IRS, it must mean, I’ll Return SHORTLY….
Just as soon as the agency figures out how to explain its latest government boondoggle. And as for the flaming liberals who read KCC with no cognitive thought process involved outside of old, tired, bob and weave tactics, rapid fire insults and topic changes thrown against the wall of reason until something sticks, just stop.
I’m tired of the “Doppler Effect,” defined as the tendency of stupid comments to seem smarter when they come rapidly. They’re still stupid.
So, the news is the IRS has been applying extra scrutiny to nonprofit applications that contain within their mission statements, a desire to “criticize how the country is run” or seek to educate the public on how to “make America a better place to live.” In essence designations that would indicate conservative political groups or leanings.
That doesn’t leave you cold? Maybe not, because it doesn’t affect you. But what if it did? You’re not immune, it can go both ways. There isn’t a much more powerful hammer in this nation than the IRS. And to the IRS, everything looks like a nail.
Here’s my question; when will the divisive partisan divide stand down long enough to allow law abiding Americans to say enough is enough regardless of party affiliation?
Maybe it’s starting, but I’m cynical enough to think there’s always a motive; nothing happens in the political arena just because it’s the right thing to do.
On Sunday, Sen. Susan Collins called the IRS moves a “truly outrageous” breach of public trust.
“It contributes to the profound distrust that the American people have in government,” the Maine Republican said on CNN‘s “State of the Union,” adding that President Barack Obama should offer a public condemnation of the IRS’ practices.
Then the President has to react, so Saturday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the President believes that the government should be staffed with “the very best public servants with the highest levels of integrity” and that “based on recent media reports, (the President) is concerned that the conduct of a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees may have fallen short of that standard.”
Here we go again,it’s not really a problem; it’s just a SMALL NUMBER of people, acting alone who fell short of the standard. Is that really what we’re looking at here?
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said at a March 2012 congressional hearing that his agency didn’t target conservative groups for political reasons.
“I can give you assurances. We pride ourselves in being a nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization,” Shulman said. “There is absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens when people apply for 501(c) (4) status.”
I might add, was appointed by President George W. Bush.
So for grins, let’s start with the commissioner’s testimony as a basis of truthiness and assume that as of March 2012, this targeting was absolutely was not taking place.
The first problem is Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s oversight subcommittee, said of his committee’s report on the subject that, “This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice.”
Boustany went on to add that the report “raises serious questions as to who at IRS, Treasury and in the Administration knew about this, why this practice was allowed to continue for as long as it did, and how widespread it was.”
Remember, that’s in 2010.
Then in June of 2011, officials at the IRS said, through an Inspector General’s draft report, that they knew that their agents were targeting conservative groups for additional scrutiny on tax documents. Lois Lerner, the Director of the Department in charge of this area, publicly admitted Friday for the first time that “agents used the keywords “tea party” and “patriot” to flag applications for further review,” but she stressed “that was done as a “shortcut” for picking applications to review, not out of “political bias.”
They have a lot of work to do and shortcuts make perfect sense to me. I’m sure Democratic Tea Party applications were given no more or less scrutiny than Republican Tea Party applications.
I don’t care if you’re a conservative, liberal, Libertarian, Democrat or Republican, this should send a cold chill up your spine and raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
Then Friday, the IRS apologized for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. “The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.”
That would be inappropriate targeting that, according to Commissioner Shulman, absolutely does NOT take place.
Are we all on the same page now?
As for low level misguided people being the only ones acting this all out, I would consider the “Director” of the department in charge of nonprofit applications to be a reasonably high level person in the food chain. She reports to the person who reports to the Commissioner and she was in charge. Make up your own mind how much power she had, but “low level,” no.
And even with the recent turn of events, the IRS has still not said when Commissioner Shulman “found out” that Tea Party groups were being targeted. I’m hoping he now knows.
You know what the IRS is cooking is bad when Democrats come out of the woodwork to take a stand against the agency. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, Chuck Todd suggested MORE Democrats should be “jumping all over the IRS story,” adding he expects this scandal to have more legs, politically in 2014 than any other issue.
