Your moment of Zen

A study in fiber. [Aditya Vardhan Tibrewala photo]



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I'll take self-serving traffic baiting for $1000 Alex

I love Alex Pareene. I wouldn't have thought him capable of writing such a mean-spirited tirade against Media Matters for trying to break through the knee jerk defense of AP going on among the big name stars of the media insiders and inject some much needed perspective.

Let's review the facts one more time. The AP didn't break the second coming of The Pentagon Papers with their story. They exposed an important counter-terrorism operation based solely on leaked information which ultimately led to to the outing of a CIA asset who had infiltrated an active terrorist group. Jack Shafer explains why that matters:

To begin with, the perpetrators of a successful double-agent operation against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would not want to brag about their coup for years. Presumably, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will now use the press reports to walk the dog back to determine whose misplaced trust allowed the agent to penetrate it. That will make the next operation more difficult. Other intelligence operations — and we can assume they are up and running — may also become compromised as the press reports give al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula new clues.

Likewise, the next time the CIA or foreign intelligence agency tries to recruit a double agent, the candidate will judge his handlers wretched secret keepers, regard the assignment a death mission and seek employment elsewhere.

Last, the leaks of information — including those from the lips of Brennan, Clarke and King — signal to potential allies that America can’t be trusted with secrets. “Leaks related to national security can put people at risk,” as Obama put it today in a news conference.

Alex sneers at Media Matters' question, “Is this story about a government source blowing the whistle on government misbehavior, or about a source gratuitously exposing ongoing counter-terrorism operations?” He finds it useless because no liberal wants Media Matters to be the boss of their talking points. Well they probably don't think they need Alex to be the boss of how they choose to influence the public discourse either. Better Alex should answer the question.

Kevin Drum confirms the entire undercover operation had to be shut down and the double agent was put in jeopardy. If the AP hadn't built the bandwagon with their irresponsible traffic baiting, this operation would still be delivering useful intelligence on terrorist plots. So tell me how was the public interest served by the AP story? And where do you draw the line between national security and profit seeking opportunism by the media? If AP hadn't published the leak, the government wouldn't be looking for the leaker and their records wouldn't been subpoenaed.

As I've said before, I've been fighting for First Amendment rights all my life. I worked my heart out in twenty years working for the ACLU and in private practice defending those rights. I want to protect the freedom of the press, but with that freedom comes responsibility to use it for the public good. I was outraged when Valerie Plame was outed by our government for political gain. Why shouldn't I be equally outraged when the media outs an agent in an active operation simply for their own profit? Dumping on Media Matters for trying to hold the press accountable for irresponsible reporting doesn't answer the question.

Blame it on the inane

As if there weren't enough pseudoscandals to go around, our very useful media eagerly embraced the most inane fauxtroversy since flag pins with Umbrellapalooza. This loser was initially pitched by Griftzilla of the Great White North, Sarah Palin who spewed out some word salad on Facebook. No, I didn't read it, but here's the quote making the rounds:

Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas.

You mean like this, Princess Dimwit? [via]



Meanwhile, I saw WaPo's Karen Tumulty saying this was a very important story, because bad optics! Swear the media excuses for fluffing these fauxscandals are getting as lame as the crackpots who invent them. That aside, I seem to be the only one who actually noticed Obama asked for the damn umbrellas in the first place as a courtesy to the Turkish Prime Minister standing next to him.

I watched that presser. Obama initially declined the umbrellas. It wasn't until Obama noticed his guest was uncomfortable that he interrupted his remarks and asked for the damn things. I'm sure if Obama was alone he would have never asked. He's certainly made speeches in bigger rainstorms than that. And he could hardly have asked for just one. It would have embarrassed the Prime Minister. Made him look like a pansy who was afraid to get wet.

You might think our very experienced journos would understand that protocol, but no. Instead they stampeded like a herd of enraged elephants to promote this lazy GOP meme as if they've never seen anything like this before. [via]



Also, this [via] :



And here's a whole gallery of Dharapak photos, many of which show Obama holding his own damn umbrella. A skill his predecessor apparently hadn't mastered well.



And they wonder why no one respects BigMedia anymore?

