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[Nazi Comparison: Berlin Calls Orbán Comment a 'Derailment']

 SPIEGEL ONLINE
05/20/2013 05:00 PM

Nazi Comparison: Berlin Calls Orbán Comment a 'Derailment'

Hungary's controversial prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has angered Berlin by comparing its policies to those of the Nazis. On Monday, Foreign Minister Westerwelle rejected the comparison, saying it was "regrettable."

A statement by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has sparked diplomatic tension with Germany, with Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Monday calling the quip a "derailment."

The tiff originated with a remark by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, in which she said Berlin would "do anything to get Hungary onto the right path -- but not by sending the cavalry."

Her statement came after Peer Steinbrück, her Social Democratic challenger for the Chancellery in the upcoming national election, said that he could see Hungary being excluded from the European Union, given recent worrisome constitutional changes that violate EU law. It was also reportedly a tongue-in-cheek reference to a well-known statement by Steinbrück in which he encouraged tougher measures against Switzerland's tax haven policies, comparing them to Indians running from the "cavalry."

The irony, however, was lost on Orbán, who on Friday compared Merkel's Hungary policy to Adolf Hitler's 1944 occupation of his country, though Hungary was technically a close ally of Nazi Germany. "The Germans have already sent cavalry to Hungary -- they came in the form of tanks," he said in a radio interview. "Our request is that they don't send any. It didn't work out."

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is not amused. "That is a regrettable derailment that we clearly reject," he said while visiting Serbia on Monday.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz said he was astonished by the Hungarian leader's comments. "I am certain that he understood full well that the chancellor was sending an ironic warning in Hungary's direction -- but his populist leanings won't let him refrain from attacking even his fellow party friend Merkel," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE, referring to the fact that Orbán's conservative Fidesz party is a sister party of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. "The fact that Orbán reacted this way shows just how vulnerable he is."

Budapest has been heavily criticized by European leaders, who say that Hungary's new constitution, ushered in by Orbán and his party, threaten democracy, limiting the independence of the judiciary and media. A number of infringement proceedings have been launched against the country within the EU.

[Russian independent pollster targeted in 'foreign agent' crackdown]

Pig Putin's Russia ..........

Russian independent pollster targeted in 'foreign agent' crackdown

Levada Centre says it may have to close after being told to register under new law on foreign-funded political NGOs

Miriam Elder in Moscow
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 May 2013 17.16 BST   

Russia's only independent pollster has warned it may have to shut its doors after a government demand that it register as a foreign agent.

The Levada Centre, which carries out sociological studies and regularly rates Russia's top politicians, is the latest target for prosecutors seeking to enforce a new law requiring political NGOs that receive foreign funding to stamp themselves with the Soviet-era tag.

Levada's director, Lev Gudkov, said that by accusing the group of carrying out political work "the prosecutor is basically putting our organisation on the verge of possible sanctions on the one hand, and undermining our credibility and reputation on the other".

The group's public surveys are essential to journalists working in the country. In the past seven days it has published polls measuring Russians' attitudes towards homosexuality, the church and the tsarist system, as well as a survey documenting growing internet use in the country.

Unlike pollsters linked to the state, Levada regularly shows that Russians' approval of Vladimir Putin is not as high as the Kremlin portrays. According to its most recent poll, 26% of Russians approve of the president. Russia's two other pollsters, VTsIOM and the Public Opinion Foundation, put the number at 52%.

Gudkov said foreign grants amounted to between 1.5% and 3% of Levada's funding.

Critics of the law say it is designed to crack down on civil society and increase suspicion of foreigners. The law requires groups to stamp "foreign agent" on all publications and websites, and to undergo extra budgetary checks.

Several NGOs that receive foreign funding have refused to register as foreign agents, arguing that the term would scare away potential partners.

Hundreds of NGOs around the country have been raided in the past few months, after a speech by Putin in February demanding that the law be enforced.

In late April an election monitoring group, Golos, was fined 300,000 roubles (£6,300) for failing to register as a foreign agent, becoming the first organisation to be fined under the law.

[Vatican denies video shows exorcism by Pope Francis]

Vatican denies video shows exorcism by Pope Francis

By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 7:15 EDT

The Vatican on Tuesday denied that Pope Francis had performed an exorcism after an Italian religious television channel said footage of the pontiff blessing a boy in a wheelchair showed he had.

“The Holy Father did not intend to perform any exorcism,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement, after the claims by TV 2000, which is owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

“As he often does with sick and suffering people who are presented to him, he simply intended to pray for the suffering person,” Lombardi said.

The channel quoted exorcists saying there was “no doubt the pope was either reciting a prayer for freeing from the devil or performing an exorcism.”

The footage recorded by Vatican television shows the pontiff briefly laying both hands on the boy’s head during a Pentecost ceremony on Sunday.

The boy is seen shaking for a few seconds.

TV 2000, which has previously aired claims that the pope’s predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI also exorcised the devil, is to broadcast a special programme on Friday devoted to “the pope’s struggle against the devil and his seductions”.

Exorcism is an ancient practice of driving out demons from a person or place, and exists in several religions including in Roman Catholicism, where it is treated with huge scepticism by many believers.

[WHO: ‘No one can predict’ course of China’s new bird flu outbreak]

WHO: ‘No one can predict’ course of China’s new bird flu outbreak

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, May 20, 2013 15:46 EDT

It is impossible to predict the evolution of China’s human H7N9 bird flu outbreak as researchers are still trying to understand the source of human transmission, the head of the World Health Organisation said Monday.

According to the latest official data, H7N9 avian influenza has infected 130 people in China, and killed 35, since it was found in humans for the first time in March.

“Influenza viruses constantly reinvent themselves. No one can predict the future course of this outbreak,” Margaret Chan said, but added that “although the source of human infection with the virus is not yet fully understood, the number of new cases dropped dramatically following the closing of (China’s) live poultry markets.”

