Breaking: White House Practices Politics

As I recall there was some kind of offer to Jon Cornyn from the Bush admin as well. Not going to look it up, since links don’t seem to be posting, but I think I read it in Media Matters.

MC: so what’s new? Will Morning Joke run with this? Is this another post on a serious subject? Or do you think Swamplanders are happy with piffle?

IOKIYAR. The right will never acknowledge that Reagan and others did the same thing. Thank you for pointing out it has been done before. Please someone tell the showboating Issa.

And in other news, Flox insists it is fair and balanced. Manure doesn’t stink, either.

And Francisco Franco is still dead.

Of course there is no scandal. Issa wins merely by wasting everyone’s time even discussing it.

I have posted the following notice on my Website, which I have on good authority that the White House occasionally reads. Following Tony Hayward’s lead, I am thinking only of myself, tho I don’t want my life back — I want a better, more exciting one:

Notice to White House: I am considering a run in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate against current Florida’s Kendrick Meek & that creepy hedge-fund guy. I am Constitutionally & legally qualified to be a Democratic U.S. Senator representing Florida. I can only be purchased with a high-paying, high-profile job, not one of those meaningless advisory thingees. Send all offers [here]. I’ll get back to you.
– Constant Weader
P.S. Better skip anything requiring Senate confirmation. Or too rigorous an FBI background check.

And for our hearing-impaired friends, here’s Garrett Morris:
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GENERALISSIMO FRANSISCO FRANCO…
…IS STILL DEAD!!!!
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Somehow this doesn’t seem as serious as leading a country into war on a lie

Thanks for the post, MC.
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Tomorrow, Issa will be claiming the fact that the president has taxpayer-funded housing — grandiosely called “The White House” even! — is somehow “Obama’s Appomattax.”

If the Democrats are smart, they’ll be the ones who campaign on this issue. Not what happened with Sestak per se, but the Republican pearl-clutching over it all.

Just remind voters that if they put the Republicans back in power in either house, it’ll be nothing but nonstop investigations and BS inquiries like this, all at taxpayer expense.
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Remember the Clinton years? The Republicans took 140 hours of testimony just on the burning question of whether the Clinton White House Christmas Card list had been politicized.
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Seriously, make Darrel Issa and his car salesman haircut the poster boy for what will happen if we vote Republican.

Won’t dispute that this is small time stuff and heck, happens in the private world all the time to (“Let Bob have this project, Carol. We’ll make it up to you next spring when we land the big Taiwan account…”) but before we just accept that this is the way things have always been done, shouldn’t we stop to discuss it?

Seems to me the bad part of this is that it does somewhat interfere with people’s choices on a local level and it also means we’re not necessarily getting the best federal appointees for the jobs at hand in D.C.

I mean, it might well be small potatoes but it’s not good, is it?

My oh my. Over at The Page, Halperin is using green type all caps on this story, certainly a first.

Deals of this type of been made in politics in this country for centuries. Is the media this desperate for sensationalism?

All those lazy what-passes-for-journalists these days should hi-tail it down to Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi and cover a real story for a change.

But no, too far to travel, too hot, too humid, too oily.

Go, Halperin, go.

Wonderful, Junior Drudge is on the case.

One episode after another….not at all surprising for this “squeaky clean” administration that so fervently promised “we are going to be transparent in all that we do”! We have been had, folks, by a well oiled (pun is intentional) political machine. ACORN was the tip of the iceberg, this group of miscreants is rotten to its very core.

I know, I know, this is almost as bad as when Bush campaigned on a promise to “change the tone” in Washington and then unleashed Karl Rove in the 2002 midterms.
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And, as we all remember, reneging on that perennial presidential promise absolutely crippled the Republicans in 2002 and led to Bush’s defeat in 2004.

Or maybe this is just like the one-episode-after-another disaster of the Clinton years, when we had Travelgate, Filegate, LAXgate and all those other huge scandals adding up.
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And, as we all remember, that cost Clinton his chance for re-election in 1996 and led to him leaving office with low, low approval ratings.

We must love piffle since we keep getting it.

Junior Drudge, that’s funny.And they wonder why no one pays attention to them anymore. In other non-important news (snark), the highest court in Iraq ratified the elections, so maybe 50K of our bravest will still be able to come home this summer. But never mind me, let’s mindlessly talk about a job that was never offered and never taken. And they wonder why the news is dying.

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Who wants to bet that *something* that happen*ed* in September of 2009 will get more attention than something that is happen*ing* in June 2010. At least MoDo is booked through Sunday.

The disheartening element of this is that you know full well Republicans would be shrugging and Democrats whining if President John McCain had given Marco Rubio a job offer to avoid a primary fight with Charlie Crist.
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Both sides are so full of it on these faux scandals. It’s no mystery why the average person just rolls their eyes and forgets to vote the next time around.
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The upside for Obama is that by the time he actually screws up and does something insanely stupid, the public will be so used to him being called a socialist/communist/racist/moron that they won’t actually take it too seriously. Freaking out about every so-called scandal just blunts that sword when he finally has a real scandal.
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This is my number two pet peeve about politics, second only to the fact that intelligence is something politicians try to avoid showing. How many times a week do you hear how Obama appears too “professorial.” Ugh!

But, baseball has been berry, berry, good to me.

