"Fight over Susan Rice holds political risks for White House."

So say Anne Gearan and Steven Mufson, writing in the Washington Post, prompting me to think the opposite.

I say we're being played by a political maneuver designed to keep us from looking deeply and broadly into the issues surrounding the Benghazi attack. It's all about Susan Rice, but why? She isn't even the nominee for Secretary of State. She just might be. Focus on her. She was sent out onto 5 Sunday talk shows a few days after the attack, to say something about that terrible video, which is itself a contrivance, a distraction. So make it about the video and embody that in a specific person, whom we never noticed before. And let's yammer about her for weeks and months until we're tired of talking about her, and then — who knows? — John Kerry is the real choice for Secretary of State. Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial. Once we're tired of Rice — she's been battered and beaten and those who've done the beating have been accused of black-woman-battering — we'll automatically already be tired of talking about the Benghazi scandal, which never even broke!

Political risk? Political genius!

What Petraeus needs to do to get his reputation back.

This is a topic for brainstorming. Meade and I are talking about it after reading a provocative comment in the "Did Petraeus lie" thread. Bagoh20 said:

I'm not interested in all this mental masturbation, but it continues to amaze me how many people will sacrifice every principle for Obama, man who has lied to them repeatedly and come up short on every bit of promise. He's gonna need to perform a few miracles, be crucified, and rise from the dead to deserve it. How many journalist, pundits, and regular folks have fallen far and hard. People, who confronted with their hypocrisy and lack of discernment, now just shrug, [are] willing accept what would have been repugnant just a few years ago. I have lost respect for so many. I hope Petraeus does not turn out to be a disciple as well. We could use a clear-headed Judas about now.

Judas has a bad reputation, but having put the familiar Jesus template on Obama, we see why bagoh20 used Judas as the model. He's saying Obama needs a betrayer, and the name Judas also evokes the word "betrayal," a word so strongly associated with General Petraeus, notoriously called General Betray Us.

But Petraeus is already dishonored and exiled. You have to betray from the inside. You have to sacrifice something valuable to yourself to build a reputation through disloyalty. As an outsider, you've got a motive to bad-mouth those who ousted you. It's hard to get credit for taking revenge.

Still, Petraeus knows what he knows, and he can be a truthteller. I think there is a path to prestige through loyalty to the truth. He has begun to take that path by openly confessing to adultery — which is a disloyalty to his wife but a truthtelling. Compare Bill Clinton's early engagement with his Lewinsky problems: He lied. But Petraeus is caught up in lies. He lied about the adultery before he confessed. And he seems to have lied to the House Intelligence Committee about Benghazi.

It's a hard path to prestige through truthtelling, but what other path is there? 

Did Petraeus lie to the House Intelligence Committee in the hope of keeping his job?

And did the Obama administration take advantage of that hope then oust him when the election was over? That's what Charles Krauthammer thinks.

Petraeus told the committee (on September 14th) that the Benghazi attack arose out of spontaneous protests over the “Innocence of Muslims” video. His prestige gave great weight to the administration's story in those key days after the attack. That testimony, Krauthammer says, is "the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant."

Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?...

Of course it was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line... everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed....

Krauthammer's theory contains the assumption that the administration didn't need Petraeus anymore after Election Day. Yet the very statement of the theory hurts the administration, and that injury only occurs because they did drop the sword on Petraeus. The administration still needs to get through its Benghazi problem. This presents a puzzle. What's the advantage in exposing Petraeus now? Perhaps the idea is for him to embody the misbegotten "Innocence of Muslims" story, which is now rejected. Others who passed that story along — notably Susan Rice, who may be the Secretary of State — can be restored to health after the surgical removal of the Petraeus cancer. Rice's conspicuous Sunday show appearances took place on the 16th. She said:

Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. 

Based on the best information... Make that Petraeus... and now he's gone. Except he's not gone. He's the most conspicuous man in the world right now. The cancer on the Presidency is lying exposed —  grisly and repulsive — on the surgical tray that is the media.

