Really–It’s Just a Case of Horrible Customer Service

Ever since its spontaneous inception, the Tea Party has been doing their Paul Revere thing with respect to warning citizens about the danger of too big, out-of-control government.

So, in a move designed, seemingly, to prove their point, the IRS’ responded by implementing a program designed to harass and intimidate individuals and groups that looked anything like a tea party.

Alinsky rule # 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

That sounds a lot like bullying to me! Which does violate one of our most important rules:

And IRS agents harassing conservatives, of course

Oh sure, it was just a few rogue employees in Cincinnati who didn’t realize that Big Guy was just kidding around back in 2009 when he suggested he would use the powers of the Presidency to smite his enemies:

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

That’s just crazy. Of course he was joking. An American president would never do that; use the IRS to target his enemies.

Right?

Right!

So we can assume that Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of “True the Vote” was just exaggerating when she told her story about government intimidation and abuse of power with respect to her, her husband, her family businesses, her organization and members of her organization:

“We applied for nonprofit C-3 status early in 2010. Since that time the IRS has run us through a gauntlet of analysts and hundreds of questions over and over again. They’ve requested to see each and every tweet I’ve ever tweeted or Facebook post I’ve ever posted. They also asked to know every place I’ve ever spoken since our inception and to whom, and everywhere I intend to speak in the future.”

Engelbrecht’s application with the IRS for non-profit status allegedly triggered aggressive audits of one of her family’s personal businesses as well. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) began a series of inquiries about her and her group; the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) began demanding to see her family’s firearms in surprise audits of her and her husband’s small gun dealership–which had done less than $200 in sales; OSHA (Occupational Safety Hazards Administration) began a surprise audit of their small family manufacturing business; and the EPA-affiliated TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environment Quality) did a surprise visit and audit due to “a complaint being called in.”

The Democratic Party of Texas filed a lawsuit against her, as did an ACORN affiliated group. Both the FBI and the BATF continued to poke around her life, the lives of people in her Tea Party group, and her businesses.

She should have hired a media/marketing analyst before picking a name for her tax-exempt group. For instance, instead of “True the Vote” if she’d selected something more suitable like “Screw the Vote” or “Green the Vote” she would have breezed right through.

After conducting a thorough internal investigation however, we find her complaint to be without merit. While her experience was unfortunate, we find no evidence of targeting or malice. It was simply another case of “horrible customer service” (h/t Steven Miller) – brought about by to all those sequestration cuts.

Butt hey! We did the best we could, considering all of the circumstances. Close enough for government work, right? And it’s not as if anyone’s life depended on it, right?

In fact, in government, I guess you get really big bonuses for providing “horrible customer service.”

Linked By: MuseumTwenty on twitter, and Robert Watson and Mireille Buser on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Addition in the Age of Obama (subtraction, not so much)

The Wons took a little break from Scandals ‘R Us to visit ground zero of the future of the Democratic party: schools.

Lady M went to college to get a new law degree (in case she needs one again someday).

OMG! OMG! I WON!?!

“I’d like to thank the Academy for this great honor; all my great fans – without all you little people I wouldn’t be here today!”

…and Big Guy went to elementary school where he quizzed future Democrats on basic math skills: 

“If I give you 1 community organizer, 2 banks and 3 grocery stores, how much money can you shakedown for Acorn?”

And he consoled a youngster who was having a little trouble calculating 2 minus 1 by telling her that “subtraction is tougher than addition.” Not that addition is all that easy in the Age of Obama either:

It’s just that addition is more important than subtraction in the Age of Obama budgeting, as we don’t ever really take anything away from anybody anyhow.

“Tax Increases” equals “addition” – for those of you educated in public schools.

I’ll provide a complete tutorial on the importance of addition and the irrelevance of subtraction in the Age of Obama math at a later date.

“Don’t worry, honey, if you keep up the good work, you, too, can grow up to be president some day. Or at least a high level IRS official.”

 

Besides, I think we’re going to stop teaching math in public school altogether pretty soon.