“At present, human-to-human transmission of the virus is negligible,” she said in her address to some 3,000 delegates attending the 66th World Health Assembly in Geneva.

Chan also thanked China for its close collaboration with WHO in sharing its information on the situation and for having “promptly traced, monitored, and tested thousands of patient contacts”.

Chan also talked about the deadly SARS-like coronavirus, detected for the first time in the Middle East last year. “To date, 41 cases, including 20 deaths, have been reported,” she said, adding that “though the number of cases remains small, limited human-to-human transmission has occurred and health care workers have been infected.”

The virus is a cousin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts and eventually killing some 800 people.

“These two new diseases remind us that the threat from emerging and epidemic-prone diseases is ever-present. Constant mutation and adaptation are the survival mechanisms of the microbial world. It will always deliver surprises.”

[Small Alaskan village loses court battle against big oil]

Small Alaskan village loses court battle against big oil

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, May 20, 2013 16:25 EDT

Perched at the tip of an Arctic barrier reef in harsh northwestern Alaska, a tiny village took on big oil for causing the climate change that is eroding its shores, but lost its court fight Monday.

The US Supreme Court declined to hear the case of Kivalina vs. Exxon.

Therefore, a lower court’s decision stands, holding that energy companies cannot be sued collectively for harm done by climate change and leaving such issues to lawmakers and the executive branch of government.

The village of Kivalina is home to about 400 people, mostly Inupiat Native Alaskans, and is being forced to relocate because global warming has led to a reduction in sea ice that once protected its shores.

The lawsuit was brought in 2008 against 22 energy companies, including ExxonMobil Corporation, BP, Chevron and Shell, seeking damages under a federal common law claim of “public nuisance.”

The suit alleged that “massive greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the Energy Producers have resulted in global warming, which, in turn, has severely eroded the land where the City of Kivalina sits and threatens it with imminent destruction.”

A buildup in greenhouse gases is increasing the temperature of the planet, causing sea levels to rise, ice caps to melt and “destroying its land by melting the Arctic sea ice that formerly protected the village from winter storms,” court documents said.

The US Army Corps of Engineers estimates that it will cost more than $95 million to relocate the village.

[Hong Kong pledges to reduce waste by 40 percent per person]

Hong Kong pledges to reduce waste by 40 percent per person

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, May 20, 2013 15:55 EDT

Hong Kong on Monday launched a ten-year plan to reduce waste by 40 percent per person as part of efforts to catch up with other leading Asian cities and avert a looming environmental crisis.

With a population of more than 7 million, the city currently sends 1.27 kg (2.8 pounds) per person per day to three huge outdoor landfill sites which are set to reach capacity by 2020.

The government’s ‘blueprint’ document proposed reaching its reduction target by expanding recycling, levying duties on household rubbish and improving waste-related infrastructure.

It also mooted the possibility of building incinerators and extending existing landfill sites.

“To face the challenges of the waste issue fundamentally, we need the joint efforts of the entire community to embrace an environmentally sustainable culture in daily life,” the city’s environmental minister Wong Kam-sing told reporters.

“We are committed to taking all the necessary decisions and actions now so we can put Hong Kong on a clear path…towards a use less, waste less lifestyle,” Wong said in the document.

The government hopes to recycle 55 percent of the city’s waste, incinerate 23 percent and place 22 percent in landfills by 2022. In 2011, 52 percent of waste was put into landfills and 48 percent recycled.

But the proposal to build an incinerator is unpopular with residents and some environmentalists.

Other possible measures include an expansion of food-waste recycling, a waste separation and collection system, a charge on construction waste and landfill extensions.

The majority of the 9,000 tonnes of rubbish generated in Hong Kong each day is from households, business and industry and made primarily of putrescibles, paper and plastics, the report said.

The southern Chinese city has a high waste generation rate compared to other Asian cities of similar economic development, Wong said, adding that Hong Kong is behind because it has not taken enough steps to reduce waste.

Hong Kong’s generation of waste per person is higher than other large Asian cities, including Metro Tokyo and Seoul which generate only 0.77 kg and 0.95 kg of daily waste per person, according to the document.

Wong also offered Taipei as an example where a volume-based waste fee system helped reduced waste per person by 65 percent from 2000 to 2011, according to Taiwan Environmental Authority statistics.

The city’s Environmental Protection Department had previously published a 10-year framework for managing the city’s waste in 2005 but has been criticised for failing to implement much of the plan.

[Oregon senator vows to repeal the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’]

Oregon senator vows to repeal the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’

By Eric W. Dolan
RawStory
Monday, May 20, 2013 17:04 EDT

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) on Monday vowed to repeal a measure that prevents federal courts from halting the sale and planting of genetically engineered crops.

The Farmer Assurance Provision, dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act” by critics, was quietly inserted into a short-term funding bill passed by Congress in March. The biotech rider allows farmers to buy and plant genetically engineered seeds while the regulatory approval of the crop is being challenged in court.

“The Monsanto Protection Act is an outrageous example of a special interest loophole,” Merkley said in a statement. “This provision nullifies the actions of a court that is enforcing the law to protect farmers, the environment and public health. That is unacceptable.”

“To avoid public scrutiny, the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ was quietly and anonymously inserted into the continuing resolution passed this March to avert a government shutdown,” he explained.

Merkley said he would offer an amendment to the Senate farm bill that would repeal the controversial law, which is set to expire in September. However, agricultural groups like the American Soybean Association are expected to lobby for the farm bill to include the Farmer Assurance Provision.

