Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]

IRS faces yet MORE charges of waste

While it grapples with the fallout from the tea party targeting scandal, the IRS is facing new charges of wasteful spending.A watchdog report released Tuesday includes potentially embarrassing examples of spending at conferences, including $17,000 paid to a keynote speaker whose specialty was painting unique pictures. He produced images of Michael Jordan, Bono, Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln at the IRS event.  Employees received hotel upgrades and a deputy commissioner spent five nights in a two-bedroom presidential suite at the Anaheim, Calif., Hilton.  Read more.
 [Thanks: ECS]

Cartoon: John Darkow

[Columbia Daily Tribune]

Barack Obama's Diary: Exposed!

Dear Diary: Aaugh! The AP has revealed our cunning  backdoor email  network where my administration  could  communicate off the record. Our spin is that we needed these addresses to avoid email in-tray overload and spam [Ha, bloody ha! as Prince Philip said to me when I gave an iPod of my speeches to the Queen]. 
In reality we used the addresses  to avoid leaving a paper trail for  messages that media hacks might misunderstand, like one I wrote to the  Lois Lerner at the IRS: "I want all conservatives organizations audited and re-audited until their eyes pop out. Capiche?"  or "That's a nice job you've got there, Eric, we wouldn't want anything to happen to it would we?  Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha!"  But enough about me.

Sshhhh! Obama aides use secret email accounts

Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The extent of  the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act over three months ago.  Read more.

IRS scandal 'about to EXPLODE'

Joseph Curl, a columnist for The Washington Times and editor at the Drudge Report, says he has sources that say the IRS scandal is about to explode:  Lower level  IRS staff, are apparently fed-up with being scapegoats and are about to strike back. More

Socialist medicine in action

New Zealand adults with severe hearing loss are put on long waiting lists for cochlear implants (often 4+years)  and have significantly poorer health as a result, new research says.  The investigation by researchers in New Zealand and Canada has prompted them to urge more spending on cochlear implantation. Read more.
[Thanks: BJS]

Dumb Chicks

"..In March 2003, on the brink of the Iraq war, Natalie [of the Dixie Chicks] told a London audience that the Chicks were ashamed that George W. Bush was from Texas. Prior to that moment, they looked like surefire enshrinees to the Country Music Hall of Fame, poised, perhaps, to become the biggest act in the genre’s history. In barely five years, their first three records had sold 28 million copies. Their then-current album, Home, had sold 6 million in six months. But in the ten years since Natalie spoke those words, none of those records has sold even one million more copies, and the Dixie Chicks as an entity scarcely exists...." Read  more.  [Thanks BJS]

Laughing Conservative back online

We had no power until 3pm but normal service is now resumed. Apologies for the lack of fresh content today.

'Stunning' sex scandal simmers in UK

The Brits are a mischievous nation. Barely had Laughing Conservative turned his eyes away from that green and pleasant land, when  a "stunning" scandal of a sexual nature seized David Cameron's government. The Sunday  Mail  is reporting the story in irritatingly vague terms -- libel laws in Britain,  being much more stringent than they are here. All that they disclose is that the lovers are not Cabinet ministers.  Beware attempting such speculation with the Obama cabinet  without copious quantities of brain bleach to hand. 

Cartoon: Christopher Weyant

[From: The Hill]

Obamawaste: IRS spent $50 million on conferences

A government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, according to a House committee, AP reports.
That total included $4 million for an August 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice. More
[Thanks BJS]

Honest slogans

There's a thread on Reddit  suggesting  realistic slogans for products.  Sample:

• Dasani: Coke just sold you water
• Lexus:  A Toyota that will get you laid
• Motel 6:  We'll leave the light on for you (in this neighborhood we have to.)

More

It's not war that's receding, Mr President, it's America

Charles Krauthammer: " Obama pretends that the tide of war is receding. But it’s demonstrably not. It’s metastasizing to Mali, to the Algerian desert, to the North African states falling under the Muslim Brotherhood, to Yemen, to the savage civil war in Syria, now spilling over into Lebanon and destabilizing Jordan. Even Sinai, tranquil for 35 years, is descending into chaos.
"It’s not war that’s receding. It’s America. Under Obama. And it is precisely in the power vacuum left behind that war is rising. Obama declares Assad must go. The same wish-as-policy fecklessness from our bystander president. Two years — and 70,000 dead — later, Obama keeps repeating the wish even as the tide of battle is altered by the new arbiters of Syria’s future — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. Where does every party to the Syrian conflict go on bended knee? To Moscow, as Washington recedes into irrelevance. Read it all 

Cartoon: Rick McKee

[The Augusta Chronicle]