On Voting Republicans Out Of Office

It's fairly obvious.

Bush was gunning for Saddam from the minute he took office, he needed to make his daddy proud by getting rid of the dictator his daddy couldn't topple. The minute 9/11 happened they started talking about Iraq.

Al Gore did not have any of that emotional baggage, and he was considerably smarter than Bush.

His IQ isn't high enough to have earned any 'college' degree.

Emails Show IRS And State Department Worked Together To Target Pro-Israel Groups…

Via WSJ:

The IRS has stuck by its story that tax-exempt applications by conservatives got slow-rolled because of bureaucratic bungling not because the groups opposed President Obama’s policies. Now the slow drip of email evidence to congressional investigators is casting further doubt on that tale.

In 2009 the Pennsylvania group Z Street applied for tax-exempt status for its mission of educating people about Israel-related issues. In 2010 an IRS agent told Z Street that its application was delayed because the tax agency’s Washington, D.C. office was giving special scrutiny to groups whose missions might conflict with Administration policies. The IRS’s “Be On the Lookout” list that November also included red flags for groups referring to “disputed territories.”

Z Street sued in August 2010 for viewpoint discrimination and its case is headed for discovery in federal court. Emails uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee show that the IRS and State Department were conferring in 2009 about pro-Israel groups like Z Street and considering arguments to deny their tax-exempt applications.

In an April 16, 2009 email, Treasury attache to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Katherine Bauer sent IRS and Treasury colleagues a 1997 JTA News article sent to her by State Department foreign service officer Breeann McCusker. The subject was whether 501(c) groups buying land in Israel’s disputed territories were engaged in “possible violations of U.S. tax laws.” The article chronicles the controversy and whether “ideological activity” can “legally be financed with the help of U.S. [tax] dollars.”

“Thought you might find the below article of interest—looks like we’ve been down this road before,” Ms. Bauer wrote. “Although I believe you’ve said you can’t speak to on-going investigations, I thought it was worth flagging the 1997 investigation mentioned below for you if it can be of any use internally when looking for precedence [sic] for the current cases.” A Treasury spokesman declined comment on Ms. Bauer’s behalf.

The “current cases” would have been applications like Z Street’s in which Israel-related activity was apparently being scrutinized for its ideological and policy content. The government says Z Street got special scrutiny because it was focused in a region with a higher risk of terrorism, which is hard to believe and in any case doesn’t explain all of the IRS’s behavior.

It doesn’t cover, for instance, why one questionnaire we’ve seen from the IRS to another Jewish group applying for tax-exempt status asked, “Does your organization support the existence of the land of Israel?” and “Describe your organization’s religious belief system toward the land of Israel.” No matter the answers, they should not affect the processing of an application for 501(c) status. The State-IRS emails reveal a political motivation for IRS scrutiny that gives Z Street powerful evidence for its suit charging IRS bias.

Keep reading…

Liberal Heads Must Be Exploding Because of Stunning Fox News Ratings Win Over Network Rivals

Call out the haz-mat cleanup crew — there’s a bloody mess on the streets of Lib Land after a mass head-explosion incident. The cause? Well, read for yourself from a Variety article entitled:

“Ratings: ‘Fox News Sunday’ Tops NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ in D.C. for the First Time Since ’07″

“Fox News Sunday” is gaining ratings momentum in Washington D.C., beating its major-network competition in all categories for the first time in seven years.

Nielsen estimates that Sunday’s telecast of “Fox News Sunday” averaged 107,000 viewers in the D.C. market on WTTG-5 — the second largest audience ever in the nation’s capital, behind only the 132,000 in February 2010 when Chris Wallace interviewed Sarah Palin.

It finished well ahead of NBC’s “Meet the Press” on WRC-4 (73,000), ABC’s “This Week” on WJLA-7 (65,000), CBS’ “Face the Nation” on WUSA-9 (59,000) and Univision’s “Al Punto” on WFDC-14 (57,000). “Fox News Sunday” also led in households (64,000 to 53,000 for “Meet the Press”).

And in the key news demo of adults 25-54, “Fox News Sunday” led in D.C. with 41,000, followed by “This Week” (36,000), “Meet the Press” (33,000), “Al Punto” (32,000) and “Face the Nation” (29,000).

Where Are All Those New Jobs in the Obama Economy? Try the Booming Debt Collection Industry

Check out the news from this Associated Press report on how many Americans are burdened with unpaid debts that have gone to collections…an industry which, it seems, is enjoying quite a bit of job growth and security:

More than 35 percent of Americans have debts and unpaid bills that have been reported to collection agencies, according to a study released Tuesday by the Urban Institute.

The study points to a disturbing trend: The share of Americans in collections has remained relatively constant, even as the country as a whole has whittled down the size of its credit card debt since the official end of the Great Recession in the middle of 2009.

All of this has reshaped the economy. The collections industry employs 140,000 workers who recover $50 billion each year, according to a separate study published this year by the Federal Reserve’s Philadelphia bank branch.

No wonder so many of us hear the regime’s propaganda about our rosy economic picture and feel a total disconnect.

Quote:

It's fairly obvious.

Bush was gunning for Saddam from the minute he took office, he needed to make his daddy proud by getting rid of the dictator his daddy couldn't topple. The minute 9/11 happened they started talking about Iraq.

Al Gore did not have any of that emotional baggage, and he was considerably smarter than Bush.

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you here, Izzy. Bush gave a number of excuses for invading Iraq but he was only throwing out answers to quiet his critics because there was simply no reason to invade Iraq.

Don't you mean The Congress only worked 126 days in 2013?

Several hundred people gathered in front of the White House on Saturday, chanting, “Obama, Obama, where are you? Iraqi Christians call for you!”

Iraqi Christians held demonstrations in a number of cities on Saturday, including Washington, Paris, The Hague, Cologne, and London, in order to bring attention to the current assault on Christians by the Islamic State (IS)– formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) jihadists. One week ago, Christians were forced out of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and many Christian monasteries, shrines and churches have since been destroyed.

His Grace Mar Paulus Benjamin, a bishop in the Assyrian Church of the East, made the 12-hour bus ride from Chicago with parishioners to attend the demonstration in Washington. I spoke with him in front of the White House: “Iraq’s Christians are being ignored by the United States, the United Nations, and the human rights organizations,” the Bishop said. “For us, America is a symbol of freedom and protection of human rights. I think of America in World War II, when America came to the rescue of Europe. Then, the enemy was the Nazis. Today it is ISIS. The names are different, but the religious cleansing is the same.”