Your moment of Zen

Pink Columbine. [source unknown]

Grasping at strawmen - Updated

There's no doubt the IRS was ham-handed in its handling of the tax-exempt applications after Citizen United. I've yet to see that they did anything against the law. Which is a problem to be sure. It suggests maybe we should be agitating to change the damn laws. Not that that's going to happen. Instead we have everyone looking to grind their own axe against the sharp edge of this pseudoscandal. That of course includes the "Obama has failed me" crowd of the left. Garance jumps in with this damning bit of evidence. On noes, there was no surge in applications in 2010. Quick fire more people. Heads must roll.

That's fine with me. Fire the whole lot. I seem to be the only one who remembers how George W Bush loaded the bureaucracy with GOP loyalists during his reign. Incompetent loyalists at that. Small wonder they screwed it all up. I've yet to see a high level official here who was hired under Obama.

Furthermore, as Steve M. points out, if the goal here was to suppress Tea Party influence on the election, they did a damn poor job of it. The chart showing the monthly approvals speaks for itself.



Oh and that bureaucrat who was in the tax exempt branch and is now in charge of IRS Obamacare enforcement? Hired under Reagan and promoted by none other than President George W. Bush, who also awarded her a hefty bonus in 2004 for distinguished service.

Our government agencies are riddled with GOP loyalists. Don't recall Obama doing any big purges like President Codpiece did. And let's not forget, the IRS admitted they outed themselves. I don't see any political advantage to Obama in engineering something so blatantly obvious. But looks like a helluva good way to invent a pseudo-scandal to help the GOP.

Update: Here's a list of all applications in that category which were approved in 2012. Just going by the obvious ones, looks like more conservative orgs were approved than liberal ones.

The biggest Benghazi scandal

In a startling new first, Major Garrett called Republicans liars -- on the teevee. Never would have expected Major to be the one to break that taboo.

Kevin Drum, who lately has dropped his old squishy style in a favor of a refreshingly bold persona, sums up the details of the GOP's ratfuckery:

So here's what happened. Republicans in Congress saw copies of these emails two months ago and did nothing with them. It was obvious that they showed little more than routine interagency haggling. Then, riding high after last week's Benghazi hearings, someone got the bright idea of leaking two isolated tidbits and mischaracterizing them in an effort to make the State Department look bad. Apparently they figured it was a twofer: they could stick a shiv into the belly of the White House and they could then badger them to release the entire email chain, knowing they never would.

Except the White House did release them, proving that the GOPers lied their faces off and burned Jon Karl. Not that Jon will pay a price for pushing it without confirming, but can't have everything. What should happen next is obvious, but since he got there first, over to you, Charlie Pierce:

The right thing to do here is for ABC to reveal the source that fed it bogus information. This is what should happen for two reasons: 1) it should happen to demonstrate the consequences of feeding bogus information to ABC, and 2) it should happen to demonstrate that there is something of a campaign among Republican congressional staffers to wound an elected president with bogus information, because (as I think we would all agree) that's a helluva news story, too. (Those of us who remember ABC's performance during Whitewater are not optimistic, by the way.) Ball's in your court, folks. Who do you really serve? The country, or the liars in your BlackBerries?

I'm not optimistic names will be named, but I'll take what we can get. Seeing generic Republicans called out by BigMedia for their mendacity is a damn good start. [graphic via]

Your moment of Zen

This was our private playground when I was a teen, long before they turned it into Tarywile Park. Danbury, CT. [John Andrew Zanzal photo]



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Off with their heads

Yet another ritualistic resignation at the IRS, as required by the optics under what passes for civil society these days.

An internal IRS memo says Joseph Grant, commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, will retire June 3. Grant joins Steven Miller, who was forced to resign as acting IRS commissioner on Wednesday.

Grant joined the IRS in 2005.

But Booman is right. In a sane society, this is what should have happened to Tea Party group tax exemptions.

I am infuriated by these stories about Tea Party groups who are complaining that seeking tax-exempt status was like having a proctology exam. While I acknowledge that the IRS made unreasonable requests and caused unreasonable delays, I am even more outraged that they did not deny tax-exempt status to even one Tea Party group. Not one.

