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“Leadership” or Lack Thereof
Recently in the United States we’ve heard news that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) is guilty of discriminating against conservative “non-profit” or not-for-profit entities. Any group with the name “Patriot” or “Tea Party” in their name was immediately held as suspect and the IRS in essence dragged their feet in terms of granting them a non-profit status. The reason why these groups did this? Simple; for taxation purposes. Liken to a religious entity, they wouldn’t be taxed. If the group owned property in their name they would receive a tax exempt status and as anyone in the United States knows, that’s music to the ears of a conservative.
According to the media, this went on for 18 months and ended in May, 2012. The Acting Director of the IRS, Steven Miller was asked to resign by current Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew. President Obama has vowed change and is “shocked” that such discrimination has taken place. Speaker of the House Boehner has demanded jail time for those involved. It reminds me of actor Claude Raines in Casablanca; “I’m shocked, shocked, shocked there’s gambling going on in this nightclub.” So it appears the President has had his “Casablanca” moment.
But I wonder what would happen if the situation were reversed? Well, truth be told the situation was reversed. In November, 2004 certain voting stations in Southeastern Ohio were shut down due to an impending terrorist attack. Why Ohio and why the southeastern part of the state? Because Ohio was a key battleground state in the presidential election of that year and the southeastern part of that state was a heavily Democratic region. Then Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell declared Ohio for the GOP even before the votes were tallied. By the way; Secretary Blackwell was also the head of the Republican Party in Ohio.
So once again, this President offers the GOP a “dove” in terms of an accommodation but does he really think that the GOP would be so generous? Nothing ever became of the election issue in 2004. No investigation, no Senate or Congressional Hearings, nothing. John Kerry and the Democrats were quick to concede and hence the Democrats to this day are noted for being spineless. What the Democrats still do not understand is that each time they offer the opposition an accommodation, the other side is thinking “gutless” because they wouldn’t do it. The GOP is not known for being appeasers and that’s exactly how they view the liberals: gutless, spineless and not willing to fight for their principles. We have a multitude of issues in the United States that has still not been resolved. We have a fiscal budget that is yet to be determined, a debt ceiling battle that will start in the August timeframe and an ongoing sequestration issue that will have an effect on the US economy. Yet, what do we have coming out of DC? More gridlock, more indecision and a blatant lack of leadership.
Instead of being ‘shocked” this “CEO” should have the fortitude to stand up to those critizing his administration. I think he might find that not only would that inspire more loyalty from his own people but even the opposition might respect him more. Wall Street is treating this as if it’s a sideshow. The economy is not reporting good economic news and yet the markets advance. There’s no oversight from DC on issues that affect the ordinary investors or traders. No one is steering the ship and usually when that happens the ship crashes into the shore.
Originally Posted on http://www.tothetick.com/leadership-or-lack-thereof
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Like it or not, we've got some major league issues in America and those problems are not going to be resolved without collaboration from both parties. Frankly, I can not see how we get out of this mess with the current mentality. What will it take for both parties to compromise on a solution? Do we need another war? An economic collapse? A Civil war?
Obama's strong arm tactics to pass the Affordable Health Care has created mistrust. Justifiably so. On the other hand, the symbolic gesture on the part of Repulicans to pass bills that don't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting passed area waste of time. Now, with the IRS issue, Benghazi, and AP coverup, we've got all the wannabies like Bachmann, Perry, and McCain, jumping for the microphone wanting their voice heard. Does that do the Party any good? It shows lack of unity. We need Christi or Rubio to tell everyone to read from the same page. They go outside the text....tell them to shutup and sit down.
By the way, the lesser asshole whom the head asshole announced had resigned was scheduled to leave his IRS post in June. Way to take the bull by the horns, hotshot.
Where did this Huffington retard come from? How about some source citations for your claims?
Here's a challenge: How many Republican campaign officials have been convicted of election fraud? How many Democrats?
Does not really matter - they are all crooked as pig weenies!
So, the Godless pagan liberals could do a "better" job if they would only fight for their principles like the Godless pagan GOP banksters fight for their principles?????
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
Godless pagan is an oxymoron?
You are giving Pagans a bad name?
Bush got sloppy with the Diebold voting machine fraud.
Our spoon-fed two horse race is getting diluted with all this Tea Party/Patriot crap.
There's only so many polling places and fraudulent voters we can put on the dole...
Hmmm what to do now...?
I know! Lets call our friends at the IRS and c@<k block all the applications for any group with an opposing view! The question is not who did this, rather who benefited the most? And if we follow the money, I would guess groups who don't want to dish out another chunk of unrestricted campaign funds to a third party to "favor their interests" would be in-scope. Although, when the dust finally settles, we will find this to be the masterminded works of the summer-intern in the mail room.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here's your blueprint
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_COINTELPRO_Papers
Everything changes, but nothing ever changes the same.