Linked By: AnnieLaurie and MuseumTwenty on twitter, and Rokee Andrew,  Linda Bolen Blackmore and Kimberly S. Hager on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Umbrella Etiquette in the Age of Obama

Well, it’s Friday. That used to mean late afternoon document dumps for the media to ignore. The last few weeks though, this gambit seems to have gotten a little out of hand. Now it seems we’re dumping new scandals, or new details from old scandals buried in previous Friday afternoon doc-dumps that the media ignored. And ever since that little phone tapping issue with the AP, they’re not ignoring them anymore!

So today’s scandal-gate dumps include a few new-only-to-the-MSM tidbits, including confirmation of the release of hundreds of level 1 through 3 criminals in Arizona as part of Big Guy’s game of sequester Chicken Little. An ugly little play that might just remind people of another potential scandal just waiting to erupt – or re-erupt, if you’re one of those conservative types targeted by the IRS who happens to watch Fox News.

What could go wrong

Then there’s the case of the missing Terrorists. That’s right; according to allegations in yet another inspector general report released Thursday, professed terrorists who turned state’s evidence and were entered into a Mafia-style witness protection programs have gone missing. Apparently they slipped through the cracks. They were supposed to be on the no-fly list, butt it  looks like that didn’t happen; some interagency communications snafu or something. 

I thought we fixed that sort of thing after 911.

"Today's IG report shows that the Justice Department continues to repeat the same mistakes that were made prior to 9/11"

Guess not.

At least we can can blame this one on Bush, since it was his idea to remove the barriers to interdepartmental communication, it must be his fault we didn’t do it. This is more “gross mismanagement – pure and simple.” So it’s a good thing we can tie this one to George W, in case this new scandal makes people think about all those MIA guns from Fast and Furious we’ll just remind them that was all Bush’s idea too.

 

Then there’s more news on the IRS scandal front: I see the woman responsible for the targeting of conservatives has been promoted! And got a $103,000 bonus! How about that, we’ve pinned  Intim-O-Gate on “ineffective management” and put the person responsible for the “ineffective management” in  charge of Obamacare? Is this a great country or what? 

Butt while we’re on it: whose brilliant idea was it to introduce private sector style bonuses -normally associated with productivity and goal achievement to government workers? Great idea. All the protections of civil service along with all the bells, whistles and perks of the private sector! Like I said, great country. 

I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, butt seriously – giving people who have the power to impose their judgment on your tax liability an incentive to maximize tax collections; what could go wrong?

Truth, Justice, the American Way Corruption, Intimidation, the Chicago Way

If we’re lucky nobody will focus on Ms. Ingram too much today, and turn instead to one of our cabinet level scofflaws, Kathleen Sebelius who was caught in a Chicago-style shakedown for “donations” to help fund Obamacare. It’s okay to break the law if it’s for a good cause, right?  And what’s a better cause than Big Guy’s Health and Human Services funding of O-care?

Butt don’t worry, BO didn’t know anything about that either. We just leave him out in the rain until all of his memories have been washed away. Disappeared, down the rabbit hole that is the Big O.

Okay, I can’t seem to remember anything, can I get back under the umbrella now?

Just for future reference, here’s an excerpt from an article on proper umbrella etiquette that may prove handy for Big Guy, given his unfortunate experience with umbrellas:

“Always hold an umbrella for a lady” (h/t CONSERVATIVES4PALIN)

Make sure your umbrella is the proper height

Buckle your seat belt Bucky, it’s going to be a rough ride.

 

UPDATE:

I’ve been advised of a yet another etiquette rule: Even the Queen holds her own umbrella.

As you see though, in this case, a Marine is holding it for the Queen.

Linked By: Gateway Pundit, and EX-ARMY, and MuseumTwenty on twitter, and Mireille Buser and Ken Meyers, Elva Garza, Daniel Jacobi, Robert Watson, Aleen Realmuto, Brenda Battle Jordan, Natalie Cartledge and Eugene Fischer on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

StOnewall Day 7 in the O-Bunker: We still know nuthin’

So Big Guy “fired” (oops! we don’t use that term around here any more) acting IRS Director Stephen Miller. Technically Jack Lew was the poodle handling the termination, as Big Guy never gets involved in the minutia of governing.