“We applaud Sen. Merkley’s effort to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act. The ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ is an outrageous attempt by biotech giants like Monsanto and DuPont further consolidate their control of our nation’s food supply,” said Executive Director of Food Democracy Now! Dave Murphy. “For too long, Americans have been kept in the dark about the food that we eat and the science behind it because our elected officials are in the pockets of Monsanto. We encourage the Senate to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act and protect the food we eat.”

Thanks Rad.

The general hypothesis I have is that past lives heavy exposure to toxicity of metals or non-metals can be tracked in the birthchart, and can have manifestations in current lifetime.

The idea is to identify such exposure to toxicity, in order to use means such a homeopathy to heal this type of impact.

Same thing with with past-lives medical conditions such as syphilis.

This seems interesting because homeopathic knowledge describes the effects of such conditions at physical, mental and emotional levels, and this would serve for observation-correlation.   

Would you say this hypothesis is correct?  

God Bless,
Gonzalo

[Study: Climate change slowed over last decade but may speed up again]

Study: Climate change slowed over last decade but may speed up again

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, May 19, 2013 17:17 EDT

A global warming “pause” over the past decade may invalidate the harshest climate change predictions for the next 50 to 100 years, a study said Sunday — though levels remain in the danger zone.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, an international team of climate scientists said a slower rate of warming increase observed from 2000 to 2009 suggested a “lower range of values” to be taken into account by policy makers.

While the last decade was the hottest since records began in 1880, the rate of increase showed a stabilisation despite ever-rising levels of Earth-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Scientists have alternatively explained the flatter curve by oceanic heat capture, a decline in solar activity or an increase in volcanic aerosols that reflect the Sun’s rays.

Because of the hiatus, warming in the next 50 to 100 years “is likely to lie within the range of current climate models, but not at the high end of this range,” said Alexander Otto of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, co-author of the new study.

Otto and his team used up-to-date data on temperatures and levels of solar radiation trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, to make new projections for climate warming.

The United Nations is targeting a global average maximum temperature rise of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on pre-industrial levels, for what scientists believe would be manageable climate change.

In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a report of the temperature rising by as much as 6.4 degrees C in the worst emissions scenario.

Study co-author Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich said data ruling out the most extreme scenarios for near-term warming was clearly welcome news.

“But even if the response is at the low end of the current range of uncertainty, we are still looking at warming well over the two-degree goal that countries have agreed upon.”

To meet the two-degree goal, countries are negotiating curbs to emissions of Earth-warming greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel burning.

Only last week, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere breached a threshold of 400 parts per million — a level never experienced by humans and considered the absolute maximum for the two-degree target to remain within reach.

Many scientists believe that on current trends, Earth is set for warming much higher than the two-degree target.

Commenting on the publication, University of New South Wales climate researcher Steven Sherwood said the conclusions “need to be taken with a large grain of salt until we see what happens to the oceans over the coming years.”

The authors had partly based their finding on a higher-than-expected absorption of heat by the world’s oceans, he said, but other research has suggested this storage may reverse due to natural phenomena such as El Nino.

[The Mainstream Media Suffers from Conservative-Induced Stockholm Syndrome]

In the USA...

The Mainstream Media Suffers from Conservative-Induced Stockholm Syndrome

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson
May. 20th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

Kurtz’s position is that, for President Obama and the mainstream media, the honeymoon is over; that “The press has turned on President Obama with a vengeance.”

That immediately made me think of the power of perceptions. For example, I hadn’t been aware Obama and the media had ever been married. The honeymoon is over? The honeymoon can’t be over for the simple reason that there never was a honeymoon. When has the mainstream media ever been pro-Obama? Have mainstream media figures like Howard Kurtz have fallen for the Republican Big Lie of a “liberal media elite”?

I begin to wonder if the MSM is suffering from conservative-induced Stockholm syndrome. Certainly, after years of simultaneously defending the conservative viewpoint and being attacked for supposedly defending the liberal viewpoint, they have a right to be messed up. I wonder if, due to dangerously high levels of delusion, it is time to put the MSM, if not the Fourth Estate as a whole, away as a threat to society.

Kurtz wrote that,

    Suddenly, the White House briefing room is filled with confrontational questions. Suddenly, the news pages are ablaze with scandal, and the commentators — even some of the president’s usual defenders — are bemoaning his shortcomings. Suddenly, Obama isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t think that in general, Obama was ever given the benefit of the doubt by the so-called liberal media elite but the conservative viewpoint has gained wide currency: Fox News did a piece in November 2012 in which they examined “Five ways the mainstream media tipped the scales in favor of Obama.”

You know what the media’s sin was? I will tell you, since Fox News won’t. The mainstream media’s sin was in actually reporting what Republicans were saying. Fox News spun this as: “The media unfairly jumped on  inconsequential mistakes — or even invented controversies — from Romney and hyped them in to multi-day media “earthquakes.”

Fox News can say Romney’s problems were trivial but they were clearly not trivial for the American voter. I don’t know about you, but being characterized as an “uppity taker” cannot be defended as a “gaffe” or “misstep” unless by that you mean Romney accidentally said what he actually thought about us. The real problem for the American voter was not that the media had the decency to actually report Romney’s words but that Romney said them – and worse, believed them – in the first place.

For just about the first time ever, the Republican Party’s extremism bit itself in the ass, becoming so extreme that even the mainstream media could ignore it no longer. They actually had the audacity to, as Fox News put it, “Pound Romney With Partisan Fact Checking”! And of course, they’ll never forgive ABC’s Martha Raddatz for actually doing her job rather than letting the debate turn into another Jim Lehrer-sponsored Republican infomercial.

Yes, refusing to conform to Republican propaganda is apparently a form of media bias. Anything less than a free pass for their extremism is pro-Obama bias.

