I did see it, today.  And I did enjoy it.  Having seen both the 1974 and 2000 movie versions within the past six months, I was most struck by how much more on-his-sleeves emotionally vulnerable DiCaprio's Gatsby was compared to Redford's.  Although I like Redford a...

Blah, blah, blah, He should have just said "The republicans are coming after me and I need the support, from those I had made earlier promises to, but have failed to adequately address, so circle the wagons and protect my inept administration. .....  ...

The "compulsion to compare" must be genetically encoded in us. It is the waving flag in the semaphore of our shared experience.

The crisis point Spalding Grey talks about demonstrates how how the personal is sometimes not politics at all. There is a show only one person gets to...

   Both law and my own conception of justice prohibit the IRS from making an arbitrary assumption that conservatives are more likely than others to cheat on their taxes and then auditing them for no other reason than that. Investigations need a better basis than that. Anyway, the whole...

Philosophy Bites is a large site with 216 installments available as podcasts at Itunes and presumably at their own page. I have listened to a couple of them. In this one on "Constitutions" the guest speaker/philosopher is John Gardner. He is Professor of Jurisprudence,...

A cheating conservative should,by law,  be treated the same as a cheating liberal. But that doesn't mean that , by law, in seeking offenders, the IRS is prohibited from investigating those  most likely to offend.

 Audits are not punishment , they are rational attempts...

Probably the wise thing to do, if their intentions are to get intrusive government out of their personal lives and business. I suppose a candidate from any of these groups, would be disqualified from public office, because they are too private?

  The way I've heard it, they can engage in lobbying and still qualify for tax exempt status, provided they don't get involved in campaigning for any candidate. The IRS claims the Democratic groups were stumping for specific candidates, so if that is true, the law was followed. Some...

Are you in the camp of those that think Deathpanelgate could be on the horizon? Except, it's really not a secret.  More older Americans will accept Hospice,  palliative care, what other choice will they have?

Yes, you're right, you're 100% right. But its hard for me to get upset about it when the whole 501 c 4 system is wrong imo. 501c 4's are not about getting a tax exemption, its about hiding your donors. I don't think there should be any dark money in politics, not for liberals or...

As for the democratic-leaning groups being denied; it didn't say if they were too far left. A threat to corporations.  If so     THAT WOULD BE THE REAL SCANDAL......Led by a Bush appointee  "The war on terror...

It seems that you think that corporations dumping unlimited amounts of cash into campaigns is okay.

Organizations can be political and get tax exemption. They are called 527 organizations

I have a hard time believing, our forefathers would have accepted the intrusion into everyones lifes, ie. their parpers and such, that is currently being done by the I.R.S. ...(Internal Rebellion Supression)...

The job of the IRS is to collect money. And in fairness to those who pay fully to act in such a way as to encourage payment from citizens who might otherwise cheat-both so the government can enjoy the use of those funds per se and also pour encourager les autres.

It stands to reason that...

Maybe so but since I am in no prized demographic,  it is really annoys me by not showing me a greater variety of ads.  I really hate how the targeting algorithms limit so much of what I see unless I game them. 

Anyway, thought you might be interested in one of the...

Serenity later - 26th century edition

...

Obama Aides Told To Spend No More Than 10% Of Time On Recent Controversies
Tom Kludt, TPM Livewire, May 18, 2013

Urging focus, White House chief of staff Denis...

Thanks for adding links to the thread, rmrd.

As far as the Benghazi story, I wonder whether politically it is worth counteracting much any more. They are like beating a dead horse with that one, I think....it's becoming kind of like being a birther....you're either going to...

Republicans believe Obama stole the last election by suppressing political advocacy by 503 organizations for which political advocacy is illegal.

Yup, that's my voice. Sometimes I do voiceover work which is really fun.

Using the US flag was my big concern--like you, I wondered if there might be resentment. But then, I thought it would be much more difficult to achieve freedom to marry in the 12 states that now recognize same-...

You are absolutely correct rmrd, yet with the Republican House absolutely set on stopping any sane improvements to 501 laws or anything to do with better government, nothing will come of it all unless Obama takes off the gloves and hits back at GOP partisanship. Explaining in terse fashion how...