Unfortunately, we might only get partial credit for this “decisive action” with respect to Big Guy’s handling of Intim-O-Gate (h/t Glenn Beck) since Mr. Miller was planning to leave in June when his temporary assignment expired anyway.

If a dead tree falls in the forest…

And if “firing” the acting IRS director – who wasn’t even the Director at the time the IRS “rogue” employees went native on their own – isn’t enough to satisfy you people, then there’s always this time honored defense: it was Bush’s fault:

Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t look like those two four “rogue” employees responsible for initiating the illegal scrutiny of 31 75 300 500 conservative groups are willing to fall on the sword in the forest. From what I hear, they’re taking the Nuremberg defense; and they don’t intend to do it quietly.

And Benghazi? Not BO’s doing. Well, that would be Romney’s fault:

I’m thinking maybe what we need is a new media relations team. Because if Big Guy could just get out in front of these stories I’m sure his expert crisis management skills that he developed as a community organizer would be very helpful. At least we wouldn’t always be a day late and a few trillion dollars short:

Until then, we may have to take the other famous German line of defense – the Sgt. Schultz immunity shield:

I think we need more than a new media team: a full flak jacket would be ideal, butt minimally a new brain bucket. To ward off any additional incoming fire. And I just sense there will be more.

Never underestimate the value of a good Luftwaffe pith helmet to deflect incoming facts; shown here worn jaunty homie style (is that racist?).

“Dude, what up wit dat?”

“Nuthin’ – I know nuthin’!”

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Mike Gilliam on facebook, MuseumTwenty and kcrouch on twitter, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Hi, I’m From the IRS, and I Don’t Know Anything Either.

Okay. We’ve finally had time to read the IRS Inspector General’s 54 page report on the targeting of conservative groups for tighter scrutiny. Here is the essence of Big Guy’s statement:

 

"I have now had the opportunity to review the Treasury Department watchdog's report on its investigation of IRS personnel who improperly targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

"And the report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable. The federal government must conduct itself in a way that's worthy of the public's trust, and that's especially true for the IRS.

In other words, he’s shocked – shocked - to find that there’s targeting going on in this administration.

Shocked, I tell you!

"The IRS must apply the law in a fair and impartial way, and its employees must act with utmost integrity. This report shows that some of its employees failed that test.

"I've directed Secretary Lew to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General's recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct never happens again.

"But regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong. Public service is a solemn privilege.

 

Boy, I’ll say!

"I expect everyone who serves in the federal government to hold themselves to the highest ethical and moral standards. So do the American people. And as President, I intend to make sure our public servants live up to those standards every day."

 

I think now might be a good time to relate a cautionary tale. To that end, I would just like to remind everyone that at one time Buddy Cianci was a well-loved, charismatic, Democratic leader. Who ended up in jail over RICO charges.

"Clearly, there is a feeling in city government in Providence that corruption is tolerated. In this mayor's two administrations, there has been more corruption in the City of Providence than in the history of this state."

“See ya’ in 10. Send soap...on a rope.”

Although Buddy was acquitted of 26 of the 27 charges, he was found guilty of a single charge of racketeering conspiracy (running a corrupt criminal enterprise – although the prosecution never demonstrated direct involvement by the mayor himself, just oversight of a corrupt enterprise – boy, Rhode Island has some tough federal laws).

And yes, Joey – that’s still a big effing deal. Good luck with that 2016 run.

Hey, I just work here.

.I don’t know anything either.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and  kcrouch and AnnieLaurie on twitter, and Jerry R. Barton Sr. and Donald P Domke on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Don’t worry: there’s no “there” there.

Here’s a brief recap of yesterday’s sideshow press conference:

Prancing to the podium, with British Prime Minister David Cameron trailing behind

First up: the IRS.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, let me take the IRS situation first. I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday. And this is pretty straightforward.

Okay, disengaged, uninformed; check.