There isn't a single Tea Party group in the country that isn't primarily concerned with political matters. None of them should have qualified for tax-exempt status. None.

If this had been liberal groups organizing during the Bush administrations, not only would their tax exemptions have been denied, the leaders of the groups most probably would have been arrested. Hell, in those days they were arresting people for wearing tshirts and carrying signs even mildly critical of the government.

The cost of repealing Obamacare

Not talking about the costs as related to health care or the deficit. This is simply the cost to the taxpayer for the time it takes Congress to keep producing these "message bills" the crackpot cons insist on repeatedly bringing to the floor in order to impress the rubes back home.

Steve Daines represents Montana, which, at last count, takes in $1.92 of money from big government Beltway solutions for every dollar in taxes Montanas send to the rest of us. And, by the time the House arranged to define the word "quixotic" for the ages for the 33rd time, which was almost a year ago, the collective cost of all the tantrums to American taxpayers — including Montanans — already had topped $50 million. ...

House GOP leadership just agreed to bring futile attempt number 37 forward because they have freshman crackpots who didn't get a chance to show their contempt for President Obummer, the rule of law and the will of the people yet.

Now if somebody would just figure out what Darrell Issa's clown show has cost us so far instead of the endless iterations on the political standings of the playahs, we'd be getting somewhere.[image via]

GOP agree: Feed the rich, starve the poor

Rebuffing Democratic attempts to stop this inhumane pandering to special interests, Republicans rammed a bill through committee that starves children of the poor and impoverished olds in order to give more money to wealthy corporate farmers.

A Republican-controlled panel in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved the biggest cuts in food stamps for the poor in a generation and a potentially expensive expansion of federally subsidized crop insurance. [...]

Almost half the savings in the House bill would come from a $20.5 billion cut over 10 years in spending on food stamps for low-income Americans. [...]

Some 45.6 million people, many of them impoverished elderly or working-poor families with children, received food stamps at latest count.

The bill restructures the corporate farm welfare in a way that expands their subsidies, effectively putting the risks of the business on the taxpayer without any share of the profits in return. The biggest beneficiary of the shift will be crop insurance companies which have been riddled with fraud.

Small government the GOP way. You see, the "dependency culture" only applies to poor people who can't get jobs that pay a living wage, if they can get a job at all. [image via]

Benghazi grandstanding blows up in Issa's face

After months of pounding the podium in outrage, demanding answers, suddenly Darrell Issa needs to think about whether to question the lead Benghazi investigators. It's one thing for Darrell to accuse them of incompetence on the TV. Quite another to allow them to defend their work:

In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa exclusively obtained by CNN, the co-chairmen behind an independent review of September's deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, expressed irritation over the House Oversight Committee chairman's portrayal of their work and requested he call a public hearing at which they can testify.

"The public deserves to hear your questions and our answers," wrote former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, co-chairmen of the Accountability Review Board that was convened to investigate the September 11th attack.

And irony this rich could give you a stomach ache.

Issa also suggested on the program that Pickering and Mullen meet with the committee behind closed doors so as not to create "some sort of stage show."

In other words, these guys might give legitimate answers that could shut the whole clown show down. Not to mention, make Issa look like a bigger idiot than he does already. [graphic via]

Your moment of Zen

Echeveria. {Photo source unknown]

Mighty Hunters

Not much has changed since Tex Avery cartooned the lifestyle of the outdoor sportsmen in 1955.

Give 'em heck Harry

Well here we go again. Harry Reid is kinda, sorta, thinking hard about cracking down on GOP obstruction.

“I’m not going to do anything now, precipitously,” he said. “But I’m looking at this very closely…. We’re going to fill that job. Cordray is there now. He’s going to get a vote.”

Corday you'll recall is the long being held in limbo nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You'll also remember the GOPers are refusing to allow a vote unless the Dems agree to render the agency completely toothless, unable to enforce any actual consumer protection against predatory banksters.

