The Lie That is the Obama Administration

Published: Fri, 05/24/13

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In This Issue:
The White House Was Involved With IRS By E.J. Smith
The Lie That is the Obama Administration By E.J. Smith
What I Learned in Paris: Part III 2013 By Richard C. Young
Where was Obama during the Seven-Hour Benghazi Crisis? By Richard C. Young
An Independent Counsel Is Needed Now! By E.J. Smith
National Treasury Employees Union and Colleen Kelley: Working against Americans By E.J. Smith
R.I.P. Ray Manzarek By E.J. Smith
AFTER EARTH Survival Tips By E.J. Smith
Washington, Not Cincinnati, Orchestrated Tea Party Application Investigations! By E.J. Smith
Who Is Taki Theodoracopulos? By Richard C. Young
A Flat Tax and Consumption-Based Fees Are Indeed the Answer By Richard C. Young
Americans Benefit from Letting Congress Pry Open this Nasty Can of Worms By E.J. Smith
GHOST: U.S. Navy’s Stealth Surface Vessel The Editors
Stacking the Deck By E.J. Smith
Eliminate the IRS’ Role in Implementing and Enforcing Obamacare By E.J. Smith
No Amnesty for Illegals By Richard C. Young

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The White House Was Involved With IRS

“Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. ‘He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?’ asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot,” writes Kimberley Strassel at The Wall Street Journal.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney cut-off a reporter’s question as “preposterous” that the president “wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those…”

“Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is ‘outraged’ and ‘angry’ that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to ‘operate with absolute integrity.’ Even when he does not,” concludes Strassel.

“You needn’t believe that Barack Obama personally texted IRS agents and instructed them to harass conservatives to know that he disdains the constitutional order. The evidence is in the legislation he signed. Both the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank create boards with utterly (in the case of Dodd-Frank) and nearly (in the case of Obamacare) unreviewable power. Both are the subjects of lawsuits challenging their constitutionality,” writes Mona Charen at National Review Online.

Charen rightly concludes, “At his Thursday press conference, Obama promised that if ‘there’s a problem in government, we’ll fix it.’ But his overweening signature legislation guarantees that power will be abused. Shielding government agencies from judicial and congressional review is an open invitation to the kind of misuse a wiser person would guard against. Wiser men did. They created our constitution, which Obama and his progressive allies flout.”

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What I Learned in Paris: Part III 2013

Last post I told you that Debbie and I would concentrate on the 6^th arrondissement for your first trip to Paris or, for that matter, on most Paris trips, where you will be encamping in the historic St. Germain-des-Pres literary café district. How great for you. Historic bistros like Brasserie Lipp, Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots and Le Select are each pieces of its former bohemian history. It’s almost mandatory to while away an afternoon at a sidewalk café that is, if you can escape the cigarette smoke with a glass or two of Cotes du Rhone (rouge) or Sancerre (blanc) and watch the world parade by. Don’t go near what is usually abominable French coffee or the generally roadhouse fare that has become the norm at the chain-owned bistros.

One exceptional bistro is the Nemrod located on Rue du Cherche-Midi, one of our favorite streets on the Rive Gauche. At the ‘Rod, you’ll find Salers beef, great salads, and Pommes Frits, along with all 10 of the Crus Beaujolais. I am familiar with no other bistro or high-end restaurant in America or France where you regularly find all 10 of the Crus Beaujolais. As my favorite Sommelier, Rajat Parr, writes (Read: Secrets of the Sommeliers), “A special bottling of Domaine Jean Foillard Morgon the Cuevee Corcelette comes from sandy soils, not the granite schist of the more commonly seen Morgan Cote du Py. It is a must buy if you see it on a wine list.” So the casual Nemrod is not to be missed. Debbie and I were introduced to the Nemrod by our friend David Lebovitz, who runs some of the best small group food and wine tours in France. More on David in coming posts.

Away from bistros, book all of your restaurant reservations, on line where possible, at least a month in advance. Plan to book at 8:00 or later for dinner and remember that the majority of high-end Paris
restaurants are closed on Sunday and often on Saturday as well. In coming posts, I’ll be giving you loads of food and wine intelligence from not only the 6^tharrondissement, but also from other Paris arrondissements that Debbie and I know well. And I would remind you of my archived What I Learned in Paris posts from the last few years. You can print out the entire series for a virtual mini-bible on visiting Paris and beyond (especially Provence and Normandy, both must visits).

In advance of my next post, I want to give you a tip on a tiny and sometimes impossible bistro to get into. Like so many of our favorites, I would book (a must) for lunch when the produce is freshest, the crowds the thinnest, and the prices the best you will find (such as that can be). Try for the table by the front window at Le Timbre. This stamp-size bistro (20 or so seats) is on a quiet side street off Blvd. Raspail, at 3 rue Sainte-Beuve (closed Sunday and Monday).

Finally, to put you in just the right Parisian frame of mind order the CD “CAFÉ DE FLORE PARIS.” Debbie and I listen to it a couple of times a week.