Yeah, Fuck off Jim! (Doors movie)
As per ZH's motto, no one here gets out alive.
What a load of shit. Typical Leftist's response to any bad acts by their boy: "But BUUUUUUSSSSSHHHHH!!!!" You've probably never hear this sayimng: Two wrongs do not make a right.
Fuck you and your fascile analysis.
"have the fortitude"
From day one all he does is VOTE PRESENT
Couple side notes:
Hillary C and FBI FILES
Sandy Berger and stuffing paper
The party in power is absolutely entitled to use all the powers of government to crush and otherwise disadvantage its opposition. But when they do it they should not deny it. Rather they should proudly take ownership.
"Peace is the elimination of all opposition to socialism." - VA Lenin
You're probably too dumb to live. The Russians murdered 100 MILLION Russians. That's socialism. Strangely they aren't proud of that.
http://www.bilderberg.org/bis.htm
Lemmie c, Bengazi, AP, IRS..seems at least up to the level of Watergate..outcomes should be the same if the R's ahve anysmarts...
RE: "No one is steering the ship and usually when that happens the ship crashes into the shore".
I actually think that those who control the rudder (which does not include those at the helm) wish to crash the ship for their greater control and profit on the new and bigger ship. (See the UN article posted today - ignoring the McDonald's part)
In all fairness Boehner is just as gutless and spineless as any liberal.
yes but his saving grace is that he takes his job as speaker of the house as a responsibility to represent all the members (and some of them do have spines and guts and stuff, some of them are tea party backed candidates) and of course a shark doesn't have a spine either.
Slightly OT:
Yesterday I responded to poster, James-Morrison (after the dead '60s rock star), with a couple of very well known Doors (group lead by said dead drugged out rock star) lyric fragments. Ever since I have had Doors advertsiements all around the edges of my web pages here. Think of the data collection, filtering and interpretation that went on to do that. If that doesn't put the fear of Eric Holder into you, I don't know what will.
Maybe I will change my posting name to Winston Smith. Hey..."do it to Julia." Now pass the Victory Gin and lets watch the wars live on the telescreen.
War is peace,
Ignorance is strength,
Freedom is slavery
This time I might not be joking.........do please.....
"Cancel my subscription to the resurrection"
J. Morrison/The Doors from "When the Music's Over" circa 1966
Hey!!! "When the Music's Over," wasn't that Stanley O'Neil's theme song? Had it piped into all of the bathrooms and elevators at Merrill-Lynch.
Strange days have found us...
Do let us know what sort of adverts appear around your edges in the next few days. I suspect that you just gave the thought police enough data fragments to parse and draw the proper conclusions.
this is gangster capitalism, you can't fault someone for demanding justice because they didn't demand justice five mintues ago. (i wake up demanding justice i go to bed demanding justice, that's my whole day) so i give you a down arrow for lack of imagination. i am sure that Obama took money from the Koch brothers (Tea Party) in his campaign. he may have taken more money than Romney even. why would they give him money? for one thing it buys access. rich donors often donate to both candidates. and the Kochs want to protect the tax code where it works to protect the wealthy. The Tea Party is the Kochs political sand box, just as Liberalism is Obamas sand box. Its the way they frame themselves, its not them, who they are about or what they stand for. Just as Bush wasn't the standard conservative he claimed he was. Everyone lies, thank you Dr House
I haven't researched this but on the surface this sounds like a good thing. There are far too many political groups trying to get tax free status. If I had my way all religions and political groups would be taxed to the max.
Plus this appears to be aimed at both demo and reps. Is this grandstanding?
If I had my way all religions and political groups would be taxed to the max.
Ooohh, a nascent fascist! We don't get too many of those on Zerohedge. Can't have any of that religious or political activity!
In a free society, the government shouldn't be in the position of decding which legal behavior is advantaged. The problem here is the income tax itself, not any particular waivers to it.
and what do you think the FBI was doing just letting all those teaparty scumbags have their way of couse not and who's head will roll next
This is all in the past, we need to move on, right? I'm surprised more defense attorneys don't use that.
Tool
Read your posting between knocking the jockeys off the rich peoples lawns.
WTF. MY posting is one word. I read the OP. My comment still stands.
I support you posting. Thought you'd recognize the words from the song the title of which is the same as your name.
Mea culpa. YOU read my posting while virtualizing to FZ's UR.
I gotcha.
Orangina can grandstand all he wants; get him an orchestra and call it musical theater.
