There's a Robot Loose in the White House

This robot is affectionately referred to as 'Gibbsy' but unlike Johnny Five his intelligence level is limited to what's programmed into his response circuit..

Oh wait, sorry, wrong robot, here he is..

And here he is again..



Seriously, this kind of stonewalling should really be appalling. After all, the same robot recently proudly proclaimed his administration as the most transparent in history. Are they transparent enough to use the Memorial Day weekend as a cover for scandals, too? Nobody seemed appalled by that, either. And it must have worked--only a few minor reporters were in action Tuesday (instead of the Tappers, Garretts and Reids)--too many new stories to report on, besides, Holder has much bigger fish to fry along the gulf coast. There are Halliburton oil villains out there to capture!

Anyway, here's a pertinent part of Tuesday briefing:

Q Thanks, Robert. Just a couple of quick things on the Sestak thing again. The counsel’s memo on Friday said that efforts were made in June and July of 2009. Were there multiple efforts and were all those made by President Clinton?

MR. GIBBS: Whatever is in the memo is accurate.

Q Okay, but, I mean, with regards to June and July, I mean, were all those President Clinton or --

MR. GIBBS: I think the relationship on how that happened, yes, is explained in the memo.

Q Joe Sestak said he had one conversation with President Clinton.

MR. GIBBS: Let me check.

Elementary. The memo indicates multiples contacts; Sestak said he had one with Clinton, so what about the others? We know the robot won't check. Will anyone follow up? Will anyone question Bill Clinton? Anyone? Hello.. echo..

Bubba on the White Horse?

Gotta hand it to these guys--they are good:

Senior White House advisers asked former President Bill Clinton to talk to Joe Sestak about whether he was serious about running for Senate, and to feel out whether he'd be open to other alternatives, according to sources familiar with the situation.

And they are saying it wasn't SecNav but an unpaid advisor position to do with terrorism.

Well, looks like the left has outmaneuvered the right again using their vastly superior skills at political shenanigans. Here we have a figurehead Chicago machine politician getting together with Bill Clinton to solve a problem. It's like David vs Goliath. All this talk of impeachment is fruitless and counter-productive against such a juggernaut--alternatively, the event should become a rallying cry to flip Congress this fall and provide a power buffer since there will be no formal investigation.

Still, calling in Clinton from the bullpen shows how serious this deal really was. Byron York pointed out that Obama spent only 32 seconds answering Major Garrett's Sestak question yesterday, which is what, about 1/18th of the time he spend on most other questions? They were really being careful.

And for anyone who knows the background on Sestak and how he got to Congress, and who supported him, and why, this can't be a shock. He might have single-handedly saved Hillary's White House run by taking out the vocal Curt Weldon in 2006, who knows.

Sestak will now be asked about this, but whether he has to "answer the question honestly" remains to be seen. Surely they've gamed it out--here's what Huffpo reported last night about how the question first came to be asked, and how the White House initially responded:

"The phone did not ring from the White House until 6:45 am the following morning, which is about 15 hours later," Kane told me on Wednesday. In that call, a White House spokesperson flat out denied that Sestak had been offered a job. Later that day, according to Kane, the White House issued a second, stronger denial.

So we get to decide the meaning of the word 'job' now. How fitting for Slick Willie to be in the middle here with his grammatical experience. And Toomey? He must really be scratching his head about now.

SESTAK SPEAKS 5/28/10

And says that yes, Slick Willie called him. So the question needs to be asked of Sestak--why did he lead the voters on with the notion he'd been offered the Sec Navy job to get out when in fact it was just an unpaid advisory position where he could still keep the day job (presumably)? How is that offering a "job"? Sestak was pretty adamant about it being a job.

MORE 5/29/10

Will anyone in the media ask the White House why they waited until the day after the first press conference since July to release details they had known about for months? Rhetorical, I realize.
Meanwhile Byron York digs up something else they need to ask Gibbs on Tuesday (so he can say "I don't have anything more on that"). They are insulting the intelligence of the voters.

