I am traveling this weekend and therefore submitting my weekend post before I depart. Sorry, no apologies for any apparent silliness involved with this early submission since it could be said to compensate for last weekend's late 'Silly Bits' entry. On the other hand, one should probably write off any consideration of timing as simply more silliness.
Silliness is not terribly surprising, considering what's going on where the Debt Ceiling and Government Shutdown are concerned. Many are beginning to look at this as the 'Silly Season' here in the US. Not to be outdone however, parts of the rest of the world occasionally insist on trying to compete (mostly unsuccessfully) with the pace of silliness that 'The Land of the Free' and 'The Home of the Brave' is trying to set. Our first entry in this latest edition is just such an example.
In Oslo, Norway, the announcement awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize was made today. While a Pakistani schoolgirl, a Congolese doctor, and a US traitor were among those who successfully got through the talent competition and made the finalists; the winner of the Peace Prize begun by Alfred Nobel (the guy who invented dynamite) is in fact not a person this year at all, but an organization. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will receive this year's gold medal and $1.25 million cash award. (Sorry, there's no sash or tiara; but thank goodness, no swimsuit competition either.)
For those of you who've never heard of the OPCW, don't feel bad. Most of the world hasn't either. These are the guys however, who will be responsible for disposing of the chemical weapons in Syria at some point, though they haven't done anything but look around so far. By now, some of you might be wondering how they could get the prize for something they haven't actually done yet. You're probably the same ones who applauded the Nobel Committee for awarding it to Barack Obama back in 2009 before having actually done anything as President (even announcing his 'Peace Through Drone Strikes' foreign policy). This is also the same prize awarded to Al Gore in 2007 for his efforts with regard to climate change. Can somebody refresh my memory here? Was his award for generating awareness of the problem or the massive carbon footprint created in his awareness efforts. (Maybe the Nobel Committee just has a problem with this award in odd-numbered years.)
Locally, the latest Shutdown brouhaha was the Defense Department's announcement earlier this week that it wasn't going to pay survivor benefits immediately to families of soldiers killed in action overseas. Not only would this failure of payment create a hardship for families attempting to meet their loved ones at Dover Air Force Base as the remains were returned for burial, but it would force them to cover the funeral expenses themselves until the shutdown had ended (and they call Republicans heartless).
The Defense Department, showing a level of sensitivity that only a government agency can (and eerily reminiscent of the IRS), justified their actions by saying that they warned everyone that these 'non-essential' expenses would result from government shutdown. And all of this in spite of the fact that both Houses of Congress had passed the 'Pay Our Military Act' to fund the military that the President subsequently signed into law. Evidently however, Executive Branch attorneys in consultation with each other felt differently, and that same Defense Department didn't see fit to pass on to Congressional oversight committees (or apparently much of anyone else except some 'unnamed White House personnel') that this obviously misnamed bill still didn't cover what the legislators who wrote it thought it did.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney showed more of his own sensitive nature by attempting to politically justify this horrifying insult to the families of those who've made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country. These offensive and non-responsive comments were to the effect that this wouldn't be a problem if Republicans would just shut down the shutdown.
In a related story, Congress yesterday apparently fixed the hole in their earlier fix where military death benefits were concerned. In the meanwhile however, Senator Joe Manchin of Virginia had apparently brokered a deal with Ken Fisher's Maryland-based 'Fisher House Foundation' to step in and cover the costs for these military benefits to the families involved for the government until they could step in once again. Thursday Press Secretary Jay Carney, not satisfied with previous structural damage to the situation that he'd already done, stated that now a legislative solution was unnecessary since the Defense Department struck a deal with the Fisher House (though not giving credit to the Senator who had actually brokered the deal that the White House was taking credit for).
Two things to consider here:
- Wasn't this the same White House that a while back was looking to eliminate the tax deductions for charitable contributions in order to raise general revenues? Weren't we told that all things were to be done by government, and that such contributions and organizations were all but unnecessary? You know, there's a certain consistent inconsistency to the concept of borrowing money from those whose funding you wanted to make harder to obtain in order to make up for your own funding failures. Perhaps the next step should be instead to make them 'too big to fail'.
- Speaking of the Fisher House Foundation and this loan, since where does the Defense Department or the White House (the branch of government that controls it), get the authority to borrow money (especially from a private concern)? Incurring debt is the exclusive province of the Congress under Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution. Therefore entering into even an informal agreement with the Fisher House, regardless of the altruistic nature of the effort, was and is entirely unconstitutional.
Have a silly week....
For those of you who didn't pay attention during history class (or were educated recently in public education), this title probably means nothing. Don't feel bad. It's probably because you knew nothing of the first incarnation of the 'Know Nothing' Party as it came to some prominence in the United States during the 1850's; when xenophobic Americans were concerned over the swarms of Irish and German immigrants who chose to try and start a new life in a new land rather than starve in their own. Others whose parents had made much the same choice 200 years earlier were terrified by these newcomers and convinced that the nation was in danger of being taken over by hoards of Irish Catholics and Germans (and perhaps eventually the Pope). Their party eventually settled as the American Nativist Party, but is far better known for the instructions that members were given in the event that they were asked about their semi-secret movement, answering "I know nothing" to their interrogators. Though the party had mostly disappeared only a few years later, it seems that some part of it may have survived and has, without fanfare and without much bother, taken over the the current leadership of the Federal Government. This latest incarnation of twisted political leadership is being fully demonstrated in the troika of crises facing the current Administration.
