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  One hopes Mr. Lyon’s optimistic approach in this article is correct. History has proven otherwise, from time to time- OEN   But see that’s the thing. Contrary to a thousand indignant screeds and editorial cartoons, no aggrieved Tea Partiers got audited, fined, or jailed. Instead, they saw their applications to turn their political hobbies into tax-free scams — oops, charities — delayed for a few months, on the quite reasonable assumption (from an IRS functionary’s point of view) that an organization named for a political party might actually be one. Boo hoo hoo. Want to read more? Please click… HERE

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Written by Robert Kennedy, Jr. for Reader Supported News For once with good reason, the GOP is exorcised with the scandals involving the IRS targeting political groups and the FBI’s spying on A.P. reporters. The broader public is legitimately concerned. However, in its classic overblown breathlessness at all things Obama, the gleeful Republican leadership is already calling for impeachment and dragging out desperate comparisons to Nixon’s Watergate. This, despite caveats from its own sages not to overplay Republican good fortune. “We overreached in 1998,” Newt Gingrich admitted recently. He counseled restraint to the Tea Party jihadists he helped spawn. Gingrich recalled how the GOP’s scandal mongering against Clinton had only amplified Clinton’s popularity and cost Republicans the 1998 mid-terms and Gingrich his speakership. But this new generation of hysterical House members immune to that wisdom, are headed straight for the feinting couch in fits of anti-Obama hysteria.

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Here’s what the news reported: An area man murdered his former girlfriend in the upper-level apartment of his split-level home. He sat with her body for 20 to 40 minutes, then phoned the local police, claiming a complete mental breakdown. I don’t know what just happened, he said, but you need to come quick. He waited for police on the sidewalk with his hands behind his head, and officers lowered him into their squad car just past dawn without incident. What they did not say is this: I was his close friend… Want to read more? Please click… HERE

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Republicans are still furious over IRS scrutiny of non-profit groups with “Tea Party” and “patriots” in their names, but the life of the scandal depends entirely upon the political affiliation of the hundreds of other groups investigated by tax officials. Only 25% of the 300 scrutinized groups seeking non-profit status were reportedly affiliated with right-wing causes. Whether the rest aligned with left-leaning causes like abortion and climate change will not be known until the entire list is released. The IRS told Gawker today that the full list has yet to be made public. Want to read more? Please click… HERE

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While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee. The second is that while this is the first time this kind of thing has become a national scandal, it’s not the first time such activity has occurred. “I wish there was more GOP interest when I raised the same issue during the Bush administration, where they audited a progressive church in my district in what look liked a very selective way,” California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said on MSNBC Monday. Want to read more? Please click……

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Written by Mart Allen/h3> Good news and bad news The first thing I do every morning is turn on the news. Before he died early this year my best friend Morgan Roderick and I compared notes on the passing scene at least once a week. You see we both came from the old school and never ceased to be bummed out by the direction we saw the country headed in. One of our favorite analogies was to compare our versions of current mores with those of our respective parents. I shudder to think that if the trend continues to paraphrase my old Uncle Mart, “What’s the world coming to?” Today was one of those rare days when the news opened on a positive note. It was the news from Cleveland, Ohio about three young ladies escaping from an unbelievable nightmare. After the initial euphoria the questions begin. How could such a situation happen in the first place? Too often it seems to me that there is a failure to communicate between the police and parents.

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Corporate slaves. (photo: Peoples Voice.org) Written by Carl Gibson for Reader Supported News Keeping our nation divided is an agenda supported by both Fox News and MSNBC. The media and the politicians both profit from Americans believing they should hate their fellow Americans. And oddly enough, the one thing that unites the traditional “right” and “left” in this country is our hatred for those same media organizations and politicians that make money by regularly lying to us. The best way to beat them is to find the things that bring us together in one common purpose and unite around that.

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  That weakness is synonymous with femininity, and masculinity with strength, is instilled in troops from the get-go. Female recruits learn their place when, upon entry, they’re classified by peers as being one of three categories: a bitch, a ho or a dyke. Harassment is embedded in the running cadences: “Don’t let your dingle-dangle dangle in the sand/The best place for it’s in a mama-san’s hand.” Pornography is everywhere. Servicewomen’s bodies are openly ­evaluated, and their imagined sex lives – speculation about who’s a “barracks whore” – are hot topics. In the Air Force, which has a tradition of fighter pilot songs, airmen circulate a songbook filled with ditties like “The S&M Man,” a parody of “The Candy Man”: “Who can take two ice picks, stick ‘em in her ears/Ride her like a Harley while you fuck her in the rear.” Against that permissive backdrop, it seems a natural outgrowth of the culture when men turn aggressive, as when a superior of former Marine Lance Cpl. Regina Vasquez told her, “I’ll sign your paperwork if you give me head.” Want to read more? Please click… HERE

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Written by Russ Baker for whowhatwhy.com This article is 2 years old, and was shared back then all across the net by the author. But it helps us understand what’s going on today in the White House as much did then. The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government? We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. Like an orchestra conductor or perhaps a football coach, he can inspire or bludgeon and get what he wants. But that’s not how things work at the top, especially where “national security” is concerned. The Pentagon and CIA are powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. They are full of lifers, who see an elected president largely as an annoyance, and have ways of dealing with those who won’t come to heel.

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Maybe I’ve just watched “Back to the Future” too many times but the latest design from Ma.-based Terrafugia, the maker of flying aircrafts that also work as cars, looks like all that’s missing is Doc and some plutonium. The next-gen TF-X will be a street legal plug-in hybrid car that has collapsible wings, retractable propellers, and is capable of driving and flying on its own in the event of an emergency. Flying Car Gets FAA Approval When I talked to Terrafugia co-founder and CEO Carl Dietrich about the highly anticipated Transition, Terrafugia first street legal plane, four years ago, Dietrich said the fuel-efficient vehicle promised to both revitalize under-utilized regional airports and alleviate traffic congestion (video). Want to read more? Please click… HERE

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