IRS Scandal explodes. "no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution."

[Jhhnn]

How you get that the IRS "jumped through their asshole to comply with congressional demands" from that is beyond me. That isn't a press release from 2011. That's a story from a month ago about emails from 2011. And IRS officials pleading the 5th is not "jumped through their asshole to comply with congressional demands."

Lerner is the only person claiming 5th amendment rights.

 

[Matt1970]

Lerner is the only person claiming 5th amendment rights.

Sorry about the 's'

 

[First]

You are not going to get much recent correspondence between Lois Lerner and the IRS IT department regarding her old hard drive as she doesn't work there anymore.

Nothing in this shit reply refutes the statement of mine you just quoted. Lerner's emails are/were located on more than one device, hence her destroyed HDD /= "unpossible to recova emails!".

So in AT Tool World, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee isn't believable when he states what the IRS testified to.

No more than taking the ranking Dem, Rep. Cummings, solely at his word. Besides, since when do respectable journalists or thinking persons take public statements from politicians at their word when they've repeatedly been shown to jump the gun or misinterpret evidence?

Instead, its better to believe the IRS when you believe that they recycled a recoverable drive but somehow just certain emails weren't recovered, not to mention anything else for that matter. Sure I guess, the IRS showing their incompetence > chairman statements when it comes to the belief department at AT Tool World. Damn this is getting really entertaining.

Dude, come on, you know you wouldn't nut up with this garbage reasoning if you were confronted in person. This is just elementary stuff. Either you take a Republican politician at his word or you don't; you did, and worse still, took horrid 3rd grade probability arithmetic at face value from another Republican rep. You got duped. Move on when you've dug the hole this big.

 

[First]

Are you actually positing that perhaps just before the shredder her hard drive made a miraculous spontaneous recovery and the IRS just hasn't yet stumbled across that tidbit, or as I suspect merely saying "We still don't really know what happened?"


Yeah, perhaps her emails are also stored somewhere really, really hard to reach, so it's totally legitimate that retrieving them should take years (and no doubt cost thousands of lives.)

Perhaps they were left with Bigfoot for safekeeping. You know how hard that sucker is to track down.

Herp.

Derp.

For someone who believes vast gov't agencies like the IRS are a mangled mess, you sure do have this weird contradictory faith in their organizational and administrative abilities.

 

[xBiffx]

Dude, come on, you know you wouldn't nut up with this garbage reasoning if you were confronted in person. This is just elementary stuff. Either you take a Republican politician at his word or you don't; you did, and worse still, took horrid 3rd grade probability arithmetic at face value from another Republican rep. You got duped. Move on when you've dug the hole this big.

I have no reason to think that the chairman of a congressional committee is going to lie about something that is in records of testimony. I mean, I really don't think he's that stupid nor do I think he's got much to gain from lying vs. what he would risk doing so.

If you confronted me in person I'd just laugh hard and walk away.

I quoted where I saw that arithmetic. But go on thinking some rep was the first to come up with it. Its actually all over the place now that I looked more into it. I have no idea who the original source is.

Seems you are the one getting duped. Sucking up the unbelievable and completely unprobable from the IRS.

 

[werepossum]

Herp.

Derp.

For someone who believes vast gov't agencies like the IRS are a mangled mess, you sure do have this weird contradictory faith in their organizational and administrative abilities.

So do you have a proper number of years, decades, or epochs we should wait for the IRS to decide her emails really are gone before we can say that her emails really are gone?

Or perhaps, a proper number of years, decades, or epochs after the issue is last mentioned in public before the IRS can quietly kill its "investigation"?

From the context, I'm assuming that "herp" and "derp" are noises one makes when fighting for air because one's head is intentionally lodged far up Obama's rectum. I am impressed that you actually took the time to type them though, so that we all know what's going on 😀

 

[Matt1970]

Nothing in this shit reply refutes the statement of mine you just quoted. Lerner's emails are/were located on more than one device, hence her destroyed HDD /= "unpossible to recova emails!".

You guys are a piece of work.

You ask for a link stating that Lerner's drive was completely unrecoverable.

You got multiple.

Then you question the source and ask for even more form a halfway reputable source.

You were given CNN.

You then question the actual date of the emails, duh, that's when the shit was happening.

And now you cop out claiming her "emails are/were located on more than one device" like that has anything to do with it.