I'm having a hard time following your argument for the president being shocked. He is trained by Saul Alynski where the ends justify the means. In no way is this president out of the loop or shocked about what the IRS is doing to it's political enemies. This is the way they operate. Period.
RE: "In no way is this president out of the loop or shocked...".
Neither was Claude Raines' character in Casablanca. That's the point.
There's cheating in this casino?
So both sides should just wink and nod and laugh at the suckers while continuing to fleece them? Gotcha.
You are right that there is a leadership vacuum. However, your implied assertion that the GOP is raining all this misery on the vacuous clown we now have is misplaced. The misery is all his own doing or undoing. And what he is about to discover is that there are many liberal or progressive types who do not feel the urgency of coming to the aid a Wall Street drone in his hour of need.
Amen.
Perhaps this "leadership" should try holding a few people accountable for their behavior. Has that motherfucker Corzine been executed yet? No, perhaps Holder should be executed then? Strong/effective leaders hold people (especially those in positions of power) accountable for their actions, period.
sort of like the Obama people said move ahead, lets not investigate anything that happened before i took office. its never smart to believe that in politics alloowing your opponent get away with murder confers future considerations on their part. not only are democrats spineless, they're amoral. their big mistake is thinking everyone else is too.
Lincoln, Wilson, FDR... all 'great' leaders.
Frankly, I think we need a great deal less leading, not more of it.
Big Jim, obviouslly El Oregonion didn't understand your post. I did, and I agree. Would have posted the same thing myself.
Big Jim, "Lincoln, Wilson, FDR... all 'great' leaders."
Are you effing High? Lincoln damn near blew the country up invoking suspension of Posse Comitatis, and Habeus Corpus. The constitutionally protected right to writs of Habeus Corpus was literally kicked to the curb by President Abraham Lincoln in 1861, shortly after the start of the Civil War. At the time, the suspension applied only in Maryland and parts of the Midwestern states. Lincoln’s goal was to illegally arrest and imprison those who favored the Confederate cause.
In response to the arrest of Maryland secessionist John Merryman by Union troops, then-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney defied Lincoln ‘s order and issued a writ of Habeas Corpus demanding that the U.S. military bring Merryman before the Supreme Court. When Lincoln and the military refused to honor the writ, Chief Justice Taney in Ex-parte MERRYMAN declared Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus unconstitutional. Lincoln and the military arrogantly ignored Taney’s ruling.
On Sept. 24, 1862, President Lincoln declared martial law and issued a proclamation suspending the right to writs of Habeas Corpus nationwide. In his zeal to stifle the rebellion, Lincoln effectively created a presidential monarchy enforced by the full weight of the Union Army.
Woodrow Wilson:
Wilson was the first president to criticize the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Wilson criticized the diffuseness of government power in the US in most famous book Congressional Government. In this work he confessed, “I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive.” His love and worship of power was a prime characteristic of fascism. “If any trait bubbles up in all one reads about Wilson it is this: he loved, craved, and in a sense glorified power,” writes historian Walter McDougall. It should not surprise us that his idols were Abraham Lincoln and Otto von Bismarck.
“No doubt a lot of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle,” wrote Wilson, attacking the very individual rights that have made America great.
He rejected the principles of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” that are the foundation of American government: “Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand….” wrote Wilson in The State. Sound familiar?
FDR
Because of him the 22nd Amendment was hastily enacted. When Roosevelt he was "Enititled" to circumvent our Constitution and was elected to his 4th term as President when 3 months later he died. He served 13 years as President.
Beginning with President Woodrow Wilson and continuing through his party successors FDR, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and Obama; Democrats prefer “reform before recovery” if they can get away with it and be re-elected. Hence President Obama’s obsession with a government takeover of the health care and insurance industries while 1/5 of American men left the work force.
FDR, to a certain extent, “got away with it”, if by that term we mean, got re-elected despite ongoing economic failure, mainly because the unemployment rate did drop from 25% to 17% right before the Election of 1936. Thanks to more of FDR’s mostly anti-business “experimentations”, the unemployment never dropped below 14% before 1941, and a double-dip of the Depression occurred in 1937-9. Even many of his Keynesian/Brain Trust gurus, including John Maynard himself, bemoaned his “reform before recovery” agenda, as recounted in Jim Powell’s, FDR’s Folly.
Sorry, for the long post but when I see uninformed posts, especially one's detrimental to the truth, I must speak up to correct the "Information".
Good post for BIN
Bad post for ZH
Pretty confident he was sarc bro
Dude, chill. I think you misread his point. Great was in quotes; he's on your(our) side...., he just didn't use /sarc tags.
obummer's day is coming. "I didn't know," is not what people want to hear from their leader - even if it is a lie.