Another example: Fox News insists the economy is Obama’s Achilles heel. But the economy has improved, the deficit is disappearing at an unbelievable rate. The problem is not that the mainstream media has refused to report the truth about  the economy – what Fox News calls “burying the bad economy”; the problem is that the mainstream media has failed to sufficiently conform to Republican propaganda. And all this while pretending that the Republican-controlled House has nothing to do with the economy, despite controlling the budget, despite spending the past half-decade obstructing any positive response to the economic debacle Republicans are responsible for in the first place!

In other words, in the real world, the economy is the Republicans’ Achilles heel, which was essentially the position of the Obama campaign. Republicans are just pissed that, for once, the truth won out. So we find Michele Malkin whining on May 13 of this year that, “For the Obama administration and the mainstream media, everything’s relative.” She complains that “CBS News President David Rhodes’ brother is Obama Deputy  National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes” but she won’t tell you that ABC’s Jonathan Karl is an Alumnus of a Conservative Media Training Program. No, that would skew her rant toward the factual, and we can’t have that, because Karl is the guy responsible for, as Sarah Jones called it, “the infamous Benghazi email lie.”

Of this incident, Kurtz wrote, “The Karl report turned out to be based on an inaccurate, misleading characterization of an email,” somehow managing to fail to mention that the Republicans had doctored those emails, and ABC News’ own culpability, as though poor Karl was the victim of a hoax. That the lie worked to skew opinion of Obama to the negative was obliquely admitted by Kurtz: “for the first time, many journalists came to believe the administration had something to hide—and that they had been personally misled in press briefings. That is guaranteed to get the blood flowing.”

If the media is so pro-Obama, why are they suspicious of Obama and not of the Republican Party, which so adroitly manipulated this episode?

They may not all be Fox News, but sometimes, there isn’t a lot of difference. The Republican point of view shows up everywhere, like US News & World Report contributing editor and Fox News opinion guy Peter Roff, who in September 2010 provided “More evidence of pro-Obama mainstream media bias”; or former Bush speechwriter Mary Kate Cary September 2012 opinion piece in the US News & World Report, that “Americans Are Sick of Media’s Pro-Obama Bias.”

No, they’re not, because there is no “Pro-Obama bias” in the media. What Cary is upset about is that her feelings have been hurt by an insufficiently compliant media that is no longer quite so anxious to swallow Republican lies hook, line, and sinker.

Yet apparently, according to Kurtz, ”According to Obama’s longtime detractors, the denizens of the fourth estate are finally climbing out of a tank in which they have been immersed since roughly 2007.”

Kurtz cautions that “the reality is a bit more nuanced than that.” He tells us that,

    It’s easy to say that news organizations recoiled from Obama only when their own special interests were threatened, and maybe there’s some truth to that. But the media also have a deep, abiding love for scandal, and beyond the AP phone records story, the administration is lately providing that scandal in spades.

No, Mr. Kurtz: the Republicans have provided the mainstream media with scandal in spades, 100% American made. Look at how eager ABC News was to roast the president alive on the strength of doctored Republican emails. And ABC News hasn’t even had the decency to apologize for misleading the American people.

But there is nuance. CBS at least had the decency to out ABC’s “scoop,” exposing it for the lie it is (a crime for which they will never be forgiven, as Malkin’s outrage demonstrates). The Republicans are still acting like the emails they doctored are the real ones, but then the Republicans still act like it’s the height of the Gilded Age.

Kurtz alleges that, “Some in the media rolled over for Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign, though the record was decidedly more mixed once he took office.”

I don’t see this at all. I didn’t see it then and I don’t see it now.  I think that if you go back and look at the mainstream media’s track record since 2008, you will see precious little evidence of a liberal media elite, or as Sarah Palin – upset that the media dared actually print what she said – whiningly put it, “lamestream media.”

Kurtz wrote,

    But personal feelings toward this president who has never courted the press no longer matter; nor do personal predilections on gun control and immigration reform. The scandal machinery has kicked into high gear, and its sheer noise may drown out everything else.

The scandal machinery engineered by the Republican Party and all too eagerly embraced by a right-leaning mainstream media. Bill Maher and Americans uninfected by Republican propaganda understand where the real scandal lies: in Republican obstructionism; in the mainstream media pretending Republican lies are the truth.

Reality has never been more skewed than by the conservative spin on the true state of the MSM, so for conservative Jennifer Rubin, writing at The Washington Post, a mainstream media “see no evil, hear no evil, report no evil” can only describe a MSM reluctance to properly investigate the imagined evils of liberalism. We know full well the real scope of the problem, which is the MSM’s reluctance to talk about what the Republicans have been doing to America since 2008.

But the mainstream media has studiously avoided looking into Republican action/inaction since 2008 just as it had studiously avoided the implications of the faked emails. Maybe Kurtz should be asking himself why that is, rather than pretending the mainstream media was ever President Obama’s friend.

**************

Mitch McConnell Crashes and Burns When Pressed for Evidence of Obama Scandal

By: Jason Easley
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

When asked for evidence of Obama’s role in the IRS scandal, Mitch McConnell crashed and burned by babbling on about a culture of intimidation with no supporting proof.

