Memorial Day

We can never forget.

Another Embellishment

Yep, it looks like Illinois Representative Mark Kirk, the Republican vying for Obama's old Senate seat this fall, embellished his military record just a tad. "Intelligence Officer of the Year" is hardly the same as getting a group award.

Ignorant, because it leads to the opposition saying stuff like this:

Kathleen Strand, communications director for the Giannoulias campaign, said Friday that Kirk "is lying or embellishing his military record," making him "the worst kind of Washington politician."

Right. Yet the guy who allowed people to think he served in Vietnam while actually serving at home doing Toys for Tots is still ahead in the polls in Connecticut. So what does that say about the voters?

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.

Mosque, er Community Center, at Ground Zero

This is a fascinating interview on the Behar show and this time Joy doesn't get in the way--it's about the proposed Muslim skyscraper mosque community center tolerance and diversity place with prayer space only 600 feet from ground zero:



The detractor was fantastic--calm, cool, collected, apolitical and she largely silenced the Huffpo stooge. Her seminal point is made at the end: wouldn't it be a great gesture of understanding for the Muslims involved in this to say "we understand the sensitivity and will go somewhere else"? Sounds more than reasonable. Interesting question from Joy--where is the funding coming from? Answer--spin. Here's some community reaction in case you missed it.

BTW, nobody on the panel mentioned the "Cordoba" part of the name and what it means. Patterico explains, and it has nothing to do with tolerance.

MORE 5/27/10

Here's Walid Shoebat on the Imam of the New York mosque, including among other things a reminder that he (like Reverend Wright and others) blamed America in part for 9/11. Now we are asked to trust him, at least when he speaks English.

And this is a shame, because a preponderance of Muslims are probably not behind a secret plan for Sharia law in America. It's those who practice taqiyya (it's permitted to lie for jihad) who give all Muslims a bad name, leaving those of non-Muslim descent to wonder if any can be trusted. After all as Obama says, we are at war.

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.

Teachin English in 'Zona

Another new controversy for Arizona: teachers with thick accents shouldn't be teaching English:

"The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English,"

This will of course get the juices flowing in the "they're a bunch of xenophobes" crowd. Such as this CNN reporter:

"Their accents reflect who they are and where they came from. What's more important? What teachers say or how they say it?" Phillips wondered.

Yes, apparently Ms. Kyra Phillips believes that not being able to correctly pronounce English words while teaching English is a non issue. And not only Ms Phillips, but a few of the teachers interviewed in her story, one of whom said there is no correct way to say English words. It's what the teachers say that matters (or says, whatever).

OK, wondering if the same should apply to math and science teachers. If a math teacher were to teach that 2+3=6 would that be OK as long as they said in a way that matters?

MORE 5/25/10

BTW, the grammatical error above was intentional but the sentence was certainly written in a way that matters (not that this blog would ever flaunt its use of the written word). Anyway, what matters here is why--Arizona appears to be going after those who would teach forms of Spanglish or its derivative in an effort to protect the culture. It may well be a losing battle.