 

[Bowfinger]

Assuming the drives were cheap consumer models, they would likely have an MBTF of 100,000 hours. If they were instead enterprise hard drives, that time is likely 250,000 hours. Assuming Lerner works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year promoting the Democrat Party's interests, and always from her office, that equates to 8,760 hours per year, for 50% failure times of 11.4 years and 28.5 years respectively.

Two other things. Here is a study from all the way back in 2007 which showed annual replacement rates for consumers of between 2% and 4%, with a very occasional outlier up to 13%. Note also that of the replaced drives, approximately 50% have no actual failures, and of the other 50%, by far the majority have at least some data easily recoverable by any competent tech without expensive software, much less hardware or clean room. The vast majority of us have been that guy, either professionally or personally, and we well know this. http://www.pcworld.com/article/129558/article.html

Here is an analysis of Backblaze's 2009 to 2013 results by brand showing failure rates of between <1% and 14%. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089...eals-the-most-reliable-hard-drive-makers.html
Couple very important things here. First, these are striped RAID drives used in a file server farm, so they see a level of use not seen in even the hardest working workstations. Second, these include a lot of refurbs, which drives down reliability. Third, the high failure rates include green drives resigned to spin down when not being used, smart choices for home and office but horrid choices for a file server farm as Backblaze admits. Even so:

Note especially that the Seagate drives which failed at high rates were both green drives (powering down after reading/writing, then immediately powering back up) AND refurbs. The other Seagate drives had failure rates only slightly higher than their competition.

tl/dr: Use real world math, not head and shoulders deep in Obama's colon math, Foamy. The only people on a tech site who are stupid enough to be fooled are already on your side.

Follow your own advice, sweetie. Assuming just 100 drives and a failure rate of only 2.3% annually, that's 7 drives in 3 years. Of course you ignored the fact that studies also showed a significantly greater failure rate for older drives. According to sworn testimony, the IRS PCs were old (though that was never quantified).

By the way, in case you'd like to learn something, a 2.3% failure rate is pretty good for cheap consumer drives. Also, hard drive MTBF claims are pure fiction:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...ty-to-the-test-shows-not-all-disks-are-equal/

http://www.dailytech.com/Study+Hard+Drive+MTBF+Ratings+Highly+Exaggerated/article6404.htm

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Of course as we've seen again and again, "pure fiction" is exactly how you like your "facts".

 

[Bowfinger]

You guys are a piece of work.

You ask for a link stating that Lerner's drive was completely unrecoverable.

You got multiple.

Then you question the source and ask for even more form a halfway reputable source.

You were given CNN.

You then question the actual date of the emails, duh, that's when the shit was happening.

And now you cop out claiming her "emails are/were located on more than one device" like that has anything to do with it.

Reading is hard. As Jhhnn already pointed out, the links don't support the claim that the IRS said Lerner's drive was completely unrecoverable. They simply show an IRS tech said Lerner's data was unrecoverable. Whether you're honest enough to parse those words accurately or not, those are two different things.

 

[Bowfinger]

Don't let Bowfinger hear you say that.

You're not much on honesty, are you? I have NEVER suggested totally unrecoverable drives are common. I simply refuted your ignorant suggestion that drives are virtually never totally unrecoverable, as well as pointing out that the IRS never claimed Lerner's drive was totally unrecoverable.

By the way, I notice you never did answer Eskimospy's question about your experience with hard drives. My supposition is that I hit the nail on the head, and you truly don't (or didn't) understand the difference between a drive controller and an interface adapter. Controller failures can easily make a drive unrecoverable while interface failures are usually not a big deal. You're welcome.

You are not going to get much recent correspondence between Lois Lerner and the IRS IT department regarding her old hard drive as she doesn't work there anymore.

Given that she worked there until a few months ago, that comment is equally ignorant.

 

[Matt1970]

Reading is hard. As Jhhnn already pointed out, the links don't support the claim that the IRS said Lerner's drive was completely unrecoverable. They simply show an IRS tech said Lerner's data was unrecoverable. Whether you're honest enough to parse those words accurately or not, those are two different things.

Right, the techie that was designing hard drives when I was back in grade school knows that when an IT guy says the data was unrecoverable, he clearly only means a portion of it was unrecoverable. If even one bit of data could have been savaged, it clearly doesn't mean that it was completely unrecoverable. Keep toeing the line baby, just keep toeing the line. Your blind allegiance will be rewarded soon.

