constitutionalley.us

The Washington Times “National Security” newsletter for Wednesday, September 21, included the following four items:

Military warned not to harass openly homosexual troops
The nation’s highest military leaders warned troops Tuesday not to harass gays who emerge from the closet as the ban on coming out officially ended.

As ban ends, Navy officer, partner wed in Vt.
Just as the formal repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy took effect, Navy Lt. Gary Ross and his partner were married before a small group of family and friends.

Pentagon downplays ending of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
The United States formally ends a decades-old ban on open gays in the ranks on Tuesday, a historic day that the military services hope will pass as routinely as roll calls, marching and lights-out.

Panetta says end of gay ban is historic for military
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Tuesday said that repealing the ban on openly gay service made this an historic day for the military and the nation.

That appears to cover most of the bases.

Three days earlier, an article that had appeared in the same paper was a bit less positive about gay and feminist political correctness in the armed forces, specifically the Navy:

Lehman rocks Navy with complaints about political correctness
Ex-secretary says aviation needs swagger
By Rowan Scarborough
The Washington Times
Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Navy’s former top civilian has rocked the service in a military journal article by accusing officials of sinking the storied naval air branch into a sea of political correctness.

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, himself a former carrier-based aviator, wrote that the swagger and daring of yesterday’s culture has given way to a focus on integrating women and, this year, gays.

Pilots constantly worry about anonymous complaints about salty language, while squadron commanders are awash in bureaucratic requirements for reports and statistics, he added.

“Those attributes of naval aviators — willingness to take intelligent calculated risk, self-confidence, even a certain swagger — that are invaluable in wartime are the very ones that make them particularly vulnerable in today’s zero-tolerance Navy,” said Mr. Lehman, who led the Navy in the Reagan administration.

“The political correctness thought police, like Inspector Javert in ‘Les Miserables,’ are out to get them and are relentless.”

Navy pilots have complained privately for years that a post-Tailhook Convention push to clean up conduct by aviators went too far.

The 1991 Las Vegas convention has stood as a black mark for the Navy because some naval aviators engaged in lewd escapades and excessive drinking.

An ensuing Pentagon investigation ballooned into one of the government’s most extensive probes, as scores of officers were targeted and had their careers shortened. Feminists used the scandal to demand a change in Navy culture.

This barely begins to adequately describe the utter disregard for tradition and esprit de corps that the Navy’s PC Police exhibited during the Tailhook investigation. A more complete story of this self-inflicted wound by the Navy’s powers-that-were is in the October 1993 issue of David Horowitz’s Heterodoxy: “TAILHOOK WITCH-HUNT” (.pdf format)

But what has this got to do with “gays” in the military?

Well, I thought some observation of how women are faring on U.S. naval vessels might provide some clue as to how a major change of culture aboard a Man o’ War might affect combat readiness. We haven’t had many years of experience with an openly gay military culture; perhaps we can get some clues from how the ladies are doing at sea.

To do this, I’ve extracted some clips from the PBS documentary series “Carrier.” The first two are from the first episode which concentrates on the personalities, foibles and interaction of crew members of both sexes. Here’s your introduction to “Nimitz High”:

Must confess that the limitation to one stuffed animal seems a bit severe. Moving on, let’s see how one young, female culinary specialist is doing on the job:

There also seem to be some differences of opinion regarding why the USS Nimitz is headed for the Persian Gulf:

At least the lady pilot knows why she’s there. But then, not all pilots of the female persuasion are created equal:

Did you catch those male chauvinist cracks at the end? That’s the kind of thing Mr. Lehman was referring to when he  talked about, “The political correctness thought police, like Inspector Javert in ‘Les Miserables,’ (who) are out to get them and are relentless.” Ladies, if you can’t stand the heat in the ready room. . .

There is at least one officer and pilot who isn’t concerned about the consequences, whatever they may turn out to be, of an openly gay Navy. And that is Cdr. David Fravor, C.O. of the “Black Aces” squadron, who is retiring at the end of this deployment. He will soon experience his last “trap” and his last “cat shot”:

The Commander may have done himself a favor by retiring for he will never have to face a fate like that of Capt. Owen Honors who lost his command of the USS Enterprise primarily because of political correctness regarding gays in the military:

DEFENSE
USS Enterprise Sailors Support Capt. Honors Over Videos
By Sara Sorcher
Tuesday, January 4, 2011 | 1:22 p.m.

Updated at 4:22 p.m. on January 4.

The public may be cringing at the videos created by the captain of the USS Enterprise containing gay-bashing and sexual jokes, but many crew members who served with him are rallying to his defense.

Capt. Owen Honors, who has been relieved of his command due to his role in making the videos, received glowing praise today from his sailors, who are joining Facebook groups, signing petitions, and creating bumper stickers to show support.

The Navy is investigating what it called “clearly inappropriate videos” that Honors filmed with government equipment during his time as executive officer—or “XO”—in 2006 and 2007. Honors had been weeks away from deploying with the carrier, but a senior military official told National Journal the Navy was conducting a probe that would likely end his military career. The Navy tends to quickly remove senior officers suspected of misconduct, a legacy of the black eye the service suffered following the 1991 Tailhook scandal.

Enterprise crew members have been told not to speak to the media while the investigation continues, according to multiple postings on a Facebook page in support of Honors.

Yet watching the videos in the news this week brought back fond memories of “XO movie night,” which would air on the carrier’s closed-circuit television every Saturday, according to Ryan Adams, 25, a petty officer second class who served on the Enterprise until 2009.

The controversial videos, which feature clips of men and women pretending to wash each other in shower stalls aboard the carrier, sailors simulating masturbation, eating what is meant to look like bodily waste from a toilet, and laden with slurs against homosexuals, were only meant to “lighten the mood,” Adams said. “They’d serve pizza on the mess decks and people would all crowd around the TV. There would not be an empty seat on the deck.”

In solidarity with Honors, Facebook groups with titles like “We Support Captain O.P. Honors!“ have garnered thousands of members. Nearly 1,000 have signed a petition to keep him as commander of the carrier, and many have swapped out their Facebook pictures for images of Honors in uniform.

