“Embrace the suck,” House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats Thursday morning... “We need to get this off the table so we can go forward,” she added. It’s a way of telling her colleagues the budget deal negotiated with Republicans is the best they can get.
"Reason I've had success in clutteredmanic world," tweets Matt Drudge, whose task seems to be making the world more manic and cluttered for the rest of us. Ironic!
The link goes to The Daily Caller, where we learn that Toni Townes-Whitley is a senior vice president at CGI Federal and also graduated from Princeton in the same year as Michelle Obama. Given that over 1,000 highly able persons graduate from Princeton in any given year, it's not that amazing that you'd find a Michelle Obama co-grad somewhere at the executive level of a large corporation, so this story seems a bit dumb, unless...
Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni....
... unless your point is that black people are in a cabal.
Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.
Jeez, the writing in The Daily Caller is bad! So Townes-Whitley decided to return to work as an African-American woman? What was she before? A white man?
Look, I'm concerned about corruption and the appearance of corruption, but this is a low-quality effort at investigative journalism. And yet think of the traffic that story is getting with the Drudge link. The rewards are there for those who are hot to get them. Fine. You like that story? Then don't whimper about lefties' expressions of contempt for right-wing media.
I heard it was hinky, but it looks great from here, not that I need to use it. I've had excellent health-care insurance for decades. (The relevant promise for me is: If you like what you have, you get to keep it.) But I went over to healthcare.gov to see if it's up and running, to click on various headings, and run a bunch of searches, and it looked great. The front page came up instantly, and every link I clicked and every search I ran went through instantly. There was nothing slow or unfinished-looking about it.
But Drudge's top headline right now is "OBAMACRASH":
The real nightmare for the anti-Obamacare crowd will be if Obamacare works well enough and people are reasonably satisfied. Myself, I'm tired of the drama.
While the site’s search feature seemed very intuitive, often returning detailed results for queries, including “sign up for account” or “sign up for coverage,” some questions returned a blank page that simply said “No Results.” In a bit of unintentional irony, the page then asked if an answer was helpful.
Those who did make it onto the Web site seemed to appreciate the design and aesthetics. The site looks like one for a typical start-up, with clean typography and large identifiable buttons that provide direction. Unlike most government sites, Healthcare.gov feels like it was built for today’s Web users, rather than something that still belongs in a 1990s-era Web browser.
But not everyone was happy with the look and feel of the overall experience. Some complained that the site was too busy and complex, and that navigation was baffling....
The underlying story is about how the government is requiring all doctors to routinely ask patients: "Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?" They want complete records on these things, and I suppose they're hoping most people don't care about their privacy anymore.
But quite aside from that policy, what's with that picture of Obama? Is Drudge trying to make Obama look like a sexual predator? Are people accusing Drudge of racism yet? Maybe he's just trying to portray the Obama as desperately, insanely hungry for all your information. He's grasping at it with his clawing hand.
Back up a bit and look at the whole 3 columns. The other hand in view is Putin's, gently adjusting his mirrored sunglasses. We can see Obama's weird eyes — spying eyes — as he clumsily grabs for his own people's secrets, but Putin's eyes are hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, and he seems skillful and analytical as he peers into America's secrets.
Look at the series of headlines under her. Surely subliminal messages are intended. Note: "END OF THE PUMP?" That goes to a story about the Fed's quantitative easing policy, but there's a sexual theme across the top of the 3 columns this morning, and with Putin intimidating us, Obama flailing and spying on us, and the dour Yellen leading us into a "Woman's World," the "end of the pump" inspires dread.
Promoters of gun control seem willing to use any shooting as an argument for gun control, but the murder of the jogging Australian baseball player is especially inapt. Here's Steve Clemons polemicizing in The Atlantic:
I have been greatly affected by sad news from Oklahoma today, another case of a victim of gun violence that deserves as much attention and public concern as the more grisly mass slayings we have heard so much about and which still have not produced progress on gun control....
The young college baseball player... was allegedly shot and killed by three juveniles, one of whom confessed to the police saying, "We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody."
The accused teenagers were in a car. Lane was jogging by the side of the road. If it's really true that they were simply bored and wanted to amuse themselves by killing that particular man in that situation but they didn't have a gun, they could have run Lane down with the car. Wouldn't that have been easier than taking aim while driving? And if their mental state really was what the reported confession makes it sound like, wouldn't that have been more entertaining?
