5/13/2013

The IRS "Scandal" Isn't a Scandal, But It Will Get Annoying:
Look, we know how this went down: Post-Citizens United, the Internal Revenue Service was flooded with applications for tax-exempt status for whatever organization a couple of fucksacks with a tricorner hat wanted to start. "Social welfare" groups, they were called, and they could not be involved with specific political candidates or advocacy (although, you know, c'mon). So the IRS told its low-level drones who had to look at all the fucksack applications to flag ones that looked hinky. So the low-level drones, who are overworked to begin with because Congress won't give the IRS the funding it needs to do its fucking job, used some search terms.

It's 2010 and who are the fucksacks who are everywhere? The "Tea Party" groups. So, sure, fine, let's fuckin' search that. Low-level drone 1 tells low-level drone 2 (and for god's sake, they live in the dull, dull, boring, dull city of Cincinnati, so give 'em a little break), "Hey, just use 'Patriot' as a search term and you'll get your job done faster because if there's one thing we know, it's that a whole bunch of these applications are from crazed fucksacks applying for tax-exempt status because they hate them that black guy in office." Low-level drone 2 might have said, "Oh, shit, that'll get us in trouble." But low-level drone 1 had a convincing argument by saying, "You wanna get to the bar sooner?" By the way, chances are that LLD 1 and LLD 2 have been LLDs forever, under at least one GOP president.

Does this narrative need to be completed? Sure, fine: Am id-level IRS drone discovers what's happening and says, "Whoa, whoa, you can't just go after the costumed fucksacks. You gotta look at everyone." At which point at least one LLD contemplated suicide, surely. So MLD went to the higher-ups, like Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations, who said, "Aw, fuck, don't you know that the fucksacks are gonna cause a ruckus over this shit? Change it up." And then the IRS started to look at any group that criticized "how the country was run." Then, because that stunk of Tea Party bullshit (even though it encompassed many groups), the standard  was then changed to "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement." And then, a year ago, that was changed to "organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention."

No group was denied anything because of the extra scrutiny. And as soon as someone higher than a low-level drone found out about what the LLDs were doing, it was addressed and changed. To say that Barack Obama had something to do with that is to say that Rupert Murdoch should be arrested every time Sean Hannity lies on the air.

If you want to call the IRS thing a scandal, well, shit, in this dumbed-down post-Clinton blow job era, the definition of "scandal" is meaningless, so why the fuck not? At least it looks like someone did something knowingly wrong, unlike Benghazi, which is a lonely penis looking for a hole to penetrate.

Hell, the Washington Post went all nutzoid on it, proving its street-cred to keep up the subscription rate among Republican readers: "One line of questioning should focus on how the IRS’s procedures failed to catch this 'shortcut' before its employees began using it. Another should center on how this misguided practice came to light, and on what the IRS planned and plans to do about it." Umm, the IRS caught it shortly after it was used. And did something about it. Isn't that the end of the story?

But, no, really, there should be an investigation. Go the fuck ahead, GOP (and, yeah, Democrats who wanna show that they can be all mightily outraged at a black man, too). Call witnesses. Have mighty inquiries where you can preen for the base. It's not like you're gonna do anything better with your time. At this point, you've cried, "Wolf!" so many times that even the wolves are bored.