"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan
May 14, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
The IRS can force Conservative groups to tell them what they had for breakfast a year ago, but don’t you dare ask Hillary Clinton if she’s sick.
Somebody should. She looks sick: Plumper, wider, too tired to comb her hair, wearing mismatched pants suits, she looks like someone who has been through a health crisis.
So why is everyone mad at Karl Rove for asking?
Because there are rules that apply to some people and not to others!
The Rules are very specific. The first is never say anything bad about Hillary.
Next: if you mess up in a government job, whoever is ready to retire and/or has nothing to do with the particular scandal, gets to be the one who is "fired.”
If you really mess up, you get a bonus.
Examples abound, but let’s start with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
After a checkered career misrepresenting Obamacare and spending $677 million on a website that didn’t work, Sebelius retired, but stuck around for a couple of weeks to, horrors! Train her replacement, but mostly to qualify for a taxpayer-funded pension for life.
This for a woman who would have been fired in the private sector.
IRS officer Lois Lerner went on paid leave after taking the Fifth, then retired with a $100,000-per-year pension. She still isn’t talking.
And this week Dr. Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health in the Dept. of Veterans Affairs was picked to be "fired” for everything that’s gone wrong at the VA.
He was perfect. Shinseki wouldn’t quit and Petzel was already going to retire anyway.
According to The Rules, the cast of characters must change quickly.
The Administration claimed it had "sought and accepted” IRS interim commissioner Steven Miller’s resignation in 2013. Although he was only on the job for six months, he was the guy picked to go.
Daniel Werfel followed. Serving as IRS acting administrator for eight months, the Administration announced he had quietly "left public service altogether,” to "spend more time with his family.”
To be awarded bonuses, though, The Rules state you can’t just be bad at your job, you have to mess up royally.
That’s why after the Internal Revenue Scandal broke, it was natural for the IRS to award its employees $62.5 million, and bonuses amounting to $843,000 to employees at the Phoenix office of the Department of Veterans Affairs after 40 vets died from lack of medical care.
As for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Well, she thinks she should be rewarded with the presidency for the job she did during and after Benghazi, and after refusing to classify Boko Haram as a terrorist group.
But reward/retirement rules are not a slam dunk. Nope. The president, the vice president, the attorney general, the former secretary of state and other officials have to say, "This is unacceptable,” at each instance of governmental misconduct. They don’t have to mean it, just say it.
It helps if they add they’re "Mad as hell,” like Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki or as "angry” as President Obama has consistently been through all his scandals.
And of course there has to be the perfunctory promise to "get to the bottom of it,” make sure "it never happens again,” while their "hearts go out to the families…”
Outrage is enough. Later on "They” can say the scandals are "phony,” or without a "smidgen” of scandal and that’s that!
Unfortunately we see The Rules spreading everywhere.
So it’s okay for Bill Ayers, member of the Weather Underground, to be a welcomed speaker on campuses, while Condaleeza Rice is called a war criminal by the kids on campus.
It’s okay for a Florida teacher, Swornia Thomas, to scold and prohibit a little 12-year-old boy from reading his Bible during free reading time.
A school board can have a New Hampshire father, William Baer, arrested at a school board meeting for protesting a sexually explicit required reading assignment for his 9th grade daughter.
And, the "War on Women?” Well, a female candidate could be left off the ballot and excluded from a poll of candidates if her party doesn’t like her.
It happened to Marisa DeFranco in Massachusetts. But, there must be some mistake. She’s a Democrat! Surely just because she criticized Obamacare and has her own opinions, that shouldn’t make a difference.
Should it?
Could it be that there are some people "They” don’t want to hear from and some "They” do?
I guess so. Attorney General Eric Holder is still allowed to vent his considerable racial anger at our "racist” America, this time at Morgan State University’s commencement.
But, curiously, the attorney general had nothing to say when Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) told the Washington Post that Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) doesn’t vote according to the color of his skin.
According to The Rules, Clyburn’s remarks are not racist.
So while The Rules rule, Americans in Benghazi are still dead. Sick veterans die without medical care. And convicted Wikileaks Pvt. Bradley Manning gets approval from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for taxpayer-paid hormone therapy and surgery to become a woman.
The Rules are big on campus where universities cave to anyone insulted by anything:
Charity events on Stanford and Dartmouth campuses featuring "All you can eat tacos” on Cinco de Mayo are cancelled because they are offensive to those of Mexican heritage.
A photo op with a camel on a Minneapolis college campus is cancelled as "racist” and "insensitive” to students from the Middle East.
And it’s no longer allowed to call a professor "Mr.” or "Ms.” It’s racist.
This week elementary school kids were told they couldn’t sing the song "YMCA” because it is racist toward native Americans.
You have to wonder.
In the long run, they may think they’re fooling us, but we’ve all watched enough "Scandal” and "House of Cards” to know what’s going on!
We learned about spin and hypocrisy, lying and arrogance in the Beltway from those shows.
So when Bill Clinton gets out there to plug for Hillary’s physical and mental health, he can’t fool us.
When there is nothing but silence when we demand facts from our government about very real scandals, they can’t fool us.
Because we are making it our business not to be "bamboozled.”
We are making it our business to resist and call out the charlatans, to reject Political Correctness, the method "They” use to shame American citizens into silence with accusations of "Racism.”
And finally we are making it our business to demand more than "Hashtag Diplomacy” from the kids running the show in Washington.
Hashtag that!
Hold the line, America.