Issa is the wealthiest and one of the scummiest members of the house. In the 70s he and his brother had a problem with stealing cars. Charged 4x for car theft. In the 80s he was charged with having an unregistered gun.
In congressional hearings he criticised the mothers, wife and daughter whose loved ones were killed in Haliburton “accidents”. He also didn’t see why NY should ask the feds for help in treating firefighters and police members who had medical problems after 9/11.
Just a real charming guy.
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Connection to Brent Wilkes and Duke Cunningham
http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201006010004

Way back in the 70s I was a Democratic Precinct Chairwoman. I worked my heart out for McGovern. Washington is a caucus state. I was chosen to go to the county convention. Let me tell you, every moment of the convention was scripted. I did have a minor revolt when I refused to sign a loyalty oath. After all, I had survived the McCarthy era and loyalty oaths. McGovern won our county convention. Actually, in the general election our county is the only one who went for McGovern.
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My point is politics has always been either smoke filled back rooms or prearranged by leadership. I am proud I campaigned for McGovern. I met men who went on to serve in Congress and one who became governor. Notice all men back then. They had used that campaign to establish party cred. I just hated the Vietnam war and despised Richard Nixon. Simple motivations.

Jeez, I wonder why the comment counts are so low?

More bogus military information from our hero Issa:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/from-the-archives—-issa-snared-in-his-own-military-exaggeration.php?ref=fpb

Well, I have no doubt that Democrats would be nitpicking a McCain administration, but I disagree that they would have made an issue of this particular kind of everyday politics. (To use the example in Ornstein’s piece, I don’t remember any Democrats getting upset over the Bush administration’s overture to Ben Nelson or any of the other things they did in this vein.)
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We’re seeing something new here, with the political opposition going ballistic over things that have been standard procedures for administrations of both parties but are suddenly being decried as radical departures from the past.
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Steve Benen had an excellent rundown on this over the weekend, noting a variety of issues where Obama’s actions have been denounced as “unprecedented” despite all the precedents — this nonsense, of course, but also using teleprompters, having “czars,” not attending Arlington’s Memorial Day ceremony, talking to schoolkids, etc. etc.
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It’s really worth a read:
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/024030.php

And nobody, and I mean NOBODY, could ever question Dubya’s intelligence. There wasn’t much to begin with!

Thanks, nflfoghorn, for reminding me of that great Garrett Morris bit. I laughed, I cried, it became a part of.

me. (sheesh).

test

According to Morning Joe the White House has said the job offered was a US AID job that Romanoff actually applied for during the transition. And the nature of the offer was: This job is still available. Terribly scandalous.

Just keep bringing home the bacon; we will continue to vote for you.

You forgot about Hulagate

It woulda helped if I were able to spell Francisco

Actually, I completely disagree. Democrats would never have made that claim because the GOP would have screamed about “the criminalization of politics”. It is precisely because Democrats are gutless wimps that the GOP pulls these shenannigans time after time. They know full well that the shoe will never be on the other foot.
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Democrats hate investigating GOP scandals and will do everything in their power to “look forward, not back”. Needless to say, this only emboldens the GOP to directly attack Democrats with everything in their power (e.g. Clinton impeachment, Don Seligman, and, ironically given Issa’s present involvement, the firing of Carol Lam for prosecuting Issa’s buddy Duke Cunningham). And also to launch into paroxysms of faux-outrage at the drop of a hat.

And when are we going to receive the transcripts from the meetings between Dick Cheney and the executives of Enron (either dead or in jail) about their plans to deregulate the US energy policy?

If it was possible to enforce a law against stupidity or gullibility, every “Conservative” in this country would be in jail.

Interesting..

I,myself have been attempting to question W’s intelligence, but have been unable to find it.

…doubt anybody on our side woulda even mentioned impeachment like that ex-car alarm salesman from CA, but of course, if the GOP wins in November, bet the ranch on it, despite the lack of any discernable body fluids….

It is precisely because Democrats are gutless wimps that the GOP pulls these shenannigans time after time. They know full well that the shoe will never be on the other foot.
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(Hopefully the fact that there’s a link in that sentence shows up. If not: there’s a link in that sentence).
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Agreed 100%. Remember the constant stream of investigations of nothing from the GOP in the 1990s, as Kevin points out. (Recall also that a chair of a committee, Dan Burton, shot a melon in his backyard to try to prove that Hilary Clinton killed Vince Forster; and that “Rev.” Jerry Falwell promoted his lie-filled anti-Clinton conspiracies on his supposedly religion-related TV show. There is no analogue to this savagery and constant stream of pouting on the left (Michael Moore doesn’t present dispassionate arguments, but he doesn’t lie like the right does, and more importantly he isn’t a kingmaker like Falwell was).
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All the fiscal conservatives left the party by 2004, after Medicare Part D, the unaffordable tax policies, and the unfunded wars of the Bush administration, enabled by lockstep GOP support. All of the foreign policy conservatives left the party by 2006, as it became clear that we were misled into an incompetently waged war. There is nothing left to GOP party allegiance but irrational animus.
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If the media were any good at reporting the news, the baseless pouting about Sestak would never have become a story. But journalism is a zero-accountability profession, and journalists are rewarded for politically correct reporting, not factually accurate or important reporting. Issa knows there will be zero negative consequences for his fake outrage.

Way back in the 70s I was a Precinct Chairwoman. I worked my heart out for McGovern. Washington is a caucus state. I was chosen to go to the county convention. Let me tell you, every moment of the convention was scripted. I did have a minor revolt when I refused to sign a loyalty oath. After all, I had survived the McCarthy era and loyalty oaths. McGovern won our county convention. Actually, in the general election our county is the only one who went for McGovern.
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My point is politics has always been either smoke filled back rooms or prearranged by leadership. I am proud I campaigned for McGovern. I met men who went on to serve in Congress and one who became governor. Notice all men back then. They had used that campaign to establish party cred. I just hated the Vietnam war and despised Richard Nixon. Simple motivations.

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/06/02/breaking-white-house-practices-politics/#comments#ixzz0pp7iIGpZ