Republicans everywhere will have a major sad:
In a scathing report, the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, laid primary blame on what he portrayed as a dysfunctional and poorly supervised group of Arizona-based federal prosecutors and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. As part of the operation, those officials did not act to seize illegal weapons in hopes of bringing a bigger case against a gun-smuggling network linked to a Mexican drug gang.
While it found no evidence that officials at the Justice Department in Washington had authorized or approved the tactics, it faulted several officials for related failures, including not recognizing red flags and failing to follow up on information about both Operation Fast and Furious and a similar, earlier investigation called Operation Wide Receiver, in which guns also reached drug gangs.
“In the course of our review, we identified individuals ranging from line agents and prosecutors in Phoenix and Tucson to senior A.T.F. officials in Washington, D.C., who bore a share of responsibility for A.T.F.’s knowing failure in both these operations to interdict firearms illegally destined for Mexico, and for doing so without adequately taking into account the danger to public safety that flowed from this risky strategy,” the report said.
Holder released a gloating statement:
The report finds that Attorney General Holder was not informed of the controversial ATF operation until 2011 after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December 2010.
“I have reviewed the Office of the Inspector General’s report on Operation Fast and Furious and the key conclusions are consistent with what I, and other Justice Department officials, have said for many months now: The inappropriate strategy and tactics employed were field-driven and date back to 2006; The leadership of the Department did not know about or authorize the use of the flawed strategy and tactics; and The Department’s leadership did not attempt to cover up information or mislead Congress about it,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
Personally, I am just glad Holder can get back to his more important real job- coordinating the suppression of white voters with the New Black Panther Party.
f space that
Real car thief gets pwned. Bwa ha ha ha ha !!!!
rlrr
This is good news for McCain…
beltane
They’ve got nothing. Nothing.
Mark S.
Shit, do 73% of the country have any idea what this scandal even is? I’d have no idea what is was if it weren’t for memeorandum putting headlines from D-list conservative bloggers about it every other day.
Violet
Sweet, sweet wingnut tears. How I love to watch thee fall.
Villago Delenda Est
So, 2006.
Holder was fucking up three years before he assumed office. What an incompetent!
Impeach him! Impeach him now!
trollhattan
@f space that:
Whenever Issa haz a sad, an angel gets its wings.
Corner Stone
Slightly OT, but I’m baiting some wingnuts elsewhere by mentioning “leading from BEHIND”. Does anyone actually know what this means? I have yet to figure it out.
Oh, and for those wondering, the “Obama apologizes to countries waging violent war on us” talking point is wickedly alive. Just flabbergasting.
beltane
Chunky Bobo has a sad that our sinful culture forced the lovable Mitt Romney to say those horrible things at a fundraiser:http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/douthat-our-revolting-elites/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120919
Villago Delenda Est
So, 2006.
Holder was fucking up three years before he assumed office. What an incompetent!
Impeach him! Impeach him now!
rlrr
@Villago Delenda Est:
He must have borrowed Obama’s Kenyan time machine…
Linda Featheringill
Hooray for Holder!
No surprise there, of course.
Even people who don’t support Obama&Co. should understand that he isn’t stupid and nobody in his administration is stupid. Given native intelligence, any member of a minority group that is the first whatever will understand that they’re going to be observed. A lot. And therefore, they will conduct themselves without corruption.
Even folks who aren’t Obamabots should understand that. And if they don’t then they’re really ignorant.
Villago Delenda Est
FYWP, just FY clear to fucking Mars.
David Hunt
@beltane:
Would that this were true. What they have is months and months of major media outlets talking about the Justice Department giving guns to Mexican drug gangs to kill U.S. border patrol agents. And that’s the mainstream media. Conservative writers aren’t literally saying that Holder personally delivered the guns to the drug lords and then paid for the hit with stolen Medicare funds. I expect that they use a Cavuto mark.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Dunno, but it sure sounds ghey as spoken by a Republican.
rlrr
@Linda Featheringill:
“But Obama is the most corrupt President in the history of ever!”
— Fox “News”
RareSanity
@Mark S.:
73% where’d you get that…
Wait…
Oh, I see what you did there. Very good, indeed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
That’s our fabulous 27%!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Corner Stone: It’s referring to the Libyan bombing. When Obama found out that the British and French were going to impose a totally pointless no-fly-zone over Libya to stop Libyan troops from massacring a city, he, after talking to his generals, convinced the British and French that bombing the military would be better and that they should lead. Hence, leading from behind.
