Political Commentary

So Much For The “White House Conspiracy”

Robert Novak describes the “attack on Joe Wilson”:

Armitage was giving me high-level insider gossip, unusual in a first meeting. About halfway through our session, I brought up Bush’s sixteen words. What Armitage told me generally confirmed what I had learned from sources the previous day while I was reporting for the Fran Townsend column.

I then asked Armitage a question that had been puzzling me but, for the sake of my future peace of mind, would better have been left unasked.

Why would the CIA send Joseph Wilson, not an expert in nuclear proliferation and with no intelligence experience, on the mission to Niger?

“Well,” Armitage replied, “you know his wife works at CIA, and she suggested that he be sent to Niger.” “His wife works at CIA?” I asked. “Yeah, in counterproliferation.”

He mentioned her first name, Valerie. Armitage smiled and said: “That’s real Evans and Novak, isn’t it?” I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column.

The exchange about Wilson’s wife lasted no more than sixty seconds.

The notion that Wilson was being “punished” by “outing” his wife never made any sense, except to the Bush deranged. And as the article notes, Fitzgerald knew this before he ever deposed Libby, and yet decided to go on his fishing expedition anyway.

Political Commentary

So Much For The “White House Conspiracy”

Robert Novak describes the “attack on Joe Wilson”:

Armitage was giving me high-level insider gossip, unusual in a first meeting. About halfway through our session, I brought up Bush’s sixteen words. What Armitage told me generally confirmed what I had learned from sources the previous day while I was reporting for the Fran Townsend column.

I then asked Armitage a question that had been puzzling me but, for the sake of my future peace of mind, would better have been left unasked.

Why would the CIA send Joseph Wilson, not an expert in nuclear proliferation and with no intelligence experience, on the mission to Niger?

“Well,” Armitage replied, “you know his wife works at CIA, and she suggested that he be sent to Niger.” “His wife works at CIA?” I asked. “Yeah, in counterproliferation.”

He mentioned her first name, Valerie. Armitage smiled and said: “That’s real Evans and Novak, isn’t it?” I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column.

The exchange about Wilson’s wife lasted no more than sixty seconds.

The notion that Wilson was being “punished” by “outing” his wife never made any sense, except to the Bush deranged. And as the article notes, Fitzgerald knew this before he ever deposed Libby, and yet decided to go on his fishing expedition anyway.

Space

Save The Planet

From people attempting to leave it:

While these ventures have a futuristic outlook, what no one questions is whether the planet, already inundated with harmful emissions, needs yet more of them from space vehicles that serve no other purpose that to give rides for people with money to burn for a brief personal adventure.

Planes provide needed transportation and scientific rockets hopefully will benefit humankind. But do we really need to unload more fuel emissions into the skies with tourist rockets while we haven

Administrative

Unhappy Customer

A “George” comments:

I’ve been reading your blog for about five years now, and it is clear that mine is not a ‘silly and innumerate comment.’ What is also clear is that that you do not have even the slightest of respect for people who read your blog, which is why I will not be reading this blog any longer.

For the record, disagreeing with the Bush Administration on a few token issues (stem cell research and gay marriage were a couple of yours, I believe) does not obscure the fact that you are an ideological lickspittle. What if, day in and day out, I defended everything the Clinton Administration did, including rudely and intemperately insulting people who dissented in any way, and then said, “Oh, but I’m no shill — look, I disagree with them on some details of tort reform!”

In any case, the bottom line is that you’ve revealed yourself to be quite a jerk, and lost a long time reader. So long.

Sorry to see you go, George. I guess.

So, apparently it’s just fine to come to my web site and call me a “shill” and a “lickspittle,” but when a commenter says that “…4/5ths of your posts are just snarky, content-free bashing of anyone who disagrees with the Bush Administration,” I’m not allowed to call it out as the nonsense that it is?

There are forty recent posts on the right sidebar there. By Bill’s light, over thirty of them should be “just snarky, content-free bashing of anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration.” Anyone can go through those posts individually. I defy them to find one that meets that description. Most of them have nothing to do with the Bush administration, or its bashers.

My disagreements with the Bush administration are many and profound, not just on a “few token issues.” I disagree with them on their previous disinterest in controlling spending, on the prescription drugs benefit, on airport security, on the drug war, on their education policy, on their inability or unwillingness to follow through on Iraq, on their unwillingness to defend the Second Amendment in the courts, on their cronyism as exemplified by the Harriett Miers fiasco, on their schizophrenia about how to deal with groups like CAIR, on their agricultural policies, on ethanol, on their coopting much of the New Deal and the Great Society, instead of repudiating it, on…too many things to list off the top of my head. I dare say that I probably disagree with the administration on more, probably many more issues than I agree with it. I doubt if there are very many administration policies that, were I in charge, I wouldn’t change, some of them drastically.

And guess what? I’ve expressed this disagreement, many times, right here on this “lickspittle” blog. If it seems like I “defend everything they do” (for the record, I don’t), maybe it’s because I see so many nutty attacks on them (including here), which to me simply distract from legitimate criticism, that I feel compelled to defend some of the things they do. Or at least I defend them from the hyperbole.

Bill wanted to talk about what it “seemed like” to him. Well, what it seems like to me is that if I don’t agree that George Bush and Dick Cheney are corrupt and evil, and make Hitler look like Mother Theresa, then I am called a “lickspittle,” and a “shill.”

As I’ve said in the past, I don’t “love” George Bush. Nor do I or did I “hate” Bill Clinton. I don’t generally find politicians worth expending that much emotion on. I (unlike, apparently, many) try to simply evaluate them rationally.

I think that George Bush is a decent man, trying to do his best, but who is often misguided. I also think that Bill Clinton is a corrupt narcissist, to the point of sociopathy, some of whose policies I agreed with, most of whose I didn’t. I don’t say these things because of any preconceptions I have about either man. They’re simply observations based on my…observations. In Mr. Clinton’s case, it’s in fact a clinical, dispassionate observation. I don’t say it because I “hate” Mr. Clinton (even if I did “hate” him, this would be a confusion of cause and effect).

But when I point these things out, those who truly do hate George Bush seem to think that anyone who doesn’t “feel” (and isn’t that the key word with these people?) as they do must love him, and be a fan or, a “lackey.” And those who do (for who knows what reason? Not me…) love and defend Bill Clinton thinks that anyone who doesn’t must hate him.

I simply call them as I see them, and if some commenters or readers don’t like that, there are in fact a lot of other blogs out there. Here’s your money back…

Go forth and read them instead.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s a piece by Jim Garaghty defending himself from charges by Hugh Hewitt that he’s Romney bashing.

What does it have to do with this post? Not much, really. Except for this one little bit:

Look, it

Political Commentary

A Risky Gambit

Elaine McArdle has an article at the Harvard Law Bulletin about the prospects for the Supreme Court overturning Parker, or upholding the Second Amendment as an individual right. I do think they’re likely to uphold, but it’s by no means a sure thing, and I do think that gun-rights advocates are taking a gamble.

It would have been nice if the framers could have foregone that purpose clause, because it certainly allows gun opponents to throw a lot of obfuscatory mud around the issue. I wonder how the prospects would be for an amendment to remove it? That might be the only relief if the court rules the wrong way.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!