***
In last night's post about this murder, I said "Why is this murder story the lead story? I've got to assume it's counter-Trayvonistic." That is, unlike The Atlantic, some commentators are presenting this story as an example of black people targeting a white person, as if to rebalance things after media made the Trayvon Martin incident the symbol of a larger racial problem. I recommend noticing who's doing what in America's endless discourse about race, but what I want to add here is that Trayvon Martin — according to evidence presented at trial — beat George Zimmerman's head against the pavement. As Zimmerman's lawyer put it in the closing argument, Martin armed himself with the concrete curb. The pavement was appropriated as a deadly weapon, and Zimmerman used the gun in self-defense.
Promoters of gun control portray handguns as a special sort of object, because they are useful only for wounding or killing other living beings and they are designed and possessed for exactly that reason. Concrete curbs and automobiles are designed, purchased, and used for nonviolent purposes, though they can be repurposed to maim and kill. If you like gun control, this difference is important. If you don't, you'll probably say: Because there are so many ways to inflict violence — including innumerable household objects and the bare fists of whoever happens to be stronger — decent people have a right to bear arms in self-defense.
“It was like a damn movie,’’ said the bike messenger, Kenneth Olivo.
He and rogue hack Mohammed Himon, 24, of The Bronx were heading north on Sixth Avenue when the cyclist cut off the cabby, law-enforcement sources said. Himon, in his yellow cab, chased Olivo to 49th Street, where the cyclist allegedly banged on the taxi. Himon “wanted to turn, but he didn’t want to wait . . . He wants to be Number 1,’’ Olivo said.
“I told him to calm down . . . He gets angry, he honks his horn, and he accelerates, and that’s it — I’m on the hood of the car, and the woman is under his car . . . He accelerated, because I couldn’t escape him.”
The woman, a British tourist named Sian Green had "her left leg... severed below the shin, and part of her right leg was left hanging by just the skin. "
Yeah, Mohammed Himon. Let's see if anyone jams this story into their larger "global jihad" template.
The link on "921 days to go..." goes to the cheerful Washington Post headline "Welcome to the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential speculation sweepstakes," which is full of babble like "It’s a double-edged sword. Early hype can deter viable challenges, but it also invites the kind of scrutiny that can deflate a bubble very quickly."
"921 days to go" seems like a fair enough teaser, but subliminally, what is Drudge doing? I suspect he's saying she's got a long, long way to go, and — look — she's already 65. She'll be 69 by Election Day 2016. I think he's working the too old message.
My suspicion arises before I read the next line:
So connect that photo of Hillary to the big, old dead body of James Gandolfini. And also worry about whether the Clintons give special preference to Hollywood celebrities... and it's okay with Drudge if you merge Gandolfini with a Mafia crime boss.
Is she up for another campaign, 6 years later, with 3 years of running, trying to convince us that she can labor on for 4 years after that? I don't know but I fully expect Drudge to inject those doubts into us. He'll try to do it subliminally, so listen to me, and you'll at least be able to be conscious as Dr. Matt approaches with his syringe full of doubt.
In an exclusive sit-down interview with The Brody File, Jeb Bush says that, “Hillary Clinton is a formidable force on the left.”
Video at the link:
Jeb says: "Hillary Clinton is a formidable force on the left. I wouldn't discount her um her uh her ability...." I interrupt to say out loud: "I would discount your ability to get through a sentence."
Oh, no. I hope he's not trying to make us feel sorry for him.
Here's how Drudge graphically depicts the story (using a photo from some other event (video of the actual event at the first link, complete with stumbling aide)):
The Weekly Standard has this clip of Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer this morning on ABC's "This Week," asked whether the IRS's actions were illegal:
Drudge links to this in a top-left headline reading "Law is irrelevant," which appears above the main headline: "'IRRELEVANT' WHERE OBAMA WAS DURING BENGHAZI," which links to another Weekly Standard clip of Pfeiffer — appearing, also this morning, on "Fox News Sunday" — saying "I don't remember what room the president was in on that night, and that's a largely irrelevant fact":
The double use of the word "irrelevant" seems significant, but let's notice the difference between the 2 usages.