Harry claims he's going to force a vote next week. Willing to bet it won't go well. [photo via The Moderate Voice]

Tea Party not a victim of IRS vendetta after all

Here's the first non-hysterical piece I've seen on the IRS mess. Tea Party groups were not the only ones singled out by the IRS. Some "471 groups received additional scrutiny, a total that indicates a crackdown on politically active nonprofit groups that extends beyond the Tea Party outfits." Liberal groups were targeted for additional scrutiny too and at least one had their status denied. So far no Tea Party group has claimed their applications wasn't approved. No doubt more of them were targeted but only because they filed many more applications than anyone else. And this is still true:

“The real problem is that phony 501(c)(4) groups are exploiting the tax laws to protect donors who don’t want to be held accountable for vicious, deceitful political ads,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The good news about this pseudo-scandal is it spurred some action on Capitol Hill to address the larger issues.

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which is conducting its own IRS investigation, has introduced legislation with Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski to require all groups spending money on politics to disclose their donors.

“These problems will continue as long as there is an absence of clear and enforceable rules,” Wyden told reporters yesterday. “In the absence of clear and enforceable rules the bureaucracy pretty much makes it up as they go along.”

This would help. The deep pocket funders of the dark money groups don't care so much about the tax break as they do about keeping their donors secret. Force them to disclose their donors and they may lose interest in forming these groups at all. At worst, they couldn't hide behind fake grassroots front groups anymore. That would help some.

Your moment of Zen

Monkshood, a/k/a Wolfbane as it was used in Europe to kill wolves and mad dogs.



[Better if you click to embiggen.]

Nobody loves the IRS

Personally I prefer to call it a ginned up psuedo-scandal, but Josh is right about the politics of the IRS mess. GOP will be dining out on this one through 2014 and probably longer. This is Grade A prime rib for the angry base. No investigation, no irrefutable hard evidence will ever convince them they haven't been persecuted by the evel soshulist fascist liberal Dimmocrats to steal their First Amendment rights.

God save us if somehow this gets tied directly to the White House for real. Everybody loves a scandal and hates the IRS. The mass outrage will drown out everything else for months. Maybe years.

Congressional Cons challenge Issa on Benghazi

This is the funniest thing I read today. Apparently the little people at home are wondering why they never see their guy on the teevee. Thus, the Crackpot caucus demands a piece of Issa's action.

House Republican members are defying Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and five committee chairmen by endorsing a measure that would set up a special panel to investigate the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

A growing number of members on the committees with jurisdiction over the Benghazi matter — Intelligence, Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs — have signed onto Rep. Frank Wolf’s (R-Va.) resolution. [...]

Wolf told The Hill in an interview, “I think you want to bring together the very best minds, you want to focus like a laser beam ...

[Insert your own snark here]

Actually, it's even bigger than just the crackpots. Last I heard 146 GOPers have signed as co-sponsors. If Boehner won't bring it to the floor they intend to push it as an amendment to appropriations bills. Poor old Johnny really is going to go down in history as the weakest Speaker ever. [graphic via his vorpal sword]

I come to defend Holder, not condemn him

The AP phone records story is still developing so I don't have much to say yet. Still waiting for more facts to emerge from the noise. So far I've seen nothing to suggest the government acted illegally. As a TPM reader points out:

More important it is clear to anyone who understands what happens in this type of investigation that the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records. Those records came from the phone company not from AP. They relate to dates and times of phone calls not content. Under the law such a subpoena is perfectly proper and under the law Justice and the phone company must notify the party (in this case AP) that records were subpoenaed.

I think AP protests just a bit too much and seeks to smear Justice (knowing full well that many Republicans will jump on this quickly).

Which of course will be great for traffic. This is Drudge bait as tempting as pure crystal coke from Columbia to a junkie.

To be clear, it's vitally important to protect the freedom of the press, especially in its social mandate to investigate government wrongdoing. While it's apparent our present day media had mainly failed in that mission, devoting most of their time to inventing psuedo-scandals in order to drive traffic and make profits for their wealthy owners, we nonetheless need to continue to protect the media from government intimidation and protect whistleblowers from retribution when they assist the media in exposing government malfeasance.