Gosh I wonder who that "Patriot" guy is? He looks so familiar!

Sorry,I don't find it scandalous that the IRS investigated some number of tea party-type organizations. If those TPers weren't doing anything wrong then that's what the investigations will show. They have no special right to be immune from the same sort of investigation that I myself...

ABC News reported that there was White House involvement in the "scrubbing" of the information released on Benghazi. The report was touted...

Polling suggests that Hillary Clinton is more trusted than Congressional Republicans over Benghazi

While the Tea Party and the GOP are upset about Conservative groups facing more detailed scrutiny, a Liberal group was denied. If there was a political agenda at work it seriously misfired.

I think the conglomerates still own us, we just do more of the work for them now.

Think of Google - they just sit back and let us click and pocket the change. Must be tough. Facebook changes terms to own everything we put online. We tell marketers how to market, they just follow the...

NO,  the model has not worked,  because eventually, all the parties are corrupted by the influence of money. Even you bemoan the fact that billionaires own the Tea Party..... I continually pray, for an overturning and replacement of the current status quo, when I say the...

I have to say, ocean-kat does have a humorous side. That was funny and I have noticed he gets many a share of responses. So maybe we can all learn something from him after all. 

Well you really know how to make my day more upbeat.

hahahahhaaha

When all those scandals happened, the voters usually ended up "throwing the bums out."

You don't think the constant drumbeat of Federal government scandals in the news is going to make swing voters and Independents who are susceptible to GOP small-Federal-government...

So at best you want to recycle the model of the political parties you dislike.

Look closer and you'll see a group who needs financial support to become a viable third party and others seeing the usefulness of this third party to gain power.... Much like the early Democratic Party, who saw the need to support Unions to get votes back then and now they...

I guess it's the vindictiveness that bugs me. The original muckrakers were more or less non-partisan. They went after anyone in power. What you often get on the blogs is more like partisan porn. People become obsessed with the misconduct of the other party because they hate the other...

Not necessarily bigger, but having the same modus operendi....... In Pearl Harbor, America was suspicious of a pending Japanese attack, yet didn't prepare for it?  Did you believe, the US government was totally surprised, that someone could high-jack a plane and use it as a...

I see a different Tea Party; of people that see the need for Second Amendment Rights. ... I see members tying to end, the selling of Americans into servitude/slavery to the Chinese and others who buy our bonds, to support two unfunded wars and other financial...

"It is not in this countries DNA"   As I recall, the country elected George Bush for a second term.

I was actually thinking of those Republicans directly affected by Watergate: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove....  

For them it was personal as well as political.

...

I was supposed to run a weekly class in my artillery battery but I had several broken teeth from a car accident so I didn't talk so well. The local German town had an Amerika Haus which was supposed to teach the Germans to love us and I invited the guy who ran it to come to ...

I am hopeful too. I tire of the doom and gloom folks. They have heavy criticism, but when you press them for solutions, you realize that they have none. It's easy to snipe from the sidelines.

Point taken, my reply was stupid. I don't think you are The Evil (that would be Wolraich) by any stretch of the imagination.  Sometimes (lots of times) you piss me off, and sometimes I think you are an asshole, but generally I think you're OK in a thorn in the paw kind of...

Taliban rival claims Kabul blast that leaves at least 15 dead, including two U.S. troops
By Pamela Constable and Sayed...

New Charge for Brooklyn Legislator Is a State Favorite: Pilfering From a Nonprofit Agency
By Mosi Secret, New York Times, May...

I apologize rmrd I should have wrote "some see it as jumble and some folks cant see.  When you wrote "wade through"  I considered it a slight.

Look behind you.

No, I give all the credit to you. You stir up the passion and it start a chain reaction, stimulating the process for deeper thought.  Keep up the good work.

There is 3 other districts that are closing early in Michigan.  Also a couple of them are loosing their high schools next year and will have to go to a private charter high school because the state won't under write these schools with enough state funds to keep them open.  In...