Different Day, Same Shit.

You gotta feel bad for ol' Jeb. In an ideal world (at least one that's ideal for the conservative world of the Bush clan), Jeb would have been an absolute shoe-in for the GOP nomination, thus continuing a presidential legacy that started with Papa Bush (George H.W.) and continued with big bro George W.

Instead, poor Jeb became one of several casualties in the face of Trumpmania™ running wild, with each debate devolving into a middle school reality show. And there's The Donald, in rare form, treating Jeb like a weedy little pipsqueak of a nerd by shoving the guy's head into the nearest toilet, slamming him against lockers and generally taking his lunch money every chance he got.

And why not? The Donald knows what the people really want and what they want to see is The Donald giving these political dorks a high-powered wedgie and a hoist up the ol' flagpole. Which is how our "low energy" nerd wound up being pushed around by a businessman/entertainer who understands how to captivate a crowd fed up with seeing the same old batch of political dorks being their typically dorky selves. Even the one guy who everyone thought was the biggest bully up to that point (Chris Christie) wound up backing out of the 3:00 after-bell fight The Donald had set up during 5th period.

With Jeb out of the running, The Donald's now free to focus on Canadian exchange student Ted Cruz, whose lunch tray he's been knocking out of his hand while mockingly saying "tough luck, eh?" every time he does it. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio's praying the GOP administrators will step in and slap The Donald with a suspension or at least haul him off to detention for a while. Poor Marco might have the money, but he has neither the muscle nor a mob of onlookers that'll back him up. Stalking around in the background is spoiled rich kid Mikey Bloomberg, whose chances of jumping into a fight with The Donald seem slim. Those two other guys (John Kasich and Ben Carson) are too busy digging out remnants of the last wedgie.

So let's pay our respects to ol' Jeb!, a guy who would have made a somewhat palatable GOP candidate if Hollywood Trump hadn't brought a folding chair over the poor guy's head.

Like Newton Leroy Gingrich, Donald Trump (who will now be known henceforth as "the Donald") knows that the fastest way to a conservative's heart is by tickling that particular portion of the brain that loves dog whistles and coded rhetoric. By throwing those big, juicy slabs of "straight talk" at the GOP masses, the Donald has managed to become the GOP's Flavor of the Month™ for the 2016 elections. The big question now is "will he manage to nab the nomination?"

The answer is a pretty definite "no." While the GOP masses adore a guy who "finally tells it like it is" on hot-button issues like immigration, the GOP establishment prefers its candidates to have a bit more...discretion. Unfortunately, the Donald's bombastic star power and deep pockets make the rest of the GOP field look absolutely hapless in comparison.

So will the GOP establishment manage to temper the Donald's presidential ambitions before things get out of hand? That remains to be seen. A few prominent pundits and writers (including one of my favorites, Chauncey DeVega) have compared the Donald's presidential run to a wrestling match. Judd Legum sums it up thusly:

In the current campaign, Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump’s opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair.

The Donald is the heel that everyone's supposed to hate, but has a massive cult following. His fans love how he throws his weight around in the ring and hate how boring and inept all of the babyfaces seem in comparison. He has the showmanship and stage presence, plus his refusal to play by the established rules is what his fans love most about him.

With a beloved heel like the Donald, the GOP establishment will have to pull its own Montreal Screwjob if it has any hope of getting the controllable candidate it wants.

So Benghazi is a thing again. If you're wondering why John Boehner and Co. are bothering with yet another attempt to mold that tragic series of events into an impeachable moment for the president, it may have a lot to do with events like these:

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican.

They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Cantor appeared with his family at the event, where Republicans had packed the house. He was there in part to address his own reelection prospects. He faces David Brat, a tea-party backed opponent, in a June 10 primary that will be open to all voters in the district.

Any sign that Cantor’s support has slipped among the region’s most active Republicans could spell a tougher challenge during next month’s election. And some of the crowd’s reaction Saturday when Cantor took a shot at Brat made clear that the Republican majority leader has not yet fully shored up support.

“When I sit here and I listen to Mr. Brat speak I hear the inaccuracies — my family’s here.” Cantor said. As he was interrupted by the raucous crowd, Cantor’s anger was evident: “That’s enough — we are a country of free speech, so decency’s also part of this.”

When you grab the tail of the tiger, you can expect to get mauled at some point. It's little wonder that the GOP's energies have gone into calming the tiger with a bucketful of red meat (with the red meat in this case being yet another investigation into Benghazi. You do what you gotta do to keep the Tea Party tiger from getting another go at your throat.

And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way.

The sage advice of Matthew 22:20-22 wasn't in the cards for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. The man whose actions nearly precipitated armed conflict between federal agents and a devoted group of self-styled militiamen laboring under misunderstood notions of sovereignty and rugged individualism had no interest in rendering unto Uncle Sam what was rightfully his, whether it was $1 million or so in unpaid grazing fees accrued since 1993 or the 58 head of cattle that were initially impounded as a long-coming result of his failure to pay said fees.

In spite of his professed love of country and willingness to express patriotism with profound ebullience, Bundy continues to operate under the belief that the things which are Uncle Sam's are actually his and his alone. It's the same modus operandi that many militia organizations and those within the sovereignty movement operate under: for whatever reason, the governing bodies of the United States are fraudulent and therefore, the militiamen/freemen are free to operate peacefully* outside of the bounds and without interference from the U.S. government, even as they live and work on U.S. soil. Which, by the way, isn't believed to belong to the U.S. but instead falls under the governing purview of the individual U.S. states, following the old conventions of the Articles of Confederation (and tossing the Supremacy Clause out the window as a result).

The militia/freeman movement and tea-party conservatism both feature a variety of overlaps on the Venn diagram of political ideology, so it was only a matter of time before Cliven Bundy became the darling of Fox News and a folk hero among conservatives longing to stick a Second Amendment thumb into the government's eye. You can't tell yours truly that the images of "ordinary Americans" demonstrating their right to bear arms against a government they could care less for (except when it works for them) didn't give other like-minded conservatives at home the warm and fuzzies.

It all could have went south. At least, if it wasn't for the Bureau of Land Management and other federal officials not wanting to replicate the worst missteps of Ruby Ridge and Waco and if it wasn't for the protesters displaying some rather desperate and craven tendencies just to get their point across. A full-fledged shootout between federal officials (framed for this purpose as "jack-booted thugs") and heavily-armed self-styled militiamen (framed as "real American patriots) not only would have made for great television ratings, but it also would have made for a powerful expression of martyrdom that resonated throughout the tea-party contingent and beyond. The consequences of that are best left uncalculated.

It's little wonder that the BLM decided it would be best to back off and not hand Bundy and Co. the opportunity to be remembered as martyrs for a flawed cause. Instead, the FBI's taking a more mundane interest into Bundy's supporters.

---

Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy represents the picture-perfect embodiment of American welfare in one of its most idealistic forms. It was the massive expropriation of land from its former native owners and the introduction of homestead acts that opened the doors to settlement to the "right" sort of Americans that made it possible for Bundy to have his current livelihood**. And it's only through the generosity of the U.S. government that Bundy was and remains able to maintain his livelihood - otherwise he'd join the thousands of farmers who've lost their lands due to debt and foreclosure. There's no telling how many federal grants, subsidies and loans he's applied for so far to help bolster his ranching operations.