Just Bad Karma, Man

Hot Air points to this WaPo piece by Anne Kornblut about how important events keep getting in the way of Obama's vacation plans:

The long-awaited Chicago visit comes at the end of a week of "horrible karma," one adviser noted, with the oil spill, the collapsing European economy, an escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula and, on Wednesday, a stock market that closed below 10,000 for the first time in months. ("At least Elena Kagan is doing fine," joked the adviser, referring to the president's Supreme Court nominee.) Perhaps his Chicago friends are in on it: the last time Obama set out to spend vacation time with his inner hometown circle, over Christmas in Hawaii, a young Nigerian man tried to bring down an airplane with a bomb in his underwear.

Yeah, those darn terrorists, always messing up the tee times. Oh well, at least he only gets blamed for bad karma, with Bush it was shirking responsibility by clearing brush. But notice Kornblut didn't include Sestak in the bad karma hit parade.

And Joe will almost certainly come up in today's presser amidst all the talk about the apparently successful mud pie top plug thing capping the oil leak (and giving new meaning to "plug the damn hole"). We'll have to see if he lets this success reopen his opened eyes about offshore drilling in general or whether he sets sail for the Bush Islands by discussing his termination of the MMS Director in ways that bring back the good ole days of industry-friendly regulation.

As to Sestak, Obama can't very well take the position of "well, it happens all the time" after coming into office as a crusader for changing DC so it'll be interesting to watch the spin. Meanwhile Specter is dropping hints about flashing Obama the moon at the end of the gang plank re Kagen and other things. And he's just the bucko to do it. But why would he be mad when Obama was trying to clear the field for him? Could it be Specter thinks he was the victim of an inside job? Maybe some intrepid reporter can ask how Kane, the Philly reporter, got the scoop so he could get this ball rolling. That might be must-see TV.

Of course, all this talk of Sestak and vacations and such would disappear in a New York minute should any of an assorted number of real world events ever get in the way.

BAFFLEMANIA 5/27/10

Looking around there seems to be no big buzz on the mainstream media sites about Obama's first big press conference since he acted stupidly last year. As of this writing even the White House web site didn't have the video (at least front and center) so You Tube to the rescue, although after watching the first two clips it could well be the lost cure for insomnia.

As to the oil spill questions, his was an exercise in bafflegab--far too much information for the questions asked but not necessarily all BS. He's just not concise like Bush and previous presidents, which is helpful not only for Joe and Jane Sixpack but also the press--some in the audience had some pretty heavy eyelids at times. That's probably part strategy and the rest Obama, coming right out of the faculty lounge.

For the record, I think the Feds are doing about as well as can be expected; yes, Obama was slow to the draw and was preoccupied with scoring points about the lost miners on 'day one' but he's a politician, and does what a politician must do (channeling Rev Wright, sorry). These kinds of huge events (like Katrina) will always prove the infallibility of a super competent government the liberals love to believe in. Eventually the industry-government team will come through and plug the damn hole but politicians as learned as Obama simply cannot take the full blame without blaming someone else, even when taking full blame. Today the learned one blamed both Bush and BP.

The action moment, such that it was, came from the Times reporter trying to catch Obama for saying they knew about the abuses in the MMS from day one and Salazar was trying to 'clean house' yet they issued new oil certs and started a new program of drilling anyway. Obama just filibustered until everyone was glassy eyed.

The real interest came last--what did he know about Sestak and when did he know it. Fox News was left to ask he question, of course. He said a report will be coming out soon about what they know; vintage O--surprising he hasn't set up a commission. Sestak was asked about it and claimed he has not been consulted but they spoke to his lawyer brother about the release. Anyway, Memorial Day weekend is always a great time for a document dump or a late night firing.

KANE SPEAKS 5/27/10

We get this:

For months, Kane had been hearing from sources that the White House had been "dangling" a job in front of Congressman Joe Sestak, so long as he would abandon his bid to unseat Senator Specter.

Then after the interview, this:

As soon as the interview ended, he called the White House and played for a press office representative the tape of the interview. He was promised that someone would "get back to you as soon as we can, probably within a couple of hours."

"The phone did not ring from the White House until 6:45 am the following morning, which is about 15 hours later," Kane told me on Wednesday. In that call, a White House spokesperson flat out denied that Sestak had been offered a job. Later that day, according to Kane, the White House issued a second, stronger denial.

That would seem to suggest it wasn't the White House leaking to Kane if he called them afterward to inform and they strongly denied it. That would be the most bizarre inside job ever if they actually were leaking to Kane and didn't expect him to mention it, or did under the hopes it would torpedo Specter, whom Obama was backing. Surely the WH would have better control over a plan. So who else? Camp Billary? Would they dare knife Obama in the back like that? Then again, James Carville was pretty hostile the other day.