All that being said, let's review why the DoJ started the investigation on the AP and its inside sources. This scoop was not the Pentagon Papers. They weren't exposing something like bombing Cambodia and lying about it, or the cover-up of the Mai-Lai massacre. The AP exposed an undercover, anti-terrorist operation that thwarted a bomb plot which would have killed Americans. In doing so, the AP jeopardized the life of an inside US intelligence asset and effectively forced a CIA operation that could have netted vital intelligence in stopping future terrorism to shut down.

Sorry, if that strikes me as more self-serving than noble. Finding it difficult to couch this one as serving the public. Feels more like serving the bottom line of the AP with a sensational scoop that actually endangered the public. So while it's far too easy for the government to claim national security as a cover for secrecy, in this one particular case I see no evidence Holder can't claim national security concerns drove the investigation. At least not so far.

Blame Congress for the IRS mess - Updated

Once you cut through the self-serving noise over the IRS psuedo-scandal, a few things become clear. Tea Party groups weren't really being targeted for their political beliefs. They were being asked to prove why they deserved a big tax exemption. And let's be real, if the name of your group stands for Taxed Enough Already, you're begging to be tied up in paperwork.

As I said before, I think most of the smaller groups were run by grifters who saw a prime opportunity to profit personally from the fear and anger of misinformed conservatives. More than one of them has been exposed as a fraud since the Kochs laid down that astroturf.

Also, I've seen no evidence President Obama had anything to do with it. He's not checking in with the IRS daily to give them a list of targets. He has no knowledge of their day to day operations. Anybody really think the CEO of a major corporation knows the intimate details of every manager's work day? It defies logic.

IRS was doing its job under the rules that Congress gave them, which were not at all clear. This is the smartest thing I've read about this so far. The real IRS scandal is in who was allowed to operate without challenge:

If that definition sounds murky—that is, if it’s unclear what 501(c)(4) organizations are allowed to do—that’s because it is murky. Particularly leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work. For example, Americans for Prosperity, which was funded in part by the Koch Brothers, was an instrumental force in helping the Republicans hold the House of Representatives. In every meaningful sense, groups like Americans for Prosperity were operating as units of the Republican Party. Democrats organized similar operations, but on a much smaller scale. (They undoubtedly would have done more, but they lacked the Republican base for funding such efforts.)

So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way. As Fred Wertheimer, the President of Democracy 21, a government-ethics watchdog group, put it, “it is clear that a number of groups have improperly claimed tax-exempt status as section 501(c)(4) ‘social welfare’ organizations in order to hide the donors who financed their campaign activities in the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.”

The real problem is the IRS was wasting time chasing the small fry while the big fish were allowed to freely cheat the system. President Obama can't fix that. Only Congress can, by making the rules clearer.

Update: Charlie Pierce has more on why the blame for this IRS mess is on Congress.

Your moment of Zen

Swarovski Kristallwelten | Wattens, Austria.



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Benghazi is the new circle derp

Obama is right. The Benghazi frenzy is a sideshow. Actually I would call it a freak show stuffed into a clown car, but not going to quibble about it. Certainly, it's painfully obvious why the GOPers are pushing it. With polling already being done showing she would blow anybody on both sides of the fence out of the race in 2016, they fear the Hillary.


[graphic via]

What may not be apparent, at least to those who don't watch the media players closely, is why our "both sides do it" journos suddenly got so interested in pushing such an obviously fake controversy and in fact, taking the GOP's side in blaming the White House. Kevin Drum thinks it boils down to just another fight over syntax.

No, it will be because the small group of reporters who are credentialed to the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room feels aggrieved that the press secretary told them something to their faces that concealed a bit of unseemly bureaucratic squabbling. It doesn't matter if the subject matter itself was important. In this case, it wasn't: the nickel version is that the State Department objected to the CIA adding a sentence making sure everyone knew they had warned about possible attacks beforehand, a statement that was both gratuitous and off subject. But trivial or not, Carney misled the reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room about this, and that makes it personal.

Never underestimate the power of a press corps that suddenly decides the story is personal. It may be a while before they let go of this.