Are the media protecting Obama, pre-election, from the full impact of the Benghazi story?

"What we already know about Benghazi is a scandal of the highest order..."

... the ambassador asked for more security after a series of terrorist threats and attacks, but didn’t get it, even on the anniversary of September 11. The administration knew that four Americans had been killed in a successful terrorist attack by an al Qaeda affiliate, but lied about the event for weeks in hopes of minimizing political fallout. Extraordinarily courageous Americans fought a seven-hour gun battle against well-armed and well-organized terrorists who vastly outnumbered them before finally succumbing, during which time the Obama administration did nothing. And when the bodies of the dead Americans were returned to the United States, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton misappropriated the occasion to deliver politically-motivated lies, both to the victims’ survivors and to the American people. All of that we now know for sure. If, in addition, there is credible evidence that American soldiers, fighting desperately for their lives against our country’s most bitter enemies, called for help but were cynically left to perish in order to protect Barack Obama’s petty re-election campaign, Obama will not only lose the election but will be turned out of office in disgust by a clear majority of voters. Reporters and editors know this. It will be interesting to see how they respond during the coming days: will they do their jobs, or will they assist their candidate with his cover-up?

I presume they would say — if they deigned to answer Power Line's question — that the Benghazi story is too complicated and inflammatory to resolve in the narrow time before the election and that it's unfair to dump this hugely burdensome issue on the President now. It would have an undue effect on the minds of the voters, who must be protected from an emotional flare-up which will keep them from weighing all the issues in the proper proportion. This is especially true — they would not say out loud — when the skewing goes against their preferred candidate. Of course, an equivalent issue affecting the incumbent in 2004 would have been splattered everywhere.

A Romney victory would give us the benefit of leaving the Benghazi scandal in the past. It will still be important to investigate, but it won't — like the Watergate scandal, after the Nixon re-election — cripple a sitting President.

Drudge depicts women turning away from Obama.

Right now at Drudge:



Click to enlarge.

The full headline is "GALLUP: WOMEN TURNING AWAY." I cut "gal" from "Gallup" to symbolize the loss of females. Just kidding. I cropped the screen-grab to tighten the view of the revelant photographs. The metaphor was accidental, I admit.

But I don't think the juxtaposition of these photographs was accidental. Women are turning away, and there are Hillary Clinton and Candy Crowley, each turning away. Hillary is taking responsibility for security in Benghazi. And Candy is going rogue on debate moderation.

Click the image above to enlarge. You see what Obama is doing? He's palling around — to coin a phrase — with a cardboard image of himself. (And that was not an accidental allusion (to another gal).)

Ladies turn away from a narcissistic man — a man who is in love with himself. And ladies turn away from a man who's completely shallow — shallow to the point of 2-dimensionality.

ADDED: Rereading this post and the previous one, I find myself ranting out loud: Speaking of women turning away! We could have had the first woman President! She was there, she deserved it, she would have been better! This man who was not ready and apparently not really willing to take on the responsibilities of the presidency wooed us away from her. He deprived us of the first woman President! That's another reason for women to turn away. We can see now that the woman would have been tougher, smarter, more dedicated, every step of the way.

Hillary is letting us see that now, as she takes responsibility as she takes responsibility for security in Benghazi. It sounds as though she's protecting Obama from criticism. Sounds, superficially. But she is really criticizing him. Put the pieces together. Go back to that 2008 speech, embedded in that last post. She made her taking-responsibility statement, and immediately afterward, that video clip pops to the surface of the web. Beneath these surfaces there are depths. Not everything is 2-dimensional.

Hillary in '08: "The Buck Stops In The Oval Office."

Noted by BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski (who might not be a liberal shill, as theorized the other day, and who is linked at Drudge, which must demonstrate the value of not being too much of a liberal shill).

"The buck stops here" is a powerful dictum. We see it in the McCain/Graham/Ayotte statement reprinted in the previous post: "The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief. The buck stops there."

Watch Hillary say it in 2008:



The lady is tough. And now she steps up to "take responsibility." We could have given her responsibility in 2008, but we chose the guy who's standing back and allowing her to "take responsibility."