Before Honors became XO of the Enterprise, the mood on board was “awful,” said Kimberly Wooster, 32, who served as an electronics technician from 2001 to 2005 and left because she was so unhappy.

“People were leaving because they couldn’t take it anymore. Even as a strong, grounded person it was just very, very hard. Everything seemed to be disintegrating so fast,” Wooster said in an interview, describing a particularly bad 18-month period where the carrier was not deployed, but crew members were working 16- to 18-hour days, seven days a week.

When asked if other XOs or commanders did anything to boost morale on the ship before Honors, Wooster responded, “Hell no.”

“We were not worth their concern or their time,” she said. “I don’t think we even registered on their radar.”

Like most everything else, women serving on combat ships is neither all bad nor all good. It depends on the woman, her physical capacities, attitude, and on her having a shell that can handle the large doses of harassment that military men, especially fighter pilots, hand out to each other all the time. It’s part of the culture, the “esprit de corps.”

But what happened to Captain Honors does not bode well for the introduction of open homosexuality in the military. Political correctness will probably continue as the order of the day. Discipline, training and spirit will take a back seat. Commanders will have one more thing on their plate that is not directly related to combat readiness and performance. That’s why I cannot refrain from suspecting that this whole business of gays in the armed forces has little to do with improving the military. In the armed services, social justice is necessarily pretty far down the priority list. Putting individual sexual preferences ahead of preparedness is definitely one very big cart in front of the horse.

Ending on a personal note, during my Air Force days I would on occasion hear a superior officer say, “Sounds like a personal problem to me.” Which is precisely the point.

Ciao,
Dennis

P.S. As an addendum to this post, I would like to share with you a video clip of Brig. Gen. Steve Ritchie speaking about the rescue from within the depths of North Vietnam of one Roger Locher. Brigadier Ritchie was the only U.S. Air Force ace of the Vietnam war. He is an outstanding example of the caliber of officer our service academies can produce — without any help from political correctness.

Here’s the mission:

A few days ago I sent out an email broadcast of the following article from the New York Times:

September 12, 2011
If it feels right. . .
By DAVID BROOKS

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America’s youth.

Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.

cont’d. . .

Today, I received a reply from my cousin Nancy, a nurse:

Chuck Colson is promoting a six part video called “Doing the Right Thing” that addresses these issues. Trouble is, the churchgoers who will see it (there was a 170 church simulcast this past weekend) are the ones who need it least. But even Christian young people pick up a lot of their values from the media and general culture.

I took a medical ethics course many years ago at Madonna College, taught from a Catholic perspective. I was really impressed by the deep thinking that had gone into elucidating Catholic ethics and the effort to achieve logical consistency. I’ve also thought you really have to admire early Jews and Christians who could pass on a strong faith and values despite living in antagonistic cultures. Sort of ironic that the only people thinking rationally about morals these days are religious people whom some would accuse of irrationality.

Nan

To which I replied:

I’m not a practicing Catholic despite my sixteen years of education in Catholic institutions, including eight with the Jesuits. I am not a religious person. But neither am I anti-religious as are most “Progressives” and much of their ilk. But I will say this, one is hard pressed to find a more rigorously developed moral philosophy than that of the Catholics. It is, to a large extent,  a formal extension of Jewish moral teachings with Aristotelian philosophy thrown into the mix for good measure. Unfortunately, for the most part, people are not too terribly concerned with rigor — except for the postmortem variety. At which point it is conveniently less difficult to excuse one’s own shortcomings. :)

Ciao,
Dennis

from a pilot training classmate who happens to have his MBA from Northwestern:

—– Original Message —–
From: fastfac
To: dsevakis@
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 4:11 PM
Subject: Jobs

Sent you an AOL article with a lot of unemployment statistics and recovery periods…most of which you have probably seen in one form or another.

What I don’t see, and I would suspect that Rand Corp Think Tank guys are still pondering the multiple possibilities of the issue, is the plight of college graduates…something of immense concern to me because of the potential “revolutionary” pressures that could (are?) building. A recent statistic indicated that 80%-85% of the 2011 college graduating class moved back in with their families because of the lack of “career-centered” work. That would be close to 2 million graduates from my understanding of the numbers. I don’t have the figures from 2010, but I know they are large and 2012, 2013….20xx(?)…still bad news since employment recovery is estimated to take at least 3 years to secure jobs for the 12-14 million unemployed (and that doesn’t count the 25 million of part-timers, many looking for full-time). I also don’t believe the unemployed and part-time statistics fully account for the unemployed group of students who have never been employ ed.

So…..the basic question being what do you do with an ever increasing pool of excessively educated people who, for arguments sake, now will compete for the blue collar jobs or find that their only income is to replace some Indian in Bombay doing customer service tips for Verizon customers? I sensed a similar situation several years ago happening in China, only there the college educated issue is 10X the U.S. problem. One difference of course is that the rise in the college educated ranks in China is quite a bit the result of government mandates to be educated with little regard to where they will place those college taught skills. In fact, one of the places for them is in the blue-collar ranks and I have seen it happening. The easy access to money has diluted the “have” and “have not” boundaries…the hell with education. I don’t think this is going to be a good mix for the future of the U.S. either.

Our society could be facing a redistribution of attitude, politics, and social life style that makes the 60’s/70’s Viet Nam counter-culture revolution appear microscopic. What do you hear from your learned friends on the issue?

Regards,
Worried With No Solution

my response:

Dear Worried With No Solution,

There are no solutions. That’s the problem. There is no theory of a steady-state modern, industrial, or post-industrial, if you will, economy. The entire planet has ventured into new territory and we are not sufficiently evolved socially, let alone morally, to handle it. And 19th century economic theories on the part of the Chinese, the Obamites and Eurozone twits will not suffice. Personally, I don’t think anybody in power really knows what they’re doing other than, to some extent, how to maintain their own power – for the time being, that is.

Except for modern medicine, we were perhaps better off as hunter-gatherers. Superstition and wonderment provided all the entertainment required. We no longer appreciate the rewards of the simple life. We now know and want too much to be easily satisfied. We find ourselves on an insane planet run by the inmates. And there are no political answers. As far as I can tell, the American experiment is winding down to an unsuccessful completion.