In return, Bundy lashes out with a generous helping of furious pseudo-patriotism, all the while using stereotypical views of black Americans and their supposed affinity towards government welfare as a foil for his own brand of "cowboy welfare":

Former conservative media darling Cliven Bundy ran into a tougher crowd on Thursday, when CNN anchor Bill Weir poked fun at both the disappearing act from his former media allies while also questioning Bundy’s claims that he should be able to graze his cattle for free on federal land.

“You are writing off a whole class of people, African-Americans as sort of dangerously dependent because they get government assistance,” Weir said, playing off of Bundy’s instantly infamous press conference earlier in the day. “At the same time, you’re grazing your cows on public land for free. So, how are you not sort of a welfare queen in a cowboy hat?”

“I might be a welfare queen,” Bundy shot back. “But I tell you something, I’m producing something for America and using a resource that nobody else can use, would use or could use and I’m putting red meat on your table. Maybe I’m not doing enough, but I’m trying.”

Bundy's own desultory views of the Negro as better off under chattel slavery serve as red meat for the legions of unreconstructed who hail Bundy as a "freedom fighter" of sorts against "government tyranny," especially now that the Oval Office is currently occupied (or "tainted" as some conservatives may say) by a "socialist Marxist Kenyan."

As with any major cause, there has to be a generous purse lurking in the shadows. In the case of Cliven Bundy, the purse strings belong to a few groups working on the behalf of billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch:

Two affiliates of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity are helping conservative media promote the cause of a Nevada rancher who has made violent threats against the federal government.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the conservative non-profit group, was founded by and has been largely funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch. The Center for Media and Democracy reported that in its previous incarnation as Citizens for a Sound Economy, AFP received $12 million of its $18 million in funding from the Koch Family Foundation.

During the 2012 election, AFP spent $122 million in an effort to defeat President Obama and Congressional Democrats. AFP has also sponsored and organized bus rallies and town hall meetings to promote conservative ideas, including deregulation, tax cuts, and opposition to health care reform.

AFP has been at the forefront of spending in the 2014 election, launching several ads attacking the Affordable Care Act which have come under fire for inaccuracy by independent fact checkers. As of March, AFP had aired a reported 17,000 television ads.

Two of its local affiliates, Americans for Prosperity Nevada and Americans for Prosperity Colorado, have become active boosters of Bundy's actions.

AFP Nevada's Facebook page posted a graphic attacking the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for spending "one million dollars" to enforce the court order to round up Bundy's cattle on federal land. Another photo attacked the Bureau for creating a designated "First Amendment Area" for protesters to gather in near the property.

Still begs the question why the Kochs would be interested in supporting the likes of Bundy and Co.:

Matador Cattle Company operates three ranches: Beaverhead near Yellowstone National Park in Montana, Spring Creek in the scenic Flint Hills of Kansas, and the historic Matador Ranch in Texas.

Acquired between 1941 and 1952 by Fred C. Koch, the ranches total about 460,000 acres under management, including about 235,000 deeded acres. They wean about 9,500 calves annually and support more than 12,000 head of cattle.

In this light, Bundy's defiance over paying his grazing fees takes on a whole different perspective. If the likes of Bundy had the power to run roughshod over the BLM, then it becomes much easier for a heavyweight like Koch Industries to steamroll the agency into accepting concessions allowing the conglomerate to access acre upon acre of formerly protected land for its various resource extraction operations.

The Kochs know what's up. As long as they can advance Bundy's interests in maintaining his livestock and livelihood with little repercussions, their own interests also take a few steps forward. If it doesn't work out, it's back to the drawing board for another plan and avenue of attack. Like any good robber baron, the Kochs are always on the lookout for any opportunity for land and profit, even if it means hitching a rough and wild ride with a welfare cowboy.

* Or so they say.
** Despite claims of his family as the area's first pioneers, official records show that the Bundys were relative newcomers to the Bunkerville area. The range where Bundy makes his living was purchased in 1948.

Paul Ryan is an idiot. Most of us know this already. So it was no surprise that he would attempt to woo Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers with the following patented dogwhistle:



The above conjures up the ages-old image of the indolent Negro and the equally old argument that a Negro whose back was not under the direct path of an overseer's whip was a Negro bound for a life of excessive sloth and inexcusable leisure. Therefore, it was nearly a moral imperative to "encourage" otherwise indolent Negroids to donate their sweat equity to the cause of hard labor for their white American betters. The "convict lease" programs of the early 20th century were more or less an involuntary push to deliver the Negro from the ills of idleness.

Fast-forwarding to the modern era, scolding the black community over the lack of well-paying jobs and the resultant poverty is a comforting pastime for conservatives and quite a few progressives, as well. Solving the actual problems of poverty and joblessness among inner city black Americans requires a structural teardown and rebuild of our society, something that many Americans are loath to do. Instead, it's much easier to scold from afar, although that does as much good as blaming a man who woke up in the eye of a hurricane for his current predicament.

Suggesting that poverty and joblessness are cultural problems allows people to equate systemic failures among a group of people as a moral and personal failing of said group. It makes it that much easier to dismiss inner city black Americans as a lazy, shiftless lot unwilling to do a hard day's work - consequently an echo to those times when even an accusation of loitering spelled swift imprisonment under the employ of a farm or a mining company, for starters. Nevermind that job prospects for black Americans have always been dismal.

Ryan's feigned pseudo-sincerity over the inner city black American's plight exists only to gain an edge in the popularity polls and all the electoral advantages they offer.

We all know how tone-deaf Republicans tend to get when it comes to women's issues. Par for the course for those folks. In an effort to go against type and score those sweet, precious political points, Mike Huckabee crafted what Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post describes as a "three-coil steamer." Well, she's being extraordinarily polite here:

I think it’s time for Republicans to no longer accept listening to Democrats talk about a war on women. Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war FOR women. For them to be empowered; to be something other than victims of their gender. Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for them birth control medication. Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war ON them, it’s a war FOR them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing or them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it, let’s take that discussion all across America because women are far more than Democrats have made them to be. And women across America have to stand up and say, Enough of that nonsense.

This, from the same folks who brought to you mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds and cockneyed theories about rape, birth control and pregnancy.

But even if Huckabee's "Uncle Sugar" speech went over like a lead balloon with women everywhere, at least it resonated with the base. A recent poll shows Huckabee in the top spot for the GOP presidential primary for 2016:

Following the controversy over his 'Uncle Sugar' speech Mike Huckabee has...taken the lead in the Republican primary race for 2016. He's at 16% to 14% for Jeb Bush, 13% for Chris Christie, 11% for Rand Paul, 8% each for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan, 6% for Scott Walker, and 5% for Bobby Jindal.

There's been more movement than usual over the last month, with Huckabee and Bush each gaining 3-4 points, and Chris Christie and Ted Cruz each falling by 6 points. Cruz had been leading the field among 'very conservative' voters for months but in the wake of Huckabee's press attention last week he's taken the top spot with that group. He's at 20% to 15% for Paul, 11% for Cruz, and 10% for Bush. In the wake of Bridgegate Christie's supremacy with moderate voters is being challenged- a month ago he led Bush by 23 points with them, but now his advantage is down to 3 points at 28/25.