The BuzzFeed item notes that in the 2008 primaries, Hillary had presented herself as a hands-on leader:

"Being President means being both CEO and COO of one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world," Clinton said.

"I know that we can get on top of this, but it's going to require strong presidential leadership — it's going to require a President who knows from day one you have to run a government and manage the economy," Hillary Clinton added, using the flailing economy to hit Obama. "The buck stops in the Oval Office."

The Obama people — not Obama himself — pushed her back:

"The truth is that we're not running for chief of staff. We're running for President of the United States," David Axelrod said, adding the President's role was to "provide direction and leadership."

Interesting use of "we."

"I think sometimes there's a relentless pursuit of the little picture over there at the Clinton campaign," Axelrod continued. "There are bigger issues at stake here."

Obama was above it all. Up in the stratosphere of visions and dreams. He didn't even drop by to tell Hillary she was wrong about the presidency. Axelrod had to take responsibility for that.

ADDED: Provide direction and leadership? He's leading from behind. Behind Hillary.

"If the President was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team..."

A statement by U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH):

“We have just learned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed full responsibility for any failure to secure our people and our Consulate in Benghazi prior to the attack of September 11, 2012. This is a laudable gesture, especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever.

“However, we must remember that the events of September 11 were preceded by an escalating pattern of attacks this year in Benghazi, including a bomb that was thrown into our Consulate in April, another explosive device that was detonated outside of our Consulate in June, and an assassination attempt on the British Ambassador. If the President was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team, whose responsibility it is to keep the President informed. But if the President was aware of these earlier attacks in Benghazi prior to the events of September 11, 2012, then he bears full responsibility for any security failures that occurred. The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief. The buck stops there.

“Furthermore, there is the separate issue of the insistence by members of the Administration, including the President himself, that the attack in Benghazi was the result of a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video, long after it had become clear that the real cause was a terrorist attack. The President also bears responsibility for this portrayal of the attack, and we continue to believe that the American people deserve to know why the Administration acted as it did.”

Exactly.

The NYT kept the Libya hearing off the front page because "It’s three weeks before the election and it’s a politicized thing..."

Why, yes, it is a politicized thing, isn't it? Oh... you didn't mean your coverage of the news, did you? The NYT managing editor Dean Baquet was explaining to the NYT public editor why the decision was made to go with the 6 stories they did put on the front page...

... one on affirmative action at universities, one on Lance Armstrong’s drug allegations, two related to the presidential election, one on taped phone calls at JPMorgan Chase, and one on a Tennessee woman who died of meningitis.

Baquet said: “I didn’t think there was anything significantly new in it.” And: “There were six better stories."

They put the story on page 3.

To be fair: The NYT put the original news of the Watergate break-in on an inside page. Was it page 18? Sorry, I'm not finding that fact as easily as I think I should. I did come up with the information that when Deep Throat/Mark Felt wanted to communicate with the Washington Post, Bob "Woodward’s home-delivered New York Times would arrive with an inked circle on Page 20."

So the myth of the inside pages of the New York Times looms large in the annals of presidential scandal.

Is the Libya scandal as big as Watergate? The substance of it may be much worse than Watergate, and the Obama administration seems not to have heeded the old Watergate lesson that it's the cover-up that gets you, but if Obama loses the election, that will limit the dimension of the scandal. If he wins the election — especially if it's very close or contested in some way — Republicans may work themselves into a frenzy going after Obama. Remember that Richard Nixon was reelected after the Watergate scandal broke. The break-in was 5 months before the election, and the first stories had come out. The next 2 years were hell for Nixon, and he was drummed out of office. And Nixon had won by a landslide.

After the Benghazi attack: "We're going through a mission accomplished moment."

Here's Bob Woodward, today on "Fox News Sunday," talking about the what the Obama administration has said about the Benghazi attacks:

WOODWARD: There are lots of unanswered questions. And I love documents, and they released some documents in this, and if you go and look at the original request for more security, they say our policy, our goal here is to shift from an emergency footing to normalize the security relationship.