My apologies for such cynical pessimism.

Ciao,
Wingman

P.S. Maybe those who died when Truth, Justice and the American Way were not so muddled really are better off. I’m not sure why, but I keep a copy of Jim Badley’s (another pilot training classmate) UPT classbook picture on my desk. He’s not worried about this shit. If the Krell could not survive, what makes us think we can?

last updated at 2011.09.19.2152z

Michael Barone, often cited as America’s most knowledgeable political analyst, has a very interesting post up at the Washington Examiner about the election of Bob Turner to replace ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, nudist Twitterer, to represent New York’s 9th Congressional district:

September 14, 2011 1:17am
NY-9: Stunning Repudiation of Chuck Schumer
by Michael Barone

Republican Bob Turner has been declared the winner by the Associated Press in the New York 9th district special election. With 82% of precincts reporting, the latest returns show Turner with 53% of the vote and Democrat David Weprin with 46%.

[snip]

This is a peculiarly shaped district, with the Brooklyn and Queens portions connected by little more than a strip of shoreline and several islands in Jamaica Bay. Many have written that the district has not been carried by a Republican since 1920. This needs a little qualification. The Brooklyn portion of the district is the descendant of districts held by Democrats Emanuel Celler (who won from 1922 to 1970), Elizabeth Holtzman (winner from 1972, when she upset Celler in the primary, to 1978), Charles Schumer (winner from 1980 to 1996) and Anthony Weiner (winner from 1998 to 2010). Celler’s districts tended to run in a narrow corridor from Crown Heights and Brownsville, full of non-affluent Jewish immigrants from the 1910s to the early 1960s) down along Flatbush Boulevard and/or Ocean Parkway to Jamaica Bay. Now the district includes only part of that area. Essentially it includes heavily white (or Asian) neighborhoods deliberately excluded from the black-majority 10th and 11th districts.

To maintain the population standard, these mostly white portions of Brooklyn have been tied by redistricters to mostly white portions of Queens, including Forest Hills, the home base of Geraldine Ferraro when she was elected from 1978 to 1982, and neighborhoods running east to St. John’s University. These parts of Queens have, I believe, been parts of districts that have elected Republicans as recently as the 1960s (when liberal Republican Seymour Halpern represented much of Queens).

There are growing Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in the district, especially in Brooklyn, and Turner seems to have carried Orthodox Jews by a wide margin over Weprin, who is an Orthodox Jew himself. Primary reason, it appears: to protest Barack Obama’s policies and actions toward Israel. As others have pointed out, these relatively middle-scale (as opposed to upscale or downscale) Outer Borough Jews are not typical of affluent Jews in Manhattan or high-income suburbs, and so there is limited precedental value here for other districts.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Personally, I find this result under these circumstances politically more encouraging than the recent Obamamaniacs’ ludicrous and unintended attempt at “black humor” with their creation and posting of the web site Attack Watch. Perhaps their desperation is showing. If not, something is.

But working-class Jews voting Republican? That is revolutionary. However, I must concur with Mr. Barone’s assessment that it’s unlikely NYC elites will likewise come to their senses. Also, former NYC mayor Ed Koch may even go to work in Miami promoting GOP candidates as he did in the 9th district contest. Wonders never cease.

Here’s Bob Turner’s victory speech overflowing with unbounded enthusiasm by his new constituents imbued with a burning desire to “send a message” to Washington. A bit long, but burden lifting:

Wonder if the Obamameister is listening?

Barone’s half-hearted paean to Chucky Schumer at the end of the post is, however, not quite so encouraging:

This vote is a startling repudiation of those policies by just the voters Schumer was hoping to win over. I write this without any rancor for Chuck Schumer. I admire his intellect, I admire his capacity for hard work and while I think he often acts to gain partisan advantage I think it must also be said that he tries to achieve good public policy results. He has risen from a modest background (he is a graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn, the alma mater also of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Senator Norm Coleman: a pretty impressive record for a non-selective high school serving a non-affluent neighborhood) and has not gotten where he is because of personal wealth (he has none) or overpowering personal charm.

Schumer will surely continue to serve as senator as long as he wants (since direct election of senators came in, no incumbent Democratic senator from New York has been defeated for reelection). But his project of forging a Democratic governing majority based on successful public policies took a severe beating in this special election.

Guess Mr. Barone doesn’t want to mess with Sen. Schumer any more than one should with Leroy Brown:

Ya think? But then, Leroy didn’t end up doing so well after all, did he?

Ciao,
Dennis

Last updated 2011.09.18.1400z

If you do a Google search for ‘palmisano obama health care‘, which a number of people must have done since that search sequence shows up as a suggestion, the first result shown is the following:

Posted: Tuesday, March 1, 2011 11:22 am | Updated: 2:45 pm, Tue Mar 8, 2011.
Today’s health law half-truth exposed
JO CIAVAGLIA, Calkins Media, Inc. | 2 comments

A few times a month I’m forwarded an e-mail claiming to expose the “truth” about the Affordable Care Act. It usually takes me an hour usually less, as there are multiple Web sites (nonpartisan) such as factcheck.com (One of the comments to Ms. Ciavaglia’s post correctly points out that this should be “factcheck.org“) and mediamatters.com that investigate these claims daily.

Nonpartisan? Factcheck and Mediamatters? Yeah, right.

Below you’ll see the latest e-mail. The newest tactic is that e-mail authors use claims of legitimacy by citing so called legitimate “sources” which are usually either known conservative media (such as FOX News or the Washington Examiner) or other blogs. Blogs are not a news source they are usually someone’s ramblings without any factual backup whatsoever.

But be sure to tune out that lyin’ FOX and the Washington Examiner.

After reading the chain e-mail, you’ll see what I found out. You decide.

A more recent email on this same subject that focuses more on FOX News and U.S. News  & World Report’s Mort Zuckerman, rather than IBM’s Chairman & CEO, Palmisano, is included at the end.

This one has links at the bottom to verify it’s content.

IBM offered to help reduce Medicare fraud for free…

What if I told you that the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, approached President Obama and members of his, before the healthcare bill debates, with a plan that would reduce healthcare expenditures by $900 billion? Given the Obama Administration’s adamancy that the United States of America simply had to make healthcare (read: health insurance) affordable for even the most dedicated welfare recipient, one would think he would have leaned forward in his chair, cupped his ear and said, “Tell me more!”