And Fox New host Chris Wallace and Dennis Kucinich stated unequivocally that this was political targeting at its worst. Calling himself a “liberal Democrat” who does not celebrate Tea Party politics, Kucinich added politics has no place within the IRS;
“We can not have a condition in America where people’s politics are the basis for IRS attacks,” Kucinich said.
Asked whether he buys the IRS claim that this was an isolated issue involving only select IRS agents in Cincinnati, Kucinich said the buck stops at the top. “The tone is set from the top…We are in a hyper-partisan, intensely partisan condition in Washington. The polarization is damaging to our country.”
Wallace asked if Kucinich thought the IRS’s actions were straight up political targeting and Kucinich answered, “How can it not be?”
I’ll close with these thoughts. Well meaning people, 65% of US households, give an incredible amount of cash to nonprofits each year. Nearly $300 billion in charitable giving in 2012 alone. We are – and rightfully so – a charitable, caring, compassionate nation. The church I attend gives nearly $500,000 each year to KC inner city school projects, complete rebuilds in many cases. That’s part of what makes us who we are. We care about our fellow man.
If Director Lerner wants to go after questionable non profits, why not the ones flying under a 501c3 that really do little with the money donated other than support themselves while giving tiny percentages to the causes people think they’re donating to?
Why not look at the Top five offenders last year as ranked by a major nonprofit tracking firm for excessive overhead and administration costs?
5: Cherokee National Historical Society 58.2%
4: Union Rescue Mission Little Rock 62.1%
3: National Council of Negro Women 64%
2: Boys Choir of Harlem 66.3%
1: American Tract Society 68%
These organizations have CEO’s making excessive income, huge overheads, with little of the donated money making it to the cause.
Finally, we seem to have two hot issues brewing at the moment, Benghazi and the IRS. With the Benghazi talks, tension between the Clinton and Obama camps has to be at an all time high. The administration is doing its best to throw poor Hillary under the bus. How long do you think Bill is going to stand by and watch that happen without implementing a contingency plan?
The Daily Caller said sources close to the Clintons say that Bill Clinton has assembled an informal legal team to discuss how the Secretary of State should deal with the issue of being blamed for not preventing the Benghazi terrorist attack.
Stay tuned, things are getting interesting!
Time to do another poll and see how many people think an armed revolt may be necessary. Last number was 29% on May 2nd. In reviewing the polling metrics they excluded fans of Duck Dynasty from the survey.
Surely we can move the needle to 35% with the IRS and Benghazi stories.
Anybody who doesn’t think these people were following orders from high level people are dreaming. It will get interesting when some of these low level IRS people start talking to save their own hides. Another thing you didn’t mention is there are reports that the IRS was also targeting pro Israel groups and there are lawsuits pending about that. There are also reports of Romney campaign people not only being targeted by the IRS, but being audited by the Dept. of Labor trying to find dicrepencies in their hiring paperwork. It may never be proven, but I have a hard time thinking that this doesn’t go all the way to the White House. Who else would this all have been benefiting?
The IRS is nothing but a bully thug blood money collector, nothing more. Each administration in office uses the IRS thugs to harass whatever organizations they see fit to punish. Republicrats do it, demoblicans do it too.
Is anyone really actually surprised this happened is what I would like to know.
The Dude asks, “Is anyone really actually surprised this happened is what I would like to know.”
The sad commentary is I don’t think anyone is surprised at much of anything anymore. We’ve become numb and apathetic for the most part. We’ve totally lost track of the fact that this is our government, not theirs. They represent us, not themselves. But what do we do? Little or nothing but sit back and complain.
It all has to start local and build from there. Elections come and go, there’s little difference between any of the parties and 3rd parties who may have the right ideas can’t get attention from the media. Why? Once again, because there isn’t a ground swell of grass roots effort to force the cream to the top. If there really is cream any more, anywhere
We always think the problem is somewhere else. We like “our” reps, Congressmen, because we like the pork coming HOME. So we do whatever other State does, we vote our own back in. When everyone does that, nothing changes and here we go again.
We fawn over our “first black President” who promised us the most transparent, virtuous administration ever and we got what we always get. .
