Some thoughts, and links.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
This Isn’t Going Away
Apparently, Sestak wasn’t eligible for the “job” being offered him. Looks like the White House legal counsel is as incompetent as the rest of this administration. I would have thought they’d at least be good at coverups.
Judicial Destruction Of Evidence
This is appalling. I wonder if there’s any remedy? Can the judge be sanctioned?
And of course, some people will persist in the lunatic theory, for which there was never any evidence (and for which the evidence against was deliberately destroyed) that O’Keefe was attempting to wire tap the office.
Transparency
Sestak or Gibbs? Someone is lying.
I know where I’d put my money.
[Update a few minutes later]
As usual, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up. And why am I not shocked that there’s a Clinton involved?
[Update a few more minutes later]
I, like everyone else, expect a White House release on this late this afternoon. It’s merely a coincidence that it’s a Friday just before a three-day weekend.
[Update a while later]
Well, the WH PR staff blew it. You’re supposed to release these things late in the afternoon, after it’s impossible to get hold of anyone to ask questions, not in the morning.
[Update a few minutes later]
Republicans are skeptical. So am I. All this does is raise more questions (like why did Sestak say “someone in the White House,” which Bill Clinton hasn’t been for almost a decade).
[Update a while later]
Well, now that they’ve had time to coordinate their stories, Sestak confirms it. Even though it’s not what he said the first time.
Lying then, or lying now? I know where my money is.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Sestak smell test. And why did the White House contact Sestak’s (lawyer) brother yesterday?
Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
[Late morning update]
Jonah Goldberg isn’t buying it, either:
If it wasn’t a job offer but instead was some third-rate perk, he shouldn’t have pretended otherwise to seem like the one honest man in the whorehouse of politics. I hope he gets hounded by local press asking him to explain the disconnect. Something like: “You said you were offered a job to get out of the race. This wasn’t a job. Were you exaggerating then or are you lying now?”
Again, I know where I’d put my money.
Peter Beinart’s Hero
Ron Radosh has some thoughts on anti-Israeli Jews.
[Update late morning]
More thoughts, and good ones, from Noah Pollack:
The sad truth is that Peter Beinart isn’t any kind of trailblazer or whistleblower, and he most certainly has not earned himself any trouble by coming out as an Israel-basher. He is someone who has rather belatedly fallen completely and predictably into line with the demands his ideological compatriots make for orthodoxy when it comes to their increasingly passionate interest in assaulting Israel and championing the Palestinian cause. In Beinart’s work, we are not witnessing an act of courage but rather a spectacle of conformity.
I used to think that Beinart was smarter than that.
What Is The Tea Party About?
A long but interesting analysis. It has Barack Obama’s number, too.
Well, That’s A Relief
Apparently, the twelve hundred guard at the border isn’t about immigration. The political tone deafness of this administration is mind blowing.
Woodrow Wilson Redux?
What will the president do if he loses the Congress? I think the parallels with Wilson are interesting, but not compelling.
Hearing Wrap Up
Alan Boyle has the story on yesterday’s space-policy farce on the Hill. Jeff Foust also has a couple posts, with meeting notes, and a description of the “ruckus” caused by Jeff Hanley’s abrupt reassignment from the Constellation program.
I wish that someone (like a staffer, or former staffer) would suggest to Dana Rohrabacher that the next time Tom Young is brought forth to testify at one of these joke sessions, he ask him what experience he has with human spaceflight. Because the answer is pretty much zip.
[Update a few minutes later]
As usual (and this isn’t Alan’s fault, obviously) but ignorance abounds in his comments section, with one commenter saying we should just “…finish the Aries-1 [sic] capsules for LEO…”
We Are So Fortunate
…to have a president wise enough to know how much money we should all have.
For all these wealth gluttons, I have a suggestion: stop earning any more money for the next two years. Since most of you voted for him anyway, grant the president his wish. Stop.
Withdraw all your money from all investments. Shutter your stores, restaurants, factories, movie studios, banks and financial brokerages. Evict all tenants from your apartment buildings and shopping centers, and board the buildings up. Invent nothing, bring no products to market, write no books and hire no one. Stop adding to your unjust, unfair, beyond-the-point income or wealth. Take a vacation. File next year’s federal, state and local tax returns with big, fat zeroes written on the payment-due lines.
While you’re at it, buy as little as possible too. After all, at other times, the president has indicated he thinks many of us keep our homes too warm or too cool, drive around too much (on under-inflated tires), eat too much salty food, buy ‘Cadillac’ health plans that are too good. He has a point of too much in mind about everything. He is the Decider of your too-much. Everybody at the too-much point could relieve him of a lot of worry by spending nearly nothing for the next two years.
I wonder if he thinks he has enough, or too much?