While many believe that the this latest incarnation 'Know Nothings' may have reared its ugly head as early as October of 2009 by taking control of the DEA's and ATF's disastrous efforts more commonly known as "Fast and Furious", most believe that this peccadillo was little more than a practice run to determine if a multi-year campaign of dissimulation, obfuscation, and prorogation could succeed with the Mainstream Media (MSM), Congress, and the American people. Having thus proven the success of their tactics, their dedicated membership now seems ready to hunker down in the trench warfare of endless Congressional hearings in which information is dribbled out in leaks slower than maple syrup in winter, while placing tourniquets on information of events viewed under a media philosophy of 'if it bleeds, it leads', and counting on a general population with the attention span of a 3 year-old that still believes that 'Reality Shows' and wrestling are unscripted.
Eight months after Benghazi, a hundred pages of emails tell us that the talking points for UN Ambassador Susan Rice were rewritten more times than the last episode of "Duck Dynasty". While the CIA had the facts of story straight to begin with, behind the scenes movers and shakers felt the need during the run up to election to 'correct' them. In a bizarre game of 'Telephone', these departmental power brokers throughout the Executive branch managed to edit out the truth and substitute a rather unconvincing plot that four people were murdered as a bad review on a YouTube movie. What we still don't know however, is who initiated the plot change and who approved it.
More importantly however, as the government and media argued over this script approval, is that we don't know who staged the scene at the Benghazi compound. The British and the Red Cross abandoned the area as too dangerous; but after the US compound had been attacked months before, it not only remained, but reduced rather than beefed up its security force. When the inevitable attack occurred, defense forces in the region that might have assisted were told to stand down, in spite of (or because of) their lack of information on the ground according to one story, or because of knowledge that they couldn't reach the battle in time according to another.
When asked after the attack what the hell happened, Press Secretary Jay Carney initially told us to wait for the completion of the investigation. Having completed it, he now tells us it's 'old news' and he can't or won't speak to it. As for the Defense Department, the State Department, and the White House; they don't know or can't tell us who is responsible for the horrible decisions made before, during, or after the attack that caused the death of four Americans on Embassy Grounds.
Cut to the IRS targeting of Conservative and and religious groups that were seeking 501c4 tax status. We were originally told in March of 2012 by then acting IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman that the IRS was not in fact targeting these groups. When an Inspector General report this month was about to reveal otherwise, the IRS's Lois Lerner (whose division was responsible for this targeting) planted a question with Celia Roady so that she could do a soft-release of the reversal. Soon to be ex-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller now tells Congress that it did happen, that it was real wrong, and that their 'investigating' to insure that it never happens again. (Can you hear the Benghazi script writers scribbling away?)
Apparently, we are supposed to believe that this was the effort of a couple of rogue employees in Cincinnati. (Does Oliver North work at the IRS?) Despite the fact that some of the documents already released on this breaking story came out of Washington and the cast of characters in this charade is becoming as long as the one in Benghazi, no one again seem to know anything about what happened, how it happened, and who sanctioned it. In spite of the fact that an Inspector General was appointed to look into it, no one at the IRS, in the Treasury Department, or the White House knew anything either. It seems in fact, that of all these career bureaucrats (and the nation's Chief Executive) no one anywhere knew that anything bad, illegal, or in violation of the Constitution might be going on. They told us in fact that they had to read about it in the newspapers to discover this ongoing skulduggery. (And who says newspapers are dead?) The fact that this began in the run up to an election and is being released only after it's over is suspicious to no one, and at the pace of White House document releases and Congressional hearings, we may manage to get partial answers about a year after everyone has lost interest.
Cut to scene three, in which the Department of Justice, without subpoena, obtained the phone records of a number of Associated Press employees. Ostensibly this is about going after a serious national security leak (you know, like releasing the info on who killed Bin Laden), but the Keystone Kops at the DOJ decided to go after the records of reporters who might have been involved in releasing the story instead of the limited members of the government employees who had access to the information in the first place. This was not, according to our government, an attempt to intimidate the press in any way, or to impede the rights of a free press to do its job. (Sure, I buy that.) The fact however that AP has traditionally been a friend to this Administration and the fact that it was they who were attacked certainly sends a clear message to those in the press who might choose to oppose it however.
As for who made the decision to pursue this particularly egregious effort in this misguided way; Attorney General 'Eric the WithHolder' said "I don't know" so many times in his recent Congressional appearance that he made "Hogan's Heroes" Sergeant Schultz look like a college professor. (Can you say plausible deniability?) Nobody at the Congressional Hearing however seemed to know enough to ask who was in charge of the program so that they could subpoena them to testify, and nobody else in the Executive branch seems to have any knowledge (at least that they're admitting) about how and why it happened. (The President did however, suggest that Congress pass a law to defend the Press against an abuse of power committed by his DOJ. Really?)
I thought at first that the White House was attempting to debut a new Reality Show with its name ripped off from the 1995 Alicia Silverstone movie "Clueless" (you know how Hollywood likes bad remakes.); but I have since come to believe that this is an unexpected resurgence to power of the 'Know Nothing' Party. (There are many who believe that both major political parties could pass for 'Know Nothings', but that's a tale for another day.) They were after all a secret society (and you know how we like to blame those), are lost far enough in our past to have become forgotten or misunderstood in intervening years, and could merely have transferred their rabid xenophobia from Irish-Catholics to the current target du jour of Conservatives. It may not be great theory, but at the very least has unique quality of fitting a number of the facts that we possess.
There be no lanterns hung in the steeple of the Old North Church this day, nor will Longfellow pen an epic poem as the news is spread. Make no mistake about it however, you heard it here first that the 'Know Nothings' are back.