Now, this is in March, six, seven months ago. Anyone looking at that what say, wait a minute, read the document in which they say, oh, the situation is incredibly unstable. Well, why are you trying to normalize your security in a situation that's visibly unstable? You even acknowledge that.

So you've got a bad policy. And anyone looking at that would say, wait a minute; we are screwed up; we can't normalize here.
So that's the first problem. The second problem is, as soon as an ambassador is killed, the president should be more proactive and be out there. He can go, you know, five minutes in the White House briefing room and say this is really serious; we're going to get to the bottom of it; we don't have the answers. And all of this could have been nipped in the bud and it was not.

[MODERATOR CHRIS] WALLACE: And what do you make of the fact that, five days later, Susan Rice goes out and tells this story about a spontaneous protest, when we now know the State Department never thought there was a spontaneous protest? In fact, we know -- and they were in touch, in real time, with people on the ground in Benghazi on the 11th.

WOODWARD: I haven't -- you know, I don't think we know exactly why she did that or what was going on. But the key... is, two weeks later, the president's at the U.N. and citing this YouTube video, I guess half a dozen times. That, as we now know, had virtually nothing to do with what happened in Benghazi.

Now, look at what Senator Lindsey Graham said on "Face the Nation":

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, the facts are there was never a riot. The-- the night in question, September 11th, Ambassador Stevens was being visited by the Turkish ambassador that wasn't the sole around the compound and the coordinated attack lasted for hours with al Qaeda-associated militia. My belief is that that was known by the administration within twenty-four hours and, quite frankly, Susan Rice, on your show on September 16th, the President on the 18th and the 25th, kept talking about an attack inspired by a video. They're trying to sell a narrative, quite frankly, that the Mid East, the wars are receding and al Qaeda has been dismantled, and to admit that our embassy was attacked by al Qaeda operatives and Libya leading from behind didn't work I think undercuts that narrative. They never believed that media would investigate. Congress was out of session, and this caught up with them. I think they've been misleading us, but it finally caught up with them.

... Al Qaeda is alive. Bin Laden may be dead. Al Qaeda is alive and they're counter-attacking throughout the entire region. And the truth is that the foreign policy choices of President Obama is allowing the region to come unraveled.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Where did you get this information that led you to this conclusion? Did you talk to officials there? Did you talk to people in the CIA? Did you talk to people in the administration? How are you so convinced of-- of what you have just stated?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: The intelligence community on the ground in Libya has told Senator Corker and myself that within twenty-four hours, they communicated up to Washington that this was a terrorist attack. The president of Libya on the same date said it was a terrorist attack. The video of the compound shows that there was nobody at the Benghazi consulate. There was never a group to riot. And the evidence is overwhelming, and the idea that it was spawned by a- a video and a riot would be-- hold the administration blameless. They said it was a copycat of Cairo. It wasn't a copycat. It was a sustained attack that lasted for six or eight hours, using heavy weapons which undercuts the idea that al-- al Qaeda has been dismantled and on the run and it certainly undercuts the idea that our policy choices in Libya have not going after the militia, not helping the Libyans training the national army were good choices.

Shieffer plays video of Susan Rice, 5 days after the attack, saying "We did not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned."

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, it's not just Susan Rice. The President of the United States said that it was the result of a video on David Letterman two days later. And the facts are very clear. There was never a riot. There was never a group of people around the embassy. It was a coordinated terrorist attack that took hours. Patrick Kennedy from the State Department briefed congressional staffers the day after the attack saying it was a terrorist attack. The next day after she was on your show, the-- the counterterrorism deputy said it was a terrorist attack and the President after that went on national TV The View and David Letterman talking about we're not sure if this was inspired by a video, a hateful video.

Amazing that Obama was doing this on "Letterman" and "The View" — the day after the attack!

