And The 2008 April Fool's Award Goes To....

You know I really didn't see too many good April Fool's jokes or stunts out there yesterday. Maybe its just me and I live in tiny bubble (called New York City) but honestly I didn't hear of much that was noteworthy. Then I heard someone talking earlier today about something the IRS is doing now. It is common knowledge that the IRS is giving rebates due to Bush/Congress' stimulus package, but according to this (who will remain nameless) woman, NPR's "Marketplace" told a larger story.

From NPR's Marketplace:

Kai Ryssdal: You might have gotten a little note from the Internal Revenue Service recently telling you about your forthcoming rebate check. It's part of the economic stimulus package Congress and the White House agreed on a couple of months ago. Most taxpayers will get anywhere from $600 to $1,200 back from Uncle Sam.

The hope is that we'll spend it to buy things, which would be what the government wants to give the economy a kick in the pants. The worry is that many have said they'll pay down debts instead. So, with some taxpayers, the IRS isn't taking any chances.

Marketplace's Rico Gagliano reports.

---

Rico Gagliano: Hello!

Stacey Atkinson: Hi!

Gordon Atkinson: Hey! How ya doin'!

Gagliano: Gordon and Stacey Atkinson live in Phoenix Arizona, in a home they bought with a subprime loan.

Gordon: Come on in.

Like many subprimers, they're having a hard time paying the mortgage. So, eager for their $1,200 rebate check, they filed their taxes in February.

Stacey: And I was expecting -- or we were expecting -- a rebate check shortly thereafter.

It eventually arrived. Sort of.

Gordon: We get this thing in the mail. It's addressed from the IRS. I had no idea what it was.

Stacey: So, we open up the package, and, well actually, I can show you what was inside of it. Do you want to come see it?

Rico: Yeah, sure.

Stacey: It's an air conditioner.

Gordon: A General Electric "Zoneline" air conditioner.

After they got over their shock, the Atkinsons called the IRS for an explanation. So did I.

Beverly Jaworsky: My name is Beverly Jaworsky. My title is Debt-To-Purchase Ratio Assessor.

Armed with a huge IRS database, Beverly and others like her have spent the last few months identifying taxpayers who'd be most likely to use their rebate checks to pay off debt.

Jaworsky: Someone who may be listing their house on the market as a short sale, for instance. Or students with student loans. Or screenwriters.

Then those taxpayers get special rebates.

Jaworsky: Instead of receiving that check that they were going to receive, we send it to them in the form of retail goods, in relative value to what their check would have been.

The piece goes on to quote Robert Reich to talk about how this is a bad idea, and how would the IRS know who needed what. He said people might want a toaster over an air conditioner. You really don't know what is on people's wish lists honestly.

So this person was outraged at the story and since she is a sociologist to add to it. She told multiple friends about the story and was apparently still aggravated about it today. I agreed with her sentiment, but then I remembered yesterday was April 1st and I looked for the transcript of the show. Guess what the last line of the story was?

RYSSDAL: Oh, c'mon, check your calendars, everybody.

April Fool's day had at least one person fooled.

Kudos to "Marketplace."

Perino Obviously Didn't Study History In School

You would think someone that could rise to the status of White House Press Secretary might be intelligent. Not only would they be smart overall, but well-versed in such things as English, History and even perhaps knowing how to tell the truth. Then again, this is the Bush Administration...and Dana Perino is emblematic of the White House as a whole. Case in point below.

From Crooks and Liars:

Download (1579) | Play (2153) (h/t Scarce)

Ahh….the benefits of being a Bushie: you never have to apologize for your lack of knowledge.

Dana Perino appeared on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and admitted that she RECENTLY had to ask her (British) husband if the “Cuban Missile Crisis” and the “Bay of Pigs” were the same thing.

Keep that in mind the next time she says, “let’s take a historical perspective on this…”

Of course not many Americans know the difference between the two unless they lived through the early 60s and saw a failed invasion of Cuba and the possibility of WWIII coming within inches of being reality. Still, like I said up top, this is the White House Press Secretary, our standards in this department should be a little higher.

A Cold, Callous And Clueless President

I've been harping on George Bush all day, but the stories just keep coming fast and furious and this one can't escape mentioning it. Several mothers of fallen soldiers went on NPR to talk about their experiences and one of them, Elaine Johnson, had quite the one-on-one with the President. It is another example of how truly, dare I say evil George Bush really is. Elaine was mostly neutral on the war until she met the President face to face. She asked him why we were there but couldn't get a straight answer.

From The Chicago Tribune:

"President Bush, he just didn’t see that, and he told me I was kind of, seemed like I was kind of hostile. I said, ‘yes I am hostile, because you sent my son over there.’ So my thing is -- all the questions that I asked him, he didn’t know nothing then, and he definitely don’t know nothing now, because the United States is in worser shape now that it was in 2003 that my son died.''

Martin asked: "So when you left that meeting did you leave with determination to do something or did that happen over time?''

Johnson said: "When he told me -- I said what’s, what’s the mission? He couldn’t give me an answer. I says, well I’m going to tell you what: I’m on my mission now. My mission had just begun. And my mission is to fight to bring these troops home, to take care of these troops when they get home.

"Then he gave us a presidential coin,'' she said. "Now you check this out: He gave six of us a presidential coin, tell us not to tell the rest of the people that was there, and then after that he told us don’t go sell it on eBay. Now you tell me how insensitive that can be? What kind of caring person is that?''

Who wouldn't be hostile after that? If I were a parent that lost a child in Iraq, only God would know what I'd do to him. Elaine is right, he does not care. There is no empathy for the troops, their grieving families or anything else that our nation holds dear. Cold, callous and clueless; and the worst President our country has ever seen.

Powell's Chief Of Staff Calls For Impeachment

The case for impeaching the President and Dick Cheney is as clear as crystal. The high crimes and misdemeanors could fill a novel (well maybe not that long, perhaps a good size essay though). For far too long, only those on the left have had the courage to speak up about it. They were called traitors, commies, unpatriotic and crazy for telling the truth about the Bush Administration.

Now times, they are a changing. Four in ten Americans believe that impeachment is necessary to stop the abuses of power committed by Dick and Bush. And out of those four, not all are necessarily on the left. Lawrence Wilkerson is an advocate for impeaching and he happens to be the former Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell. Hardly a candidate to be accused of being a commie liberal.

From AfterDowningStreet:

Wilkerson is a Retired Army Colonel, the former Chief of Staff at the State Department from 2002 to 2005 under then Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam War veteran, the former Acting Director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico, and currently a teacher of national security at William and Mary College.

The program, On Point, was hosted by Tom Ashbrook, who focused the discussion on a need for greater public accountability for the Iraq War, but who maintained that the public was not outraged or interested. (Ashbrook should read some polls and invite on organizers of the impeachment movement.)

Also on the program was Ken Adelman, who promoted the war and said it would be "a cakewalk". Adelman argued a case for not holding public officials accountable.

Wilkerson said in early comments on the show: "This administration doesn't know how to effect accountability in my opinion." But he did not raise the possibility of impeachment until after a member of the audience had phoned in.

Ashbrook is right and wrong at the same time. There is a segment of the population that is actively engaged in getting the Prez and VP out by an act of Congress. Yet many people are more interested in other things (Have you seen the Spiderman 3 hype?) other than politics.

Thankfully we have people out there like Wilkerson who realizes the damage the Administration has done and what it would take to stop the madness. I've been a fan of impeachment for some time now and it is good to see the crowd getting larger and more diverse. Of course seeing it through is highly unlikely with the makeup of the current Congress, but unless we keeping pushing, we'll never get anywhere.