From Kennedy to Benghazi, will we ever know the real truth?
Wrong wilsun, everybody knows Clinton was the first black prez. 😉
Don’t worry, I think it is safe to say there are those of us out there giving the government enough rope to properly hang themselves. You have to let it get bad enough so the normal citizen is seeting with righteous anger at the whores-for-hire in elected office and is ready to take action against them.
That time is coming, patience is the key.
I believe it was no less an observer of the black experience than Maya Angelou that bestowed upon Slick Willie the First Black President designation.
To wit, he was raised by a single mother, loved jazz and the blues, greasy food and white women with big butts.
That’s hard to argue with. I concede your point.
Hopefully, the ba$tard step child of KCC will post something, for the 1,345th time, about hot tubs and I’ll regain some ground and prominence in this discussion.
As usual, thanks, Smarty.
The IRS has always been a tool used to bully those on the “outs”.
And while the media attention falls over it, the more the current administration continues to quietlygut basic civil liberties…
Article 2, Nixon impeachment;
1.He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.
Sound familiar, Nick?
Yep – was actually going to post Nixon’s whole articles of impeachment, instead I simply linked them: figured it was 50-50 whether anyone read them…
Understanding the context – now and then – I gave slightly lesser odds to.
So will we get to see Bronco Bama’s enemies list soon?
Enemies list? We ain’t got no enemies list. We don’t need no enemies list! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ enemies list!
…we got a stinkin’ Kill List.
The administration also went after phone records of reporters in the AP. I wonder if this will make some in the media less sympathetic to Obama and his administration?
The 900# gorilla in the room is the number of tax-exempts posing as charities. The IRS, practical political beast it is, tracts the way they think the ideology goes. They have their own agenda and no matter which guy or gal occupies the Oval Office, it will survive and prosper.
I am continually amazed you believe a Nation built on stolen land is going to deliver justice.
Orphan, I’m not sure I agree with your assumptions on my assumptions. I think justice is lost in this country. I believe it more every day.
A close friend of ours was a RN. She went back and got a Masters. Then, she got to thinking about law, went back and got her JD. She has a thriving private practice she’s built in 8 years. You know what she’s doing? Going back, getting another Masters, walking away from her law firm and going into family therapy. Why, you ask? Because she is so disillusioned with the criminal justice and family law system. She wins when she shouldn’t, loses when she shouldn’t and has come to see it has nothing to do with that lady on the scales with a blindfold over her eyes.
I don’t know where it fell apart or if it ever existed, but I had no preconceived notions that justice prevails, is alive and well or is even on life support.
And whether its genesis is found in how we came here to the “new land” or not, I don’t know.
I did see a great tee shirt with 4 Indian Chiefs on the front and the caption, “Ask us what happens when you don’t control immigration!”
Come help us get these Mexicans outta here Orphan!
No1 No! Help us with these darn Zulus!!
Orphan! Jump in Mike Fox’s De Lorean and then get these Cro Magnums out of here!
This small breeze, blowing back the curtain on the malodorous initiatives and intent of our most powerful Government agency isn’t even a bump in the road for the liberal, ineluctable juggernaut, that now suffuses most all levels of local, state and federal government. Thinking that the cries from the proletarian abyss, at this abeyance of rectitude and probity in the highest offices in the land will bring entrenched kleptocrats with sinecure and the support of hive-minded, brain washed, bread and circus electorate to their feet with cries of “AUX BARRICADES!” is a crack pipe dream folks.
Already, exculpatory talking points in combination with the usual smug patronization from the MSM are in place, ready for consumption by those wet by every rain and blown by every wind.
This IRS face plant should be Res Ipsa Loquitur, instead, as the 24 hour news cycle continues, legerdemain, exegesis and tautology will supercede reason, common sense and indictments.
The triple threat of an IRS, T Rexing conservative buttholes, Ben Ghazi and the requisition of phone records from the Associated Press should shake these rogues and political mountebanks from lofty heights, but this will result in yet another political feint and then defeat for those ever diminishing citizens who languish under the suzerainity of anarcho tyranny and a president who rules by fiat.