Maybe Kev wasn't on the twitter when it happened. The quibbling over the definition of the word "editing" was just a cover for why they were mad. The real outrage was over Jay having played favorites before the briefing started. He held a background briefing beforehand and only a few of the very important journalists were invited. So Kevin is right, it's personal. Hell hath no fury like a insider journo who's been consigned to the B list.

Meanwhile Greg Sargent wryly notes it feels like the 1990s all over again. Shorter, less polite version: Petty scandal mongering because of perceived slights is not responsible journalism. It's tacky and makes them look a pack of jackals.

Rubio plays the fool - Updated

Well, I suppose Rubio's ridiculous demand will play well with the rubes:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Monday called on the IRS commisioner to resign in the wake of the agency's admission that staffers in the Cincinatti branch targeted conservative non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in the run-up to the 2012 elections.

You see, the well deluded base probably won't hear this on Fox News.

Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President Bush in 2008 and held by President Obama, left the agency in Nov. 9, 2012. Any pre-election misconduct would have had to occur on his watch. The current acting commissioner is Steven T. Miller -- a permanent replacement has not been nominated.

When quizzed on this small fact, Rubio's office responded that of course Shulman couldn't be responsible, he was just the actual commissioner. Clearly, Miller is still responsible because he was the deputy the whole time.

Pretty sure Rubio won't be blaming this highly placed bureaucrat either. [Via Steve M]

Lois G. Lerner has been selected as the director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service.

Chosen in December of 2005. Another Bush era appointee, so not guilty. I've also been wondering how many applications this division has to review in a year. Still not sure, but probably more than the 75 that were reviewed during the two years in question.

In this position, she will be responsible for administering and enforcing the tax laws that apply to more than 1.8 million organizations recognized by the IRS as exempt from tax.

Of course, not all of those are political front groups, but it does give us another clue about why the worker drones in that division may have been tempted to take shortcuts.

Update: Ed Kilgore has a good overview of psuedo-scandal fever and reminds BigMedia what their job is supposed to be.

So it would be nice if we could have a serious discussion of the abuse of tax exemptions to make it easier to pour obscene amounts of anonymous money into vicious and stupid campaign ads aimed at boosting the profits of the anonymous sources paying for them.

Of course, that will never happen because the same guys that should be investigated pour millions into their advertising revenue.

Your moment of Zen

Hop Brook. Belchertown, MA. [Steve Toutant photo]

A star is born

Commander Chris Hadfield is leaving the International Space Station today. He's been literally orbiting the earth for a long time. A couple of days ago he had to do a space walk to fix an ammonia leak on the station. His last gift to us earthlings is this video, karaoke from outer space.

America's Nuclear Nightmare

The most terrifying thing I've read yet about our nuclear waste disposal problem.

There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local. ...

West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that's home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren't eager to find out. ...

Today, West Lake's radioactive waste – all 143,000 cubic yards of it – sits on the outskirts of a former quarry with practically none of the standard safety features found in most municipal landfills. No clay liner blocks toxic leachate – or "garbage juice" – from seeping into area groundwater. No cap keeps toxic gas from dispersing into the air. This unprotected waste sits on a floodplain 1.5 miles away from the Missouri River. Eight miles downstream is a drinking water reservoir that serves 300,000 St. Louisans. Worst of all: The materials dumped in this populous metropolitan area will continue to pose a hazard for hundreds of thousands of years.

Meanwhile, "Republic Services also denies that it is dealing with a 'fire' – the company prefers the euphemism 'subsurface smoldering event.'"

This stuff is ticking time bomb. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when it explodes into an insoluble problem. Mankind will all be wanting to book that flight to Mars after that. [graphic via]

Eric Holder schools the bed wetters

I can't be the only one who finds it darkly amusing that the same gun hoarders who are preparing to engage in hand to hand combat with the gummit agents of tyranny piss their pants at the thought of closing Gitmo and giving those "dangerous" terrarists due process within the US of A's judicial system. As AG Holder mansplains to the would be warriors of freedom, we can do this.

The attorney general told graduates that federal courts are capable of handling terrorism cases, accusing critics of "ignoring reality."

"Let me be clear: those who claim that our federal courts are incapable of handling terrorism cases are not registering a dissenting opinion," he said. "They are simply wrong."