In other words, they are pissed because he didn’t make the US lead the effort, after they were pissed that he got the US involved, after being pissed that he wasn’t doing anything.
Napoleon
@Corner Stone:
A while back there was some article in something like Vanity Fair or Esquire which was talking about how Obama was handling the Arab Spring and some unnamed administration source characterized Obama’s style on the issue as leading from behind. The usual sources (McCain/Graham/Lieberman) sized on it and mischaracterized it as Obama failing to lead, which was not what was meant (the meaning was that Obama was happy with not being real high profile on the issue so as not to have the stink of America interventionism attach to the movement).
Roger Moore
Come on, Cole. This is obviously a coverup. Holder must have leaned on the IG to give such a biased, misleading report. It’s just proof of how deep the conspiracy runs./wingnut
Face
This partisan report, written by lackeys for the Obummer Admin, has no bearing on the case and Holder will be impeached because shut up your cake hole.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Anyone else here expect Congress to come out of recess in the next few months to impeach Holder?
OT, but these polls are seriously driving me insane. Up. Down. NH walks for Obama– oh no, wait, it’s close! Someone must have sent an email! And Ryan’s got WI in the bag for Romney now… except when it’s Obama up by 14 on the next day. And so on, and so on.
The convention bounce is completely gone, for no reason. We also should have seen some kind of ‘rally round the President’ bump last week (even a tiny one), but didn’t. And now I’m getting the feeling that Mitt’s 47% comment might not have the bad effect most of us think it should (we’ll know more about that next week).
Seriously, just how much does Mitt need to suck before his support cracks below 48%? A Dem candidate of equal ineptitude would have been forced to retire to Iceland by now.
GxB
And the wingers pshaw and dismiss these findings as yet more evidence of a vast left wing conspiracy. Still, the weight of all that denial surely is getting mighty heavy.
Drip, drip, drip isn’t just for Rmoney these days.
Captain Haddock
Only because Bill and Hilary had key witnesses whacked. Oh, wait, sorry, wrong decade.
peach flavored shampoo
I think the nonpartisan Inspector General is about to become, in about 42 nanoseconds, the most partisan Democrat-leaning activist ghey 47%er in Washington.
shoutingattherain
@Villago Delenda Est:
When Holder time-traveled back to 2006 to fuck things up for F&F was when he also too changed the dates on Obama’s birth certificate. Or so I’ve read.
SectarianSofa
Impossible! Who is this Horowitz guy? Sounds like a Blank Panther. I have an ear for that kind of thing.
SFAW
@Corner Stone:
Ask Larry Niven
Peej
I think Cole is having a sad that Holder’s last name doesn’t begin with “F”.
dedc79
If you head over to the alternative universe that is Fox News’ website, you’d never know that Holder was cleared. Of course, that’s the same news “network” that is claiming that the 1998 obama video is on par with if not worse than the Romney video from May.
Villago Delenda Est
@Peej:
Yeah, I was thinking that too. Kinda spoiled the effect.
Another reason the SOB should be impeached!
PeakVT
It looks like the report basically lines up with this article by Katherine Eban from a few months ago. It’s well into tl;dr territory, but the article is worth reading if you don’t understand what actually happened with the F&F program.
Xecky Gilchrist
Republicans everywhere will have a major sad:
No they won’t. They’ll have a temper tantrum. It’s the only form of expression they know, other than a horrible fake simper when they’re concern trolling.
RareSanity
Saw a funny (as in depressingly stupid, not funny “ha ha”) bumper sticker today.
“I’d rather vote for the MORMON, than the MORON!”
(Of course the ‘O’ in ‘MORON’ was the OFA ‘O’ with the red circle and line through it…and yes, of course it was on a pickup truck)
I live in one of the capitals of Wingnut World, the northern suburbs of Atlanta, so it’s a daily occurrence to see, and hear, the most vile of the wingnut catch phrases…but the stupidity of this one, temporarily incapacitated my brain’s ability to form a thought.
Gotta give it to wingnuts though, their ability to come up with bumper-sticker-ready lines, borders on idiotic genius. They even managed to spell moron correctly.
General Stuck
Add on top of that, the wingnuts picking Willy Loman as their candidate, the nutters could go full Reaver sooner than later.