May 14, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
The IRS can force Conservative groups to tell them what they had for breakfast a year ago, but don’t you dare ask Hillary Clinton if she’s sick.
Somebody should. She looks sick: Plumper, wider, too tired to comb her hair, wearing mismatched pants suits, she looks like someone who has been through a health crisis.
So why is everyone mad at Karl Rove for asking?
Because there are rules that apply to some people and not to others!
The Rules are very specific. The first is never say anything bad about Hillary.
Next: if you mess up in a government job, whoever is ready to retire and/or has nothing to do with the particular scandal, gets to be the one who is "fired.”
If you really mess up, you get a bonus.
Examples abound, but let’s start with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
After a checkered career misrepresenting Obamacare and spending $677 million on a website that didn’t work, Sebelius retired, but stuck around for a couple of weeks to, horrors! Train her replacement, but mostly to qualify for a taxpayer-funded pension for life.
This for a woman who would have been fired in the private sector.
IRS officer Lois Lerner went on paid leave after taking the Fifth, then retired with a $100,000-per-year pension. She still isn’t talking.
And this week Dr. Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health in the Dept. of Veterans Affairs was picked to be "fired” for everything that’s gone wrong at the VA.
He was perfect. Shinseki wouldn’t quit and Petzel was already going to retire anyway.
According to The Rules, the cast of characters must change quickly.
The Administration claimed it had "sought and accepted” IRS interim commissioner Steven Miller’s resignation in 2013. Although he was only on the job for six months, he was the guy picked to go.
Daniel Werfel followed. Serving as IRS acting administrator for eight months, the Administration announced he had quietly "left public service altogether,” to "spend more time with his family.”
To be awarded bonuses, though, The Rules state you can’t just be bad at your job, you have to mess up royally.
That’s why after the Internal Revenue Scandal broke, it was natural for the IRS to award its employees $62.5 million, and bonuses amounting to $843,000 to employees at the Phoenix office of the Department of Veterans Affairs after 40 vets died from lack of medical care.
As for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Well, she thinks she should be rewarded with the presidency for the job she did during and after Benghazi, and after refusing to classify Boko Haram as a terrorist group.
But reward/retirement rules are not a slam dunk. Nope. The president, the vice president, the attorney general, the former secretary of state and other officials have to say, "This is unacceptable,” at each instance of governmental misconduct. They don’t have to mean it, just say it.
It helps if they add they’re "Mad as hell,” like Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki or as "angry” as President Obama has consistently been through all his scandals.
And of course there has to be the perfunctory promise to "get to the bottom of it,” make sure "it never happens again,” while their "hearts go out to the families…”
Outrage is enough. Later on "They” can say the scandals are "phony,” or without a "smidgen” of scandal and that’s that!
Unfortunately we see The Rules spreading everywhere.
So it’s okay for Bill Ayers, member of the Weather Underground, to be a welcomed speaker on campuses, while Condaleeza Rice is called a war criminal by the kids on campus.
It’s okay for a Florida teacher, Swornia Thomas, to scold and prohibit a little 12-year-old boy from reading his Bible during free reading time.
A school board can have a New Hampshire father, William Baer, arrested at a school board meeting for protesting a sexually explicit required reading assignment for his 9th grade daughter.
And, the "War on Women?” Well, a female candidate could be left off the ballot and excluded from a poll of candidates if her party doesn’t like her.
It happened to Marisa DeFranco in Massachusetts. But, there must be some mistake. She’s a Democrat! Surely just because she criticized Obamacare and has her own opinions, that shouldn’t make a difference.
Should it?
Could it be that there are some people "They” don’t want to hear from and some "They” do?
I guess so. Attorney General Eric Holder is still allowed to vent his considerable racial anger at our "racist” America, this time at Morgan State University’s commencement.
But, curiously, the attorney general had nothing to say when Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) told the Washington Post that Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) doesn’t vote according to the color of his skin.
According to The Rules, Clyburn’s remarks are not racist.
So while The Rules rule, Americans in Benghazi are still dead. Sick veterans die without medical care. And convicted Wikileaks Pvt. Bradley Manning gets approval from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for taxpayer-paid hormone therapy and surgery to become a woman.
The Rules are big on campus where universities cave to anyone insulted by anything:
Charity events on Stanford and Dartmouth campuses featuring "All you can eat tacos” on Cinco de Mayo are cancelled because they are offensive to those of Mexican heritage.
A photo op with a camel on a Minneapolis college campus is cancelled as "racist” and "insensitive” to students from the Middle East.
And it’s no longer allowed to call a professor "Mr.” or "Ms.” It’s racist.
This week elementary school kids were told they couldn’t sing the song "YMCA” because it is racist toward native Americans.
You have to wonder.
In the long run, they may think they’re fooling us, but we’ve all watched enough "Scandal” and "House of Cards” to know what’s going on!
We learned about spin and hypocrisy, lying and arrogance in the Beltway from those shows.
So when Bill Clinton gets out there to plug for Hillary’s physical and mental health, he can’t fool us.
When there is nothing but silence when we demand facts from our government about very real scandals, they can’t fool us.
Because we are making it our business not to be "bamboozled.”
We are making it our business to resist and call out the charlatans, to reject Political Correctness, the method "They” use to shame American citizens into silence with accusations of "Racism.”
And finally we are making it our business to demand more than "Hashtag Diplomacy” from the kids running the show in Washington.
Hashtag that!
Hold the line, America.