In talking about Benghazi, the interviewer, Chris Wallace, is trying to extract a specific fact about the events, a fact that has not yet come out and that Pfeiffer might know. Pfeiffer blows out a tirade of truly irrelevant verbiage to distract us from the question asked, including the notion that the fact isn't important. Who cares where the physical body of Obama was as long as he was "in touch"? Well, some people would like to know, so tell us the fact and let us decide what use to make of it. To withhold the fact — on the ground that, in your opinion, we don't need it — is to make us think it would be damaging. We're likely to think Obama went golfing or something like that. Otherwise, why not just cough up the irrelevant fact? It must be relevant, we think, at least for political purposes, or Pfeiffer wouldn't strain so hard to suppress it. (He does claim at one point that he doesn't remember where Obama was.)
But in the ABC interview, the use of "irrelevant" was mostly a bad choice of words, and it unnecessarily makes Pfeiffer seem cagey and evasive. The question is whether what the IRS did was illegal. Pfeiffer doesn't want to give a legal opinion. He says: "Look, I can't speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable." He could have put that more elegantly: I am not a lawyer, and this does need to be analyzed to determine if there were legal violations, but what I can say clearly and categorically — even if no laws were violated — is that the activity was outrageous and inexcusable.
Not every terrible policy is illegal. You can condemn a policy and vow to end it without determining that it's illegal. Pfeiffer — like Obama — concentrates moving forward and fixing problems, not prosecuting anyone for committing a crime in the process of doing the work of government. I can see why Pfeiffer wants to be circumspect about the question of whether anyone committed a crime, and he's only withholding his own legal opinion, not — as in the Fox News interview — trying to suppress a fact we'd like to know.
As I blogged here yesterday, Drudge had this dramatic graphic depiction...
... linking to a NYT article with the headline: "Treasury Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012, Official Says." Key text on that point:
The inspector general... divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly after,” he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.
This morning, the headline at the link is: "Republicans Expand I.R.S. Inquiry, With Eye on White House."
It's all about the Republicans' political ambitions. That's the spin. That's what they have. We're supposed to look ahead to 2014 (and 2016), not back to 2012, when voters were deprived of information we could have used.
In that view, the NYT's new headline makes sense. Look always to the future. The past only matters to the extent that it influences what we do going forward. In that view, the scandal investigations are to be understood in terms of the next election. Naturally. What else is there?
What's with the dashes before and after the "b"? Damned editors. If I have to guess the word, get the dashes right. Knob. The Daily News — which is what Drudge linked — must have gotten it from The Daily Mail, which wrote "k**b," getting the asterisks in the right place... and displaying what must be the British decorousness about a word that seems more funny than dirty to an American... at least to this American. The Daily News probably just didn't know what the word was supposed to be.
Said Meade. Acknowledging that I got the reference, I said, "But he didn't do it alone..."
Meade has his computer screen open to Drudge, the right 2/3 of which looks like this right now:
It's all about smiles, as the dolphin in the lower right corner makes clear. Meade says, "Wow, George P. Bush looks like Nixon," and I say, "And Obama too... strangely." The Gore smile is waxen. For all I know the pic is of a wax depiction of the GoreBot, the ManBearPig we've come to dread.
Meanwhile, there's Leo, our new Gatsby, apparently "vibrantly alive." The word "vibrant" appears only once in "The Great Gatsby":
He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions.
I think you know what to do with that sentence. And if not, my belief in the harmony of the universe — or the mystical shades and echoes of pink dolphins or the reliability of the Althouse commentariat — tells me that betamax3000 will show you the way.
Driscoll is talking about the photo of Obama that happens to have a portrait of George Washington in the background, but that Drudge page he links to begins with a very striking picture of the new Pope, lying prone — with the quote "Respond to evil with good"— and a big closeup of a cute baby getting a spoonful of mush — with the headline "Putin Orders Ban on Adoptions By Foreign Gay Couples."
Graphically, the horizontality of the Pope corresponds to the spoon, but if that's expressing an analogy, it could be: 1. The Pope's advice is pap, 2. The Pope's advice is the simple nourishment that Putin would take from helpless babies, or 3. Sexual perversion (is the Pope humping the rug and what does Putin think gay people put in a baby's mouth?!!!).
ADDED: Sorry that #3 is inflammatory, but I'm just being honest about the alternative interpretations of the imagery. #3 is especially justified by the phallic imagery on either side of the Obama photo. Atop the left column, there's an upright microphone (representing the newly dead record producer Phil Ramone), and atop the right column there's Kim Jong-un (and another N. Korean) aggressively pointing fingers or guns or some sort of metal cylinders.
