The Hornswoggle: to bamboozle; deceive; to attempt to get the better of
someone through deception
So, John McCain took it upon himself
to go to Syria. I damned near fell of the stool in the kitchen when I heard
that one. He “sneaked” across the Turkish border to meet with rebel commanders?
Is this some kind of joke? This is like Geraldo Rivera sneaking around Iraq. It
is high on the list of seriously stupid things to do.
McCain wants to open up another front. He's said as much. It’s not enough that we’re wasting American lives in Afghanistan. It’s not
enough that a string of bombs throughout Iraq today killed at least 53 and wounded
over 200 Iraqis once again demonstrating how effective our nation building
strategy has been in their country. And now McCain wants to bring that same
high level of success to Syria?
Note to Syrians: Run, run, run as far
away as you can from this guy.
We have no business intervening in the
Syrian civil war. None. Nada. Zilch. We don’t belong there. We should not be
arming anyone. We should not be advising anyone. Do we really want to get in a
pissing war with Hezbollah? This has disaster, death, doom, destruction, and
dumb written all over it.
John McCain wants to take more
American dollars and waste them in another nunfunded war when we need every damn dollar here to
rebuild our own military wounded from the last two ill-fated adventures he
was supporting. What? He have some sort of messiah complex that he thinks he’s
the savior of the world? Clearly the man
is dealing shy of a full deck these days if he thinks embedding more American
soldiers in Arab wars has some kind of return on investment. It does not. Never
has, never will.
Note to We, the People: Just say no.
The Boondoggle: a project that is considered a useless waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy motivations.
Just to get my blood pressure down, I
spent a fair amount of Monday reading tax codes. Yep. You read that right. I
was tripping through IRS stuff in an attempt to better understand the phrase “tax
exempt.” This is no easy thing to do. People go to law school and accounting
school to do this. And even then, not
too many of them come away with a thorough enough understanding to actually be
able to competently guide someone on the issue. But what I did come away with
are some opinions that may or may not be valid…but they’re my opinions so if
you know I’m wrong, write and tell me why…but be prepared to support your
assertions with examples and, if necessary, case law.
The reality is there is no IRS scandal. The scandalous
part is behavior of the people who are saying there is a scandal. The IRS in
Cleveland was doing its job. Flooded with applications for 501(c)(4) status, the
worker bees did what all worker bees worth their weight in beeswax do….the
batched like applications. Similar applications means you’re doing the research
once, applying to each application as needed, and moving on to the next
thematic batch. I would guess they do the same thing for community playground
groups or Jewish groups or Baptist groups or Muslim groups or even the dreaded
Democratic groups. It’s what you do in every single business anywhere in the
world. You batch like functions together; to do otherwise is absurd and
wasteful.
Just so we’re clear, here’s what
501(c)(4) means:
Title 26 USC §
501 - Exemption from tax on
corporations, certain trusts, etc.
(c) List of exempt organizations: The following organizations are referred to in
subsection (a):
(4) (A) Civic leagues or organizations
not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare,
or local
associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the
employees of a designated person or persons in a particular municipality, and
the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational,
or recreational purposes.
(B)
Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to an entity unless no part of the net
earnings of such entity inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or
individual.
In a NY Times article, Groups Targeted by I.R.S. Tested Rules on
Politics, former IRS exempt division lawyer Kevin J. Shortill, said:
“My experience has
been that the agents immediately start Googling to see what the organization is
doing outside of the application…“And that explains why you get these requests for
information like, ‘Please print out your Web site and send it in.’ ”
Official Congressional Moron |
Isn’t
that what anyone in 2013 would do? Come on, folks; the laws maybe on the books
since before the inter-web, but it is fair game to use modern technology to
research this stuff.
There is no scandal…only morons in Congress who would rather
waste time and money than to govern our nation. Remember this at mid-terms Do everyone favor and don't send them back to the House.
And the fall of Constantinople
I'm not sure too many people will observe the 560th Anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople To The Turks on May 29th, but it always was an important holiday in this house, celebrated with steaks on the grill and chocolate frosted angel food cake. Well, there maybe steaks....we'll see...but no angel food cake. Just can't do it.
But I will be remembering what it was like.
Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Never offer to order things online for other people.
Just say no.