"Hundreds are properly, safely and securely held in our federal prisons, not Guantanamo, today. Not one has ever escaped custody. No judicial district has suffered a retaliatory attack of any kind," he said. "I defy anyone, on the merits, to challenge these assertions."

To which Republicans will answer: ZOMG! Obama wants to bring those Mooslim terrorists onto US soil and let them live right next door. The insider media will gravely report this development in the "controversy." There will be much polling to measure the daily public concern. Whereupon the very important pundits will predict what this all means for the President's agenda (almost always very bad) and give him earnest advice on to fix it.

What our mighty gatekeepers of BigMedia won't tell you is Eric Holder is absolutely right. We've had terrorists safely imprisoned on US soil for decades. All of whom were convicted under our regular judicial system. Fear of Gitmo prisoners is one of the lamest rightwing freakouts, ever.

Your moment of Zen

Happy mother's day to the moms. Orchids in Spain. [Xema Romero photo]

Rand Paul fires the first shot at 2016

I want to shoot myself for even saying the words Election 2016, but it's clear the battle flags are being planted already. In the race to be first out on the field, Rand Paul issues a call to arms to rally round the paranoid gun hoarders.

In a blast email Rand tells the true believers there's an “anti-American globalist plot against our Constitution," led by none other than President Barack Obama in league with the UN. They're coming to take yer guns and destroy Murika. But have no fear. Rand Paul is willing to lead the troops to glory. He has a battle plan ready to go.

Direct mail. Phones. E-mail. Blogs. Guest editorials. Press conferences. Hard-hitting internet, newspaper, radio and even TV ads if funding permits. The whole nine yards. Of course, a program of this scale is only possible if the National Association for Gun Rights can raise the money.

But that’s not easy, and we may not have much time.

In fact, if gun owners are going to defeat the UN’s schemes, pro-gun Americans like you and me have to get involved NOW!

So please put yourself on record AGAINST the UN Gun Ban by signing NAGR’s Firearms Sovereignty Survey.

But along with your survey, please agree to make a generous contribution of $250, $100, $50 or even just $35.

Freedom ain't free and yer gonna need those guns when Rand leads you into battle against the agents of tyranny. (And if that doesn't work out, Mr. Paul is all set up for nice sinecure with the gun lobby.) Is Murika a great country, or what? [photo via] and [graphic via], true patriots.

What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

By Capt. Fogg

There's a lesson to be learned from the trial of Guatemala's former dictator Efrian Rios Montt; ‘a man of great personal integrity . . . totally dedicated to democracy’ said Ronald Reagan, surprised upon visiting him in Honduras that Central America was composed of several countries. But few Americans will care or will even be aware that at long last he's been found guilty of genocide and war crimes.

The things that went on in Guatemala  were gruesome, horrifying and heart-breaking but I don't have the stomach to relate even part of it.  You can read about it here and if you do, if you can tear yourself away from Boston Bomber stories, School shooting stories' da scores' and Cleveland sex slaves long enough, perhaps you'll take a further moment to meditate and perhaps agonize over the part our country, always howling about freedom as if we invented it, played in yet another sordid and brutal horror.

Yes, Rios Montt is a monster like so many Latin American monsters in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere, all of whom were supported by the Land of the Free and even placed in power by violent  US assistance.  Rios Montt whose  squads were supported and advised by and trained by the Reagan administration, wasn't a Communist you see and that's what counts and so it didn't matter that he raped, tortured, brutalized attempted to murder an entire ethnicity because they were better off dead than Red. better off dead than getting in the way of  the very few and very rich. Red of course means looking for some hero to improve life from the hopeless, unchanging, grinding, disease ridden, starvation and poverty Central American Kleptocracy needs in order to provide a most excellent life for people like Rios Montt and his generals.

The 86 year old and frail monster has now been sentenced to 80 years in jail, although he claims he never got his hands dirty or bloody, as though that were grounds for clemency or forgiveness.