A bientôt,

Dick

Americans deserve an answer. As Pat Buchanan writes:

The Benghazi issue is of far greater gravity. Still, Obama’s sins here as well seem to be those of omission, not commission.

The president was apparently completely in the dark about the urgent requests from Benghazi for more security. Obama was also apparently completely out of the loop during the seven-hour crisis of Sept. 11-12, when Ambassador Stevens was assassinated, calls for help from Benghazi were denied and two heroic ex-Navy SEALs died fighting to defend U.S. personnel from the roof of that CIA installation.

No one seems to know where Obama was that night.

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An Independent Counsel Is Needed Now!

Yes, stay shocked about the IRS scandal advises Peggy Noonan in her blog at The Wall Street Journal:

Which gets us to soon-to-be-former IRS chief Steven Miller’s testimony today before the House Ways and Means Committee.

It gave a bit of a shock. He’s the head of an agency accused of major wrongdoing but his attitude was arrogant, nonresponsive, full of gamesmanship. His general tone? I am insulated, baby. You can’t touch me. You can make your little speeches and I’ll endure them with my best approximation of a poker face, but at the end of the day what can you do? I’m leaving. I have a pension. You can’t prove a thing It was so bad that by the end it occurred to me he might be a secret whistleblower who’s trying to enrage Congress into digging in and finding out what really happened to the IRS, and how, and when, and who did it, and what the rest of the administration knew.

Colleen Kelley is the president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) which represents 150,000 federal employees across 31 agencies, including the IRS. This union leadership role has its privileges. As Andrew Stiles at National Review Online writes, “Since Obama took office, she has been to the White House at least eleven times to meet with high-ranking officials such as Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to visitor logs. She has also met directly with the president and the first lady.” Stiles continues, “The Hill in a May 2012 profile observed that Kelley ‘has had a hand in every major deficit negotiation’ since Republicans retook the House in 2010; she ‘has tangled with the Tea Party and gone up against GOP standard-bearers Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.).’”

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R.I.P. Ray Manzarek

Ray Manzarek, the founding keyboardist of the Doors, died of cancer Monday at age 74. Mandalit del Barco at National Review Online writes:

One of the biggest selling bands of all time — and one of the most controversial — The Doors came together in 1965, after Manzarek moved to Los Angeles and recruited Jim Morrison to sing with his college band. Manzarek grew up on Chicago’s south side and resisted piano lessons when he was young, until he heard Chicago blues and jazz on the radio. His keyboard playing on such Doors classics as “Light My Fire,” “Riders on the Storm,” “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” and more provided a blues and jazz counterpoint to Morrison’s poetic swagger.

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AFTER EARTH Survival Tips

As summer approaches, get ready for Hollywood’s take on the apocalypse. You can check out the trailer for Will Smith’s upcoming movie After Earth. But my favorite part about the After Earth website is the survival tips it offers up from survivalist Les Stroud. He’s best known for his Survivorman series. Stroud is currently on location surviving somewhere alone for 10 days while filming. He always offers sound advice in case you’re ever in a tough spot. His best-known advice is “Keep calm. You sweat, you die.”

“From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, according to both IRS sources and the inspector general’s report released in mid-May,” writes Eliana Johnson at National Review Online.

Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to exercise tight control over these applications, creating both a backlog in application processing and frustration among Cincinnati agents waiting for direction.

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Who Is Taki Theodoracopulos?

Perhaps not surprisingly, Taki is a Greek and a wealthy and quite controversial Greek at that (Taki’s Magazine). In the May issue of Chronicles, Taki wrote, “Our very own Fifth Columnist neocons, the Kristols, Abramses, Wolfowitzes, Perles, Feiths, Frums, and others, are still being listened to by naïve Americans instead of being silenced for their criminal propagandizing leading up to the (Iraq) war. Der Sturmer was shut down after the Nazi defeat. The Weekly Standard is still going. Go figure, as they say.”

My Cato Institute friend Richard Rahn tells readers, “The tax code is so complex that no individual can understand it, including those who work for the IRS. That does not keep those who work there, though, from threatening everyone else for not understanding what they themselves do not understand. Many seem totally ignorant of the protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution and the American ideal of a civil society. The type of arrogant, mean-spirited, aggressive, biased and hypocritical incompetence by many IRS employees that has been revealed in the congressional hearings and other investigations would not be tolerated in most organizations.”

Let’s allow Congress to do its job.

“The moment a prosecutor — special or otherwise — takes over, the public flow of information stops. All witnesses will claim that the pendency of a criminal investigation means they cannot discuss the matter 'on advice of counsel.' They will cease cooperating with congressional investigators,” writes an insightful Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online.

Juliet Marine Systems is a maritime technology think tank that is developing innovative solutions for naval and commercial applications.

Juliet Marine Systems seeks to assure fleet force protection in response to small vessel terrorist attacks against our Navy and coalition ships. There is a clear and present danger of these tactics being used against the U.S. Navy throughout the world and in our home ports. These same innovative technologies, applied to commercial needs, will provide a significant decrease in transit time and increase in energy efficiency, resulting in the savings of thousands of gallons of fuel daily.