The same poll also shows Sarah Palin winning the "Ms. Congeniality" prize of "best liked person."

Last time on Adventures In Senseless Shit, yours truly brought to you the story of a little boy who, encouraged by relatives, played up to the "gangster/trapper/thug" archetype instead of doing something kids his age usually do, like yank cats around by their tails or smear nail polish all over the new loveseat and recliner set, nevermind the plastic's still on it and everything.

Thanks to the power of Facebook, video camera technology and a few of Omaha, Nebraska's finest, he became the poster child of all that's perpetually wrong with the black community, young black males especially. The boys in blue caught a lot of flak behind that and rightfully so. Feigning sincere concern to showcase "proof" of black thuggishness and validate your own prejudices in the process has always been a bit of a dick move.

What I wasn't looking for was this nonsense from Crystal Wright:

Maybe if blacks would stop killing each other, having babies out of wedlock and basically acting like thugs, people wouldn’t call them thugs.

In a bold move to show residents, the pathology of violence they encounter and who is perpetrating the crimes, the Omaha Police Officers Association posted a video of a “local black thug” spewing profanity, sexual and violent laced language at a toddler.

Mr. Thug was so proud of his video masterpiece, he posted it on Facebook and his black friends cheered him on.

Liberals and some liberal blacks have expressed disdain for the Omaha police in posting the video, claiming it stereotypes blacks and the man’s behavior is an anomaly. But the opposite is true. In DC where I currently live and witness frequently uneducated blacks calling each other and their children the same sorts of heinous names.

I have never seen white people talk to each other this way, much less their children. While black activists and liberals can try to pretend, we all know hip hop and rap glorify and extol this exact thug culture, using the very same offensive words in their music. So let’s stop pretending.

Crystal, let's stop pretending you have the good interests of black folks at heart. We know you're just doing this whole Stepin' Fetchit routine for the big bucks, fanfare and connections. This formulaic recycling of the usual conservative arguments about blacks and black thugdom might impress your paymasters and send tingles up the spines of the unreconstructed, but just isn't gonna cut it with the rest of us today.

So Crystal goes on to tell us that the truth isn't politically correct, which segues into the big whopper of the day:

The ugly truth is blacks, who represent a mere 13% of the population, are committing most of the violent crimes in America and 55% of federal prisoners are black. About 54% of all homicides are murders of blacks and according to the Justice Department data from 1980 to 2008, “blacks were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide.”

I have a love/hate relationship with the FBI/DOJ data. I love it because of how it lets the unreconstructed lay down a distorted version of "the truth" with remarkable ease. I hate it because it takes too damn long to correct that bit of statistical malpractice and keep a captive audience. Even Tim Wise can't cut it down to a succinct, salient point that single-handedly blows the above out of the water.

I could say the stats are bullshit, because they are. But then I'd just be accused of being in denial.

To be honest, the true face of the thug life isn't a little kid who knows only what he's taught or any number of random black males who fit the broad description of a "thug."

Take a look at the above photo. That's the true face of the thug life.

Hear me out on this. She's a ride-or-die chick with the conservative clique who's not afraid to put a cap in the collective ass of an entire community to get her program over with. With this drive-by piece, she unloaded the race realist gat and sprayed hot hollow-point bile all over the block for her conservative homies. Now that's some real gangster-ass shit.

As Field Negro, Redeye and countless others have pointed out, this wasn't necessary. And the same courtesies asked of liberals by conservatives are seldom returned. Just look at what most conservatives have to say about the president's family.

Jason Easley says it best:

"Harris-Perry took responsibility for the segment, even though she never said what the right accused her of saying. Her apology was heartfelt, intelligent, and insightful. It was typical of what viewers see on her program every weekend. What it wasn’t was necessary.

MHP brought up a great point about families being off limits, but that is something that the same critics that have called for her to be fired have ignored when it comes to President Obama and his family. The fact that Harris-Perry has now apologized multiple times raises the question why do those on the left have to apologize multiple times for things that Republicans get away with daily?

Please spare me the argument that the left is somehow morally superior to the right, and thus held to a higher standard. The left, right, and center are all the same. Partisans like to think that they are morally superior, but each are still human being expressing political views that should be held to the same standard.

The problem is that there is a basic hypocrisy in the media that allows the right to not be held accountable bad behavior. Not only is the right allowed to get away with worse things than the MHP segment on a daily basis, but no one on the left is ever cut the same slack.

Harris-Perry turned her apology into a teaching moment. She demonstrated once again why she is one of the best on cable news. However, the apology was unnecessary. The left should resolve to only apologize when the right is held to the same standard of accountability for their behavior. The only way that the media will ever treat them fairly is if it is demanded. "

The bolded reminds me of how a maligned school administration deals with bullies and their victims - the bully can punch as hard as they want for as long as they want (but not in complete clear view of the admins), but if the victim so much as draws back a fist, the administration comes down on them like a ton of bricks. As long as conservatives insist that liberals follow the schoolhouse paradigm, things like this will continue.

One of the most notable exploits of Jamaican-born leader Marcus Garvey, aside from the formation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the cultivation of Pan Africanism and black nationalism throughout the 1910s and 1920s, was his attempts to encourage black Americans to return to their continent of origin by way of Liberia. The African nation had already been established during the early 1820s by the American Colonization Society as a sanctuary of sorts for black freedmen.

Opposition from European leaders, a lack of interest from black Americans and Garvey's own troubles with the proto-FBI and the initially successful but ultimately troubled Black Star Line put an end to those efforts. It didn't help that Garvey, a firm believer in black nationalism and separatism, and W.E.B. DuBois, who believed his "Talented Tenth" would lead blacks into an era of prosperity and eventual inclusion into the mainstream, were constantly at loggerheads with one another. You just don't call someone a "Supreme Negro Jamaican jackass" for nothing.

The underlying premise of pulling up stakes for greener African pastures was simple - if America is so bad for blacks, why stay?

---

Mychal Massie must had thought that the spirit of Marcus Garvey was moving through him as he wrote his latest column for World News Daily, the virtual hangout for washed up, past-prime conservatives like John Stossel and Walter Williams. Whereas Garvey posited his question as a response to the systemic, institutionalized mistreatment and subjugation of people only decades removed from actual slavery, Massie's question comes as a condescending sneer towards a people seen as, for the lack of better words on the part of yours truly, a bunch of whiny titty babies:

If America is so bad, blacks - why stay?

The entirety of Massie's column is a finger-wagging admonishment of the so-called "race baiters" and "angry black militants" who dare speak out about America's on-going racial injustices. In short, the entire piece screams "America - Love it or Leave it" to an audience Massie sees as ungrateful and unwilling to forgive their white counterparts for age-old injustices and current "misunderstandings."

When a piece starts out like this, you know you're in for a treat:

A fact in retail is that there ultimately comes a time when you are unable to satisfy a customer who insists on being irrational and/or is unwilling to accept what is being done for him or what is being offered to him. When you have exhausted all efforts to accommodate said customer, you apologize and politely offer that it is apparent, despite your best efforts, that you are unable to satisfy him. And you suggest that perhaps his or her interests would be best served elsewhere.