Who amongst us, the champions of freedom, has clean hands?  Kindly old avuncular Ron is dead, but he's still the hero who made the sun come up in America. His own Himmler, Ollie North continues to be admired and listened to and frankly my dear, America doesn't give a damn about any of the things we did in the name of protecting American Corporate imperialism from land reform or about how much innocent blood was soaked into foreign soil to do it.

Go on worrying about how dangerous it is to live in America, how expensive to fuel your three SUVs and how high your taxes are. There's a one in more than a million chance of some psycho shooting you after all and that Asian, Middle Eastern, central and South American blood isn't on your hands. You're not some bleeding-heart Liberal anyway.

Your moment of Zen

Spiral iceberg, Antarctica.

The taxman cometh

No longer having any trust in the first 12-24 hours of Twitter/Facebook/Media coverage of any breaking story, I'm reserving my outrage until I figure out what's going on with this IRS mini-scandal. I'm not at all comfortable with IRS scrutiny based on political beliefs but I'm not entirely sure that is what's happening here. I'm sure this is true.

She said that between 2010 and 2012, about 75 of these groups were selected for extra screening as part of a broader review of political advocacy organizations that were seeking tax-exempt status. Front-line IRS employees working in the tax-exempt unit in Cincinnati selected groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, she said, as a shorthand because of the proliferation of these groups in recent years.

I'm also remembering the IRS has been hit by austerity fever same as every other federally funded agency. Also, the applications for this particular status by politically motivated individuals has exploded in that time frame. So you have fewer workers reviewing umpteenth more applications and they took a shortcut to meet their quotas.

Have to agree with Think Progress here. The real problem is they used the wrong keywords. While it's true a lot of these Tea Party groups are fleecing the gullible rubes, they're just the grifters. It's the deep pocket front groups who are cheating on the codes.

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, for example, told the IRS that any political ads run by the group would be “limited in amount” and “would not constitute the group’s primary purpose.” Campaign finance reform advocates have argued that, in light of more than $70 million in “independent expenditure” ad spending, the group’s primary purpose is clearly campaign activity. But rather than register with the Federal Election Commission as a political committee, Crossroads GPS continues to claim that it is not such a group and need not publicly identify its funders.

Far as I know he's still getting away with it. The overworked IRS guys would have been better off plugging in the names of the big money NGOs and seeing how many media buys pop up.

Peak climate disruption

If we still had a functional BigMedia, this would be leading the nightly newscasts. Instead they'll be doing wall to wall coverage of BENGHAZZZZZZzzzzzzi, while our planet Earth burns.

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

The far north of this continent has been in a heatwave for weeks, while here in the south it's been the coldest spring since I moved here seven years ago. There are wild storms sweeping across the globe on a daily basis. Climate disruption is a far greater threat to our way of life than whether the State Department edited the talking points on a stupid memo. Yet, mark my words, every damn newscast and bobblehead pundit on TV will be parsing the difference between extremist and terrorist all weekend long. This real news won't make the cut.

A consensus of crackpots

There's a leadership crisis on Capitol Hill but it's not Obama who's the problem. According to the crackpot GOP caucus, John Boehner is failing to lead his troops to glory. Apparently the GOP's feckless chief is MIA and forcing Cantor to do the work. Not that he's having any better luck in corralling the crackpots. But this was the funniest critique.

Some of Boehner's chief critics in the House, like Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, said they haven't really seen a difference in style within the House leadership: it's still unsatisfactory to them.

"I would like to see him uphold the Hastert rule about bringing bills to the floor. We don't see that happening this congress, we did not see that happening last congress," Broun said. "They do seek members council and I've counciled our leadership to have, at a minimum, one bill on the floor every month to repeal Obamacare or parts of it. I think we need to do that once a month."

I'm sure he would have demanded they offer a repeal bill once a week except it would cut into their time off. Meanwhile from the world's greatest deliberative body comes this gem.

Mark Knoller: Senate GOP Leader McConnell says Pres Obama should really speak tomorrow about the adverse consequences of ObamaCare.

I read that last night and had the first belly laugh I've enjoyed in two weeks. These guys aren't only cracked, they're lazy. Now they want Obama to push their bogus propaganda for them too.

Your moment of Zen

Sign of the Cross. Blue Passion Flower. [source unknown]