SatanicPanic
I still expect them to be harping on this (and pretending like anyone cares) well into the 2030’s
eemom
OT: meme brewing in wingnutosphere that two minutes are missing from the MJ video. Apparently David Corn edited out the part where Romtron beseeched for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free and bathed the feet of a homeless man.
dmsilev
Mitt Romney switches to Plan B
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
The two minutes missing are the Arbeit Macht Frei portion where he announces his plans to set up work camps for the indigent, with satellite camps located near the Rmoney stables for mucking crew.
GregB
Mitt’s stubbornly high poll numbers are the result of the soft expectations of low bigotry.
P.S. Unless the missing two minutes contain him saying: Everything I said before or after these two minutes are part of an elaborate hoax, they got nothing.
Patricia Kayden
I don’t think anyone on the left is surprised that Holder was guiltless vis-a-vis Fast and Furious. So why was he impeached again? Repubs are so useless. Dying for the day when they no longer exist.
Paul
I’m so glad that the Republican House spent their valuable time on this and issues such as voting 39 times to abolish ACA knowing full well that the Senate would not go along.
After all, there certainly are not more pressing issues such as getting our fricking economy back on its feet.
I still want to know who the 11% are that approves of the way Congress does its job.
Darkrose
@Linda Featheringill: That’s the problem right there: the wingnuts have so much invested in the idea that black people are inherently stupid that they simply can’t process the fact that Obama is very, very smart.
RareSanity
@Paul:
Wall St. and corporate lobbyists.
GxB
@dmsilev: Not bad but I really got a charge out of this beaut. In the 6 years I lived in the Peoples Republic of Madison, I accumulated a wall of cut out articles from the dead tree version of America’s Finest News Source – this would have been one of them. In fact I may have to take a road trip – they still giving them away for free in Dane County? I suppose that ended once they went to the big city – sniff…
Ash Can
@RareSanity: They’re so thoroughly convinced that a black person can’t possibly be intelligent, no matter how much evidence to the contrary gets heaped upon them. It’s pathetic.
@eemom: That cracks me up. Assuming this is even true, WTF do they think could have happened/been said during those two minutes? Romney saying, “Now watch this — I’m going to assume the character of a selfish rich jagoff, and you’re all going to play along with me, strictly for the lulz, and none of what we say will be true or in any way reflective of my policies and beliefs; got it?”
Patricia Kayden
@David Hunt: Which administration started the whole Fast and Furious nonsense? Not sure how much elapsed between the time the Obama administration found out about F & F and the time they put an end to it. Otherwise, the conservative crazies have nothing.
MikeJ
@Paul:
They could have been doing something dangerous that Manchin would have gone along with. When morons are in charge the safest thing is to have them wasting their time.
Roger Moore
@GxB:
I don’t think they’re ever going to top this one, both for humor and prescience.
Amir Khalid
@eemom:
What could Mitt possibly have said in those two minutes to negate his dismissal of half the country as unworthy? Do the wingnuterati advance any plausible speculations?
gelfling545
@eemom: There were a lot of people there. Romney himself was, so they say. Surely they could just ASK someone. (?)I have no doubt that if it was anything useful Romney would have trumpeted it to the skies by now.
uila
It’s not all bad news for wingnuts. They got a reefer crackdown for their troubles.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@SatanicPanic:
__
By the 2030s I expect the GOP to be loudly screetching about how the latest ultra-left wing Democrat-de-jour is selling out the awesome legacy of the very conservative President Obama who was of course completely white (on his mother’s side) by threatening to cut Obamacare which was their idea all along.
Oh and the firebaggers will castigate Democratic President Castro Mao Stalin for not kicking the GOP in the balls just like Obama used to do.
General Stuck
BREITBART.COM– SECRET SECRET UNVEILS GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS FRENCH. GOP CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE MULLIGAN AND CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION TO PUT BABY JEEVUS IN CHARGE.
okay, this marks my blog commenting quota for the week. Now i must meditate.
Lev
If the New Black Panther Party didn’t exist, FOX News would have had to create them.
Oh, wait, they actually sort of did do that.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ (formerly IrishGirl)
@Villago Delenda Est: I have seen a lot cons online talking about how Holder should be executed, even lynched. As much as they hate having a brown man in the WH, I think they actually hate having one as the highest ranking LEO even more! Hard to believe I know.
Omnes Omnibus
@Patricia Kayden: Um, impeached? When was Holder impeached?