And what if I told you that the cost to the federal government for this program was nothing, zip, nada, zilch? And, what if I told you that, in the end and after two meetings, President Obama and his team, instead of embracing a program that was proven to save money and one that was projected to save almost one trillion dollars – a private sector program costing the taxpayers nothing, zip, nada, zilch – said, “Thanks but no thanks” and then embarked on passing one of the most despised pieces of legislation in US history?

Well, it’s all true.

Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman of the Board and CEO for IBM, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that he offered to provide the Obama Administration with a program that would curb healthcare claims fraud and abuse by almost one trillion dollars but the Obama White House turned the offer down.

Mr. Palmisano is quoted as saying during a taping of The Wall Street Journal’s Viewpoints program on September 14, 2010:

“We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion…I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down.”

A second meeting between Mr. Palmisano and the Obama Administration took place two weeks later, with no change in the Obama Administration’s stance. A call placed to IBM on October 8, 2010, by FOX News confirmed, via a spokesperson, that Mr. Palmisano stands by his statement.

Speaking with FOX News’ Stuart Varney, Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, said, “It’s a little bit puzzling because I think there is a huge amount of both fraud and inefficiency that American business is a lot more comfortable with and more effective in trying to reduce. And this is certainly true because the IBM people have studied this very carefully. And when Palmisano went to the White House and made that proposal, it was based upon a lot of work and it was not accepted. And it’s really puzzling…These are very, very responsible people and don’t have a political ax to grind.

In Mr. Obama’s shunning of a private sector program that would have saved our country almost $1 trillion in healthcare expenditures, presented to him as he declared a “crisis in healthcare,” he proves two things beyond any doubt: that he is anti-Capitalist and anti-private sector in nature and that he can no longer be trusted to tell the truth in both his political declarations or espoused goals.

For more info. check these links:

>http://capitolhillcoffeehouse.com/index.php/article/574

>http://reimagineamerica.org/tag/sam-palmisano/

>http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/ibm-exec-offers-save-900-billion-health-care-costs-obama-turned-html

Okay, first thing I did was check Google since the only references to it were found on conservative blogs and other media (i.e. Fox News and Washington Examiner). Even the “links” cited as proof are conservative links, so I really don’t consider them as independent news sources. But I believe the authors of these e-mails are counting on people NOT fact-checking.

So next, I went to the video interview which appeared on the “Wall Street Journal Viewpoints Executive Breakfast Series” (it should be noted at the bottom of the Web page, this disclaimer appears: “The Wall Street Journal editors and newsroom were not involved in the creation or production of this special advertising section or its story selection.”)

I am curious as to whether or not Jo Ciavaglia would have included this disclaimer had she been writing an analysis of the George Soros June, 2009, interview conducted using precisely the same venue. I would think not.

This is the link to the program with Palmisano that e-mail references:

http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/viewpoints-palmisano.html

(Not embedded in original)

Unless you want to hear about the sniping between HP (Hewlitt Packer) [sic] and IMB [sic] skip ahead to 9:15 of the 11:30 video, where Palmisano starts talking about the health care law. This is the direct quote (go and check if you want).

Note: The discussion shifts its focus to Obama and IBM’s participation in early Administration meetings with business leaders at the 6:40 mark. So, if you skip ahead to the 9:15 mark you lose much of the flavor of what is being said. If you’re interested in IBM as a business, you should watch the first 6:45

“We could have improved quality and reduced the cost of the health care system by $900 billion the bill was 850 (billion) with self-funding; you could have insured anyone you wanted illegal aliens, dogs, cats, ponies, whatever you want and the stuff was simple.”

That is what he said, people.

Now cometh the analysis. . .

I’m not sure what he means by self-funding, unless he is suggesting that the U.S. government run the health care system like companies that self-fund their health insurance.

Self-funded health care is a self insurance arrangement whereby an employer provides health or disability benefits to employees with its own funds. Instead of fully insured plans – where the employer contracts an insurance company to cover the employees and dependents – in self-funded health care, the employer assumes the direct risk for payment of the claims for benefits.

Next Palmisano talks about how $400 billion could be saved if the federal government brought prescription drugs using a nationwide discount.

To calculate the $400 billion in savings, Palmisano said, “All we did was take OMB (office of management and budget) volumes and times by nationwide discounts.”

Last Palmisano mentions something about $200 billion in “fraud” – he never specified where the fraud was – and how IMB offered to reduce the fraud and gave the money quote: “I said we would do it for free to prove it works.”

But Palmisano never said what “it” was that IBM would do for free.

I watched this last two minutes of this interview five times to be sure that I was correct, which is more than I can say for the person(s) writing and circulating these e-mails.

What I came away with after watching the Palmisano video was not nearly as ambiguous and uncertain as is the tone of the analysis behind this directed impression. Lots of scary double quotes in that! However, I suspect that Ms. Ciavaglia is herself probably a member of the group described in the ending phrase. Why not write the offending email and then author the debunking critique? Nice work, but you can only get it if you’re “Progressive.” Right?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here’s the more recent email as I received it today, other than a type face size reduction and change of color. Hate those giant letters. And, the sender should have used IBM/Lions blue rather than Minnesota Vikings purple. Yuck!

Subject: IBM turned down by Obama  Hope the whole United States population finds out about this. IBM offered to help reduce Medicare fraud for free… The offer is true.Mort Zuckermann , US News and World Report, a Democrat, was interviewed on Fox and confirmed it. IBM has confirmed it. You won’t believe it.

IBM offered to help reduce Medicare fraud for free…

What if I told you that the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, approached President Obama and members of his administration before the healthcare bill debates with a plan that would reduce healthcare expenditures by $900 billion? Given the Obama Administration’s adamancy that the United States of America simply had to make healthcare (read: health insurance) affordable for even the most dedicated welfare recipient, one would think he would have leaned forward in his chair, cupped his ear and said, “Tell me more!”

And what if I told you that the cost to the federal government for this program was nothing, zip, nada, zilch?