Confirmation bias rules the day, and it won’t take much (10 days?) for this story to become dissected into small enough parts for the MSM to swallow, then scat into our waiting mouths for sustenence in the new America.
A politically weaponized IRS is nothing new, what is new, are the targets and the metaphorical (For now.) force of arms inflicting politics like a Chinese re education program in the “Great Leap Forward”. Make no mistake about it, the power of the IRS is in every way, comparable to the despotic, arbitrary and capricious power of Chairman MAO, in political and economic terms, sans execution from the end of that famous gun barrel (For now.).
Hillary’s slatternly rebukes at the Ben Ghazi hearings is more evidence of a hubris born of certain power and certain result in the face of fewer and fewer challenges from the castrata that now make up her political opponents.
Eric Holder’s requisition of journalist’s phone records is, as has been mentioned, “chilling”.
The road to the unthinkable, is not paved with slight departures from the path our fathers paved in our freshly remembered past, it is 90 degree turns into chaos and stupidity, sold to us all, by a corrupt 4th estate.
Thanks, as usual, for your well worded thoughts, Chuck. In my humble opinion, I think this may have more legs than even Benghazi. Why? There’s a pre-existing hatred for the IRS! At no time should people have their private records looked into because of any political belief of any kind. That pisses people off. Add that to the fact they hate the IRS anyway and I think that makes for something that will make it past the first 24 hour news cycle.
There is, as I said, a perfect storm brewing. Call me naïve, I just hope there’s enough coming to the surface, AP snooping, IRS, Benghazi, even Bloomberg adding a side order of dirt, my hope is it will go somewhere. Wasted thought; likely. But I can hope.
We’ll see buddy, we’ll see…
Ok Paul, this story has traction on CNN and MSN.
Your Tea Leaves are far more prescient than mine, I hope.
It ain’t over, Chuck. Regardless of the mindless blathering of our irrelevant douche bag, this is going somewhere, just like I said.
And like I said in my opening of the story, we see the same bob and weave, personal insults, topic changes and revisionist comments. 501c4’s are where the BIG crooks are. While I’m being accused of not being smart enough to know what I’m talking about, A$$hat isn’t smart enough to discern between 3 and 4 in the non profit world.
This story isn’t about the deficit, but also as my story said, the anonymous big mouth can’t address a fact based debate on a base of fact and staying on topic. It wasn’t about Hillary for Preseident, it’s about lies surrounding Benghazi! It’s not about Obama Care, it’s about a corrupt administration that PROMISED transparency and ethics on a level not previously seen.
Jealousy; it’s not pretty. While KCC’s ba$tard step child throws dirt at someone writing a real story under his real name, all he can do is brag about 250 comments on his “national blog” without ever having to let anyone actually see it, because it’s not real.
All from the person who turns to TKC, until he realized he’s even less relevant there, and makes vile comments about KCC, Hearne, comments and promised to NEVER comment here again.
Not only is the Always Right Harley WRONG, he’s a liar. And that doesn’t mention his endless, baseless law suit threats and impersonating an attorney.
He’s headed for unwanted exposure. Bet it.
One other comment, Chuck. You know what has made this site fun? Its comments like yours. You discus it, comment, disagree all you like, but on a basis of ideas and facts, not personal attacks.
Unlike some asshats on here, I openly admit to having made a mistake or two in the past and having been wro, wro, wro, wro, wong at times. Everyone has. Without exception.
Yesterday, you said, “This small breeze, blowing back the curtain on the malodorous initiatives and intent of our most powerful Government agency isn’t even a bump in the road for the liberal, ineluctable juggernaut….” and comments were also made by others that this story wouldn’t survive the 24 hours news cycle. And, it had every likelihood of that being true, given the media’s treatment of serious issues.
Then today, you write, “Ok Paul, this story has traction on CNN and MSN. Your Tea Leaves are far more prescient than mine, I hope.” That’s common discourse, that’s what makes it fun here and thanks for being that person.
But when you have someone with no cognitive thought skills who wants to claim this is all a smoke screen because the Republicans want to shut down the story of how well the economy is doing, well, that’s so stupid it’s laughable. Funny, I guess, if you think watching a kid fall off the short bus is funny; it’s really not.
