THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

I thought for a moment there that Captain Dave of Flight Level 390 had returned to blogging. Then I noticed that the writing style was different and the url had acquired a hyphen. To capitalize on Dave’s fame, I suppose, but I see no ads there yet.

At least one of Dave’s blogging pals has stepped forward with the news that he wasn’t fired or told to stop expressing his opinions of his work on the Internet but merely was tired of blogging. Can’t blame him for that. Esepcially when he has to work and blog. Hope he comes back to it, though. No one better.

Eleven folks showed up last night for our weekly pickup contra dance band, including a guy with a bodhran, a Celtic drum, which was a first since I started sitting in on backup fiddle in late February. (Last week there was a guy with a recorder but he didn’t return.)

Most of us, as usual, were fiddlers, though a guitar, a banjo and a mandolin were there to help keep the bodhran on tempo. One fiddler, a guy I like to call the banker because of the way he dresses—as if just coming from the executive suite—was really cutting loose as always, stomping both feet like a Breton fiddler, playing the melody on such pieces as The Hanged Man’s Reel.

The near-beheading of the Brit soldier on a London street outside his base by apparent Somali Jihadis seems a little extreme until Sultan Knish informs you that the Brit government is rapidly turning  London into Somolia’s 12th (so far) largest city and providing lots of welfare checks for the new Muslim immigrants, some of which get sent home to the homegrown Jihadis.

Yeah the IRS thing is scary. But as Reason TV reports, the IRS has been used for political retribution by at least four other presidents, starting with Franklin Roosevelt. The rest were Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Three Democrats and one Republican.

If we had an honest federal government (you wish) we would not have an IRS in the first place nor a complicated annual income tax form with so many strokes and sticks. We’d have a flat tax for everyone. But that would eliminate a lot of jobs for the Democrats to fill and a favorite weapon against their political enemies as well as innumerable opportunities to shake down the lobby for more bribes.

Benghazi is far more important than the IRS scandal and not only because four Americans died. It demonstrates better than anything else how inept and venal the leader of the Choom Gang and his probable successor the Hildabeast are when it comes to foreign policy and genuine national security.

An American ambassador seems to have been used as an errand boy, to clean up Hellary’s mess: trying to buy back shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles she ordered given to Islamists fighting to overthrow Gaddafi after she realized (duh) they could be turned on civilian airliners.

Denying readily-available forces to protect the ambassador when he came under attack (and lying about it repeatedly afterwards) seems to have been done to avoid uncovering the missile operation. In other words, the ambassador (and two Navy SEALS) had to die to save Obozo’s dwindling credibility and Shillary’s political future.

Having political enemies audited is one thing. Turning your back on Americans under attack is Vietnam all over again. Or, more recently, Barry’s betrayal of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All we can do is hope that the otherwise-feckless Republicans don’t drop the ball on the Benghazi cover up. Or we’re very likely to get Lady Macbeth and her blood-soaked hands as the next occupant of the White House and much worse to come than selling guns to Mexican drug lords, harassment of the Tea Party and spying on the snooze media.

Bernie at Planck’s Constant can’t help but wonder at the pols requiring expiration dates on bottled water. He thinks they’re stupid.

Actually they’re crooks. Expiration dates mean more sales and passing laws like that mean more bribes from the lobby. We have the best pols money can buy, after all, though it ain’t sayin’ much.

Was out in the back forty about noon Monday, checking to see if any new deer had jumped the privacy fence to get at the rancho’s roses. Had one Sunday, and an earlier one a week ago. Still trying to figure where they’re getting over.

Saw no deer but was struck by the clouds overhead. Coming out of the northwest and the southeast. They were just racing north. Wind was picking up, of course. Had to be a low out there somewhere, in the direction of Round Rock, probably. Hoped it would spawn a thunderstorm and bring us some rain.

Had no idea then that the low was as far north as Oklahoma or that about 3 p.m. CDT it would spawn a killer tornado that would wipe out two elementary schools south of Oklahoma City. G-d bless the dead and the injured and the devastated untouched, so to speak. Glad to see that CGHill at Dustbury, at the Bandwidth Wastage Station, survived this “last rite of spring” as he blogged it.

Heard some fool Democrat blaming global warming/climate change. The usual dreck. This is Tornado Alley, nitwit, beginning down here around Austin and stretching as far north as South Dakota. We get these bastards every year about this time. Wouldn’t have wished it on Oklahoma, especially not those dead kids and their devastated parents. But I’m sure thankful it didn’t spin up anywhere near us.

I’ve had an implicit faith in most of the federal government for most of my life. It didn’t even completely die when I was betrayed, as most Vietnam veterans were, by a government that never intended to win the war they conscripted us to fight.

But watching the partisan Democrat bureaucracy kowtow to President Choom has just been too much for me. Such as this recent discovery that the feds kept secret the surviving Boston bomber’s written confession that jihad was the reason for his killing and maiming hundreds in a Marathon crowd.

The confession conflicted with the Democrat narrative that the reason for the bombing was unknown, mysterious, an enigma. And federal agents (and the local cops) dutifully played along and hid the confession like good little puppets doing Barry’s bidding. The federal gumshoes have always cost more than they were worth. Now they are beneath contempt.

Notice the hapless fellow getting directions is wearing a medical outfit? Lately, it seems every time I take Mr. B. to the doctor, for a brief illness or a required checkup for summer camp, even the nurses are bemoaning a future of expanded federal supervision.

The paperwork alone will keep them busy-busy hopping to the tune of the latest partisan Democrat in charge of counting lead pencils and rubber erasers. For instance, the IRS woman in charge of targeting the Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment audits, is the new director of enforcement for Obamacare.

The usual low-information folks who think Obamacare means free medicals will now discover that time also is a form of money and they will be spending a lot of time waiting. We’ll use the new concierge clinics as long as we can afford them. Then we’ll get in line.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, as I said before, watch how you vote. You might not get that procedure you need approved in time to save your life.

Some think Barry is just woefully misinformed about the way the federal government is supposed to work. Too much golf; too many vacations; and too many celebrity parties to have time to study up on it, apparently.

Or else the First Adolescent is simply evading responsibility for his latest “screwup,” as he has about everything else since 2009. With him it’s always someone else’s fault. Just like a 12-year-old.

I think Kimberley Strassel has the goods on President Choom: The IRS Scandal started at the top, with him. He instigated it and he knew very well what he was doing. For instance:

“Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a ‘wealthy individual’ with a ‘less-than-reputable record.’ Other donors were described as having been ‘on the wrong side of the law.’

“This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

“Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes… Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.”

It was similar to 2008 when Schoolyard Barry gave Shillary the finger on CNN by pretending to scratch his face with his middle finger. His backers in the audience hooted. They knew what he was doing. Just like the IRS knew what to do to Mr. VanderSloot.

Only fools would ever again trust our partisan federal bureaucrats.