And, what if I told you that, in the end and after two meetings, President Obama and his team, instead of embracing a program that was proven to save money and one that was projected to save almost one trillion dollars – a private sector program costing the taxpayers nothing, zip, nada, zilch – said, “Thanks but no thanks” and then embarked on passing one of the most despised pieces of legislation in US history?

Well, it’s all true.

Samuel J. Palmisano, the Chairman of the Board and CEO for IBM, said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview that he offered to provide the Obama Administration with a program that would curb healthcare claims fraud and abuse by almost one trillion dollars but the Obama White House turned the offer down.

Mr. Palmisano is quoted as saying during a taping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcR_bLBHcJo of The Wall Street Journal’s Viewpoints program on September 14, 2010:

“We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion…I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down.”

A second meeting between Mr. Palmisano and the Obama Administration took place two weeks later, with no change in the Obama Administration’s stance. A call placed to IBM on October 8, 2010, by FOX News confirmed, via a spokesperson, that Mr. Palmisano stands by his statement.

Speaking with FOX News’ Stuart Varney, Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, said, “It’s a little bit puzzling because I think there is a huge amount of both fraud and inefficiency that American business is a lot more comfortable with and more effective in trying to reduce. And this is certainly true because the IBM people have studied this very carefully. And when Palmisano went to the White House and made that proposal, it was based upon a lot of work and it was not accepted. And it’s really puzzling…These are very, very responsible people and don’t have a political ax to grind.

In Mr. Obama’s shunning of a private sector program that would have saved our country almost $1 trillion in healthcare expenditures, presented to him as he declared a “crisis in healthcare,” he proves two things beyond any doubt: that he is anti-Capitalist and anti-private sector in nature and that he can no longer be trusted to tell the truth in both his political declarations or espoused goals.

Be sure to click on the link above for Mr. Palmisano’s statement.

Why not the link to the full “Wall Street Journal Viewpoints Executive Breakfast Series” interview?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ciao,
Dennis

Yesterday, there was a two-hour kerfuffle on the House floor reported as follows by The Hill:

House approves resolution opposing $500 billion debt-ceiling increase 
By Pete Kasperowicz – 09/14/11 08:11 PM ET

The House on Wednesday passed a resolution disapproving of an expected $500 billion increase in the debt ceiling that — despite the vote — is expected to take effect this month. Members voted 232-186 in favor of the resolution, H.J.Res. 77. Only five Republicans voted against the measure, and the 228 Republicans who supported it were joined by just four Democrats.

[snip]

During nearly two hours of debate on the resolution, House Democrats mocked Republicans for bringing it up at all, particularly after most Republicans agreed just last month to support the agreement that allowed the federal debt ceiling to rise in return for plans to cut $1.5 trillion — or more — in planned spending.

“We have members on the majority side who have trouble explaining to their primary voters why they had a temporary embrace of reality,” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said. “So having done what they had to do, they now want to pretend that they’re going to undo it.”

Frank also charged that Republicans are disingenuous about wanting to reduce the deficit, given that they have supported wars and tax cuts in the past without paying for them.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) called on members of the House to support the resolution in order to remind President Obama “how serious we are about this issue.”

“This war on our national debt is going to go on for many years to come, but we need to take those first steps,” Reed said.

Just what we need, another WAR. Will the Republicans ever get serious? Being semantically accurate is not the same thing as being seriously correct. Believe President William Jefferson was the one really good at semantic precision.

The Dems weren’t about to let it go at that:

Rep. Sandy Levin (Mich.) and other Democrats also charged Republicans with wasting time that could be better spent working on legislation aimed at creating jobs.

“This resolution is a dangerous distraction from the unprecedented challenge before us,” Levin said, adding that the House should be focused on passing Obama’s jobs plan.

But House Republicans have all but rejected the president’s plan because it proposes paying for billions of dollars in new spending with tax increases. 

Ah, Obama’s jobs plan! More on that later, but here’s the “Whoop-de-doo” debt update as of Tuesday past:

What?! As of the 13th we were already $24 billion over the current limit! Guess we can wait a few days for the Prez to unilaterally raise it the additional $500 billion. I’ll have to incorporate that in the next Whoop-de-doo update.

Moving right along from debt wars to job creation, we have the “American Jobs Act” or “Here’s looking AJA!” This is the latest legislative issue to appear on the event horizon, and the Democratic National Committee is in full swing cranking-up the propaganda machine, to wit:

The above screen shot is of a mouse-over popup that appeared, in of all places, on the nearby “Weather Underground” station page where I normally check local meteorological conditions. This little gem played a short clip of excerpts from Obama’s JOBS address to a joint session of Congress, and included a link to the whole thing for those who just can’t get enough of Obama speechifyin’. However, for the moment it appears to be no longer available at that site, but you can have a peek here.

Must have been intended for early-risers only. Like people who have jobs? I don’t. Guess I should sleep in and not trouble myself with all this political stuff.

Ciao,
Dennis

Last revised 9/14/2011 15:03

Dear Reader,

This telling will take a bit of time, so please be patient. In conversation with a fair number of persons, I’ve learned that not many have even an inkling of the implications of what’s related below. Often, they are astonished when hearing it for the first time. So, it may be worth your while to “listen up” as Gunny R. Lee Ermey is inclined to suggest. . .

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Thank you,
The Management

The tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the U.S. has come and gone. America, in one form or another, is still here, though in what shape seems a bit less certain from one day to the next. There were remembrance events throughout the country and, as reported by the Washington Times, these included appearances by former and current Presidents as well as “other dignitaries”:

 Obama, Bush and Clinton lead U.S. in 9/11 tributes

“They wanted to draw us in to endless wars, sapping our strength and confidence as a nation,” Mr. Obama said. “But even as we put relentless pressure on al Qaeda, we’re ending the war in Iraq and beginning to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. Because after a hard decade of war, it is time for nation building here at home.”

[snip]

Other dignitaries at ground zero included New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At Shanksville, Pa., the president and first lady laid a wreath at a new memorial dedicated to the passengers of United Flight 93 who fought back against hijackers and drove the plane into the ground. Mr. and Mrs. Obama visited a boulder that marks the crash site and stood quietly in the field of wildflowers for several minutes, gazing into the distance.

