strategy to replace Obamacare. By all means, Republicans should run against the president and his party — against their refusal to take the entitlement crisis seriously, against the implementation of their “train wreck” health-care law, and even against the unusually politicized executive-branch culture that contributed to the post-Benghazi cover-up. They should at the same time understand that a purely negative message, however justified, will not produce the governing majority Republicans should be aiming for in the next two elections.

I would caveat, though, that scandal is also important.

Policy-wonks dismiss scandal because it's not in their specialty wheelhouse of policy. But governance is not just policy -- it is also governance, that is to say, it is also management, and all the requirements of sound management, such as focus to detail, ethics, integrity, and honesty.

Why is it somehow "less" to knock the White House and the Democrats for failing at these things? Are they not important as well?

Policy matters, but so does personnel. And, let's recall -- policy is personnel.

Let's be honest here: 40% of the voters have no idea what policies are in play in any specific election, and 70% of them don't know the specifics of policies under consideration. We tend to know broad strokes.

I will not be shocking any of you when I confess I am a broad-strokes guy, myself.

So yes, I do wish to run on scandal, at least partially, because You cannot trust them is a very effective campaign theme, and has won more elections than any policy-based theme. Obama just ran on this theme in 2012. He didn't seem to have to offer a "positive agenda" himself.

In addition, a commenter -- I forget his name, but if you recognize your quote, speak up -- said something sort of profound last week. He said:

It's easier to get someone to change his mind than to get him to care in the first place.

People may poo-poo scandal as being less high-minded than policy dispute, but the fact of the matter is that an objection to someone's honesty, ethics, and sense of fairness will get more people to care than any discussion of policy.

Policy's important. Don't get me wrong. But I don't think policy is as important as policy wonks think it is, just as I don't think skill at written expression is as important as writers think it is, just as I don't think hammers are as important as the Big Nail thinks they are.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what the intellectually-oriented people might think or wish, politics is essentially dumb and played out between the groin and the top the of the ribcage.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (194)
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Did you know this? I didn't. Some guy at Mediaite notes it, speculating that the reason for the fall is that MSNBC is simply a partisan cheerleading outfit (No, that's not true, take it back, Jennifer Jason Leigh said) and that without an election to cheerlead, it has no actual identity.

In fact, it's a bit worse than that, because MSNBC's core corporate mission -- outdo Daily Kos in fervent liberal partisan apologias -- plays especially poorly during a period of very real scandal in the Obama Occupied White House.

Check out some of these recent quotes from MSNBC hosts:

“I do not believe what the IRS was reported to have been doing is an outrage. I believe that the IRS agents in this case did nothing wrong. Let me say it again, you won’t hear it anywhere else: the IRS agents did nothing wrong. They were simply trying to enforce the law as the IRS has understood it since 1959.” – Lawrence O’Donnell on the IRS.

“Conservatives still want to change the subject to the fake, ginned up scandal they’ve been pushing month after month.” – Chris Hayes on Benghazi.

“So now they’re (Republicans are) viewing an actual real world abuse of power scandal (the IRS Scandal), not as its own outrage, but as a means of supporting their preexisting witch hunt on Benghazi, which they really struggled to turn into a scandal in large part because they themselves cannot seem to settle on what the scandal even is. It’s a cover-up. Just don’t ask what’s being covered up…” – Hayes on the IRS Scandal being used for political gain for Republicans on…Benghazi.

There's another quote from Maddow I've left back at the link.

Note what's going on here: A "news" network -- a business in the business of selling you The News each night -- is forced into the position of telling you there is no news to report, night after night.

Because of the Full Partisan Tilt of MSNBC, the alleged "news" network must tell its customers, night after night, that there stockrooms are bare, and they have nothing at all to vend.

I remember this happening with Keith Olbermann on, I think, MSNBC. I think that was his first time he got fired from the network, but don't hold me to that; I can never keep his firings straight. For that matter, neither can he.

Point is, he was a hardcore liberal partisan (of course), and his show debuted during or just before the Clinton Impeachment story.

And night after night... Keith Olbermann basically told people there was no story.

Same story, every night, that there was no story at all.

That didn't exactly light up the ratings.

One can only hope the same fate for all of MSNBC.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (207)
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Remember, as Ron Elving said, these scandals have hurt Obama's "fondest dreams" of bipartisanship.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (430)
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First treatment of the planned sequel to Forrest Gump.

[Casting notes: Tom Hanks is too fat, but he has demonstrated that he can lose the weight, so let's try to get him to reprise his role. Haley Joel Osment is perfect for Forrest Jr. because he is a druggie, and has no career to speak of]

Prologue: Forrest is told by his doctor that he has AIDS, contracted from his grasping harpy of a dead wife. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:15 PM | Comments (395)
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@rdbrewer4 linked this story in the sidebar, I think linking to the Daily Mail: A study shows that men who are physically strong, with larger penises, are more likely to be conservative.

Here's Dan Foster's headline and byline:

Study: "Dan Foster Types" More Likely to be Conservative

by Dan Foster

I don't care who you are, that's just funny.

The study also found that weaker men tended to be more supportive of the welfare state, for protection 'n stuff.

I guess I'm done with the Obama press conference because he's saying, as usual, nothing, and is speaking in lawyer-crafted language. Asked when he'd known of the IRS scandal -- that is, the underlying allegations and controversy -- he answered that he hadn't known of the IG Report about it until Friday last.

We "Dan Foster Types" don't cotton to such pussymouth parsing.

Not a Dan Foster Type: Seriously? You haven't invented umbrella poles for this purpose?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (211)
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Slightly overstated for comic effect, because Jay Leno does do Obama jokes, and of course Dennis Miller does.

But 97% true.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (166)
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From Michael Sneed at the Chicago Sun-Times:

Sneed is told that Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder’s days are numbered.

Sneed hears President Barack Obama, who is this/close to Holder, has set his sights on Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as a possible replacement “when the heat dies down on the latest hot-button scandals to hit the U.S. Justice Department,” said a top White House source.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (243)
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Although we tend to sublimate class disputes into "political" terms, class remains a high-voltage current in America, and for that reason I think this simple story is going to get a lot more play that it otherwise would have.

Williamson describes himself as a vigilante against the vulgar. Others describe him as a nasty elitist snob.

His Twitter feed is interesting, because -- if my general read is right -- his supporters and detractors aren't breaking into left/right lines, but into camps of You Should Know How to Behave (Elitism) and Let People Do What They Will and Be Who They Are (Populism), with some on the left peopling either camp, and some on the right similarly distributed into either camp.

There's a Let It All Hang Out ethic in America which is, in some ways, bracing and liberating -- not all traditions are deserving of the same level of respect -- but, on the other hand, Time and Place, guys.

Adam Carolla is always going on about people not being well-dressed on airplanes. I hear this from older people, too; that people used to dress fairly well for air travel.

I don't get that one. Certainly one should be clean, but on a six hour flight... one should also be comfortable. The best way to kill that time is to sleep.

But there are a lot of areas where people have just decided that No One Matters But Me. Movie theaters, for example.

Posted by: Ace at 10:01 AM | Comments (298)
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Livestream.

This is a whole bunch of bullshit. Obama is once again having a joint press conference with a foreign leader, which sharply limits the number of questions about US domestic affairs (half of all questions will be for the Turkish PM), and furthermore is a subtle psychological cue to Behave Respectfully.

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (352)
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