If America were a restaurant, black America would be the party of five who had to wait an hour and a half for the table next to the men's restroom and then wait around for a server who studiously ignores them while taking everyone else's orders, only to be told to kindly piss off and dine elsewhere if they don't like the service shortly after wondering aloud if that server would ever stop to take their order.

Massie's apparent ideal is for black America to patiently wait and wait and wait until its almost closing and the server finally takes their order, but most of the menu items are gone and whatever's left is half-cooked and unceremoniously dumped into a takeout bag, which is then plopped down on the table by a now-smirking server whose smirk disappears when black America rightfully refuses to leave a tip. "How typical," she says...

"It is THEIR OWN FAULT they decided to show up without a reservation," mutters the conservative couple a few tables over, nevermind how black America spent hours trying to get one only to be told again and again that there weren't any tables available, even if the restaurant is huge and half-empty nearly all of the time. "They did it to themselves. Besides, it was years ago they couldn't even set foot in the joint, so why are they complaining now?" say the libertarians across the aisle. "It's all in the past - they should be grateful."

The idea of people demonstrating deference and piety towards their social, moral and financial betters is a universal one, but nowhere in America is that idea more prevalent than in the Deep South. This idea shows itself prominently when it comes to the issue of labor unionization, as all of the southern states are "right to work" and unions have a negligible, if not nonexistent presence.

For instance, the United Auto Workers have made several attempts to organize Volkswagen's Chattanooga, TN assembly plant. IG Metall, Germany’s largest labor union, also has its eye on organizing a "works council" within the plant, as is the norm in VW's German facilities. But the prevailing attitude among most workers in this and other auto plants throughout the Deep South is one of not "messing up a good thing" by any attempts at unionization, regardless of if doing so will actually benefit them. It's the fear of seeing their jobs move further southward and the commonly-held view of unions as lazy, parasitic and overpaid louts that's kept unions a rare breed south of the Mason-Dixon. Most workers in the Deep South are also invested in the belief that if they do good by the company, the company will do good by them in return. In the age of Kochist corporate thought, company leaders are often bemused by the thought of acknowledging or returning such shows of corporate piety.

Truthdogg cracks open a window into this sort of thinking, how it relates to the current government shutdown and demonstrates how toxic it's become to the nation at large:

...the idea of the commonwealth, of something for all citizens, is as foreign to this region as the Russian language. Here, we look to our corporate leaders and wealthy families for table crumbs, for protection & entertainment, and for permission to act.

This flies in the face of our popular ideas of the smartass rebel, glorified by the Dukes of Hazzard and other tv shows and movies. But it makes sense once it’s understood that the smartass rebel is a marginal character here, much more likely to end his life as Cool Hand Luke than Bo Duke, muttering alone in his shack if not prison itself. As celebrated as the lawbreaking bootleggers still are, they exist outside the mainstream, with their romanticization from the ruling class little different than memories of childhood squirrel hunts and canned sardine lunches.

The mainstream is obedient, deferent and possesses a mixture of awe, gratitude and fear toward the fabulously wealthy that is painfully embarrassing to behold. Watch one of our Congressmen apologize to BP executives for the Katrina disaster if you want to scratch the surface of the worshipfulness that is expected here.

I know, I know. I’m describing something that exists all across the nation in many ways. This is certainly not limited to the South, just like racism is not, and I’m not someone who claims the South is full of more bad people than elsewhere.

But here, this idea of a fixed class permeates in ways that are more difficult to escape, with struggling workers admiring the charity of the Walton family, or arguing that development companies should be given free rein to foul their own water. Today they’re arguing that they don’t need health insurance, that they (I suppose) will just wither and die once it’s clear that the church bake sale can’t pay for their future lung cancer treatments, because they know that they’re lower class and don’t deserve anything more. Perhaps one of their libertarian heroes of finance will step in and personally intervene like God himself, but if they do not, His will is being done.

Passions flare over this in no small part because of race. A rigid class structure maintains the illusion of permanent white dominance, and masks the prevalent white working class fear of slipping to an even lower rung in society. Control is the most important issue for the whites I know who fear changes in racial status (or its loss) and the “tradition” of conservative subservience is the path for keeping it. The adoration of the financially successful reinforces it.

The rigid social structure of the long-lost yet seldom forgotten Confederacy provided plenty of benefits for the "right" folks. The ruling class were rewarded with a never-ending and self-replenishing flow of free labor, while the lower orders looked up to them with a mixture of awe, gratitude and fear. Working-class whites were just grateful for receiving whatever crumbs the ruling class deigned to brush aside in their general direction, all the while comforted with the assurance of always having it better than those coloreds, free and slave. No matter how far down the societal rung one slipped, at least your average Joe of the time knew he would always be a cut above a Negro.

Even after the death of the Confederacy, this mindset still reigned supreme throughout the southern states, intermixed with anger at the federal government for infringing on their way of living (except in cases where they benefited immensely). A large number of people were simply comfortable with the rigid social structure of old, as they knew exactly where they stood and what their assigned roles were. People often reacted to any attempts at bucking or demolishing the social structure with a vicious, inflamed passion. That explains why many people treat the idea of universal healthcare like a communist plot (at least until the hospital bills comes due).

It also goes a long way to explain much of the consternation over Barack Obama's presidential election:

The election of a highly-educated black president shattered it. In fact, as with Bill Clinton, his humble origins are the most distressing part of his biography here. If he were born into a wealthy black family, perhaps with a slaveholding ancestry, or even someone who slipped comfortably into a CEO role (like Herman Cain, subservient to the Koch brothers), President Obama’s election may have been easier to accept.

But he wasn’t like either of those things. Barack Obama leapt over many people in his ambitions, drive and focus, and argues for making his path easier to follow, as liberals tend to do. He’s an inspiring figure for anyone inclined to be inspired. He doesn’t claim that his success comes only from his work and ambition, even while that is clearly a major part of his story. But for those who rely upon inequality and fixed social classes in order to maintain the facade that they aren’t the poorest citizens of this country, his biography destroys everything they thought they knew about the world.

The GOP party goals of lower taxes and freer reign for the corporate class and landed gentry, greatly reduced federal social services, sacrosanct defense expenditures, free or greatly reduced-cost labor via public and private prisons and a landscape of districts gerrymandered just enough to insure a permanent Republican majority all echo a desire for a strong ruling class and a populace too enamored with the tradition of conservative subservience to bother with any sort of genuine progress - at least progress that doesn't directly benefit the ruling class.

There's also the never-ending drive to figuratively and legislatively lynch the first (and as conservatives hope, the last) president of color by cutting off as many of his policies off at the knees as possible. Perpetual gridlock, shutdowns and standstills are all a part of paralyzing government to which it'll have no capacity to make any serious legislative changes until a suitable GOP president is back in the Oval Office. That's something to think about as the House Republicans hold the nation hostage over the Affordable Care Act.

Yesterday's government shutdown is the end result of what happens when one group of politicians play a game of chicken with a telephone pole. Things tend to get messy real quick and in this case, the engine of government was the first to go.