Transcript from NBC News:

GREGORY: Let me get right to it and start on the IRS. Why don’t you accept the word from not only White House officials but from former acting commissioner who said, these were foolish mistakes about targeting con– conservative groups, but there is not evidence of a political agenda?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Actually, there is a culture of intimidation throughout the administration. The IRS is just the most recent example. Let me just recount a few for your audience. Over at HHS, back during the Obamacare debate, Secretary Sebelius sent out a directive to health insurance companies telling them they couldn’t inform their policyholders of what they thought the impact of Obamacare would be on them. Now she’s trying to shake them down for contributions in effect to a group to go out and try to convince the public that they should love Obamacare. Over at the FCC, there have been efforts by Obama appointees to– to shut down or make difficult people who are seeking to buy advertising to criticize the administration. Over at the SEC, the Obama appointees have been engaged in an effort to make it difficult for corporations to exercise their First Amendment, political rights. The IRS– coming back to the IRS. The head of the union at the IRS gives 99 percent of her campaign money to Democrats. She openly criticizes the Republican House for trying to reduce government spending and has specifically targeted Tea Party groups in her public comments. It’s no wonder that the agents and the IRS sort of get the message. The president demonizes his opponent. The head of their union demonizes the people…

GREGORY: But Senator, that– that was a leap…

SEN. MCCONNELL: …who think that…

GREGORY: …that’s a leap that can you make as argument, but you don’t have fact to back it up. You can create and I just asked…

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, the investigation…

GREGORY: …I asked Dan Pfeiffer about it. You can you talk about a culture. Do you have any evidence that the President of the United States directed what you call a culture of intimidation at the IRS to target political opponents?

SEN. MCCONNELL: I– I don’t think we know what the facts are. All I can tell you is…

GREGORY: But that hasn’t stopped you from– from accusing.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, what we’re talking about here is an– an attitude that the government knows best, the nanny state is here to tell us all what to do and if we start criticizing, you get targeted.

Basically, Sen. McConnell admitted that Republicans don’t have any evidence to back up their IRS allegations. They are investigating an Obama connection to the IRS scandal because they are falsely attributing some beliefs to him that he does not hold.

McConnell’s culture of intimidation talking point was supposed to act as justification for all of the congressional investigations.

Minority Leader McConnell never thought that David Gregory would ask him for evidence to back up his accusations. McConnell’s claim about Obamacare was a lie. The directive was sent out because insurance companies were sending their Medicare customers confusing and deceptive mailings designed to whip up opposition to Obamacare. His claim about the FCC was based on an attempt by the commission to require local stations to post online the names of those who purchase television campaign ads. Mitch McConnell views openness and transparency as part of Obama’s culture of intimidation.

McConnell’s complaint about the SEC also involved Citizens United. The SEC is considering a disclosure rule that would require publicly traded companies report to shareholders all of their political donations. According to McConnell, trying to stop billionaires from secretly buying our government is Obama intimidation.

Republicans have been screaming about an Obama culture of corruption since the president took office, but when asked to prove their allegations, they offer zilch. Without even realizing it McConnell proved that all of these “Obama scandals” are nothing more than political fishing trips. Congressional Republicans are hoping to find something to confirm their conspiracies about this president.

The truth is that outside of Obama hate, Mitch McConnell’s got nothing.

***********

The Lie Matters: What Did Sen Coburn Know about the Edited Benghazi Email and How Did He Know It

By: Sarah Jones
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

Joy Reid dropped a little Benghazi lying leaker bomb yesterday on the Reid Report blog. A trusted source of hers told her to look at the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. One person who stood out to her was Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who was on Morning Joe on May 9th, the day before the now debunked Benghazi email bombshell, claiming that there were “glaring omissions” in what was given to the intelligence committee, but that he couldn’t talk about it yet.

Senator Coburn appears to be referencing the email that was edited and shopped by “Republicans on Capitol Hill” to media outlets, and picked up by the gullible rube Jonathan Karl at ABC, as well as repeated by The Weekly Standard and a CBS reporter. This suggests that he saw the edited version of the email that was leaked by Republicans.

The Reid Report detailed on Saturday:

    A very trusted source of mine gave me a cryptic piece of advice yesterday, which was to take a look at the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. I didn’t know quite what to make of it at the time, but tonight it occurred to me: could someone on that committee also have been on the Select Committee on Intelligence, which is the one that got the email briefing in February?

    Here’s the Republican membership of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (the Committee is chaired by Democrat Thom Carper of Delaware):

    • Tom Coburn, (OK) Ranking Member
    • John McCain (AZ)
    • Ron Johnson (WI)
    • Rob Portman (OH)
    • Rand Paul (KY)
    • Mike Enzi (WY)
    • Kelly Ayotte (NH)

    Pretty juicy list! Note how stacked the minority side of the committee is with presidential aspirants, potential aspirants, a former aspirant, and some of the most hardcore tea party Senators, including some, like Rand Paul, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte, who have gone after, first Susan Rice, and then Hillary Clinton guns blazing on Benghazi. But only one of those Senators ALSO sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence — which is the one that my administration source says got the February briefing”

    And that person is Tom Coburn.

Joy Reid points out that “On May 9th — literally the day before Jonathan Karl’s “bombshell” report went live, Coburn appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe” and said that the State Department was going to be in trouble because of “glaring omissions” that he could not discuss yet, but he assured us all would come out eventually.

Sen. Tom Coburn said the State Department was in real trouble due to a “glaring omission”, and that it would “eventually come out” but he “can’t talk about it now”, “I think the State Department has real trouble. Having sat on the intelligence committee and seen the review of emails that went back and forth as they developed the list, there is are glaring problem there that will eventually come out, and I can’t talk about now, but there was an omission that was given to the intelligence committee.”

Do tell, Senator. How did he know about the “glaring omission” in the emails? Someone had to have shown him the Republican version of the emails, since there is no glaring omission in the actual emails. The very next day, Jonathan Karl sold his soul to the devil by publishing his “exclusive” (aka, a lie).

Reid points out that this doesn’t mean the leaker is Coburn or is even from his office, but she’s fairly certain the leaker is high up (most likely a Republican top staffer, unless Republicans are even more suicidal than they currently appear) who leaked the deceptively edited email at the direction of their member.

Coburn, a far right Republican, does sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Senator, who misses his fair share of votes (“from Jan 2005 to May 2013, Coburn missed 112 of 2,611 roll call votes, which is 4.3%. This is worse than the median of 1.6% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving”), sits on the following committees:

Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Federal Programs and the Federal Workforce
Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Member, Subcommittee on Economic Policy
Member, Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development
Member, Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

In January, Senator Coburn appointed Brian E. Treat as his Chief of Staff. Treat has been with him since he was in the House in 1998-2000, and then from 2005 to now. An index of Coburn’s past and present staffers can be found here.