 

[Bowfinger]

So in AT Tool World, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee isn't believable when he states what the IRS testified to. Instead, its better to believe the IRS when you believe that they recycled a recoverable drive but somehow just certain emails weren't recovered, not to mention anything else for that matter. Sure I guess, the IRS showing their incompetence > chairman statements when it comes to the belief department at AT Tool World. Damn this is getting really entertaining.

What's really entertaining is watching you lying you ass off, desperately twisting the facts to maintain your standing as P&N's premier RNC sock puppet. I don't know much about Camp, but your good buddy Darrell Issa, the Chairmen of the House Oversight Committee, is a shameless, pathological liar that puts you to shame. So pardon me if I don't put a lot of faith in being a "chairman" as a measure of honesty. Further, as I already pointed out, the issue isn't necessarily dishonesty. Camp's technical ignorance plus blogger technical ignorance is more than enough to explain how technical testimony could be easily misunderstood and become distorted as it passes from person to person.

 

[Matt1970]

Given that she worked there until a few months ago, that comment is equally ignorant.

September 2013 is a few months ago?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23/lois-lerner-retires_n_3976663.html

I guess we are going to redefine "few" as well.

 

[Bowfinger]

Right, the techie that was designing hard drives when I was back in grade school knows that when an IT guy says the data was unrecoverable, he clearly only means a portion of it was unrecoverable. If even one bit of data could have been savaged, it clearly doesn't mean that it was completely unrecoverable. Keep toeing the line baby, just keep toeing the line. Your blind allegiance will be rewarded soon.

Tell you what, Sparky. If you can show us where that tech ever used the phrase "completely unrecoverable" I will concede the point. Unfortunately for your story he didn't. Your incessant goal post shifting is transparently dishonest.

And by the way, I notice you never did answer Eskimospy's question about your experience with hard drives. My supposition is that I hit the nail on the head, and you truly don't (or didn't) understand the difference between a drive controller and an interface adapter. Controller failures can easily make a drive unrecoverable while interface failures are usually not a big deal. You're welcome.


Edit: And just so your distortions don't stand unchallenged, I wasn't a techie, I was an engineer. I also didn't design hard drives, but I did design a controller and was well versed in drive technologies. I continued to follow the EE trade for many years, including evolving drive technologies, even after I moved into commercial IT instead of hardware engineering. Note that none of this is especially important ... except when some arrogant Geek Squad wannabe announces he's forgotten more about drives than I'll ever know. Here's a hint: If you're going to puff yourself up and crow about how wonderful you are, you should probably know something about your target.

 

[Bowfinger]

September 2013 is a few months ago?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23/lois-lerner-retires_n_3976663.html

I guess we are going to redefine "few" as well.

Fine, 10 months ago. Play whatever pedantic semantics games you must to salve your ego, the simple fact is that's a full two years after the 2011 date you insinuated. When First mentioned August, 2011, you replied:

"You are not going to get much recent correspondence between Lois Lerner and the IRS IT department regarding her old hard drive as she doesn't work there anymore."
​

In fact, there were two full years for Lerner to generate more correspondence. Once again, let me suggest your frequent errors wouldn't become such a big deal if you would acknowledge them and move on instead of constantly doubling down on stupid. Food for thought.

 

[werepossum]

Follow your own advice, sweetie. Assuming just 100 drives and a failure rate of only 2.3% annually, that's 7 drives in 3 years. Of course you ignored the fact that studies also showed a significantly greater failure rate for older drives. According to sworn testimony, the IRS PCs were old (though that was never quantified).

By the way, in case you'd like to learn something, a 2.3% failure rate is pretty good for cheap consumer drives. Also, hard drive MTBF claims are pure fiction:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...ty-to-the-test-shows-not-all-disks-are-equal/

http://www.dailytech.com/Study+Hard+Drive+MTBF+Ratings+Highly+Exaggerated/article6404.htm

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Of course as we've seen again and again, "pure fiction" is exactly how you like your "facts".

Wow. You linked to the same Backblaze study I linked - though with displaying not the slightest understanding of the differences between a striped file server farm and an office environment, or that it specifically said it included refurbs and drives totally unsuited to the environment. Then you linked to the same 2007 study I linked. Then you linked to a 2005/2006 study. Then you made the huge leap of faith and assumed that "failed" equals unrecoverable even though the two earlier studies specifically mentioned that a high percentage of "failed" drives are not only recoverable but pass all diagnostics. (Hard drive manufacturers put this number at roughly 50% last I read.) You really are the Swiss Army knife of tools, willing to do anything for the cause no matter how ludicrous you look doing it.