Our Navy is in a revolutionary period of change. Historic military tactics combined with modern materials and technology present a formidable fleet protection challenge for our Navy today. One of the greatest threats to our Navy is low tech vessel attacks with conventional explosives, as seen on October 12, 2000, when the USS Cole was attacked, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others and in the continued success of pirates. As a maritime systems think tank, Juliet Marine Systems provides offensive, defensive and ISR solutions that are developed in a skunk works operation able to rapidly invent and construct needed technologies and systems for the Navy and armed forces. We have already developed a surface variant of a supercavitating craft and are planning to apply our unique technology in a UUV prototype.

While the GHOST is a surface vessel, the hydrodynamics of the twin submerged buoyant tubular foils are also a test bed for Juliet Marine’s next planned prototype, a long duration UUV. The GHOST is a revolutionary proprietary technology vessel platform that will assure force protection through stealth fighter/attack capabilities along with integrated situation awareness. These vessels would create a protective fleet perimeter, providing sensor and weapons platforms, allowing no surface or subsurface intrusions.

The GHOST is a combination of stealth fighter aircraft and attack helicopter technologies packaged in a marine platform. The awesome capabilities of GHOST are designed to provide a marine surface and subsurface platform for tracking and identification of multiple targets. Systems for integrating on-board weapons will be designed to be capable of multi-target firing solutions while GHOST operates at very high speed. These weapons integration systems will also allow for attacking several targets simultaneously with a variety of weapons systems options.

The same capabilities that have made helicopters valuable to get to hard to reach locations fast, will apply to the GHOST in commercial applications in the maritime environment. Crew rotations or resupply runs for critical items to off-shore oil rigs can be accomplished two to three times faster than the craft currently in use and would be far less expensive and have fewer weather restrictions than using helicopter assets. The GHOST is two to three times as fast as most ferries in use today.

Features:
• Supercavitating Hull
• Reliable Gas Turbines
• Revolutionary Propulsion
• High Speed Transit
• Manned/Unmanned
• Unparalleled Speed
• Long Range
• Outstanding Stability
• Large Weapons/Payload Capacity
• Enclosed Weapons Bay
• Air Transportable
• Three Crew Operation
• Scalable

Source: Juliet Marine Systems, Inc.

Recent News: Keeping the Straits of Hormuz Open – January 10, 2012
US Navy/USPTO have removed Secrecy Orders previously applied to GHOST – August 10, 2011

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Stacking the Deck

You can bet President Obama is going to try and stack the deck at the D.C. Circuit Court, the nation’s second most powerful.

E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse,
home of the D.C. Circuit Court.

Yesterday, Sri Srinivasan was confirmed by the senate 97-0. This splits the court 4-4 between judges nominated by a Democratic and Republican President. “One big problem: The court doesn’t need the judges. The D.C. Circuit is among the most underworked court in the federal system. Lawyers can under most statutes now bring challenges to federal agencies in either the D.C. or a local circuit. Liberals prefer the Ninth Circuit, while conservatives used to favor the Fourth but might now choose the Fifth. In any case this means fewer cases for D.C.,” from Review & Outlook in The Wall Street Journal.

You haven’t seen anything yet. “As it collects data on potential violators of Obamacare’s coercive mandates, the IRS will be aided by the creation of a new Federal Data Services Hub, which will allow information to be collected and shared between the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, the several states, and the IRS,” writes Jeffrey Anderson at The Weekly Standard.

Moreover, Obamacare will require Americans to update the IRS regularly on what’s going on in their lives. Marriages, divorces, job changes, moves, pay raises, even changes in numbers of hours worked—these are all things on which the IRS will expect to be kept well informed. During congressional testimony last summer, Rep. Tim Walberg (R.-Mich.) asked IRS official Nina Olson, “Do you believe that most Americans are going to update the IRS or state exchanges when they change jobs, get married, move states, whatever?” “I think it’s going to be a very great learning curve,” Olson replied. “I think it will be a surprise to taxpayers if they don’t update their information.”

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No Amnesty for Illegals

I just returned from Paris. Anyone who votes for amnesty for illegals is paying no attention to what has been going on in France, Sweden and England to name three obvious examples of immigration disaster. Pat Buchanan lays the issue out for you in spades. Pat offers:

After a British soldier wearing a Help for Heroes charity T-shirt was run over, stabbed and slashed with

machetes and a meat cleaver, and beheaded, the Tory government advised its soldiers that it is probably best not to appear in uniform on the streets of their capital.

Both murderers were wounded by police. One was photographed and recorded. His message:

“There are many, many (verses) throughout the Quran that says we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our land women have to see the same. Your people will never be safe.”

According to ITV, one murderer, hands dripping blood, ranted, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

Both killers are Muslim converts of African descent, and both are British born.

Wednesday also, Stockholm and its suburbs ended a fourth night of riots, vandalism and arson by immigrant mobs protesting the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69-year-old.

“We have institutional racism,” says Rami Al-khamisi, founder of a group for “social change.”

Sweden, racist?