Out of all the organizations targeted, only Emerge America, a democratic group that lobbied on behalf of women's businesses, was denied tax-exempt status for their political activities.

Not that this doesn't mean that the IRS is another in a long line of liberal biased organizations that is out to turn the United States into another Muslim country under Sharia Law.

Oh, the scandally, scandalous scandals. From the birth certificate, to the brown-shirt army of youth, to this.

What does it take to wake you people up to the scandals?

Sheep, I tell you, drinking that KoolAid.

Bah!

[quote][b]theold33[/b] - Dzog might even come if he can stop crying wolf long enough[/quote]

HOLD YOUR FIRE!

I'm just the messenger, dog. Chuck is the guy you want for wolf-crying.

[quote][b]Shalmaneser[/b] - No, because they keep assuming if they dig long enough they'll find something politically useful. In short, to achieve via scandal what they can't manage by debate. [/quote]

For five years now they have expended every ounce of their effort in that direction, the country be damned. In my 63 years, I never seen anything even remotely like it. They ran on jobs in 2012. Other than Trump's team of investigators who soaked him for millions (hehe), what jobs have they created?

The public moves slowly, but with a lot of momentum. Everywhere I go I find people who are just disgusted with the right right now, and the right just keeps doubling down.

This hearing was yet another example of that.

It's that doggone liberal media again, of course they won't let the truth be known about Benghazi.

They won't let the truth be known about Obama's place of birth (Kenya, for sure), Obama's intentions to bring down the capitalist system, Obama's plans to recruit all our youth into a brown shirt zombie anti-patriot army, Obama's deep and abiding man-love relationship with bill Ayers, Obama's plan to institute Sharia law in this country. They are totally complicit in scientists' plans to try to say that pumping gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere on a daily might be having a deleterious effect just so they can get research money and become fabulously wealthy in a way that the Wall Street bankers and the Koch brothers can only step back and envy.

They skew polls so effectively that they actually change the course of elections. They hate Christians so much that they try to show them in a bad light when they're trying to save us from gay marriage and all the other stuff that Jesus hates so much.

What's a righteous patriot to do?

Watch FoxNews, send money to Glen Beck, and buy gold, I guess. Oh, and stockpile food and ammunition and vote for Paul Broun.

This will probably end up being as scandalous as the birth certificate thing. You watch.

Today's meeting of the Lowest Common Denominator Club has a better-than-average turnout, I see. There's something about golf that always seems to unhinge them.

Hey look! There goes Michelle!

[quote][b]King Minos[/b] - The power to tax is the power to destroy![/quote]

I think we should have the very best government in the world, I will accept nothing less, but I don't want it to cost anything.

Don't tread on me.

Oh, and if a church places a large demand on the storm water infrastructure with its large buildings and parking lots, I as an individual and practitioner of another faith, should foot the bill for it, but the Tea Party should get the merit.

"...Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism."

Chogyam Trungpa, Boulder, Colorado, 1970

@Censored:

That's funny.

I am a member of one of the tiniest religious minorities in this country and I feel completely free to practice my faith. I feel no threat whatsoever that this will change during the course of my life.

Maybe it's just you.

Is E.J. the only one here who has recognized that RWE has gotten off his cross and slipped in the back door?

@anonymous1:

The guilt my sister had to endure for merely being who she was led her to try to end her life back in the sixties. She was a student at the Medical College of Georgia at the time. She eventually got her Master's in Psychiatric Nursing from Cornell, learned to accept herself for who she is and learned not to be bitter when all of her associates could announce their engagements and marriages, or even that they had a new love interest in their lives, while she could not. She eventually had a daughter who fulfilled her dream of becoming an M.D. and she has lived an exceptional life in her own right..

Breaking out of self-absorption and understanding the plight of others is one of the greatest gifts life has to offer. Too bad you're a prisoner in your own little world of little consequence. At least when you reside in the lowest common denomination, you have lots of company.

You do have that going for you.

[quote][b]ProudSoutherner[/b] - Bush kept America safe and people seem to forget that[/quote]

I can think of at least three thousand people who weren't aware of that.

@citydude:

Check this out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/dalai-lama-woman_n_3146425.html

Just like used to be a free country is.