 

[werepossum]

You guys are a piece of work.

You ask for a link stating that Lerner's drive was completely unrecoverable.

You got multiple.

Then you question the source and ask for even more form a halfway reputable source.

You were given CNN.

You then question the actual date of the emails, duh, that's when the shit was happening.

And now you cop out claiming her "emails are/were located on more than one device" like that has anything to do with it.

I especially like that last bit. I don't believe the Hope-Change-Brains crowd really thought that through. Are they claiming that multiple devices crashed, or are they claiming that Lerner's emails are unrecoverable because there are just too darned many copies of them?

Let us all remember that NONE of Lerner's emails for the period in question were recoverable from Lerner.

 

[Matt1970]

My supposition is that I hit the nail on the head, and you truly don't (or didn't) understand the difference between a drive controller and an interface adapter. Controller failures can easily make a drive unrecoverable while interface failures are usually not a big deal. You're welcome.

Repeating the same inaccurate statement does not make it true. With that statement I am not even sure you really understand how a hard drive works and yet you and your little buddy want to question my expertise? In layman terms, the controller is very hard pressed to cause a total catastrophic data loss. The actual platters can be taken out and data extracted from them. This is a hard drive platter. That is where your data is.

This is a hard drive controller:

Drive controller failures are very, and I do mean very unlikely to cause data to be unrecoverable.

Do you want to get into motors and actuators and all the other components?

 

[Matt1970]

Tell you what, Sparky. If you can show us where that tech ever used the phrase "completely unrecoverable" I will concede the point. Unfortunately for your story he didn't. Your incessant goal post shifting is transparently dishonest.

.

There you go, you may have found a way that possible nobody phrased the data loss. First it was "unrecoverable" and now it is "completely unrecoverable".....and I am goal post shifting.

 

[Bowfinger]

Wow. You linked to the same Backblaze study I linked - though with displaying not the slightest understanding of the differences between a striped file server farm and an office environment, or that it specifically said it included refurbs and drives totally unsuited to the environment. Then you linked to the same 2007 study I linked. Then you linked to a 2005/2006 study. Then you made the huge leap of faith and assumed that "failed" equals unrecoverable even though the two earlier studies specifically mentioned that a high percentage of "failed" drives are not only recoverable but pass all diagnostics. (Hard drive manufacturers put this number at roughly 50% last I read.) You really are the Swiss Army knife of tools, willing to do anything for the cause no matter how ludicrous you look doing it.

You know, I'm starting to understand that your problems aren't just low integrity and a huge, fragile ego. You're also just not very bright. I linked those articles specifically to document that the MTBF numbers you cited are pure fiction. I understand reading is hard, but it was only a short sentence, immediately before the links:

"Also, hard drive MTBF claims are pure fiction:"
​

Had you read your own articles, you might have noticed that before you cited bogus MTBF numbers as if they proved something. You also conveniently ignore the sharp increase in drive failures as they get old.

Beyond that, just as I pointed out to little Matt, I have NEVER stated that totally unrecoverable drives are common. I was simply refuting those nutters who keep insisting that losing seven drives over three years is some sort of statistical outlier. It clearly isn't for anyone with even modest amounts of honesty, math skills, and real world experience with computers. Sorry that you have three strikes.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've written "letters to the editor" which didn't get published by the right-leaning local newspaper; I'm clear -- crystal -- about how I understand the wider issue, and it isn't just Lerner.

The application of the 501(c) statute was corrupted decades ago, and it's amazing to me that the people who had to deal with the confusing fog of it didn't attempt to advise the elected officials about the problem.

So it may be the case that a lot of "advocacy interests" -- often left-leaning -- used the loopholes of the statute to avoid filing whatever tax returns they needed to file otherwise.

Now along comes the Tea Party. They actually believe that donor anonymity is in the public interest -- for apparently being in the private donor's interest.

They would have had automatic -- immediate -- tax-exemption if they had merely chosen to file with the FEC as political organizations. In the filing, they would've had to declare the "proud" donors and their amounts over certain thresholds. But no -- voters shouldn't be able to assess which private interests are supporting which public candidates and public initiatives -- according to the "political innovators" as some conservative pundits call them.

In other words, "the end justifies the means." Spread distortions, lies -- do anything to obtain power and get elected. Money talks; 98-percenter voters walk.