As the Obamas departed, the crowd chanted, “USA.”

On Saturday, former President Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush spoke at the memorial dedication in honor of Flight 93’s heroes at Shanksville.

Mr. Obama and his wife then returned to Washington to lay a wreath at the Pentagon, where terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 77, killing 59 people on board and 125 people in the building.

The president concluded the day’s events by speaking at a “Concert for Hope” at the Kennedy Center. 

Yep, that’s just what we need, more hoping events.

Fortunately for all gathered dignitaries, there was no “dirty bomb” detonation at any of the events as had been suggested as a possibility by the captured al Qaeda operative, al-Mauritani, and reported by Allahpundit at HotAir:

Terror threat update: Feds fear plot involves dirty bomb?

Before we get to the dirty bomb stuff, I get to say “I told you so” about where this threat came from. Last night I speculated that it was Younis al-Mauritani, the AQ capo charged by Bin Laden with organizing international plots. He was captured recently in Pakistan — no one’s quite sure precisely when — thanks to a joint CIA/ISI operation. According to an intel official who spoke to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross today, al-Mauritani is indeed the source of the intelligence on the new plot. Former Bush counterterror advisor Fran Townsend also suspected it was al-Mauritani, but she adds a wrinkle:

“Source says Pak-US CT relationship still rock bottom. No trust. Al Mauratania arrest was targt of oppty. US gettg no direct access 2 him.”

If the U.S./Pakistani relationship is still at rock bottom and we’re not getting these details straight from the horse’s mouth, who knows how much of what Pakistan is telling us — or not telling us — is true. Sending us off on a wild goose chase would be partial payback for humiliating them with the Bin Laden raid. But then, so would holding back key details that might help us break this thing up before it goes off. 

I’m glad we’re being update-twittered by a former Bush counterrorism advisor, but who is this Fran Townsend? Turns out she’s been bouncing around D.C. for quite some time as Bill Gertz of the Washington Times informed us back in March:

Inside the Ring
Wednesday, March 16, 2011

FBI director search

Obama administration officials say the leading candidate to replace FBI Director Robert Mueller is Fran Fragos Townsend, a lawyer whose career spanned Clinton administration Attorney General Janet Reno’s Justice Department and George W. Bush’s White House.

Mr. Mueller’s term as director ends in September. The White House and FBI have been searching for a replacement for the past several months, according to two officials close to the search.

Ms. Townsend most recently served as Mr. Bush’s homeland security adviser, a senior counterterrorism post, until 2009.

[snip]

Her earlier career in the Clinton Justice Department made her the focus of criticism. In early 2000, she came under fire from conservative officials in the Bush administration, notably Attorney General John Ashcroft, who moved her out of the strategically important Office of Intelligence Policy Review.

It was at OIPR that Ms. Townsend was a key figure in the notorious bureaucratic “wall” imposed under Ms. Reno that limited intelligence officials from talking to law enforcement officials. The wall was widely blamed for contributing to the intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The policy wall was erected by Ms. Reno, Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick and Justice Department intelligence official Richard Scruggs.

Ms. Townsend “was the main enforcer of the Reno-Gorelick-Scruggs wall,” said a former official who described her as “divisive.”

Other executive branch officials involved in security matters said that while at OIPR, Ms. Townsend blocked a key FBI request for a wiretap on Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee, the chief suspect in a spy case involving the loss of nuclear secrets to China. He was not convicted of spying but pleaded guilty to lesser charges of mishandling classified nuclear information. Officials said the delay in getting the wiretap undermined the FBI’s nuclear espionage case that remains unsolved.

Sounds like a shoe-in to me.

But what’s this about Wen Ho Lee? Thought he’d been exonerated? Well, at least that’s the impression I was given by Mr. Dunn over at American Thinker when he wrote about a new book by David Wise, Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China:

China’s Espionage Threat

Misunderstanding of the Chinese intelligence mindset has led to serious failings in U.S. counterintelligence efforts. Wise recounts disaster after disaster in the recent decades.

[snip]

• The Wen Ho Lee case, probably the only name most readers will readily recognize, in which Lee’s life was disrupted and his career virtually destroyed before it was discovered that the classified material in question — concerning the W-88 Trident warhead — didn’t come from his workplace at Los Alamos at all but very likely from within the Pentagon.

I really don’t think we need to put on sack cloth and ashes and wailingly lament about how “Lee’s life was disrupted and his career virtually destroyed.” Not if you read about the efforts of Clinton Administration officials which seem intentionally constructed to ensure that Lee’s case would never see the light of open court:

The Wen Ho Lee Flake-Out
Friday, September 29, 2000

Yes, there was a Keystone Kops quality, as Senator Richard Bryan put it, to the government’s handling of the Wen Ho Lee investigation. But the chattering classes are on the verge of a major intellectual flake-out, enshrining Mr. Lee as a victim of racism. No doubt he will soon be collecting a hundred grand a year on the lecture circuit and selling his life story to DreamWorks.

Any serious person, though, ought to read the accompanying narrative from the statement of Janet Reno and Louis Freeh. This is of course the prosecution’s case, and we’re not sure it would be enough to convict on the counts alleging intent to harm the U.S. But it is abundantly clear that Mr. Lee was up to no good, that there was plenty of reason for investigators to look at him with a jaundiced eye and that under serious investigation he acted like a guilty man. Having pleaded guilty to one felony, he promises to cooperate with investigators in revealing the fate of still-missing tapes. We won’t hold our breath.

The prosecution’s mistake was overkill. It framed the most serious possible charges, and then asked for onerous detention conditions prior to trial. Much of this was the work of John J. Kelly, a college classmate and longtime crony of President Clinton, who was U.S Attorney in Albuquerque and has resigned to run for Congress there. The Senate committee investigating the incident ought to get him in and hear his story. 

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

Believe it or not, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to appreciating the anti-American machinations of Bill and Hill Clinton, their utter disdain for the military, as well as their well-documented subversions of U.S. national security interests. For more on those subjects, you can read a little something I put together in February of 2008 in anticipation of a Clintonian third-term candidacy. In deference to Quentin Tarantino I call it “Hazel O’Leary and the Missing 88’s.”