If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous and there's no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable, because the IRS as an independent agency requires absolute integrity, and people have to have confidence that they're applying it in a non-partisan way -- applying the laws in a non-partisan way.

Uh, the IRS already admitted that they “engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported on” Mr. President. (disengaged, uninformed, ergo, not responsible: good!)

Let’s move on to Benghazi; see if you can spot what’s wrong here:

The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism. [and we know that, because Candy Crowley said you did] And what I pledged to the American people was that we would find out what happened,(snip)

And the emails that you allude to were provided by us to congressional committees. They reviewed them several months ago, concluded that, in fact, there was nothing afoul in terms of the process that we had used. And suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no “there” there.

“wink, wink”

The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow. What we have been very clear about throughout was that immediately after this event happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were.(snip)

Keep in mind, by the way, these so-called talking points that were prepared for Susan Rice five, six days after the event occurred pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing.

I don’t know about you, butt I’m having a little trouble following both the timeline and the logic: the day after it happened it was “an act of terrorism,” butt “five, six days after the event,”  per the talking points - that nobody in the Big White was responsible for – we once again believed the attack was the result of a bad movie review?

No wonder Big Guy dismissed this whole mess as a “sideshow” – in that charming, youthfully peevish way of his:

P.T. Barnum reincarnated

Now, on to the next scandal: the illegal seizure of Associate Press phone records in order to sniff out a government leaker. Boy, we may have really stepped in it this time. Even dumb animals know that you don’t crap in your own nest. If we’ve started to apply Chicago Rules to our lapdogs, we must have everyone quacking quaking in their boots.

Wait- this just in: we didn’t know anything about that either!

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters in New York Monday night.

So let’s recap; recent decisions/actions that Big Guy and the Big White had essentially nothing to do with:

1. The Benghazi talking points,

Carney insisted that the White House only made one minor change to the CIA talking points and that "the other discussions that went on prior to this in an interagency process reflected the concerns of a variety of agencies who had a stake in this issue."

2. the IRS targeting conservative organizations (and individuals) for scrutiny (and audits),

“I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this, I think it was on Friday.”

3. the Justice Department pulling AP phone records, and

4. Kathleen Sibelius’ soliciting funding from Big Pharma to fund Obamacare:

Q Jay, does the President think it's appropriate for Secretary Sebelius to be raising money from private groups for an outside group for Obamacare implementation?

MR. CARNEY: I saw that story this morning. I've been focused on other things, so I don’t know that much about it.

I thought the concept of official Press Briefings was for the Big White to brief the press, not the other way around.

Really!?! You’re kidding!

Either way, as you can see, this is a very dangerous trend - spying on the press I mean. I don’t think we can afford to tick off our lapdogs. Especially if Big Guy’s going to continue to rely on his media sock puppets for all of his news.

“Throw me a bone and I’ll tell you what’s going on over at Agriculture with Pigsford.”

Now do you see why we have to spend so much time at fundraisers?  It’s going to cost a lot of money to squelch all these non-scandals (that we didn’t know anything about).

BO arriving for 3 fundraisers in NYC yesterday. Don’t worry, there’s no “there” there.

Linked By: American Digest, and AnnieLaurie and kcrouch and MuseumTwenty on twitter, and Mireille Buser and John Legier Yates on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Our Lapdogs Go Savage on Us

Our strategy for crisis management – which up till now has fluctuated between  “that’s a lie!” and “that happened a very long time ago” to “what difference does it make?” – has been modified. One of the Really Big Brains (RBB) decided to try overwhelming our enemies by  expanding the number of breaking scandals to the point that our MSM sock puppets will just put their slippers back on and pad off to the kitchen to make some hot cocoa.

The uncurious George sock slippers

So the Big White leaked the IRS scandal themselves, foolishly thinking they could “manage” it. I don’t know why they thought so, as they’ve been unable to manage anything other than Organizing For America up till now. It’s already spun out of control, with our former sock puppets at the WaPo leading the charge:

On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,”

What the RBB’s didn’t realize at the time was that they could have just sat idle since another big scandal was about to break out on its own: Extortion 17.