Whatever the case, the vice admiral was trailing by 15 points before he answered honestly then he won. Honesty is still the best policy! Specter had to sit on his tongue due to the insidious nature of the charge (collusion between him and Obama), proving that perceived crime that everybody does doesn't pay. But now what?

As the article points out, the White House has already strongly denied a deal so unless they want to claim incompetence themselves it would seem Sestak will have to go under the bus for misunderstanding them. Then again, maybe they shouldn't mess around the Joe.

Foul Game

Finally, the new movie about Joe and Val Wilson-Plame and the Plame affair, starring activist Sean Penn, is safely in the can. It was recently screened to liberal applause at Cannes, although they probably would have clapped at the opening credits.

The IMDB page shows no actor portraying the actual leaker, Richard Armitage. And wow, doesn't that sum up the entire affair? For those who didn't follow, the cliff notes might read like this--mainstream media types saw Wilson's tale as a means to their redemption for trumping up Saddam's dangerosity dating back to the Clinton years. Like the Democrats and neocons, they were on the hook for Iraq, too.

So the leaker was not really the story, the "Bush lied people died" was the story. And mission accomplished--that meme pretty much led to the downfall of GOP political control of America culminating in a man named Hussein occupying the White House. Rove admitted as much in his book.

Now we have another scandal with a White House billing itself as the most transparent ever lowering the cone of silence, and oddly enough players in the Plame affair are weighing in with comparisons. Here's John Dickerson:

But this situation is very different than the CIA leak case in the Bush administration. The stonewalling is the same, of course, but the issue at the heart of the two is not. What the White House is covering up now is a purely political act: trying to persuade someone not to run for office. It happens all the time in politics. At the center of the leak case then was an issue of national security: specifically, the principle that the identity of CIA agents should not be made public, especially as part of an effort of political damage control. It was an exceptional story. And it came at a time when the Bush White House was also defending itself in a host of other instances where it massaged facts to make the case for an unpopular war.

Ironically, Dickerson's own role in receiving leaks remains mysterious. At any rate, this Plame analogy seems to be making the rounds on a few liberal sites, which must be their desperate way to drag Bush back into what is purely an Obama mess.

Dickerson gets to his main point (after the requisite Bush bashing equivalency set-up), which is to say that "trust us" is never acceptable coming from any administration. He's correct of course, but that's not what happened in the Plame thing. In that case the CIA initiated the criminal inquiry whereupon Justice (Ashcroft) took steps to appoint a SP. There was going to be an independent investigation no matter what Scott McClellan said at the podium whereas there will be no such thing here. With Bush it was about the "lying", with this it's about the lack of accountability and promised transparency.

A better analogy for Dickerson therefore might have been the Blago affair, where nascent Obama officials investigated their own behavior with the disgraced former governor and found absolutely nothing wrong, telling everyone to move along and see nothing regardless of what the prosecutor had in the tapes. Yes irony of ironies--the same Patrick Fitzgerald that investigated Scooter Libby.

But such is the circle of life. If there's ever a serious investigation into this Sestak mess perhaps they should start with who supplied the initial leak to Philly reporter Joe Kane. Who gave him the knowledge to ask Sestak about the job? Who "leaked"? Why? Maybe we'll see -the three-day forecast for DC is calling for sunshine, but if past is prologue those weathermen have already looked into the crystal ball and verified there's nothing to see, making it safe to look. Either that or Rahm will be spending more time with the family very soon.

IMPEACHABLE? 5/26/10

That's what some pundits are scribbling based on what hacks like Dick Morris are saying. But c'mon, is this really an impeachable offense? Quid pro quos happen on both sides and have been part of politics probably since Plato--and always will be. The deal here is Sestak's stunning boldness and what it means, and Obama's glaring hypocrisy after running to clean up Bush's corruption, etc.

At worse Rahm will have to find another job; in the least, he'll get a demerit. Sestak has been driving this boat since day one--the right would be idiots for not pursuing. But saying this rises to impeachment is only making the right look unhinged. Unless there's a helluva lot of there there we don't know about yet it's best to just keep asking questions and watching their spokesmen squirm and acolytes spin.

