Illustrating Absurdity: Or, lack of planning on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my part…

Chicken crossing by Peter Griffin

Looks like the O-Administration is taking lessons from the L.A. Clown Posse, otherwise known as the City Council.  The BP oil spill gets increasingly worse by the day, Obama and his administration try to place blame, yet they are the ones with oil on their faces.   James Carville, famed Clintonista and Louisianan, is going all over talk shows screaming for the administration to do something.  Kirsten Powers of the New York Post (and a Democrat supporter) mentions Carville’s comments in her article: “He urged it [the administration] to rapidly ‘move to Plan B.'” But she goes further, hitting the nail on the head to ask: Where was Obama’s Plan A on the Oil Spill? A pull quote:

“It also shouldn’t be a secret that no matter how many inspections and safety requirements you have, you can’t ever completely prevent disasters like this one. If you’re going to permit offshore drilling, be prepared to respond to a spill.”

Wouldn’t that be nice.  He had no plans for the flooding in Nashville either, not even warranting them a visit.  So did we really expect anything but talk and finger-pointing on this?

Now pundits are starting to call this “Obama’s Katrina“, but I think it’s far worse.  The supposed sins of George W. Bush’s inaction on Katrina occurred in his second term.  Obama is still out of the box of his first term, and save for a rosy few months, he and his administration have been stumbling and bumbling on every national and international issue and crisis.  We have a nationalized health care package very few people want to see enacted, Iran is still building nuclear weapons and thumbing their nose at us, Korea is on meltdown, and let’s not even talk about the Panty-Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, Jihad Jane and the Arizona-Mexico border.

So, I think a more apt term would be “Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis”–but anyone born after 1970 who is not a political junkie wouldn’t get the reference.  “Katrina” is more immediate, sound-bitey and invokes a certain imagery; much of it manufactured by our own news media, but imagery nonetheless.  Haven’t seen as much non-stop imagery of oil-caked wildlife, have we?  Now with Louisiana’s fragile coast being destroyed, methinks that’s about to change.  And he’s not helping matters by headlining fundraising dinners for Barbara Boxer in San Francisco.  From the Mercury News:

“Obama attended a series of fundraisers for Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is facing a fierce battle in the fall to win a fourth term. It was his second trip to California in as many months to assist the liberal Democrat.  ‘We’ve got a lot on our plate right now, so I don’t travel for just anybody,’ Obama told Democratic donors Tuesday night at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel.  ‘But when it comes to Barbara Boxer, I’m a lot like you: When she calls and says she needs help, we’re gonna give her some help.'” (emphasis mine)

Ouch!  That soundbite is going to boomerang on him big time–if it hasn’t already.  Should have used the teleprompter.

And the New York Post is on fire this morning.  Writer John Crudele already interviewed Naomi Cohn, unemployed lawyer and 2010 Census worker, who blew the whistle on how the Census is cooking statistics to make the job numbers look good.  Well, Crudele brings us more good news on just how wasteful, disorgananized and corrupt this Census go-round is turning out to be.  Two more Census workers blow the whistle…  The anonymous Census worker writes:

“‘John: I am on my fourth rehire with the 2010 Census.

“‘I have been hired, trained for a week, given a few hours of work, then laid off. So my unemployed self now counts for four new jobs.

‘I have been paid more to train all four times than I have been paid to actually produce results. These are my tax dollars and your tax dollars at work.'”

Yours, maybe.  Like Naomi, the legal profession decided to cut me from their fat rolls two years ago, and I have not found a replacement full-time gig.  And just for your information, because I choose to work even part-time, they cut my unemployment benefits last year.

So like any hard-working American, I applied to work for the 2010 Census, as did a number of my friends, but we were never called–now I know why…

And what’s that phrase, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up?”  Well, in the case of Joe Sestak, it may be a bit of both.  Now that Sestak has won the Democrat party nomination for the Senate in Pennsylvania, he is trying to play footsie with allegations he repeatedly made that the Obama Administration offered him a job if he would drop his primary challenge against Republica–Democrat Arlen Specter.  “Benedict Arlen,” as he is affectionately known by right-wing pundits.  The L.A. Times, no less, has an opinion on this: Joe Sestak and the phantom–or was it?

Even his own party claims to be interested in hearing what was said, and the GOP is calling for an independent counsel investigation.  Both parties want answers about Sestak.

I was six-years old during the Watergate hearings, so it wasn’t even a blip on my radar.  However, almost every presidency since then has been plagued by its own version of an embarrassing scandal: From Iran-Contra to Monica-gate.   Will this be Obama-gate?  From all indications, it appears that obfuscating, manufactured rhetoric, and finger-pointing are not making this go away.