Month: June 2014

IRS cut ties with Sonasoft almost immediately after Lois Lerner scandal broke.

I’m sorry* to revisit this topic, but this Sonasoft thing is starting to blow up: “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.” Basically, the Daily Caller – doing the legwork that our legacy media apparently cannot – determined that Sonasoft offered email backup services from 2005 to 2011 (Sonasoft certainly claimed that).  A couple of weeks after Congress started requesting Lois Lerner’s email records from the IRS, Lerner’s computer crash – and, shortly after that, the IRS let their contract with Sonasoft lapse.  Left unstated is why the IRS would decide to terminate services with the company that was providing them with backups, although I’m sure that we could all hazard a guess or two. Continue reading IRS cut ties with Sonasoft almost immediately after Lois Lerner scandal broke.

Question of the day: Does the IRS use/*still* use Sonasoft to back up its archives?

Because the IRS apparently did use Sonasoft, once:

The IRS reportedly used a private company to back up emails, a new report claims. The company is called Sonasoft, which boasts, “Email Archiving Done Right.”

“The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005, according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for ‘automatic data processing services.’ Sonasoft’s motto is ’email archiving done right,’ and the company lists the IRS as a customer,” Reason magazine reports.

Continue reading Question of the day: Does the IRS use/*still* use Sonasoft to back up its archives?

Tweet of the Day, I Apparently Have More Delicacy Than FLotUS edition.

There’s a part of me that’s a bad person for laughing at this.

On most evenings, Michelle Obama and her trusted adviser, Valerie Jarrett, met in a quiet corner of the White House residence. They’d usually open a bottle of Chardonnay, catch up on news about Sasha and Malia, and gossip about people who gave them heartburn.

Their favorite bête noire was Hillary Clinton, whom they nicknamed “Hildebeest,” after the menacing and shaggy-maned gnu that roams the Serengeti.

“Menacing and shaggy-maned gnu.” I really, really hope that the Democrats think that they’re going to have the same free media pass in 2016 that they had in 2008.

Via

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, are wildebeests actually ‘menacing?’ Also: a quick look at Wikpedia argues that they’re not actually native to the Serengeti. I hate to note that, because the line is hysterical, but fair’s fair.

Here comes the next Obamacare meltdown!

Oh, this should go over well:

…the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposal in March that would prohibit insurers from selling fixed-benefit insurance plans as stand-alone policies.

Fixed-benefit plans are so bare bones they don’t even qualify as actual health insurance under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate – so people who are covered by these plans only are still subject to the penalty unless they qualify for an exemption.

So why would people buy them? …Probably because the Obamacare tax – that’s what it is: a tax – is low enough that it’s still cheaper to pay the tax and get the fixed-benefit plan. Numbers are a little sparse on this stuff, but a fixed-benefit plan seems to range from $70 to $100 or so a month; given that the Obamacare tax is effectively capped at 2.5% (eventually) of income over $10,000, there’s still a market for these kinds of plans. Continue reading Here comes the next Obamacare meltdown!

To understand Iraq in 2014, look no further than the USA in 2008.

The Wall Street Journal, in the process of mentioning just how badly Barack Obama’s administration urinated away years of hard work in Iraq, mentions this minor bit of too little, too late*:

…at the end of April, the Pentagon dispatched a team of special-operations personnel to assess the capabilities of Iraq’s security forces, a defense official said.

The assessment they brought back was bleak: Sunni Army officers had been forced out, overall leadership had declined, the Iraqi military wasn’t maintaining its equipment and had stopped conducting rigorous training. The response in Washington, summed up by a senior U.S. official, was: “Whoa, what the hell happened here?”

Permit me to answer that:

2008

(Via 270 to Win.)

This was the goal. This was what the Democrats ran on. This is what they wanted, and now they have it. Don’t look at me: I voted for the other guys.

Moe Lane

*This has been a constant theme of this administration.  It’s a natural byproduct of a situation where we have a bunch of people who have an inflated opinion of both their competence, and their ability to improvise.  Alas, we simply have to grin and bear it until January 2017…

Jew-hating wing of the Presbyterian Church gives the divestment game away.

Background: the Presbyterian Church (USA) finally voted narrowly to retreat from doing business with Jews… oh, pardon me: I meant ‘divest themselves from companies that sell stuff to Israel.’ The virulent anti-Semites – oops, I was trying to type out ‘hardcore progressive activists’ – in that particular sect have been pushing for this for some time; they finally got their way.  Which makes this Kinsley Gaffe – yikes, what it is with me, today?  I absolutely thought that was going to be expressed as ‘inarticulate comment’ – all the more fascinating.

…Heath Rada, moderator for the church meeting, said immediately after the vote that “in no way is this a reflection of our lack of love for our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

So, apparently, there is an actual lack of love: it just… had no actual effect on this decision, then.

Continue reading Jew-hating wing of the Presbyterian Church gives the divestment game away.

Quote of the Day, Who Benefits? edition.

Jonah Goldberg, discussing the rise of a managerial ‘class’ in this country that has apparently found a happy home with the Democratic party:

It’s true that the already super-rich Kochs would benefit from a freer country. It’s also true that the managerial class would benefit from the bureaucratization of America.

Very true. The major difference between the two, though? Other people besides the Kochs would benefit from a freer country. We’ve long since passed the point* where more bureaucratization would benefit anybody except bureaucrats.

Moe Lane

*Libertarian theorizing aside, you need some bureaucracy and organization if you want a country this large to operate effectively. Having no desire to break up the United States of America into an easily-conquered patch of pocket-realms – to say nothing of not wanting to need a passport to visit Seattle, Chicago, or Philadelphia – I am thus constrained to avoid advocating for a hard-core libertarian system. But we can hack The Weed Agency back a bit.  And by ‘bit’ I mean ‘a lot.’