More Sestak

Allahpundit twists himself into knots trying to figure out what Axelrod is up to re Joe Sestak:

I realize that they promised Specter they’d campaign for him, but to be so committed to him as to try to buy Sestak off seems bizarre in hindsight. It could be, I suppose, that they feared that a contentious primary would hurt their chances in the general regardless of who won, but that would be a miscalculation too. What kind of shop is Axelrod running over there?

Ok, well it's sometimes helpful to establish the facts.

• One, Sestak is from the Billary wing of the Dem party. That could explain why they tried to torpedo his chances through a buy out.
• Two, Specter is not someone the Dems could necessarily trust. And why should they? The GOP couldn't either. He seems too enamored with being the maverick whereas Sestak is a solid govt-provided health care loving predictable liberal.
• Three, Specter would be easy to target in the general against Toomey due to his party flip-flop. Sestak less so. But Sestak didn't have the name-recognition or track record in politics going in.

The facts according to me, at least. With that it's time for speculation! Whereas Allah is a respectable pundit who wouldn't dare proffering a conspiracy theory lesser bloggers have less to lose, so here goes. How about this one: the Dems concocted the whole "Obama made me an offer" story so Sestak could then knock it down to appear independent and sympatico with the independent clingers, whose votes were needed to knock off the old fart? In the end they didn't want what amounts to two republicans running against each other for the win.

Ergo, there's really nothing for Obama to fess up to (except the phony offer), which is why Gibbs and crew must continue stalling until the cows come home or the friendly media loses their memory. They will eventually forget. Maybe that was it.

But everyone will not forget. And if the electorate feels in the mood to eject liberals this fall Obama that puts Toomey as the odds on favorite against the liberal. Meanwhile the story that won't go away can't be answered without resorting to more whoppers. Surely those 40 pound brains from Chicago would have considered such an angle. Again, unless they figured the pushback against Hussein would win a lot of middle votes, taking their chances in the general, etc. But we're back to blowback again.

Which means the narrative of 'Sestak blurted out something he wasn't supposed to and is now stuck with it' is plausible, leaving Joe's judgment in question. When 2012 comes Obama can say he never endorsed him!

Yet now Mr. Deniabilty is in the position of slapping Sestak's butt and cheering on his teammate even if the teammate tried to whistleblow on him, which is awkward as hell. Billary must be secretly smiling.

Hmm. Well, one has to wonder if we'll ever find out. Gibbs looks like a robot answering the questions and his boss remains under the cone of silence. Maybe Julian Assange has the real story in a can over at Wikileaks.

MORE 5/24/10

If the above seems confusing that's because the whole thing is confusing. Nobody knows anything or can say anything, but fear not--like the Blago affair the White House has looked into it and 'nothing inappropriate happened'. Hey, look over there--balloons!

"FLIGHT RISK" 5/24/10

That's what Sestak called Specter in this interview conducted March 20th, 2010. In other words, at least somebody was worried about Specter's loyalty as a Dem. In the interview Sestak kept comparing him to George W. Bush, over and over then pandered to the unions after it was mentioned that Specter was endorsed by one of the big ones.

You can play this recap and hear how the whole thing got started--a Philly interviewer--but the question is this, who got that first questioner to ask the question? Where did he get the leak?

KING 5/25/10

John King asked the 'appropriate' question of David Axelrod last night on CNN,



Notice that Axe acknowledges it was a serious offense and there were conversations, only that nothing inappropriate occurred, or better yet, Sestak might have misunderstood. Is that the escape hatch? Maybe.

Also notice that King loses all credibility at the end by apologizing.

The Sestak Thing

Obama isn't taking many media questions these days. Some speculated a reason for his silence yesterday might have been because the man who claimed he was bribed by the administration not to run against Arlen Specter had won.

According to those same speculators, Obama called with his congratulations after the victory, pledging his full support. Weird--weren't they already on the same team?

So, who is this Joe Sestak? The Times explores:

Now Mr. Sestak — despite an initially rambling and occasionally bewildering speaking style — appears to be one of the Democrats’ best hopes for keeping control of the Senate. How a relatively obscure member of Congress, with a consistently liberal voting record, made it this far says a great deal about who he is.