Coburn’s top five donors from 2007- 2012 election were (per Open Secrets):

Club for Growth $63,300 $63,300 $0
Emergent Biosolutions $20,650 $15,650 $5,000
Cummins-American Corp $15,400 $6,400 $9,000
Koch Industries $14,800 $4,800 $10,000
Rooney Holdings $13,500 $13,500 $0

Coburn has said that he will retire in 2016. He is infamous for saying, “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor.” That was right before he told his constituents that Obama likes the culture of dependency because it worked so well for him as an African American male.

The most interesting thing about this suspicion is that if the leak came from the Senate and not the House, it can be investigated by Democrats who are the hamstrung, beleaguered majority in the Senate. I would have bet on the House being the leak for this reason, but perhaps I’ve underestimated Republican hubris.

Yesterday, Democratic Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA) called for an investigation into how the doctored email ended up in the media’s hands. There’s no way that Darrell Issa would allow an investigation of Republicans in the House. He’s way too invested in abusing his power for partisan gain, especially after the big money told Republicans to stop any legislating and just focus on drumming up Obama scandals.

Karl and ABC brushed this under the rug today, claiming that his story still stood. It most certainly does not. But clearly, they aren’t going to be outing their source and CBS did enough by outing that it was offered to them by Republicans on Capitol Hill. Americans deserve to know who lied to Congress, the public, and the press and why. Remember, “it’s the lie that matters”… and the cover up.

Republicans have been nattering on since September 12 about Benghazi. Now that we have the first piece of evidence that there has been malfeasance and an attempt to mislead the public, albeit by Republicans, suddenly they aren’t interested in wasting time on investigations anymore. File that with the years-stalled WMD investigations.

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Benghazi Bullshit: The Real Scandal is the Media Pretending that Republicans Aren’t Lying

By: Sarah Jones
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

Pardon my language, but I’ve had it with this bullshit.

The real scandal, the only scandal, is that your “free press” is once again pretending as if Republicans are not lying to them. They are pretending that House Republicans did not feed a lie to the press in order to forward their bullshit Benghazi narrative.

The press is very busy and important moving forward the narrative that there’s a scandal. Oh, you might be impressed at first that they’ve finally found the courage so clearly missing during the Bush years, when they scraped the lies off of the administration’s feet with subservience and deference befitting propaganda outlets.

But you’d only be impressed if you didn’t look any deeper. You see, there is one consistency here and that is that when Republicans lie to the press, the public, and Congress, from WMD to Benghazi, the press carries their water like the corporate serfs they are.

They are not doing this to hold the executive branch accountable. They are doing it because this is the only time they have any balls at all, and they must make a show of it. They haven’t the courage to stand up to corporate Republicans in Congress because their corporate bosses need their Republican stooges to deregulate them for the profit. They haven’t the integrity to stand up to Bush’s WMD. But boy oh boy, can they stand up for phony Benghazi bullshit!

On the Sunday shows this week, you’d have thought that Jake Tapper never busted ABC’s deliberately misleading Benghazi email “exclusive” as the joke it was. Much concern over the trifecta of scandals. Yesterday I was listening to CNN on satellite radio, and they were breathless with the scandals– would Obama ever recover?

But it’s perfectly okay for ABC to lie to the public, carrying Benghazi bullshit for their conservative reporter who didn’t even demand to see the original email before passing along Republicans’ interpretation of it as fact.

Your media hasn’t the guts to call ABC out, just like they got Fox’s back when the President said they were not a news organization. It’s a big club, and the only reason you got the Tapper story is probably because Tapper has a grudge against Karl. He should despise him for being a moron and a Republican stooge, but that’s not the problem at all. After all, we all remember when Tapper was carrying GOP Benghazi water, so concerned that the administration might have not been honest – based on nothing but Republicans claiming so during an election — oh, but, integrity!

The problem is that ABC replaced Tapper with this former CNN conservative because, you know, chasing after a demo that is aging itself out of existence seemed like a great plan to ABC. I don’t give a crap why Tapper went all Benghazi bombshell on Karl, Karl set himself up for it. But who is going to go after the rest of the walking dead corporate puppets?

Do they even care about the truth? If they did, Republican Benghazi bullshit would not be headlining. The headline right now should be that ABC doesn’t see anything wrong with what Karl did, and apparently our misinformed public couldn’t give a crap either. Kim Kardashian! Sparkles! Oh, yes, and Obama is Nixon/Bush only worse. Wrap that up with a bullshit bow, because that is all you are getting for news from the bullshit factory that brought you WMD as a real thing.

Note: I save bad language for moments like this, when nothing else will do. My contempt runneth over.

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Cowardly Karl: ABC Let’s Their Chief White House Correspondent Issue Non-Apology

By: Sarah Jones
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

On CNN’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz read a statement this Sunday from Jonathan Karl, chief White House Correspondent for ABC News, that didn’t make Karl look any better, but in fact only raised more questions.

Karls’ statement was a response to being busted by Jake Tapper of CNN for taking a doctored email hawked to other reporters by House Republicans and creating an “excuslive” out of it that specifically charged that the White House had changed talking points in order to protect itself.

Jonathan Karl isn’t backing down. Nope. He’s doubling down on the accusations while expressing regret that the email was quoted incorrectly (by whom? aliens who took over his keyboard?) and for the “distraction” from what Karl sees as the real story:

    Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it’s become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately.
    -Jonathan Karl, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent

Somehow, Karl believes that the story still stands. But all examinations of the emails show that the minor edits fundamentally altered the meaning of the email. They were edited in order to make the Obama administration look bad, “inventing the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed.” That was the entire point of Karl’s story, and not coincidentally, the narrative of House Republicans.

