Randi Rhodes Show - May 17 2013 torrent

May 17, 2013
The Randi Rhodes Show

It's Friday, ya bastids!


At a hearing today, acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller today said that the targeting of Tea Party groups was due to “foolish mistakes.” That’s not true—it wasn’t foolish, and it shouldn’t be considered a mistake. Someone at the IRS decided that if they were looking for groups with a political agenda instead of a social welfare agenda, maybe they should look at groups with “party” in their name. That’s not exactly foolish.

The very inspector general’s report that brought this whole IRS thing to light stated that there was no evidence of political motivation or White House involvement. Republicans will have to rewrite that like they rewrote the Benghazi talking points. Douglas Shulman, who was running the IRS when this was going on, is an appointee of George W. Bush. If Republicans want to tie the IRS story to the White House, they’ll have to tie it to the Bush White House.

If anyone is going to target Tea Party groups, they’re going to hit the Koch brothers, since they’re propping up almost all of those organizations. Together, the Koch brothers are worth $68 billion. That can buy an awful lot of powdered wigs, anti-Obama signs, and elections. The scandal isn’t that Tea Party groups were being given extra scrutiny by the IRS. The scandal is that Tea Party groups aren’t scrutinized enough… by anybody.

The 501(c)(4) scam means that the Koch brothers aren’t just using the Tea Party idiots that they dupe—they’re using every American taxpayer. As Frank Rich said, “The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests.” And they’re really laughing when they fill out their tax exempt status forms. The Koch brothers are ripping off every American who pays taxes—which is basically everybody except for their billionaire pals. We shouldn’t be investigating what was done to the Tea Party, we should be investigating what the Tea Party has done.

Just how crazy can conservatives get in their reactions to the IRS story? As always, the answer to that question is “What is Michele Bachmann saying?” Michele thinks that recent developments on the IRS mean that Christians will be denied healthcare. If you wonder how she got there, remember—Michele isn’t starting at the same place as the rest of us. Michele said that after this week’s IRS hearings “Now it is reasonable to ask could there potentially be political implications regarding healthcare, access to healthcare, denial of healthcare?” First of all, Michele, you are no authority on what is reasonable in any situation. And she adds “Will that happen based upon a person’s political beliefs or their religiously held beliefs?” Michele is that what you took away from this week’s hearings? All I took away was “Louie Gohmert is a lunatic.”