Some people are starting to ask uncomfortable questions about why

“our military piled 30 of our best and brightest highly trained Special Operation forces into an old Chinook helicopter built in the early 1960′s that had last been retro-fitted in 1985 and was documented to be in very poor condition.” [ed., let the record reflect that Michael Savage was the first to ask this question, back in August of 2011]

Since it’s getting harder and harder now to keep all of our stories straight, and public sentiment seemed to be turning against us, we went immediately to Plan B – which we always keep in the file drawer to handle public relations snafus like this. We even have a Plan B  “emergency” “birth control”  under Obamacare to handle unexpected sexual encounters -

butt apparently we didn’t have one at the ready to address a terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi.

A second chance for Sandra Fluke, butt not for Ambassador Stevens

Anyway, Plan B for handling our unraveling public relations stories is, as always, to deploy Lady M. She’s the hardest working FLOTUS in politics.

In her inimitable way, Lady M took the focus off all of the dead bodies laying around by making the commencement ceremony at Eastern Kentucky University all about…her!

I didn’t even know how to furnish my own dorm room. I saw all these other kids moving in all sorts of couches and lamps and decorations for their rooms, but when I unpacked my belongings, I realized that I didn’t even have the right size sheets for my bed –- mine were way too short. So that first night, I stretched the sheets down as far as they could go, then I draped the covers over the foot of my bed so when I crawled into bed my legs were sticking out past the sheets, rubbing up against that cold, plastic mattress. And I slept that way for the entire freshman year.

So now you know - too short, too tight - Lady M’s problems with proper fit go way, way back!

Lady M, East Room January 24, 2011

And for what it’s worth, I see we’ve returned to one of our old hair styles. I don’t know what it means butt I promise you, I’ll get to the bottom of it. Inquiring minds want to know.

PS: For a really fun trip back in time, you might want to review the entire post “Movin’ To the Center” in which we saw this lovely home sewing project. Ironically, it was an event  - what else? – honoring military families.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and MuseumTwenty and kcrouch and AnnieLaurie on twitter, and David Bell on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Obama’s Message: “I Wish All You Mothers Would Just Chill”

Despite what you may have heard about the scare, yesterday’s West Wing evacuation of reporters and photographers was not repeat, NOT caused by a smoking gun.

An aside: a Glock always makes a thoughtful Mother’s Day gift

The official explanation, if anyone believes official explanations any more, is that the billowing smoke was caused by an overheated transformer in a mechanical room.

Can you handle the truth? We’re betting against it around here, butt I think you can. The truth is that the mounting pressure of the twin scandals of Benghazi-gate and the IRS’ Teaparty-gate (and now rumors of Extortion 17-gate) was starting to get to everyone around here, even No-Drama-Obama.

He thought if he could just get together with his mellow self again for a bit, everything would be okay. So he called in the old choom gang to, uh, chill.

Needless to say, things went awry.

Man, that Maui Wowee is potent stuff!

We had to call the Fire Department because, as you can see here, Lady M’s Tuscan Kale was in danger:

By the time they arrived though, everything was back to normal. Including Big Guy,

who was once again ready to grab the reins of government:

So you can all just move along now, I think we’ve got this situation under control.

  

Oh, and by the way - President Obama and First Lady Michelle would like to wish all you mothers a happy day.

Happy effing Mothers Day from the Obamas to all you Mothers Against Big Government

And if you haven’t gotten your Mom a present yet, Big Guy has some helpful suggestions. Because Mom can never have too many Obama thongs:

and here’s a very special bouquet for her very special day – right from the Organic Garden of Good and Evil:

What is it? Well, I can tell you it’s not Tuscan Kale. Since we can’t grow enough for everybody’s Mom, you can order yours through the Cheech and Chong site. And Big Guy guarantees your Mom will love it.

Butt seriously, Happy Mothers Day! And many Happy Returns:

Linked By: iOwnTheWorld’s Cardigan, and BadBlue, and kcrouch and MuseumTwenty on twitter, and Clint Counts on facebook, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network