The reason they're trying to sell this, if it is true it was an al Qaeda-inspired attack that was coordinated involving heavy weapons that lasted six-to-eight hours and our embassy consulate was so exposed and they had denied numerous requests to reinforce it, is Exhibit A of a failed foreign policy. I have seen this movie before. I went to Iraq in 2004 and everybody told me things are going fine. This is just a few dead-enders. Iraq was falling apart and you couldn't get the truth from the Bush administration. The Mid East is falling apart, and they're trying to spin what happened in Libya because the truth of the matter is al Qaeda is alive and well and counter-attacking.

Iraq, they have been doubling of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq since we left, twenty-five hundred. Iran is flying over Iraqi air space to deliver weapons to Syria. Syria's becoming thirty thousand people dead and foreign fighters moving into Syria. The Iranians have quadrupled the amount of enriched uranium they have to build bombs, as the Obama administration talks to them. This whole region is about to explode, al Qaeda is on the march. Northern Mali is now under the control of radical Islamists that make the Taliban look like choir boys. So they're trying to sell something, (INDISTINCT) the facts on the ground will not justify. When John Kerry said at the Democratic National Convention ask bin Laden is he better off. They're trying to spike the ball after killing bin Laden create a false narrative about the true state of al Qaeda and it all caught up with them in Libya.

Connect what Woodward and Graham said. Woodward said the administration withheld security from Libya because they wanted to make things look normal, to convey a message that the conflict had wound down. And Graham is saying the video story was a message — a narrative — a story that they wanted to tell. It was the story that al Qaeda is vanquished, that the mission is accomplished.

Now, here's Congressman Darrell Issa, also on "Face the Nation." He was refuting the Democratic talking point that attributes lack of security to a GOP budget cut.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA (Government Reform & Oversight Committee Chairman): There's 2.2 billion in discretionary reprogrammable money that wasn't used. The fact is they are making a decision not to put security in because they don't want the presence of security. 

That's what Woodward said above.

In our hearing, and in testimony, we were told they removed their diplomatic plates because they wanted to be invisible. They didn't put any markings on this building that was attacked because they didn't want to have people know they were. That is not how you do security. After there was a twelve-foot hole blown in the wall of this compound, all they did was rebuild the wall, no new reinforcement, no kind of capability to protect somebody inside....

This is not very Republican, if you will, but when President George W. Bush went aboard an aircraft carrier and said, "mission accomplished" I listened rightfully so to people saying, look, but there's still problems, and they're still dying, and quite frankly, things got worse in many ways after that famous statement.

.... We're going through a mission accomplished moment.

ADDED: After Graham and Issa's powerful interviews, Schieffer informed us that the administration "declined" to send any onto the show to defend its position. So for the Democratic perspective, they had Congressman Elijah Cummings, who is the ranking Democrat on Issa's committee.

REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Bob, first of all, what happened to Ambassador Stevens and the other three public servants was...

I paused the recording and said: "He's about to say "tragedy.'"

... indeed a horrible tragedy. 

Before unpausing, Meade and I enumerated the talking points we thought he was about to deliver. The first was it was a tragedy, which you can see he said. We had 5 total, and Meade held the 5 fingers of his left hand aloft so he could tick them off. And Cummings said each one, even using the very words we thought he'd say (words other Democrats, notably Biden at the debate, had already used):

We will search their killers down and bring them to justice. The one thing we must not do, though, Bob, is make this out to be a-- and treated like a political football, and I think that's basically what's happening. We have a situation where we rushed to a hearing. We don't have substantial evidence, yet. We're still gathering evidence, coming to conclusions, and looking in search of facts and this is what has happened. But, again, we-- there's a lot to be answered. And I think you asked the right questions. Yeah, there are a lot of things that we need to address. But this is not the way to do. We have an FBI hearing going on, investigation going on, and Hillary Clinton, Secretary Clinton, has appointed an accountability review board to look at this. And we will get the answers. But the way we're doing it, I think, is basically based on a campaign schedule, trying to give Romney some talking points. 