In the vigorous pursuit to defund what very well could be the stepping stones towards universal healthcare in the U.S., 30 caucus members representing the GOP's "tea party" faction in the House saw fit to double down on the rhetoric and attempt to push through a measure to delay and otherwise attempt to strangle the Affordable Care Act in its crib - something that the Senate predictably rejected.

Which brings us to where we are today, with national parks closed, most veterans services shut down and hundreds of thousands of government workers either furloughed or working without pay as essential employees. The Tea Party contingent are doing a remarkable job of showing the people that government does not work...by making sure it doesn't work.

At this point, you have to feel for House Speaker John Boehner. If he tells the Teabaggers to go forth and engage in a vigorous round of auto-fornication by passing a "clean" continuing resolution, he risks the likelihood of losing the remaining shreds of his authority and his seat to a more Teabagger-friendly Republican, most likely wannabe House Speaker and current Tea Party ringleader Ted Cruz. After all, he's demonstrated time and again that he's the one calling the shots.

If he decides to play to the baser instincts of the Teabaggers and maintain the congressional stalemate, the shutdown continues. Too bad neither the Senate nor the president has any intention of capitulating to GOP demands. That means piecemeal solutions like reopening parts of government here and there are out of the question. Either way it goes, the orange one comes out looking like a complete chump.

An increasing number of moderate Republicans now fear having their legislative asses handed to them by a beyond-pissed electorate, which explains why folks like Michael Grimm and 11 other House Republicans have indicated their support for a "clean" CR - one that's stripped of the poison-pill provision that hamstrings ACA funding. The longer this goes on, the worse the pain gets for the GOP in general.

---

Meanwhile, the American people have to put up with some of the inconveniences of a government gone fishing:

• All of America's national parks and monuments are now closed. So don't bother packing your bags for that trip to Yosemite National Park.
• Don't bother sending in your application for a small business loan or loan guarantee, either. The government's not taking those while the shutdown's in effect.
• If you're a veteran with questions about your benefits, good luck. No one's around to answer your questions.
• The National Institutes of Health is also shuttered for the duration of the shutdown, so no further research into life-threatening diseases will be conducted and ongoing clinical trials are closed to new patients.
• Government workers tasked with border patrol, food inspection and air traffic control will work through the shutdown sans pay. Hundreds of thousands of other non-essential govt. workers are now on furlough. Figuring out how to pay the house note is going to be a bitch, but at least they won't have to worry about their car notes.
• No more non-essential inspections of drinking water systems and chemical facilities by the EPA until further notice. 
• Some services for seniors and young children may run out of money in the event of an extended shutdown.
• Even the president isn't immune to the effects of the shutdown. Teabaggers are no doubt pleased that he has to cut his Asia "vacation" short to tend to matters closer to home.

But it's not the shutdown that should have people worried. The debt ceiling deadline is just 15 days away and unless there's a bump in the $17.5 trillion debt limit, the ramifications could very well kick the legs out of the country's current attempts at economic recovery. Without a debt ceiling increase, the U.S. government loses its ability to borrow and defaults on some of its debts, which could set off a chain of events that could eventually lead to sky-high interest rates, frozen credit and investors backing away from U.S. currency and assets as quickly as possible.

Having the government lurch from crisis to manufactured crisis is precisely what the GOP quack doctors prescribed in the first place. A close look at the "Williamsburg Accord" lays out the current stratagem to reorient the national budget towards the general direction of the Ryan Plan, by any means necessary:

In January, demoralized House Republicans retreated to Williamsburg, Virginia, to plot out their legislative strategy for President Obama’s second term. Conservatives were angry that their leaders had been unable to stop the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on high incomes, and sought assurances from their leaders that no further compromises would be forthcoming. The agreement that followed, which Republicans called “The Williamsburg Accord,” received obsessive coverage in the conservative media but scant attention in the mainstream press. (The phrase “Williamsburg Accord” has appeared once in the Washington Post and not at all in the New York Times.) But the decision House Republicans made in January has set the party on the course it has followed since.

If you want to grasp why Republicans are careening toward a potential federal government shutdown, and possibly toward provoking a sovereign debt crisis after that, you need to understand that this is the inevitable product of a conscious party strategy. Just as Republicans responded to their 2008 defeat by moving farther right, they responded to the 2012 defeat by moving right yet again. Since they had begun from a position of total opposition to the entire Obama agenda, the newer rightward lurch took the form of trying to wrest concessions from Obama by provoking a series of crises.

Heritage Action for America's Michael Needham drove home the push for a "balanced budget" through an open letter to conservative congressmen:

Dear Congressman,

In the coming months, you will face tremendous pressure to accept a deal to raise our nation’s debt ceiling. Conservatives around the country will insist the debt ceiling not be raised unless our nation gets on a path to a balanced budget within 10 years and stays balanced. This is not an arbitrary marker; rather, it is the marker laid out by the entire House Republican Conference in what has become known as the Williamsburg Accord.

Conservatives cannot enter into the debt ceiling debate without understanding the promise of the Williamsburg Accord.

On January 18, four current and former chairmen of the Republican Study Committee announced an agreement to re-sequence the 2013 fiscal fights. In exchange for holding the line on the sequester and producing a budget that balanced in ten years, conservatives agreed to postpone the debt ceiling debate for several months. In turn, the debate on the debt ceiling would revolve around enacting the policies that put the federal budget on the path to 10-year balance.

A few days later, Speaker Boehner declared, “It’s time for us to come to a plan that will in fact balance the budget over the next 10 years.” He said it was the GOP’s “commitment to the American people.”

As the proverbial ink dried on the Williamsburg Accord, the House Republican Conference marched in unison. Lawmakers focused on laying the groundwork to enact the policies necessary to achieve a 10-year balance, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and attach them to any future increases in the debt ceiling.

At the same time, the National Republican Congressional Committee quietly poll-tested the message in key districts. Balancing the budget was a winning political argument in swing districts. The NRCC poll found that 45 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of Independents and 76 percent of Republicans thought balancing the federal budget would “significantly increase economic growth and create millions of American jobs.”

Good policy is good politics, and we know from recent history a coherent, principled message on the debt ceiling can shift public opinion. Before landing on the Budget Control Act in August 2011, Republicans consistently said America had a spending problem and spending reductions must accompany any increase in the debt ceiling.

Not surprisingly, the accepted narrative of that showdown is wrong. Many forget Republicans were winning the generic congressional vote the entire month of July. President Obama’s disapproval rating stood at 52% by the end of August. In September, Mitt Romney was leading in head-to-head polling.

The path to balance is the path to victory.

Conservatives should not raise our nation’s statutory debt limit unless Congress passes and the President signs into law real reforms and immediate spending reductions that place America on a path to balance within 10 years without raising taxes and keeping the budget in balance.

Regardless of how many concessions the Democrats offer to conservatives, the GOP in its current state is bound to go with the Assad option and obliterate everything within reach, just because. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation's getting pretty sick of playing hostages to a bunch of legislative psychotics.

In lieu of a fleshed-out post on the impending shutdown, here's Bill Clinton recounting his own experience with government shutdowns and a few bits of advice for President Obama:

Clinton would not negotiate, he said. “The current price of stopping it is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine,” he said. “If they’re going to change the way the Constitution works and fundamentally alter the character of our country and damage the future of a lot of kids, you just have to say no.”