What really struck me about the Wen Ho Lee case was that he first came to the attention of the FBI in 1982. That’s right, 1982, the early years of the Reagan Administration. So why did it take until the late ’90s to bring the hammer down? Well, while investigating this and related nuclear proliferation questions, I came across the following:

Saturday Morning Deseret News – Oct 11, 1988

Has U.S. set out welcome mat for spies at nuclear arms labs?
Lax security permits inappropriate access, GAO report says.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lax security at Energy Department nuclear weapons laboratories has allowed agents from Iran, the Soviet bloc and other countries to gain access to sensitive research facilities, congressional investigators reported Tuesday.

The mils took place at the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico and at the Livermore laboratory in California, where scientist conduct advanced research on nuclear weapons and the Strategic Defense Initiative, known as “Star Wars,” according to the report by the General Accounting Office.

The foreign visitors included specialists from the Soviet bloc, China and nations believed either to have nuclear weapons or are seeking to develop them, including India Pakistan, Israel, Brazil and Argentina.

Also allowed into the plants were visitors from both Iran and Iraq, the report said.

Officials at the FBI and CIA declined to discuss possible espionage investigations stemming from the incidents, and it was not clear whether any secrets had been lost, according to the report by the agency, the investigative arm of Congress.

Formally delivering the report to the Senate Governmental Operations Committee, the GAO’s senior associate director, Keith Fultz, said that his inspectors “could not determine If sensitive or classified Information has been lost” but added that “because of weaknesses in DOE’s foreign visitor controls. We have little confidence that adequate protection of weapons related information and technology is achieved.”

One member of the committee, Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, said that “there may be a strong possibility that we will today only be looking at the tip of a monstrous iceberg.”

The Energy Department “generally does not follow its own requirements and obtain background information on foreign visitors and assignees from communist and other sensitive countries,” the GAO report said.

It found the department “allows foreign nationals from communist and proliferation risk countries into the laboratories to discuss subjects that could assist nuclear weapons programs.”

“I can tell you from my point of view. I personally know of no prolonged visit from any foreign national.” said Nigel Hey, spokesman for Sandia.

Hey said foreign visitors must make formal application through the Department of Energy, “so actually you can see that the actual procedure that’s followed to clear access to Sandia is in the hands of the Department of Energy.”

He said further comment would be impossible without first seeing the GAO report.

Congressional investigators found that of the 6,700 foreigners were allowed to visit the weapons laboratories between January 1986 and September 1987, 222 were from communist countries and 675 were from other countries deemed to be espionage or proliferation risks, including 25 from Iran and two from Iraq.

So, U.S. sponsored nuclear weapons proliferation gamesmanship seems to have started long before Clinton became President. I have no notion as to how familiar Reagan himself may or may not have been with this issue, but it’s difficult for me to overlook the likelihood that then Vice-president, soon to be President, George Herbert Walker Bush, Sire of Dubya, knew and approved of what was going on in the weapons labs. After all, he was a former director of the CIA and would appoint Robert Gates, later Secretary of Defense under Bush II and Obama, CIA Director.

Frankly, my dear reader, it’s beginning to seem to me as though not very many of those at the helm have ever really given much of a damn about national security.

But there are those who do care. Listen to the emotion in the voice of former Counterintelligence Director Michelle Van Cleave when in early 2010 she relates her shock and dismay upon learning just how bad our spy catching efforts had been. . .

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I don’t know about you, but this stuff just doesn’t set very well with me. And it really makes me wonder about all those Presidents parading their sympathies, condolences, and remembrances before the cameras. I find myself thinking that we really have become little more than a touchy-feely Oprah-Winfrey/American-Idol nation.

So, for 9/11 I decided to go to a bar and watch the Lions’ game with a buddy. Lions did okay in their defeat of Tampa Bay. But they still couldn’t manage a full sixty minutes of quality football. The fourth quarter was almost disastrously poor.

I’d wait to say my remembrance rosary and try giving a damn by putting this information together.

Ciao,
Dennis

Update: You’re gonna love this, but keep that saved air-sickness bag handy when you watch the promo for “A Decade of Difference” concert.

Analysis by “Sevakis Skeptilytics”

Late yesterday afternoon I received the following from one of my B-School buddies:

The forwarded email included the following description:

The Incredible Shrinking Federal Workforce

Another myth debunked: Contrary to your belief that the Federal government is growing and growing in terms of its role in the government, it turns out that in one crucial respect, it’s actually shrinking.

As a share of all workers, Federal workers have been declining pretty steadily over the last several decades. That number has risen a little bit under Obama — due to some growth in the Federal workforce and the dramatic shrinking of the private workforce — but the ratio is still near the all-time rock bottom.

(via Matt Busigin) Read »

As per usual, data that are combined to give percentages tell a very limited story and often truncate rather than further understanding. This is certainly the case when budget numbers are analyzed as percentages of GDP without any mention of specific dollar amounts. Don’t know of any organization, including governments, that actually budget in such a fashion. Anyhoo. . .

If you go to the source of the graph given by “Business Insider” you will find the following slightly different presentation:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=26b (Please note how the vertical scale of the first chart is exaggerated when compared to one directly above.)

This graph was generated by using a resource of the St. Louis Federal Reserve called, appropriately enough, “FREDgraph” which permits one to generate custom charts through the combining of available data sets using a formula of one’s own creation. Viola! We have now demonstrated that we have an “Incredible Shrinking Federal Workforce.” “Not so fast!” says me. What’s a percentage of what, and what about all government workers? Why just federal? Don’t the AFSCME and NEA emps get paid to? Aren’t they also a “burden” on the economy?

The chart given above was created using FREDgraph by combining the data for this chart:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CEU9091000001?cid=32325 (Note that the absolute number of federal employees has not “shrunk”, but rather has remained essentially constant for the past 45 years with spikes in census years.)

with the data for this one:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS?cid=32305

The number of ALL government employees is given by the following:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USGOVT?cid=32325

which when combined with “PAYEMS” yields the following result:

Presto, change-o! A bit of a different picture, isn’t it?