Schieffer pummeled him with a great question:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you this, Congressman, and I say this with all respect--if there were a car wreck here on M. Street outside my office and I looked out the window and saw a car wreck out there, I wouldn't have to wait till the cops came to know it was a car wreck. I mean it was a car wreck. There were two dozen people in that compound there. They had windows. They could look out the window. They could see that there was no demonstration going on. And, yet, it was not until last week that the administration admitted that this was a preplanned terrorist attack and not a spontaneous demonstration.

What can he say? Something about "an evolving situation," which is just absurd, because how does the story of the anti-YouTube-video demonstration ever get started? You start with nothing — don't you? — and then add details. Schieffer says "well" and Cummings goes into spluttering mode:

But, Bob, Bob, you know, I just listened to that interview, both of those interviews, and-- and this conspiracy stuff is kind of ridiculous, to be honest with you. 

This sounds desperate. Graham and Issa were articulate, and all Cummings has is the accusation that their legitimate questions are "conspiracy stuff" and "a witch-hunt." It's insulting and lame.

"Bombshell: Obama.com Owned by Bundler in Shanghai with Business Ties to Chinese Government."

"In an explosive report set to send shockwaves through official Washington, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released a 108-page GAI investigation into the threat of foreign and fraudulent Internet campaign donations in U.S. federal elections...."

The unusual Obama.com website redirects traffic directly to a donation page on the Obama campaign’s official website, my.barackobama.com, which does not require donors [to] enter their credit card security code (known as the CVV code), thereby increasing the likelihood of foreign or fraudulent donations. The website is managed by a small web development firm, Wicked Global, in Maine. One of Wicked Global’s employees, Greg Dorr, lists on his LinkedIn page his additional employment with Peace Action Maine and Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights. According to the GAI report, 68 percent of all Internet traffic to Obama.com comes from foreign visitors.

 ADDED: "By the way, Obama’s incredible $181 million take in September was especially notable because only 2% of it was reportable...."

"I hope people remember George, and I think they will, for having the determination and the toughness and the persistence..."

"... to be able to see... our country through such a very difficult time after the terrorist attack," said Laura.

"There was never a taint of scandal around his presidency," said Bush the Elder. "And I think we forget the importance of that. But they'll remember him for being a good, honest president that got a lot of things done, but I think the thing I take pride in is integrity."

Video at the link. It's the video that was shown at the GOP convention last night, a convention where the party's last failed candidate spoke at great length. The party's 2 living Presidents appeared only in a charming, modest — overly modest — video. Sad. Almost shameful.

Was the Elder correct? Never a taint of scandal around W's presidency? Here's a Salon article, published in 2005 (before the second term), listing "34 scandals" from the first term — "every one of them worse than Whitewater."

Imagine if Salon were committed to maintaining a single standard for the meaning of "scandal" and had to make an equivalent list for the Obama administration. How many scandals would it list? It too absurd to imagine. Holding Obama to the insane standard that was imposed on Bush?!

Ironically, this is one of the reasons I voted for Obama and I won't apologize for that vote. I anticipated that Obama would have to own many of the policies that Bush — with his "determination and... toughness and... persistence" — followed. The Democratic Party would not be able to continue standing on the sidelines, calling everything outrageous, "a scandal," with the press amplifying each charge. They would do many of the same things and preen about their toughness on terrorism, and the press would boost them along.

And so now we are here in the fall of 2012, and that has been accomplished. Can you imagine where we would be if McCain had been President and the carping on the sidelines had continued all these 4 years? Would McCain even be attempting to get reelected?

"The left-leaning press should be all over this, no? Evil Big Drug Companies (PhRMA) funnel money to David Axelrod’s old ad firm..."

"... (which is still paying him for his share) even as they are negotiating with the Obama administration? Hello? Josh Marshall? Arianna? You there? Someone explain to me why this isn’t a scandal."

"These seem like completely stupid, idiotic people."

"I don't know how Obama had them in his security force."

They liked to show off their bodies, great bodies, well-defined abs... They liked attention....

I am not to blame for being attractive... They are to blame -- for leaving their duty behind.

"The man slept all night... If I had wanted to, I could have gone through all his documents, his wallet, his suitcase."