Karl tried to defend his false story at the time by claiming his story still stood and pointing his finger at the White House. He wanted more information, darn it! Sadly for him, the White House complied and those emails proved that Karl’s story did not stand. Jason Easley explained at the time that by doing this, Obama put a stake through the heart of the GOP’s Benghazi scandal:

    The president put a stake through the heart of the GOP’s attempts to revive Benghazi by releasing 100 pages of emails. (Now, the world can see how badly Jon Karl and ABC News got played when they used the summaries of someone else’s notes.) The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent published an email from Tommy Vietor, who until recently was the spokesperson for the National Security Council. Vietor wrote, “Regarding the talking points, it’s not surprising that the entire government would want the chance to look at and edit that language. This was a dynamic situation and new information was constantly flowing in, and different agencies had important concerns that had to be addressed – the State Department had security concerns, the FBI was worried about its investigation, and the CIA had a major, yet still undisclosed, role.”

What makes this even more egregious is that somehow Jake Tapper got the original email. How did he do that? Was Karl unable to get the original email or is he responsible for altering it?

Karl’s Rovian mea culpa actually only raises more questions, most specifically who is responsible for incorrectly quoting the email. Until now, it seemed he was had by the House GOP, who hawked their email to other reporters. But now, we have to ask — who altered the email, who “quoted it” incorrectly? Is Karl trying to cover for House GOP?

Yesterday, I gave Karl the benefit of the doubt, even after learning that he had been trained by a conservative media outlet also responsible for unleashing James O’Keefe, Michelle Malkin, and a host of other well known frothing lunatics who now pass themselves off as “journalists”.

Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is indeed a Republican with an agenda that has made him blind to evidence and a general sucker for any lie a Republican wants out there, Karl’s words remind us all that crazy can never see just how crazy it appears, “I regret that it’s become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands.” Oh, thanks for clearing that up, Karl. Integrity: ZERO.

Karl’s non-apology apology and refusal to go on his own network, let alone Reliable Sources, to explain what happened and how he came to mislead the public is indicative of an agenda that can’t afford the prying eyes of a TV audience.

Jonathan Karl is a coward, and a dupe. He misled his readers about his source, attributing it to a review of the actual emails when in fact he never had them. He got played by the GOP. The public is already starting petitions demanding his resignation (a move I support). But instead of apologizing for the real crime, ABC let him double down, claiming that he regrets this distraction. ABC is chasing after Fox News in the integrity department.

Jonathan Karl has officially become his own scandal, exposed by his own words and hubris.

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Lyin’ Paul Ryan Tells A Fact Free Tale About Obama and The IRS Scandal

By: Jason Easley
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

Paul Ryan ignored the evidence, and wove a web of lies in an attempt to insinuate that President Obama was involved in the IRS scandal.

Paul Ryan started off his Fox News Sunday interview by admitting that he had no proof that President Obama was involved in the IRS scandal. This did not stop Rep. Ryan from insinuating that Obama was involved in the IRS scandal.

Ryan said,

What we also know from just this one hearing is that groups with the word progressive, or organizing, groups with a liberal persuasion did not have this targeting. They went through. They were approved. So we know that they specifically targeted people based on their political beliefs. Based on people who have a suspicion of the size and direction of government. Based on tea party, and 9/12, and the word patriots. So we know for sure they targeted people based on their political beliefs.

We’ve got allegations based on, you know, religious beliefs that were contrary to the president’s positions. We have credible allegations that donors to these groups were targeted. We know that the IRS leaked private confidential information to the public, for political, which served political purposes, so there’s so much more that we’ve just uncovered that we do not know the root causes of.

And so to suggest that this is some bureaucratic snafu, it it, that’s already been disproven, Chris. The other point I’d say this is. The person in charge of this bureaucratic snafu is has now been put in charge of implementing Obamacare. The IRS is now going to be granted huge amounts of unprecedented power over our health care in the implementation of Obamacare, and so this is just rotten to the core. This is arrogance. This is big government cronyism, and this is not what hardworking taxpayers deserve. People deserve a government that they can trust. That’s honest, that’s impartial, equality before the law, and that’s not what we are getting here, so to try and suggest bureaucratic snafus. We already know that this is not true.

Paul Ryan was lying. His lie was one of omission. Rep. Ryan made those claims based on only the year 2010. The problem is that the IRS also targeted liberals 2011 and 2012. In 2012, the IRS revoked the tax exempt status that they had given a liberal group in 2011.

The report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the IRS was targeting groups on both the left and the right who were interested in expanding or limiting government. The IRS wasn’t targeting for partisan reasons. They were trying to figure out if these political groups violated the tax exempt status limitations on partisan political activity.

Ryan also lied about the IRS having power over health care. The IRS will be involved in making sure that everyone is participating in Obamacare or paying the penalty. The IRS will not be involved in health care, or health care decisions.

Republicans are trying to use this IRS scandal to attack Obama, and stop Obamacare. Notice that near the end of his remarks Ryan mentioned people deserve a government that they can trust. This statement was the first sign that the goal of these scandals is to use them against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Republicans are laying the groundwork for the argument the Obama administration can’t be trusted, and Clinton would represent a third term for Obama.

It is all a lie. There is no evidence that the president was involved, but that is not going to stop Republicans from drawing connections where none exist in order to trump up another Obama scandal.

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White House Fights Back: We’ve Seen the GOP Playbook of False Allegations Before

By: Sarah Jones
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

Top White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer fought back against the week of Republican lies on Meet the Press, telling David Gregory, “We’ve seen this playbook from the Republicans before. What they want to do when they are lacking a positive agenda is they want to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations. We’re not going to let that happen.”