This does not, of course, give one the entire picture. In economic terms, numerical employment percentages are not nearly as important as would be, for instance, percentages of total payroll. Also, most government jobs are not wealth creating. And the benefits associated therewith, as recent headline events have pointed out, are among the best offered by anyone, anywhere.

From a political standpoint, what I find most interesting is the recent rise in the percentage of government workers. After peaking in the mid-seventies, the percentage of government workers generally declined for the following 25 years. For the last 10 years, since the beginning of the Bush II administration, that trend has reversed and been upward overall. So, when I hear comments about the Obama Administration being merely a continuation of Bush policies, s’pose I should concur. That troubles me. Not because of what that says about Obama, but rather, what it says about Dubya’s presidency.

Besides, how do you decide what percentage of the labor force should be U.S. Government employees? As Tina might say, “What’s that got to do with it?”

Ciao,
Dennis

The current political banter frequently seems to make about as much sense as the ol’ Abbot & Costello “Who’s on first” routine: confusing, but not nearly as funny. (I know, my age is showing.) If you can spare 6m29s, you should find Ingraham and Coulter’s recent assessment of the current state of GOP candidate musical chairs refreshing. I’ve not been a great fan of Ann Coulter, often a bit too glib for my druthers, but she’s spot on when it comes to pointing out where ‘contenders’ are falling short:

Laura Ingraham has a new book out that Mark Steyn discusses in a recent National Review article wherein he waxes nostalgic:

Even if the economy were to fix itself overnight, we’d still face sincere cultural challenges.

[snip]

It’s not the vulgarity or the crassness or even the grunting moronic ugliness, but something more basic: the absence of tenderness. A song such as “It Had To Be You” or “The Way You Look Tonight” presupposes certain courtship rituals. If a society no longer has those, it’s not surprising that it can no longer produce songs to embody them: After all, a great love ballad is, to a certain extent, aspirational; you hope to have a love worthy of such a song. A number like “Carry Out” is enough to make you question whether the fundamental things really do apply as time goes by.

Yet one of the curious features of a hypersexualized society is that it becomes paradoxically sexless and joyless. Guys who confidently bellow along with Enrique’s “F**king You” no longer quite know how to ask a girl for a chocolate malt at the soda fountain. It’s hardly surprising that, as Miss Ingraham reports, the formerly fringe activity of computer dating has now gone mainstream on an industrial scale. And, even then, as a couple of young ladies happened to mention to me after various recent encounters through Match.com and the like, an alarming number of chaps would rather see you naked on their iPhones Anthony Weiner–style than actually get you naked in their bachelor pads. I was reminded of The Children Of Men, set in an infertile world, in which P.D. James’s characters, liberated from procreation, increasingly find sex too much trouble.

I’m reminded of what Roger Kimball had to say some time back:

The New Criterion
December 1992
The treason of the intellectuals & “The Undoing of Thought”
by Roger Kimball

When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.
—Alain Finkielkraut,The Undoing of Thought

Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere. Who knows if in centuries to come there will not be universities for re-establishing our former ignorance?
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, La Trahison des clercs. I said “famous,” but perhaps “once famous” would have been more accurate. For today, in the United States anyway, only the title of the book, not its argument, enjoys much currency. “La trahison des clercs”: it is one of those memorable phrases that bristles with hints and associations without stating anything definite. Benda tells us that he uses the term “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are in this sense clercs. The English translation, The Treason of the Intellectuals, sums it up neatly.

The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as intellectuals. From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, considered in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. In Benda’s terms, they were understood to be “all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or a metaphysical speculation, in short in the possession of non-material advantages.” Thanks to such men, Benda wrote, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.”

Is that rift closing?

We haven’t really been “liberated.” Rather, America, along with the rest of Western society, has been corrupted. This is the true fruit of the “progressive” movement. Freedom isn’t license. Legality and morality are not merely two sides of the same coin. We now render only unto Caesar, and America can no longer be considered so exceptional.

What do any of the presidential aspirants have to say about how we’re going to fix that?

Let’s take a peek at what former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, had to say evening last regarding Dubya’s V.P., and what Cheney contends in his new memoir, “In My Time,” about the “alleged” nexus between Saddam and bin Laden:

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The following is a segment from the “Crime and Justice” series that was originally broadcast by ABC News on January 14, 1999. Seems to leave little doubt that the nexus was a bit more than alleged.

Of course, it’s now a little late for Mr. O’Donnell to seek an interview with either one of the non-domestic bad guys. Well, who else can we get to bad mouth domestic bad guy Cheney? Ah, how ’bout the author of a Cheney-bashing book who’s actually read all of the just-published memoir! Ladies and gentlemen, here’s Barton Gellman:

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Seems to me just a tad bass ackwards that the Attorney General has veto power over a President’s policy regarding the conduct of intelligence operatives overseas, whatever the true narrative of the Ashcroft-in-the-hospital-unwilling-to-sign-and-what-was-Comey-doing-there episode may be.

Comey, by the way, was Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s “let’s get Marc Rich” partner when they were both U.S. Attorneys on Rich’s case. Mr. Rich, as you may recall, was one of Mr. Clinton’s last-minute pardons upon his departure from office, said pardon being recommended by then Deputy AG, Eric Holder, who is now AG. Guess who was one of foreign-and-domestic bad guy Rich’s attorneys back then? Well, none other than I. Lewis “The Scooter” Libby, who was the only person ever charged or prosecuted by Mr. Fitzgerald for the non-revelation of Ms. Plame’s non-covert position with the CIA.

Scooter, by the way, was also Cheney’s Chief of Staff. Not that that has anything to do with anything. Though it may account for the fact that, unlike Marc Rich, Mr. Libby never did get a full pardon, though Scooter’s would have to had come from President Bush II. Guess Cheney and Bush weren’t all that close after all. Ya think?

Oh, almost forgot. Politician, not the actor, Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s Deputy Secretary of State, was the one who actually spilled the beans about Valerie Plame to the now departed Robert Novak. Guess O’Donnell won’t be interviewing him either.

Ciao,
Dennis

Update: By the way, did I mention that it was Comey who appointed Fitzgerald “Plamegate” special prosecutor? Didn’t want to leave that out.