The Tilled Land

Retro
The New York Times website today featured a fourteen minute video retrospective of the Tawana Brawley affair. All will remember the incident in which a black teenager claimed she was raped by several upstate New York cops. Of course it was later determined that it was a complete fabrication. The cops were wrongly accused and, no doubt, actual black women who were victims of rape were thenceforth viewed skeptically.  Figuring prominently in the video was Obama adviser and MSNBC host Al Sharpton. 

Who is a man of God. 
Who did not apologize for his role in falsely inciting racial animosity.
Who does not apologize even today. 
Who has the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. 

Even Eliot Spitzer (a.k.a. Client #9) apologized for whoring around before getting his own television show. 

Not Sharpton.


Let's Dance
An internal watchdog at the Treasury Department is set to report Tuesday that the IRS spent almost $50 million on more than 200 employee conferences from 2010 through 2012, spending the tax-collecting agency's new acting commissioner called "inappropriate." (WSJ, 6/2/2013)

So Liberals, please note. When we say that taxes should not be raised, spending should be cut, this is what we mean.


Stumblebum
A second major piece of legislation that would have made Illinois the 13th state to allow same-sex couples to marry also stumbled in the closing days of the session. The Senate passed a bill to legalize the unions in February, but the House failed to take up the measure in the face of pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and a group of black ministers.  (WSJ, 6/2/2013)

Whatever one's view of gay marriage - and reasonable people can have entirely different opinions - it is worth noting again the opposition of many black clergymen. So for gay marriage advocates, can we have a little more tolerance for those who oppose? Labeling opponents as homophobic is not a good strategy and you might be surprised at the constituency of those who hold divergent views.

Counting the Broken Ties

Misunderstood
The Internal Revenue Service, according to an inspector general’s report, was not reacting to political pressure or ideology when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny in evaluating requests for tax exemptions. It acted inappropriately because employees couldn't understand inadequate guidelines. (New York Times editorial, 5/16/2013)

Such guidelines which said to scrutinize conservative groups? No ideological issue there, huh?

The utter lack of curiosity by the Legitimate Media about the Obama Scandals (we are trademarking that one, too) is truly astounding. The same media, for example, which spilled endless ink over two fruitcakes like Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame is suddenly maxed out on Benghazi and the IRS. Everyday they confirm what conservatives say about a biased media.

Of course the real goal of Republicans - the Times tells - us is stopping Obama's agenda. Exactly.


Remote Control 
It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. Lois Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, was the person who finally acknowledged, under pressure of a looming investigative report, some of what the IRS was doing. She told reporters the actions were the work of "frontline people" in Cincinnati. But other offices were involved, including Washington. It is not even remotely possible the actions were the work of just a few agents. This was more systemic. It was an operation. The word was out: Get the Democratic Party's foes. It is not remotely possible nobody in the IRS knew what was going on until very recently. The Washington Post reported efforts to target the conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency by May 2012—far earlier than the agency had acknowledged. Reuters reported high-level IRS officials, including its chief counsel, knew in August 2011 about the targeting. (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 4/16/2013)

Liberal astonishment that Republicans have jumped on the Obama Scandals(tm)  does not pass "the shoe on the other foot test." Would Bush's IRS targeting Media Matters raise the ire of Dems? Of course it would.


Back-to-Back
One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack, lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration’s purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate? (George Will, Washington Post, 5/16/2013)

Four days after the IRS announced that it discriminated against conservative organizations, Carney said repeatedly in his daily briefing that, if true, the president would be outraged. If? By then, the IRS had not only admitted the grievous misconduct but apologized for it — and the president was speaking in the conditional. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 5/16/2013)

Conservatives have the brilliance of Will and Krauthammer. Liberals have Dionne and vanden Heuvel. We like our team's chances. 

Fence Post

Noticeable
But China’s growth in the American auto industry is drawing notice in Washington. Last year, the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization that China’s government was unfairly subsidizing the production of some parts shipped to America. And the country’s inroads into American-made batteries and electric vehicles have drawn scrutiny because that sector of the industry has been heavily subsidized by the United States government. (NYT, 5/12/2013)

Has so much irony ever been found in two sentences? Obama is mad at the Chinese government for subsidizing auto parts at the same time that the American government subsidizes electric car parts.


Hand Out
Republican lawmakers have become reflexive in rejecting every extended hand from the administration, even if the ideas were ones that they themselves once welcomed. Under the circumstances, Mr. Obama would be best advised to stop making peace offerings. Only when the Republican Party feels public pressure to become a serious partner can the real work of governing begin. (New York Times editorial, 5/12/2013)

Well, we found more irony. Democrats - who famously worked so well with George Bush - cannot fathom why Republicans would snub President Obama's "peace offerings." (We tried to come up with a joke about the white man bargaining with native Americans, but we couldn't get the racial components worked out.)

So one more time:
-Democrats would not work with George Bush. They despised him.

-Republicans do not trust Obama or the Democrats because of the way in which they passed Obamacare.

-Both sides are posturing (and waiting) for the mid-term elections.


Suggestion
The New York Times obtained a 12-page timeline from the inspector general’s audit on Sunday. It suggests that the effort to single out Tea Party groups goes back to March 2010 when a special Determinations Unit in the Cincinnati office of the I.R.S. began searching tax-exemption applications that focused on groups on one side of the political spectrum, rather than broadly on political groups without a social-welfare mission. (NYT, 5/12/2013)

Halfway through an article on the IRS investigation of conservative groups we get this, giving hope that the Times does remember its past ability to do investigative journalism. Perhaps the Times has finally found an Obama scandal that they can run with. There have been numerous opportunities after all....


Lean To
President Barack Obama said if any Internal Revenue Service staff targeted groups based on their political leanings, they would be held “fully accountable” for their actions.  “If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Mr. Obama said, in his first public remarks on the issue. (WSJ, 5/13/2013)

Obama added; "And when I say 'fully accountable' I mean just like those responsible for Fast and Furious, the collapse of Solyndra, and the debacle in Benghazi were held fully accountable." Meanwhile, Jay Carney said the IRS scandal was "old news."


Down Below
The State Department board that reviewed last year’s attack on a diplomatic outpost in Libya never questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state at the time, because it had already decided responsibility lay below her level, the board’s chairman said Sunday. Thomas R. Pickering, a former ambassador who led the review, said his group discussed its findings with Mrs. Clinton but did not pose any questions because it had established the facts to its satisfaction and concluded that mistakes were made by less senior officials. Likewise, he said, the panel did not question her two deputies. (NYT, 5/12/2013)

This is precious. Why have a review if you have already determined the answer? And why not question the person who accepted responsibility? 

While we are on Benghazi-gate, we saw Rudy Guiliani a couple of nights ago make a brilliant point. The Obama/Clinton administration contends that they did not send help to the beleaguered ambassador in Libya because they would not have gotten there in time. To which Guiliani responds: "Oh really, how did Clinton/Obama know how long the attack was going to last?"