The Republicans have FOX, the Dems have every other network. So his accusation is, the Republicans can keep a hot news story, like how well the President is doing with the deficit, buried by digging up dirt on Hilary, AP and the IRS?
Sure they can……makes perrrrrfect sense to me!
Some people can just suck the life out of a rainbow and unicorn party, I’m frankly tired of it.
😉
I wake up every day wanting to be wrong about everything.
Hearne print this!!!!!
WTF…wilson..you thought this just started? You’re not smart enough to understand
this has been going on forever. The winner gets the spoils. Why live in poverty
at $160K as a congressman/live 4 to a room/sleep in your office/then take
payoffs to get legislation passed and sell your soul to the highest bidder.
While you were out somewhere in africa…I worked the halls of the political
scene. Do you really think this was done on just one side. When this story gets the
full airing..you’ll see that under bush the left organizations got the special
treatment too…..its common practice in d.c…..i’ll explain later dude.
the repubs set this whole thing up with their court case…and if you did any
kind of reading these non profits are nothing but scams..these political
organizations are nothing but money laundering machines…but someone
like yourself..with little background in the real world might not understand
that.
What about rove and his boys…or the koch boys…those non profits are nothing
but legally certified payoffs for getting things done. Do you really think the
koch boys care a crap about education in florida where they dumped 500,000
to get legislation passed…or that they cared about unions in ohio to drop
another million ….
see …you have a very uneducated look on the world. Along with smarmyman
you’ve been wrong on every issue and this will be prove you wrong again.
Then you talk about the IRS…yes…they are cracking down on these political
non profits that are nothing but payola for the politicians disguised as
contributions. And if you had any brains you’d know it was
the republicans who fought for these phony operations and they perfected
them…and i’m willing to guess there’s a lot more to this whole thing
than you as an amateur scribe would ever know.
HERE’S HARLEYS TAKE: john mccain said these non profits would be the
biggest scandal in american history. Obama tried to stay away from them.
The supremes validated them. I’m betting money that this billion dollar
payola funds have been used for a lot more than just buying tv ads and
bumper stickers for candidates. John mcain…mccain feingold author…
said it himself…both sides are using it to buy the politicians and i’m willing
to bet that there’s millions of dirty dollars in those slush funds. It’s coming
home to roost…the republicans wanted this case settled this way…its going to
blow the entire political system in america up….and many people on the left
have fought it….rove/reed perfected it…and now HARLEYS SAYS…we’re
about to see what the progressives and the few republicans like mccain
said would happen is and has occurred.
NOW BENGHAZI WHICH YOU HOPE KILLS OFF HILLARY’S ELECTION IN
2016. Don’t hold your breath little buddy. If you heard and listened to what
mullen and his coauthor said (and what issa would not allow into his hearing)…
hillary had little to do with the decision. don’t hold your breath smarmyman
…or chuckles the sad clown…or dude….this is again political theatre. The facts will prove this….i guarantee it…
And just like the other phony b.s. you and the fox boys tried to stir up
it’s just another way to divert attention from what obama has done
since taking over.
LETS TALK ABOUT THAT..
More tax revenue from a booming economy that they don’t know what to
do with the money…..dow over 15,000…record profits….the oil crisis
literally over…so much money to come from oil revenues that the debt
will be non existent in 2020…..housing market on huge rebound….
home prices climbing fast…and UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINSTRATION
RIGHT NOW…ECONOMISTS ON BOTH SIDES OF AISLE ARE WORRIED/
CONCERNED…THAT THE DEFICIT IS COMING DOWN TOO FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So for all you pseudo intellectuals with your fox new talking points and your
dreams of trying to drag this nation down….FORGET ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!
Harley is always right…
I’VE BEEN RIGHT ON THE MAJOR ISSUES….THIS TOO WILL PASS….