As far as I can tell so far, this isn't really about "persecution of the Tea Party." It's about trying to get even over Watergate.

I can also say that far too many civil servants are traditional GOP supporters -- I know this because I knew the civil servants. And as the GOP corrupted the civil service in the '80s, you may now find an explanation for the malfeasance and corruption at Minerals Management Service, General Services Administration -- and even the debacle over the ACA roll-out. If you don't want to make government better by following law and statute, you might be inclined to do your best to make it worse.

Issa is a demagogue. When the scandal broke in 2007 of Halliburton trying to shag the Defense Department for upwards of $10 billion in contracts with double-billings and false claims, Issa said "Oh, well. You can always expect some waste during a war."

An idiot -- and a fascist.

 

[Bowfinger]

There you go, you may have found a way that possible nobody phrased the data loss. First it was "unrecoverable" and now it is "completely unrecoverable".....and I am goal post shifting.

Hey sweetheart, that's your straw man, not mine. You used that phrase to move the goal posts. I just quoted it back at you. You're yapping so hard you can't even keep up with yourself.

 

[werepossum]

You know, I'm starting to understand that your problems aren't just low integrity and a huge, fragile ego. You're also just not very bright. I linked those articles specifically to document that the MTBF numbers you cited are pure fiction. I understand reading is hard, but it was only a short sentence, immediately before the links:

"Also, hard drive MTBF claims are pure fiction:"
​

Had you read your own articles, you might have noticed that before you cited bogus MTBF numbers as if they proved something. You also conveniently ignore the sharp increase in drive failures as they get old.

Beyond that, just as I pointed out to little Matt, I have NEVER stated that totally unrecoverable drives are common. I was simply refuting those nutters who keep insisting that losing seven drives over three years is some sort of statistical outlier. It clearly isn't for anyone with even modest amounts of honesty, math skills, and real world experience with computers. Sorry that you have three strikes.

Swiss Army knife of tools, willing and able to claim anything for the cause. No stoop is too low, no claim is too stupid.

 

[werepossum]

I've written "letters to the editor" which didn't get published by the right-leaning local newspaper; I'm clear -- crystal -- about how I understand the wider issue, and it isn't just Lerner.

The application of the 501(c) statute was corrupted decades ago, and it's amazing to me that the people who had to deal with the confusing fog of it didn't attempt to advise the elected officials about the problem.

So it may be the case that a lot of "advocacy interests" -- often left-leaning -- used the loopholes of the statute to avoid filing whatever tax returns they needed to file otherwise.

Now along comes the Tea Party. They actually believe that donor anonymity is in the public interest -- for apparently being in the private donor's interest.

They would have had automatic -- immediate -- tax-exemption if they had merely chosen to file with the FEC as political organizations. In the filing, they would've had to declare the "proud" donors and their amounts over certain thresholds. But no -- voters shouldn't be able to assess which private interests are supporting which public candidates and public initiatives -- according to the "political innovators" as some conservative pundits call them.

In other words, "the end justifies the means." Spread distortions, lies -- do anything to obtain power and get elected. Money talks; 98-percenter voters walk.

As far as I can tell so far, this isn't really about "persecution of the Tea Party." It's about trying to get even over Watergate.

I can also say that far too many civil servants are traditional GOP supporters -- I know this because I knew the civil servants. And as the GOP corrupted the civil service in the '80s, you may now find an explanation for the malfeasance and corruption at Minerals Management Service, General Services Administration -- and even the debacle over the ACA roll-out. If you don't want to make government better by following law and statute, you might be inclined to do your best to make it worse.

Issa is a demagogue. When the scandal broke in 2007 of Halliburton trying to shag the Defense Department for upwards of $10 billion in contracts with double-billings and false claims, Issa said "Oh, well. You can always expect some waste during a war."

An idiot -- and a fascist.

Dude, if you're trying to win the stupid race this is an admirable effort, but so far Bowfinger's the clown to beat.

 

[Bowfinger]

Swiss Army knife of tools, willing and able to claim anything for the cause. No stoop is too low, no claim is too stupid.

So as usual, you've got nothing. Nothing but a case of raging butt-hurt and chip on your shoulder for having your buffoonery exposed again and again. Why don't you go play, Stewie. You have nothing to offer here, and I'm sure there's another big "proggie" conspiracy brewing that you need to bust. (Don't tell anyone, but I heard those mysterious white flags were really Obama surrendering to Hamas. You should get on that before the liberal media covers it up.)