While the president's citizenship eligibility has always been a bone of contention among conservatives throughout his term, there's not much ado about Ted Cruz's Canadian heritage:

When Democrat Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, Republican voter Christina Katok of Walden said she believed he was ineligible for the job.

She reasoned that he was born in Kenya and therefore wasn’t a “natural born” American — one of a handful of constitutional requirements for the job. (Obama's birth certificate shows that he was born in Hawaii, but some critics do not accept that as fact.)

Fast forward six years and another freshman U.S. senator, Canadian-born Tea Party firebrand Ted Cruz of Texas, is being mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential candidate. But Katok, who would vote for Cruz in a heartbeat, doesn’t have any concerns about his eligibility.

“As far as I’m concerned, Canada is not really foreign soil,” she said. Katok said she was more disturbed by Obama's "strong ties to Kenya," the African country where his father was born. She also said she didn’t like the fact that Obama did not release his long-form birth certificate during the 2008 race.

Cruz, who recently released his Canadian birth certificate, is at least “up front about it,” she said.

No wonder the alternative spelling for "hypocrisy" involves the letters G, O and P.

What's being left out of the conversation is the real reason why the so-called "birthers" were up in arms over the president's alleged Kenyan origin, despite his fulfillment of all the constitutional requirements for presidential eligibility. Cruz's Canadian birth certificate is of as little issue to conservatives as his heritage or his appearance, both which are sufficiently American enough to pass muster with birthers and Teabaggers who are chafing under Barack Obama's leadership.

Canada isn't as foreign as Hawaii, nor is it as "dark" or "exotic," if you get my drift. Also, Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson Darragh didn't commit the cardinal sin of cavorting with black men or giving birth to a "half-breed," as Stanley Ann Dunham had done. As for his father, Rafael, he managed to bribe his way into the U.S. after realizing that a post-revolution existence in Cuba wasn't as appealing as he previously thought. After his student visa evaporated, so did the elder Cruz's residency in the U.S. Only in 2005 did he remember that his Canadian citizenship would pose problems for his son's political ambitions.

Which should make the younger Cruz's views on immigration a bit softer than those of his contemporaries:

"The 11 million who are here illegally would be granted legal status once the border was secured — not before — but after the border was secured, they would be granted legal status," he says. "And indeed, they would be eligible for permanent legal residency. But they would not be eligible for citizenship."

Or maybe not. The above would turn today's illegal immigrant into an ersatz version of Japan's Zainichi Koreans - able to live in the U.S. as permanent residents, but not able to vote or otherwise participate in politics. It's fortunate for the younger Cruz that such a policy didn't exist during his younger days, otherwise his political ambitions would have been as limited as the average illegal immigrant's hopes of getting U.S. citizenship the safe and legal way.

Out of consideration for the birthers, the younger Cruz not only released a copy of his birth certificated, but he also announced that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship - he has yet to visit a Canadian Embassy and get it all done in writing, for good.

Being the antithesis of Barack Obama in some respects is Cruz's strongest appeal among conservatives. He's neither a "Negroid half-breed" nor was he born in some seemingly exotic locale. Unlike Mitt Romney, he's not some neo-aristocratic nitwit whom conservatives of all stripes had to hold their nose to support, nor is he a visibly batshit insane wet dream for the teabagger types. As long as there aren't any skeletons flying out of his closet, he's a shoe-in as a 2016 GOP candidate.

Spicy headlines attract readers. They also attract controversy. Chattanooga Times Free Press editor and political commentator Drew Johnson didn't expect his controversial headline to attract a pink slip and a trip to the unemployment office:

Political commentator Drew Johnson, who had been editing for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for less than a year, was fired from the paper, after telling President Barack Obama to take his jobs’ plan and “shove it” in a headline, according to WND.

During the President’s visit to the Tennessee town last week, Johnson decided to change a headline to “Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough,” causing the article to go viral and stir up controversy.

Shortly after, Johnson was fired.

At first, it seems like Drew Johnson was given the pink slip over criticism of President Obama's economic vision. Except that the meat of Johnson's article was left as-is.

As it turns out, the Chattanooga Free Press claims that Johnson was told on multiple occasions not to dick around with the headlines. On this one, Johnson went so far as to wait until his editor was out for the day before changing the piece's original, less controversial headline to the above highlighted. Judging from the first of many tweets, Johnson wasn't seeing eye-to-eye with the bosses:

I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper's most-read article. http://t.co/BPOTzihZoT
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 1, 2013

That's a bit disingenuous isn't it, Drew?

@Derrall We change headlines all the time at the last minute. I had a filler headline in that stunk and thought of that Johnny Paycheck song
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 1, 2013

Drew, you knew full well the Times Free Press couldn't let that Johnny Paycheck reference slide under the radar. It's almost as if you were begging for the hammer to come down.

The policy I "broke" did not exist when I "broke" it. It was created after people complained about the headline & was applied retroactively.
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 1, 2013

Is Drew suggesting that the Times Free Press bounced him not because of their stated policy on headlines or their editorial standards, but because he had the temerity to tell the president to that his economic vision for Chattanooga and the rest of the country would make for a wonderful suppository? According to the Huffington Post, he maintains his ouster was for political reasons.

The Times Free Press, on the other hand, stands by its decision to let Johnson go for violating the newspaper's standards:

The language he chose was vulgar and not appropriate for this newspaper. Even Johnson himself admitted that the headline was “harsh and perhaps crass to a fault” in an editorial he wrote for this Sunday, which will not run.

It also noted that Johnson's editorial freedom wasn't infringed upon except for obvious reasons:

In fact the only instance when the Times Free Press ever denied Johnson the freedom to present his views was last week when he referred to pornography as a “miracle product” and touted the benefits of pornography stating that if teenagers watched pornography it would result in lower rates of teenage pregnancy.

Porn as a "miracle product." I bet people would have paid good money to see that article.

---

After doing the bit on the headline, I sat down and read the article that was attached to it. Overall, it comes off as a standard-issue conservative op-ed piece that strikes against the president and his efforts to spur job creation. Not much to it, except his article makes constant references to EPB, a non-profit utility serving the metro Chattanooga area.

Although the big highlight of the president's visit was his brief tour of the Amazon fulfillment center, the president also highlighted the city's fiber optic network infrastructure. That belongs to EPB and it's part of a vast fiber optic network that spans a 600 square-mile, nine-county service area. But it's not just ordinary fiber optic service that skids to an abrupt halt at the last mile. If you're one of the lucky folks living within EPB's service area, that network comes straight to your front door.

That means fast fiber optic Internet service with speeds of up to 1 Gbps. And since EPB is a public utility, that also means cheap fiber optic Internet service. EPB's slowest Internet tier is 50 Mbps for $57.99/month. Compare that to $89.99/month for Comcast's 50 Mbps "Blast Plus" service (or $69.95/month for those who take advantage of online-only 12-month pricing). And unlike Comcast, EPB offers symmetrical upload and download speeds.

In all honesty, Drew should be glad he can get some "study material" for his piece on porn's "miracle" properties with lightning-fast speed, but alas:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 helped fund the Gig to Nowhere project, a $552 million socialist-style experiment in government-owned Internet, cable and phone services orchestrated by EPB — Chattanooga’s government-owned electric monopoly.

