The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: txradioguy on May 20, 2013, 01:38:48 PM
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The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in “an artful dodge,†i.e., a cover-up, was that they used the phrase “mistakes were made.†Safire defined it as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.â€
The phrase became infamous when both Richard Nixon and Ron Ziegler, his press secretary, deployed it to explain away Watergate without explaining who did what and when or whether any ill motive was involved.
Astonishingly, the Internal Revenue Service resurrected the Nixonian expression within hours of its clumsy revelation that it had targeted tea-party groups and other organizations with “patriot†or “9/12†in their names. “Mistakes were made initially,†the official IRS statement on May 10 read, implying that the mistakes ended after a short “initial†period. We now know that the scandal and cover-up unfolded over a three-year period, and the IRS publicly acknowledged them only after the 2012 election was safely past.
Here are some other clues that a Washington cover-up is going on.
1. No one seems to be able to name the players.
Last week, former acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller claimed he had identified “rogue†employees at the IRS’s Cincinnati office who were at the center of the scandal. But an IRS staffer at the Cincinnati office at the center of the scandal told the Washington Post this week: “Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.â€
Perhaps that’s why on Friday, Miller had this exchange during his House testimony with Representative Kevin Brady (R., Texas) .
Brady: “Who is responsible for targeting these individuals?â€
Miller: “I don’t have names for you.â€
Later, Representative Dave Reichert (R., Wash.) confronted Miller: “I’m disappointed. I’m hearing, ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t recall. I don’t believe. Who knew?’ You don’t even know who investigated the case, but yet you say it was investigated. . . . You’re not instilling a lot of confidence.†Reichert pressed on, asking whom senior technical adviser Nancy Marks had identified as responsible for the targeting policy. Miller repeated his mantra of the day: 
“I don’t remember.â€
One possible reason for the failure to reveal names is that it takes time for all the players to get their stories straight.
2. Spinners minimize the scandal by claiming it would have been impossible to detect it.
David Axelrod, President Obama’s strategist in the 2012 election, perfected this ploy last week when he told MSNBC that the scandal was caused by “bureaucrats deep in the bowels of the IRS.†He went on to offer this civics lesson: “Part of being president is there’s so much underneath you because the government is so vast. You go through these [controversies] all because of this stuff that is impossible to know if you’re the president or working in the White House, and yet you’re responsible for it, and it’s a difficult situation.â€
Apparently, mistakes can’t even be known.
3. Critics are discredited.
In July 2012, months after he was made aware of the targeting scandal, Miller testified before a House committee and dismissed the complaints about the IRS’s targeting and intrusive questioning as mere “noise.†He said many of the groups applying for tax-exempt status “are very small organizations, and they are not quite sure what the rules are.†In other words, any groups that complained were just too dumb to understand the law. In reality, it was the IRS that was making up the rules as it went along.
Even many Democrats in Congress are tired of all these evasions. Having been misled by the Obama administration for so long on the IRS scandal, they aren’t likely to go out on a limb defending the cover-up.
Representative Joe Crowley of New York, one of top-ranking Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, is calling for IRS official Lois Lerner to resign. Crowley told MSNBC that Lerner “failed to answer the question†when he asked her at a Ways and Means hearing on May 8 of this year whether the IRS was investigating groups that had applied for tax-exempt status. “She then two days later planted a question at a press event, only to then use that opportunity to apologize for what the IRS had been doing,†Crowley said. He added that when he later confronted her about the contradiction, she denied she’d even been asked about the political targeting at the hearing.
Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill is going further. A former state auditor, she has had years of experience with dissembling bureaucrats and errant officials. Last Friday, she issued a video statement calling for a full house-cleaning of everyone involved in the scandal: “We should not only fire the head of the IRS, which has occurred, but we’ve got to go down the line and find every single person who had anything to do with this and make sure that they are removed from the IRS and the word goes out that this unacceptable.â€
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348757/three-signs-there’s-cover-john-fund
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Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri. An extremely skilled liar in her own right. If anyone can recognize a liar, she can. It takes one to know one and her record is clear and unambiguous.
But let's say for example that the housecleaning happens and the players are all shitcanned.
The only thing that would happen is they'd wind up going to another government agency to infect that one. :whatever:
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I liked Safire's writings.
This piece is spot-on.
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You know why democrats are feigning contempt for the IRS....they got caught using it....again....to damage republicans....that's one reason. Two, they know that if they get away with this a republican will someday be able to use it and that won't be good for democrats.
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Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri. An extremely skilled liar in her own right. If anyone can recognize a liar, she can. It takes one to know one and her record is clear and unambiguous.
But let's say for example that the housecleaning happens and the players are all shitcanned.
The only thing that would happen is they'd wind up going to another government agency to infect that one. :whatever:
You've got that right. If ever there's a snake, it's the lovely Claire. She's the one thing that I don't miss about Missouri. She was so transparent when she did her best to make sure that Todd Akin kept running against her. She knew that he was tainted. It was about the only way that "lovely woman" could have won reelection.
She'd throw anybody under the bus to save her own rear. I remember when she endorsed Obama and was so enthralled because her kids told her about them---or so the story she had in the press. Blech.
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4. Obama and/or Hillary are involved.
5. Pelosi babbles on about insane things, like the GOP is focusing on scandals because Obama is such a great president. When she starts speaking to the morons (low info voters) to the exclusion of all intelligent citizens, you know there is a cover up.
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4. Obama and/or Hillary are involved.
5. Pelosi babbles on about insane things, like the GOP is focusing on scandals because Obama is such a great president. When she starts speaking to the morons (low info voters) to the exclusion of all intelligent citizens, you know there is a cover up.
6. Obama is talking.
7. Obama goes on vacation.
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8. Obama starts talking about his laser like focus on jobs.
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Three Signs There’s a Cover-Up ....the teleprompter is on, Obama is reading it and he wrote the shit.
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Surprise, surprise
Top IRS official will invoke Fifth Amendment (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-top-irs-official-fifth-amendment-20130521,0,6645565.story)
Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.
Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday.
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Surprise, surprise
Top IRS official will invoke Fifth Amendment (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-top-irs-official-fifth-amendment-20130521,0,6645565.story)
Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.
Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday.
Sounds like sufficient evidence that there was CRIMINAL activity going on at the IRS, if you ask me. After all protection against SELF INCRIMINATION, by it's very definition, presumes that the activity in question was as illegal as hell.
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She's falling on her sword to protect Barry.
Plus, she really doesn't have an alternative. She's already given testimony last year, which is under scrutiny. Any further commentary jeopardizes her legal culpability, but all this will create the expected buzz in the media.
And Barry will get off scot-free.
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I always thought the sign of a coverup is a liberal's lips are moving...
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Here's your sign...
(https://securecdn.disqus.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/499/333/original.jpg)