[quote][b]Used2baFreeCountry[/b] -

Did you know that there has been no global warming for the past 20 years?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/twenty-year-hiatus-in-risi...

[/quote]

That is a flat out indefensible lie.

@Used2baFreeCountry:

No, but I do know that you and fish are political hacks, probably paid, who are tasked with defending the indefensible. Yay. I'd bet you a dollar to a doughnut that fish's initials are J H.

How'd I do?

rimshot!

@jebunny:

I have Jewish friends (such as Davidxto) and atheist friends and out of respect for them, I prefer B.C.E. Even The Watchtower magazine uses it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era

[quote][b]jebunny[/b] -

@dzogchen: BC

[/quote]

I choose to go with the much more widely accepted convention, but I don't mind if you go with the one you like best.

@citydude:

"I understand the vows they take but what I don't understand is why are you not mentioning the male monk?"

That's a good point, and who said it was a male? The story erroneously called her a monk. I'm not saying either of them have sinned, I just don't think they're cut out for monastic life. All the monks I've known take the Pratimoksha vows a lot more seriously.

And by the way, I'm old but not old enough to have been around in Jesus' day. Too bad, he was one of the better teachers who have ever lived.

Buddhism is based on a system that goes from teacher to student in a lineage that goes all the way back to the fifth century B.C.E. It is based on methods for realizing directly the very nature of mind.

It depends heavily on its monastic orders to keep the teachings alive and viable. Depending on the school, there are two to three-hundred vows that are taken when one enters the monastic life. Because sexual desire is one of the more potent of the deluding passions, vows of celibacy are considered a biggie.

The only time I've ever seen my teacher become angry in almost fifteen years was when he learned that a monk and a nun (Americans) in our lineage shared a motel room while traveling in order to save money.

If one wants to be a householder, that's fine; there are many examples of householders who have attained enlightenment in their lifetimes. If one takes vows and then chooses to rescind them, that's okay, too. But to wear the robes and engage in sexual misconduct is a serious threat to the integrity of the teachings and cannot be tolerated. It sounds like this woman never should have taken vows to begin with.

Glenn Mullin is internationally recognized as the world's foremost scholar on the succession of Dalai Lamas. While his wife was a producer at CNN for several years, I had the good fortune get to know him through work he did at Drepung Loseling, a satellite monastery of the current Dalai Lama's that is affiliated with Emory.

One evening he told me about approaching several of his teachers and telling them that he was considering taking monastic vows. He said after they picked themselves up off the ground and finally stopped laughing, they told him that was probably not such a good idea. Too bad this woman had no one to give her the same advice.

I saw Richie at the 235 Club (I think those were the numbers) in the basement below the Georgian Hotel here back in probably the late seventies. His bass player got so drunk he could hardly stand up and you could see Richie getting madder and madder as the first set progressed. When buddy finally started blowing his chow, Richie sent him packing and performed solo for the rest of the evening and the show only got better.

He wasn't really a guitar player; he would open tune and barre up and down the neck in some way that he had worked out. His voice was his talent.

RIP Richie, you were a good man with a good heart.

As many trees as there are in the Athens area, when I saw the headline I knew which tree it was. It was indeed a white oak. I guess the best specimen white oak in Athens is now the one in the park in Winterville on Cherokee Rd.

Another lesson in impermanence.

The ignorance here is overwhelming.

What is it about AthensTalks that attracts so many uninformed and negative people? I just can't take more than a few peeks a day anymore because it truly depresses me.

@sweept:

You clearly don't understand the scientific method.

Please cite one example for me of fraud within the climate science community. And before you say "Climategate" at East Angolia, there was no fraud. What caused the uproar in the stolen emails were private conversations among scientists who were complaining, and rightfully so, that they were bound by the exacting discipline of the scientific method, while denialists can say anything they want without having their assertions subjected to any real scrutiny. People like you buy into anything they say because you want to be "right."

The Climate Research Unit was investigated by eight different committees and each one concluded that there was no fraud and the findings of the CRU were solid science.

It really disturbs me that the importance of science and its impact on the quality of our lives is so completely misunderstood by so many today.

An acquaintance who is a real life atmospheric physicist once commented to me when someone brought up the subject of a conspiracy by climate scientists in order to get research money, that it would take him over seven hundred years at his current salary to make what either Charles or David Koch made last year.

Follow the money.