The Gig to Nowhere is a Smart Grid, a high tech local electricity infrastructure intended to improve energy efficiency and reduce power outages. After lobbying for, and receiving, $111.6 million in stimulus money from your administration, EPB decided to build a souped-up version of the Smart Grid with fiber optics rather than more cost-effective wireless technology. This decision was supposed to allow EPB to provide the fastest Internet service in the Western Hemisphere, a gigabit-per-second Internet speed that would send tech companies and web entrepreneurs stampeding to Chattanooga in droves.

In reality, though, the gig, like most of the projects funded by your stimulus plan, has been an absolute bust.

Drew also criticizes EPB for blowing taxpayer dough on its Smart Grid, which has done a lot to make electric service in Chattanooga more efficient, more cost-effective and less prone to getting knocked out of commission during bad storms:

While the Smart Grid will cost taxpayers and local electric customers well over a half-billion dollars when all is said and done, there has been little improvement in the quality of EPB’s electric service. Worse, despite being heavily subsidized, EPB’s government-owned Internet, cable and telephone outfit that competes head-to-head against private companies like AT&T and Comcast is barely staying afloat, often relying on loans from electric service reserve funds to afford its business expenses.

The above is the usual argument of public utilities being the business world equivalent of a clapped out Chevy Citation to the private sector's sleek, sexy and efficient Fisker Karma, as personified by Comcast and AT&T. Drew's beef is that EPB is wasting taxpayer money doing what Comcast and AT&T already do, to not only it's own fiscal detriment, but that of it's customers.

The reality is that both Comcast and AT&T would be perfectly content to extract as much profit as it can without making but the slightest investments into their aging infrastructure. Without a public concern like EPB to make them step up their game, the major ISPs would be more than content to rest on their laurels and rake in the cash, to the everlasting detriment of customers. Which is how Internet service in the U.S. wound up so slow and expensive compared to the rest of the world.

You can tell poor Drew has it out for EPB and for good reason. According to the former editor, his fiancé found herself out of a job after he wrote a few articles "exposing" the public utility.

@blurtjunk After these, EPB forced my fiancé's employer to fire her: http://t.co/vvmQkPwh7B http://t.co/uPEZp6OXlU http://t.co/m3dmd7DbD0
— Drew Johnson (@Drews_Views) August 4, 2013

I tried to find info on Drew's fiancé and the reason for her termination, but Google-Fu's failing me. However, I did take a good look at the articles he linked above.

The first article is a spiel that supposedly outlines how much money EPB wasted on its Smart Grid infrastructure, only to come off as an amateurish wank that ends with these choice nuggets:

After all, government ownership of companies is the very essence of socialism.

The true cost of the Smart Grid is liberty.

The second article is the most interesting. It's about how Iron Labs, an upstart video gaming business, tried to partner with EPB to showcase the potential of the company's gigabit-level services and got cold-shouldered. It then offered to pay for the service and got cold-shouldered again. This led Iron Labs into the arms of Comcast, which proceeded to promote and support the startup.

The problem? EPB only offers its $300/month 1 Gbps service to residential customers and businesses that only use a fraction of the bandwidth. For everyone else, the price of admission varies. The prospect of EPB having its bandwidth duly tested by hundreds of avid gamers running bandwidth-heavy apps was apparently enough for the company to craft a $9,000/month asking price.

Drew bangs on EPB for doing what many other ISPs would have done when faced with the same scenario. Meanwhile, Comcast had the cognizance to put a marketing thumb in EPB's eye by welcoming them with open arms.

Aaron Welch, the president and CEO of Iron Labs, admitted his company didn't necessarily need the gigabit-level bandwidth himself and cleared the air about the whole debacle. You can also see it in the article's comments, provided you get past the Comcast customer rep spam:

#1. Iron Gaming won the $10,000 Warner Brothers digital media prize in the
Gigtank Event this summer. We also receive $15,000 in seed capital that
was funded by local and regional venture groups.

#2. EPB valued our proposal for the "EPB Gig Gaming Center", an extension
of the GigLabs project, at $50,000 per an email from Danna Bailey to me.

#3. We were asking for the "Gig" only to help promote EPB in the media by
visually showing and making a physical representation of what a "Gig" can
do for gamers in EPB's customer base. This service would have been
exclusive to EPB's customer base and have provided a way for Iron Gaming to
promote our gaming league in the region. Did we NEED a gig, no. When we
finally asked to pay for the service, we kept getting referred back to
Danna Bailey and as of August 2 (before the end of the Gigtank Contest) we
have not heard back from anyone at EPB.

#4. Our relationship with Comcast has been fantastic from an Iron Labs
(brick and mortar gaming store) and Iron Gaming (online gaming league)
perspective. Comcast has helped open doors for us and provided a
significant amount of support for our startup.

#5. My only "beef" with EPB is that the people we were dealing with did
not understand the technical details of what we were offering and therefor
did not value what the proposal could provide them. To this day I do not
hold any animosity towards EPB and will still do all that I can in
supporting them and the growth of the startup community in the "Gig City".

Aaron Welch
President
Iron Labs and Iron Gaming

In the third article mentioned, Drew compares EPB salaries with those offered by the city of Chattanooga, focusing on the number of people earning six-figure incomes at both. Then he goes on to compare EPB employees to the average resident in Chattanooga. In short, those evil government workers are wasting your hard-earned taxpayer dollars by living high on the socialist hog. And I thought class envy was an affliction only liberals were supposed to suffer.

To summarize, Drew has a beef with the EPB because:

1. It's a public concern attempting to offer services that so-called "free market" competitors already offer, making it a juicy target for the former editor's right-leaning fury.
2. EPB's taken federal handout money to spend on its infrastructure and other concerns, again making itself a juicy target for some good ol' fashioned conservative tongue-lashing.
3. EPB also ties in to the president's economic vision for the nation. By now, that bullseye is about as big as Lookout Mountain itself.
4. Drew believes his previous pieces on EPB got his fiancé shit-canned from her job. 

But don't weep for Drew Johnson just yet. Johnson's tale of how he got burned by his former employer made him the talk of the right-wing media (despite how Johnson's viewpoints are more or less in tune with the libertarian point-of-view), judging from all the support he's gotten from conservative media and his recent appearance on Fox and Friends. He won't have long on the unemployment line - in fact, I do believe he's found himself another job.

If there's only one admirable quality to pick out from the GOP, it's persistence. When the GOP has a goal, it hones on that goal and resists deviation from the path they've set out on as much as possible. When said deviation becomes all but inevitable, they switch paths and continue onward until that goal is achieved. Or until miserable failure becomes so certain that even Stevie Wonder could read the writing on the wall.

Unfortunately, the GOP's unique brand of persistence easily devolves into an unhealthy fixation on already-accomplished goals, For instance, the above dead horse represents the belated Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Off-screen are several House representatives, bat in hand, standing victorious after yet another posthumous equine assault:

The House GOP quietly blocked funding for ACORN last week, even though the anti-poverty organization has long since been both defunded and disbanded.