GxB
@Roger Moore: That one was eerie as it was sublime, a centerpiece in my display. I still have it in a box somewhere… time to dig.
eemom
Well, Wonkette points out that Mitt being Mitt, he COULD have changed his mind in those 2 minutes.
? Martin
How many jobs did the Fast and Furious investigation create, again?
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
It doesn’t matter. It’s the same basic thing as the claim that the video is a violation of Florida’s wiretapping laws. They think they can write off the whole video if they can just find some minor lapse or technical problem in the way it was brought to the public’s attention. That’s all they care about.
WWStBreitbartD
@PeakVT:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
peach flavored shampoo
@dedc79: Now you will. Fox News current headline:
Who quit?
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
Republican superpac ad–“If President Obama is reelected, this will happen across our heartland.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/sep/19/fire-tornado-australia-video?newsfeed=true
“Don’t vote for fire tornados; don’t vote for Obama.”
Omnes Omnibus
@GxB: Paper copies are still available for free here.
Redshift
@RareSanity: Was it another one of those where you can see the OFA logo from a lot further away than you can read the rest of it? I love how so many of them provide unintentional Obama advertising.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: It is eerily reminiscent of the workshops on abusive predators:
*Technical fouls remove their responsibility. If dinner hadn’t been late, I wouldn’t have lost my temper.
*Telling the truth is not something they can do; because of us. If I told you what I was really doing, you’d get upset with me.
*If only we were perfect, they wouldn’t have to correct us. If the 47% would just get a high wage job and pay taxes, we wouldn’t have to take away their food stamps.
WWStBreitbartD
@peach flavored shampoo:
Resigned
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch were all swiftboated over Fast and Furious.
Redshift
@Omnes Omnibus: It was a contempt vote, not impeachment, but I can understand the mistake. They’ve talked about impeachment.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Polsters have to sell polls. Who’s going to buy polling on a walk away election?
General Stuck
oK, one more. and brace yourselves.
New Plutocrat internet poll shows a big lot of agreement out there in jungle.
You can too. Vote early and often.
Edit – and before you libtards go off on some science worship shit. Clownhall nips that in the bud.
SatanicPanic
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
You’re just a Castro Mao StalinBot. And stop blaming Adolf Ho Chi Minh Pot for getting Jenna Bush elected. That was Che Ortega Kim’s fault for not running a real liberal campaign.
RareSanity
@Redshift:
Never thought of it that way but, as a matter of fact is was…blue background, with white block lettering as well.
I walked by in a parking lot and had to do a double take, because at first, I thought it was an OFA sticker. Then as I got closer…I made out “MORMON” and knew that OFA doesn’t do multi-word bumper stickers, and even if it did, the word “Mormon” would never be one of them.
My next thought was, “Here we go…I wonder what madness is this.”
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques:
Nate Silver just tweeted “The. Polls. Make. No. Sense.” (that, literally). So I feel less alone.
Romney’s sending out an email declaring that the 47% video is “debunked and edited”, btw. Typical Rovian reality-creation.
But will it work?
GxB
@Omnes Omnibus: Good to see they respect their roots.
Violet
@General Stuck: Har. They’re boasting about what online polls are saying. Hilarious. Nothing says confident like boasting about online poll results.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: “But will it work?”
No, this is just part of the over all Mittens experience. Buy itself this video won’t be a big deal, but with the primary debates, his visit to England, the convention, Todd Akin, Empty chairs and him gloating over a dead ambassador it does add up.
japa21
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Interesting since Romney has already said of the 47% statements that he may have said it inelegantly, but it is the message he is trying to get out there. So Romney doesn’t believe it has been debunked.
Kay
This doesn’t have anything to do with Eric Holder, but this election is bizarre. I’m passing out yard signs from the trunk of my car and half of the Democrats are (literally!) wringing their hands, fretting and the other half are supremely confident. These people live in the same town. How could there be such a divide in expectations?
The same is true on the other side, from my observation. Republicans here were all strutting around crowing a month ago (which I thought was a mistake-I saw nothing that would indicate that they should have so much confidence) and now half are still sure Romney’s got it in the bag and the other half are all cranky and angry.