THE WORLD IS CHANGING…AND HOPEFULLY WE LAST AS A CIVILIZATION
AS WE DESTROY OUR PLANET….AND THIS BOOM IS JUST STARTING…MISSOURI HAS
SO MUCH MONEY THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT…
take that money..put back into the economy and we’ll really see how
great obamas program was…….lets get serious boys….the man saved america!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
so keep trying little buddy. You’ve never proven harley wrong..and you never
will.
OH AND WHINEY BOYS HERO, ROMNEY….he’s a crook too…
sorry for the rush…been busy…but i had to put the kcc crowd in their place
when they get way out of wack on issues that they know nothing about.
have a great day.
Harlinator, read my first post- I basically said what you did about the IRS kerfluffle, in a lot less words. Benghazi is smokescreen and theater and much ado about nothing and Herr Hillary will win in ’16 regardless of what anyone thinks.
If i was a republican politician right now in d.c…i would pray that this
whole irs thing would go away. Theres fire in those files…its going to
blow up in their face. The irs knows whats happened…they’ve seen where
the money trail leads….and i’m wiling to bet that when the b.s.clears
that we’re going to see the biggest scandal in american history…
payoffs for plahing like we’ve never seen before…and i’m predicting that
if the real truth leaks out the repubs and koch and rove/reed and the
rest of those astro turf non profits that tried to finagle the system are going
to jail.
If we thought the s and l scandal was big…if we thought the mortgage
crisis was big….boys…hold on to your hats….this is going to blow the
roof off the liars and cheats who screwed over the nation.
Remember…the repubs invented and perfected these phony money laundering
machinges….the left/dems were totally against them….
it’s not going to be pretty for either side.
If i was a repub…i’d be shaking in my boots right now….because once
the REAL STORY hits….its going to shake the entire american system…from
top to bottom.
But the truth is we all knew we were being screwed by these guys…its been
a game…but now its going to be a blood bath.
When the facts come out why they were lookign into those tax filings we’re
going to see a lot of crap…but probably noone goes to jail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hey little man…never heard of daily caller…
but if you read the headlines ofthat site they make you look like a fool…
HOLDER: says ap probe was part of aleak that was serious to american
security. what did you write?
and its headline contadict everything you’ve written
While some people scan a story and come up with outlandish interpretations of what was said, written or meant. we now see a criminal investigation opened into what the IRS has done. But as someone who has worked with multiple non profits for years, this article discussed only 501c3’s. Thats who the IRS focused on while the acting Director issued a memo telling staff to stay away from looking into c4’s. For the uneducated but fast to condem, 501c4’s are where the real dirt is. They masqurade as Social Welfare organizations when they are truly Political Advocacy groups. And they exist on both sides of the aisle. That’s where the real money is hidden with donors as anonymous as a loud mouthed bragger with no facts to back himself up!
Just as ugly are the c3’s who use gift in kind donations of product and account for the donations at full retail, greatly lowering the spend on admin % ! It’s all an ugly game all the way around.
It all needs to be examined but on balance, not just a focus on one group. There wouldn’t be a criminal investigation if there wasn’t a problem. And once again we see flaming liberals would rather attack on a personal basis than pay attention to facts and story line.
That is the shame, not holding Obama to the same standards we held Bush to in the past. Different party, same tactics and the beat goes on. He’s a SOB but damnit Virlene, he’s our SOB.
It is the institutionalism of the IRS which lends itself to political posturing. What is more chilling is how few who voted for Obama call him to task when he plays the political cards. After all, he was elected because he was an outsider, didn’t play those games.
While the charity for politics is the cancer of non-profits, the rest of the crowd is just as sleazy about how they handle their funds.
The public and its leaders let the attempted coup against FDR fade quickly away. Despite all saying there was a need to get to the bottom of it.
History may not repeat itself but it certainly rhymes often enough.
The acting Commissioner resigns; I’m glad this was only relegated to low level, know nothing, small time employees acting as a little rouge group.
(Some people just don’t know what they are talking about)
Penn Jillette, one of the most liberal guys out there says on Imus this morning; all those right wing whack jobs we thought were crazy are ending up being right! We live in interesting times.
Too bad it’s just us ‘merica hate’n, gun toten Bible readin publicans diggin up dirt to cover for how well the economy is doing!