The legislative assault on ACORN, which shut down in 2010, was included in a Department of Defense appropriations bill that cleared the House on Thursday. Although the bill passed by a broad, bipartisan margin of 315-97, it garnered attention for an amendment proposed by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have stopped the government from collecting masses of phone call metadata without reasonable suspicion.

Amash's amendment failed, but language to bar ACORN from receiving any money made the final cut. Section 8097 of the bill reads, "None of the funds made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries."

Not that any of this matters, considering how ACORN and its subsidiaries have been dearly departed since juvenile delinquent James O’Keefe found his dad's old pimp suit and decided to play dress-up*.

Between this, the GOP's constant attempts in resurrecting Benghazi as the president's Watergate analogue and its repeated attempts at obstructionist legislation, it's little wonder the GOP doesn't have the time or energy to use its persistence for the actual good of the nation.

*According to the linked source, Jimmy didn't actually wear his pimp garb to the offices.

“I am a black male who grew up in the inner city of Atlanta and no one ever followed me in a mall. I don’t recall any doors clicking when I crossed the street. And I never had anyone clutching their handbag when I got on an elevator. I guess having two awesome parents who taught me to be a respectful young man paid dividends.” – Allen West

I find that extraordinarily hard to believe, Allen. First of all, you are a man of presumably African-American descent. Your physical appearance alone sends certain individuals and subgroups into fits of near-fatal apoplexy.

Perhaps your parents gave you The Talk™. Perhaps they trained you how to control your movements and mannerisms so that you don't cast off such a threatening appearance. Perhaps you displayed an affinity at a young age towards accommodation in exchange for whites being more at ease with you. Or maybe you just chose to be oblivious to any sort of indirect profiling that happens, as I admittedly do at times.* I'm just throwing that out there.

I have no doubt your parents trained you well, Allen. But when you break out a whopper that big, you're bound to get side-eyed from here to infinity.

*No, seriously. I never notice or pay any attention to security staff or shopkeepers who decide to "keep an eye on me." Then again, I can be a bit oblivious about my surroundings, too.

In the ongoing IRS debacle and Benghazi, the GOP figures it hit a home run, or at least a triple with all bases covered. Something tells me the GOP hit a couple of fouls and is well and truly on its way to striking out.

First, the specter of the Obama administration being responsible for targeting conservative groups through the IRS was swiftly snuffed with the following:

Over two years, IRS field office agents repeatedly changed their criteria while sifting through thousands of applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status to select ones for possible closer examination, the findings showed.

At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making "America a better place to live."

Exactly who at the IRS made the decisions to start applying extra scrutiny was not clear from the findings, which were contained in portions of an investigative report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

After brewing for months, the IRS effort exploded into wider view on Friday when Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations for the IRS, apologized for what she called the "inappropriate" targeting of conservative groups for closer scrutiny, something the agency had long denied.

At a legal conference in Washington, while taking questions from the audience, Lerner said the agency was sorry.

She said the screening practice was confined to an IRS office in Cincinnati; that it was "absolutely not" influenced by the Obama administration; and that none of the targeted groups was denied tax-free status.

By July 2011, the IRS was no longer targeting just groups with certain key words in their names. Rather, the screening criteria had changed to "organizations involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy."

But then it changed again in January 2012 to cover "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, social economic reform/movement," according to the findings contained in a Treasury Department watchdog report.

In March 2012, after Tea Party groups complained about delays in processing of their applications, then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman was called to testify by a congressional committee. He denied that the IRS was targeting tax-exempt groups based on their politics.

The IRS said on Saturday that senior IRS executives were not aware of the screening process. The documents reviewed by Reuters do not show that Shulman had any role.

In May 2012, the criteria for scrutiny were revised again to cover a variety of tax-exempt groups "with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit)," according to a TIGTA timeline included in the findings.

The happy scandal balloon deflated even more when two salient facts came to light: that a Bush administration appointee was in charge of the IRS at the time this happened and that the IRS has been without a commissioner since he stepped down. In spite of the presence of an acting commissioner, the big chair remains empty due to the usual GOP obstructionism:

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

If the GOP still wants to place the blame on the Obama administration since this "happened on his watch," let the investigative processes commence.

Not only is the IRS "scandal" proving to be anything but, so is Benghazi. Courtesy of PoliticusUSA:

After CNN’s Jake Tapper exposed ABC’s report was based on information that was edited in order to make the Obama administration look bad, ABC tried to explain away their lies by claiming that their inaccurate story, and the actual emails are the same thing, “Assuming the email cited by Jake Tapper is accurate, it is consistent with the summary quoted by Jon Karl.”

In the process of trying to defend himself, Karl exposed his own lies, “This is how I reported the contents of that e-mail, quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes.” (In his original story, Karl claimed that ABC News had obtained the emails. This obviously wasn’t true.)

Karl also explained that he and ABC News never reviewed the emails, “The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.”

For the sake of getting the scoop first, ABC News managed to trip all over its own shoelaces and get shown up by the folks at CNN. But that's beside the point. What matters is the lengths Republican leaders have gone to paint Benghazi as the next Watergate. It didn't hurt that they had a little help along the way:

Jon Karl wrote that nobody could get copies the emails. If this was true, how did Jake Tapper get them?

The truth is that Karl’s source was likely someone within the Republican House, because these emails were made available to the Republicans investigating Benghazi months ago. (Before Karl came to ABC he was a congressional correspondent at CNN, so connect the dots. Plus, it wasn’t a coincidence that this story broke days before House Republicans held another Benghazi hearing.)

Jon Karl thought he found his "Deep Throat" and well...nah. Had a pretty good metaphor for this one, but it would be a bit uncouth even for DDSS standards. Jake Tapper saw an opening to make himself look good for once at Karl's expense. It's gonna make for a rather awkward meet when they run into each other at the next cocktail dinner.

If Benghazi didn't provide enough fodder for conservatives' sense of victimhood, the following definitely will:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

It's one thing to investigate 501(c)(4)s to make sure they stay within the legal boundaries of their status. It's another to laser target 501(c)(4)s based on their political affiliation:

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, noted that the number of 501(c)(4) group applications doubled between 2010 and 2012. As a result of this influx, she explained, low-level workers at the agency’s Cincinnati office had flagged about 300 applications for additional review based on a keyword search. None had their status revoked or denied and the IRS apologized for the mistake.

While it unclear whether the IRS workers intentionally targeted conservative groups — an agency spokesman did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for the complete list of keywords used — the office revealed that two of the terms on the list were “Tea Party” and “patriot.” As such, about 75 Tea Party groups were singled out for additional scrutiny.

The spike in 501(c)(4) groups comes after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that outside groups may make unlimited political expenditures. Since then, some 501(c)(4) organizations have begun abusing the system. Though groups engaged in some political activity may qualify as “social welfare groups” and receive tax-exempt status under this section of the tax code, electioneering cannot be their predominant activity.

It remains seen whether this all was deliberate or unintentional, not that it matters much to conservative Tea Party-types. This only validates their claims of victimization by the Obama administration and chances are they'll milk it for all it's worth. That includes getting yet another round of "Impeach the Socialist Negro"...ahem..."Take Back the White House."

Where were these guys when the IRS decided to take a peek at the NAACP's books during the Bush administration?