Tom Maguire questions the Times on the length of that liberal voting record, which only goes back to 2006, by asking whether it included his time commanding the George Washington Carrier Group off the coast of Afghanistan (sic). True enough, Sestak is a former Navy Vice-Admiral (to be nitpicky, the Times and his own web site call him an Admiral) and the upstart who took Congressman Curt Weldon's 30 year entrenched House seat in 2006.

The Gray Lady goes on to detail some enemies he made in the Navy, which Specter tried to "Swift Boat" him with in campaign commercials leading to backlash. Of course anyone trying to make effective change in any organization is going to make enemies--but so do zealots trying to make change for the sake of change, or bad changes, so it's hard to tell what happened based on the Times story. The only evidence was his quick demotion and departure from the Navy as soon as Admiral Mullen took over in 2005, which could have been a personality conflict from past interactions.

Out of the blue (literally) he entered politics in 2006. Writer Jack Cashill had some interesting bits on Sestak's initial backers at the time:

Looking about for a new career, Sestak decided, improbably enough, on Congress. The nostalgic admiral eyed not the Virginia district in which he lived, but the Pennsylvania district in which he had last lived as a boy. More daunting still, he would be facing off against popular 10-term maverick Republican, Curt Weldon.

Despite the odds, the political novice proved master rainmaker----it must have helped to leave the Navy under a cloud--as he somehow managed to muster a $3 million war chest within months. Former National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, pitched in big time. Now a lobbyist—quelle surprise--Berger hosted a serious fundraiser for the admiral in Washington and lent the Sestak campaign his firm’s Director of Communications to serve as the official campaign spokesman.

He follows today with a reminder post:

Another interesting contribution came in from Mary O. McCarthy, recently dismissed from the CIA, reportedly for failing a polygraph on leaked classified information in regards to CIA prisons overseas. As it happened, a timely leak shortly before the 2006 election would ultimately do Weldon in.

Cashill continues:

Their reasons for supporting Sestak were transparent even to the local media. “A Sestak victory,” observed suburban Philadelphia’s Delco Times early in the campaign, “would muzzle a Republican congressman who blames Clinton for doing irreparable harm to America’s national security during the 1990s.”

Still, it's not entirely improbable that a man of his resume might want to enter politics. And some may dismiss Cashill due to his conspiratorial bent, but he was one of the few digging around in 2006. To be fair, some questioned whether Weldon had perhaps gone too far in his quest for the defense of America, including his passionate interest in Operation Able Danger and warnings about Iran and those who provided intelligence thereof.

In contrast, Sestak's views on Iran are more moderate and in line with liberal orthodoxy; this Jewish PAC endorsed him due to his two-state stance and diplomatic posture regarding Tehran:

Crucially, Congressman Sestak believes that the United States needs to pursue a “diplomatic surge” with Iran. He argues that Iran is strongly disinterested in having a chaotic Iraq located next-door and that as such, an American withdrawal can be used to create diplomatic leverage with Iran.

Anyway, a 2006 FBI probe into Weldon's possible shady dealings with his lobbyist daughter came at just the right moment for Sestak, who was behind in polls with only a month or so to go:

“It is a longstanding practice of the FBI to refrain from engaging in any dramatic action related to political corruption in the weeks immediately preceding an election,” notes Martin correctly, “out of concern that this would be regarded as an effort to interfere with the electoral process.”

Quotes Cashill of a story on the World Socialist Website, of all places. Ironically, Sestak himself had to return a pittance of money given by illegal alien criminal Norman Hsu, a former friend of Hillary, but there were no allegations of wrongdoing. Still, it was another dot connected to the Clintonistas.

In the end Weldon lost but was never indicted (sort of like Ted Stevens) and here we are today with another improbable Sestak victory after a sensational story of possible wrongdoing that will likely never be confirmed. But you know this had to hurt:

“That ad said there’s a real alternative to Arlen Specter and he’s not a kook,” Mr. Oxman said.

And who wants to be seen backing a kook? No wonder the cone of silence is down. But maybe the press is frustrating themselves with the wrong president. Sestak's biggest backers seem to be friends of Bill, and Bill is always ready to jawbone about current events. Maybe they could ask him why Sestak's win was "a victory for the people over the establishment" based on some of his initial establishment backers, who were there from the beginning.

THIS... 5/21/10

Is incredible stonewalling..

How long will it be before a Sam Donaldson figure emerges from this pack?