He then proceeded to drop a few fact bombs on the alleged “scandals”.

Transcript from NBC News, with modifications and additions for missing text, my bold:

DAVID GREGORY: You don’t buy the theory there’s a big cloud, scandal over this president.

DAN PFEIFFER: No, I do not. We’ve seen this playbook from the Republicans before. What they want to do when they are lacking a positive agenda is they want to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations. We’re not going to let that happen. The president has business to do for the American people.

DAVID GREGORY: We’re going to hear from Dave Camp (R-MI, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee)… This is one of the things he said. I want to get your reaction.

    DAVE CAMP: Listening to the nightly news, this appears to be an example of cover-ups and it seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.

DAVID GREGORY: How do you react to that?

DAN PFEIFFER: There’s no evidence to support at that. The first time the White House was aware of this investigation was a few weeks ago when our office was notified it was happening. At that point, we had no idea what the facts were. Congressman Issa has been aware of this investigation since before the election. He didn’t say anything publicly for very good reason. As he said, want to make sure you actually have facts before you raise allegations — when you’re talking about a nonpartisan entity like the IRS.

DAVID GREGORY: You’re a communications professional as well. You never want a president of the United States coming out and saying I just learned about this from news reports. It doesn’t look like someone is large and in charge–

DAN PFEIFFER: In this situation that’s exactly what you want. You don’t want the President involved in an independent investigation with an agency with an independent stature like the IRS. That would be inappropriate.

The Obama administration appointed a career official to review the IRS procedures, someone who has served under presidents of both parties, because that is exactly what you do when you do not have an agenda to cover something up. The President is staying out of the investigation, as he should.

The facts are that the IRS was not only “targeting” conservatives. In fact, conservatives were only 1/3 of the groups “targeted”. During another one of the Republicans’ wasteful congressional hearings, they got handed their hysteria on a platter of “don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to”, when they forced acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller to explain to them that conservatives were not targeted. Eric W. Dolan at Raw Story reported Saturday that Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) stepped in a big puddle of unbecoming fact:

    “If the targeting wasn’t targeting, if the targeting wasn’t based on philosophy, how come only conservatives got snagged?” Roskam confidently asked.

    “They didn’t, sir,” Miller responded. “Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration].”

Furthermore, Republicans knew about the IRS investigation last year, because they requested it (caution: Jonathan Karl article). They also know why it didn’t “come out” then, and that is because no wrongdoing had been found yet. This is the nature of investigations, something Issa admitted then and now plays confused over. However, you can’t blame Republicans for their most defining characteristic of jumping the gun. They don’t care much for evidence, as proven in these trumped up charges (Benghazi gate, in which they were busted as manufacturing evidence against the Obama administration, should burnish the WMD rep once and for all).

The “scandal” that certain folks knew about the “IRS targeting conservatives”, suggesting yet another coverup, was planted in the press last week by Republican congressional aides, who failed to mention that Congressman Issa also knew about it.

These are the facts, and it’s a sad commentary on our media that the White House had to send out their own representative to point these things out. If they didn’t, the “trifecta” of trumped up scandals would be allowed to continue ala the Clinton years, costing untold amounts of money and halting government for years. But guess what? President Obama is not going to let that happen again.

Democrats have learned a few things from the Clinton years, but Republicans clearly have not. Speaker Boehner was already asked if he was worried about backlash last week. If they aren’t careful, the narrative by next week will resemble something closer to the truth: These scandals are trumped up by Republicans, who have once again lied to the press, Congress, and the public.

Meanwhile, the President’s approval ratings are going up.

Backlash is on the menu.

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Scandals Backfire on Republicans as Obama’s Approval Ratings Go Up

By: Jason Easley
May. 19th, 2013
PoliticusUSA

Despite the many attempts by Republicans to generate a scandal, a new CNN/ORC poll found that the president’s approval ratings have increased by two points.

The latest CNN/ORC poll reveals that President Obama’s approval rating has gone up by two points from 51% in April to 53% today, while his disapproval rating has fallen by two points from 47% to 45%. While 85% of those polled agree that the IRS targeted of political groups is very or somewhat important issue, by a margin of 61%-37% respondents believed that President Obama’s statements on the matter have been completely mostly true. (That 37% number comes up a lot in polling. It represents the higher end of the number of self-identified conservatives/Republicans in the country.) By a margin of 54%-42% respondents think Republicans are reacting appropriately to the matter, but the vast majority (55%-37%) believe that the IRS acted alone without White House orders.

A majority of those polled were dissatisfied with the way the Obama administration handled Benghazi (53%), but they believe that the administration was passing along the facts as they knew them to be at that time (50%-44%).

These “scandals” haven’t hurt President Obama at all. The most logical reasons for this are that people aren’t paying attention, and those who are don’t believe the Republicans. President Obama has always been well liked trusted by a majority in this country. For years,Republicans have tried and repeatedly failed to damage the relationship that the president has with a majority of Americans.

President Obama has been consistently viewed by the majority in this country as honest. This hasn’t stopped Republicans from continuing to damage their own brand by trying to portray the president as dishonest, or covering up something.

This poll reveals that congressional Republicans are walking a fine line on the IRS scandal. People support them investigating the IRS, but they don’t support turning the investigation into an Obama witch hunt. Since House Republicans excel at self-destruction, they should be expected to try to link Obama to the IRS in their future hearings.

The scandals appear to be backfiring, and setting a dangerous trap for Republicans. The fundamental political dynamic of President Obama being much more popular than the Republican Party is shaping these numbers. If the unpopular congressional Republicans continue to attack Obama with scandals, they will make the president more popular and drive his poll numbers up.

The Obama scandals are backfiring in a big way. If Republicans don’t play it straight with these investigations, they could end up boosting Obama while burying their own party.