Half of the people in this county are completely wrong. 47% , or so, I’d say , and they’re not all Republicans :)
David Hunt
@Patricia Kayden:
You’re quite correct that the facts are on the side of the Obama administration. Reality is notorious for having a liberal bias. I was simply talking about all the free publicity that the MSM showered on this “scandal.” I suppose I was thinking about DougJ’s earlier post regarding the Milbank article. That being that, from the press’s POV, Obama is a very boring president so they’ll grab at anything vaguely exciting and plaster it all over the news. The fact that “boring” in this context means “confident and scandal-free” is not lost on me.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
In local news, Scott Brown basically had to be forced to admit he was still for Romney for POTUS (and that had to be done indirectly, through a spokesperson). Note that their campaigns share a key advisor.
First Brown/Warren debate tomorrow at 7pm. No pressure.
Paul
@General Stuck:
These folks are so funny. Not only is the poll not scientific. It is an online poll from CNBC. 90% of the CNBC viewers are Republicans. Heck, anytime I watch that channel to see how the market is doing I always turn off the sound since most of it is right-wing propaganda like FoxNews.
Needless to say one would expect most of those folks to agree with Romney irregardless of what he said.
J.D. Rhoades
@RareSanity:
The “Obama is stupid” meme seems to be a persistent one in my corner of Wingnuttia as well. It’s usually put forth in poorly spelled, grammatically incorrect, and generally incoherent posts and letters that one can easily imagine being written in crayon.
WereBear
Because the old way of knowing what is going on is breaking down (Fox? CNN? MSNBC? Yahoo headlines while checking email? They all will say different things.)
PeakVT
@Kay: The state of the economy would probably mean Obama would lose if Rmoney wasn’t such a godawful candidate, so it’s not surprising that people might have different feelings based on what signal (economy or candidates) they (un)consciously emphasize. Besides, when are Democrats ever of one mind about anything?
Or what WereBear said.
kay
@PeakVT:
It’s just so WILDLY divergent. They’re either all the way up or dragging on the floor.
kindness
Now if only Holder will back off on trying to close all the Medical Marijuana outlets here in California.
I’m not very happy with Obama about it either.
Soonergrunt
@Linda Featheringill:
Paging Veritas/Political Observer…Paging Veritas/Political Observer…Veritas/Political Observer to the white courtesy phone, please.
Calouste
@PeakVT:
FTFY.
burnspbesq
@Patricia Kayden:
I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Bush Administration “started” it, either. I think the takeaway is that the op was started by a bunch of rogue agents in the field. Now, you can argue insufficient oversight, and you might be right, but that goes on all the time in large and geographically dispersed organizations, in both the public and private sectors. And it’s been pretty decisively addressed by the ex-Marine who is now running the agency.
Turgidson
@kindness:
I’m miffed about that too. I’m really hoping this is an issue where Obama was trying to look “tough” or triangulate or whatever, but will back off in a 2nd term. I mean…I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that Obama thinks the war on weed should be a priority in expending the DOJ’s resources.
ruemara
@Corner Stone: I just post the video of Bush apologizing for the Koran burnings. That usually shuts them up. or makes them frothy with rage in a humourous manner.
quannlace
The only rightwing radio host I ever listen (in the interest of ‘what’s the other side saying.’) to is Michael Medved. He’s no rabid wingnut, and he does have one great show every month, the ‘conspiracy day.’, where he invites any and all crackpot theories, and boy, do they call in!
But today, I kinda felt sorry for him. He and his guests kept insisting that, despite all the ‘propaganda,’ i.e. all the polling and all the bad news from the big news outlets, the trend was actually moving TOWARDS Romney! No, it really, really is!
Sigh.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@kindness: I am assuming a 2012 win for Obama. I’m not buying the party line about this being for triangulation purposes, most of this country knows marijuana laws are bullshit. I think Holder’s a true believer. I think Obama is too.
How the post-2012 Obama administration and the Democratic Party deals with this will be a huge determining factor in how and who I choose to vote for in 2016.
Mike Lamb
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: They care about edited videos now? ACORN would like a word…
Bruce S
Proof of the cover-up!
Original Lee
Nobody in my corner of FB is talking about Romney or Fast and Furious. These Daily Caller links are the most popular amongst my FB wingnuts:
, which seems to be intended as a preemptive strike against the IG report.
And , which seems out of left field to me.
Edited to get the links to show up properly.
nellcote
@quannlace:
His teevee appearances would say differently.
TG Chicago
@SectarianSofa: Seriously. It’s time to inspect Michael Horowitz’s countertops.
johnny interglacial
@dmsilev:
I thought Plan B was an abortifacient.