Said the prostitute in the Secret Service scandal.

Londono used the word "bobo," Spanish for "fool" or "idiot," to describe the agents.

"Brazilian prostitute had collar bone broken when three U.S. marines threw her out of a moving Embassy car..."

This isn't the other prostitutes-in-South-America scandal. That one was in Colombia. This is Brazil. The other one involved Secret Service agents. This one had 3 marines on a U.S. Embassy security team and a member of the Embassy staff.

Obama refers to the Secret Service scandal as "a couple of knuckleheads."

Basically, the Secret Service "guys are incredible. They protect me. They protect Michelle. They protect the girls. They protect our officials all around the world... A couple of knuckleheads shouldn't detract from what they do. What these guys were thinking, I don't know. That's why they're not there any more."

"I’m a ’60s, West Coast, liberal, radical, artsy, dyed-in-the-wool 99 percenter before there was such a thing."

Said George Lucas, who has $3.2 billion.

Sorry to link a second time to the same article, but I find George Lucas and the NYT article fawning over him just so hilarious. This I-am-the-99% quote comes in the context of talking about Lucas's girlfriend of 5 years, Mellody Hobson. Lucas is 67. The article declines to tell us how old she is, but a quick Google shows she's 42. Lucas has made a movie about black people and Hobson is black "and a friend of the Obamas’ and Oprah Winfrey’s." Lucas is calling himself a 99 percenter in the context of contrasting himself to her:

“And she’s an East Coast, Princeton grad, Wall Street fund manager, knows all the big players, works in the big world. You would never think that we would get together, have anything in common. But when we did, we realized we had everything in common. It was the most unlikely coupling.”

He doesn't know "big players" and work in the "big world"?!  What delusion!

What delusion? It's the delusion of a ’60s lefty who imagines himself at one with some idea he has of the underclass.

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:

It's interesting that his girlfriend is a buddy with all the Obama people. At the time of the AF1 panic-inducing flyover of Manhattan, it was redtails accompanying the plane. That has never been explained. A lot of people speculated it was related to this film.

Thanks for reminding us of that! Here's a NY Post article from April 27, 2009:

A jumbo jet being chased by a F-16 fighter jets buzzed Lower Manhattan this morning, panicking New Yorkers, many of whom were forced to evacuate their office buildings.

President Obama was in Washington at the time, but the low-flying 747 circling the Statue of Liberty was one of the planes used as Air Force One, sources said...

Here's my post reacting to the official story, which was that the flight was for the purpose of taking an inexplicably crappy photograph.

AND: Remember that 2009 Halloween party at the White House that we just found out about: "George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle with invited guests."

"If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs..."

"... not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border agent – which they were – then we are looking at a scandal that dwarfs any in modern American history."

John Hinderaker, trying to fathom Fast and Furious. We really do need an explanation. If Hinderaker's conclusion seems extreme, consider that it could be easily refuted by a clear statement from the Obama administration disclosing the true and legitimate purpose. The absence of such a statement propels us toward the extreme conclusion.

SunPower.

Worse than Solyndra?

"The political scandal over the failure of Solyndra, the politically connected solar-panel maker, just got a lot more interesting."

"The FBI raided the company's Fremont, California offices yesterday and executed a search warrant."

Congress has been investigating the company, which received a $535 million government loan guarantee in March 2009 and announced August 31 that it is filing for bankruptcy. Yesterday's FBI raid is the first hint of a larger government probe, which is being conducted in cooperation with the Department of Energy's Inspector General. The FBI declined to comment. A Solyndra spokesman said it was surprised by the raid and is cooperating.

Political connections can come back to bite you, when the politicians you were connected to need to gnaw through that connection and run like hell.

ADDED:

“Officials from the Department of Energy have for months been sitting in on board meetings as ‘observers’ at Solyndra, getting an up-close view as the solar energy company careened towards bankruptcy after spending more than $500 million in federal loan money.” Probably felt just like being back at the federal government, which is careening toward bankruptcy after spending more than $15 trillion in loan money . . .