Quote of the Indeterminate Time Interval – Maguro

In Althouse’s thread on the news that the Obama administration will ignore* the subpoena for Solyndra documents, he said;

Most transparent, ethical administration evah!

I concur. Between this and running guns to Mexican drug gangs to build up support for domestic gun control**, they’re doing a bang up job.

*Since when can you just flat out ignore subpoenas? I thought that was the whole damn point?

**BTW CNN (and WSJ, for that matter), it wasn’t a “botched probe.” Repeating it doesn’t make it true***.

***Unless by botched they mean it was actually found out. If it was supposed to be under the radar, and now it’s manifestly not, then that’s pretty damn botched.****

****I don’t actually have a fourth note; consider this a botched footnote. 😦

More truth in political cartoons

From Michael Ramirez, via Say Uncle:

If Watergate had been this bad, the press would have been trampling each other in the rush to get the next big scoop.

Instead, we get crickets.

I’m so glad we’ve laid violent rhetoric to rest

But shouldn’t someone have told Joe “Foot in Mouth” Biden about it, first?

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists,” according to several sources in the room.

It’s one thing to call your opponents racists. But to call them terrorists?

If someone disagrees with you, you don’t slander them; you either try to convince them that they’re wrong, or you try to convince everyone else that they’re wrong. Calling political opponents terrorists waters down the meaning of the word, and does absolutely nothing for you.

And it would be one thing if the person calling their political opponents terrorists were just some opinion writer, but for the vice president to do so is beyond the pale.

The government should not lightly label people terrorists.

Being called a Terrorist by Govt. officials gives them permission to shoot the person ON SITE. Terrorist is NOT a word 2 b used carelessly

— CTconserv. Faith (@CTconserv) August 1, 2011

The plot thickens…

Apparently the White House did know about Fast and Furious. The ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix office told the National Security Director for North America about the operation because,

“He was asking about the impact of Project Gunrunner to brief people in preparation for a trip to Mexico… what we were doing to combat firearms trafficking and other issues.”

Obviously Operation Fast and Furious only falls under that umbrella in the loosest definition of “combat firearms trafficking” you can come up with; as we’ve seen in the past couple of months, the ATF was more enabling firearms trafficking than actually combatting it. Hell, they were even letting convicted felons buy guns as part of this “program.”

And now Congress’s report has accused the ATF of arming Mexican cartels for war. When guns you allow to be sold to known straw purchasers take less than 24 hours to get from the point of sale to the scene of the crime, then your lame attempt to “combat firearms trafficking” isn’t working at all.

Heads are going to roll because of this. For many Mexicans and Americans living near the border, they already have.

Look, you jumped up, jackbooted petty tyrant

You say you’re only “taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money?” (H/T Alan)

It’s my fucking money.

If I want to spend it on “wasteful” incandescent bulbs instead of CFLs, or even if I just stack it up in a warehouse, douse it in gasoline, and set it on fire, it’s none of your damn business.

The solution is always more government control

Is the government smuggling guns illegally across the Mexican border to cartels?

Well, that’s only because the laws aren’t strong enough and we need more government control!

It was only a matter of time, of course, until lawmakers joined the Washington Post and the New York Times in calling for more gun control in the wake of the ATF’s disastrous Fast and Furious gun “tracking” operation.

Obama’s answer to the Fast and Furious question at yesterday’s press conference was almost Nixonian; though he did miss the chance to go full Tricky Dick and say, “I am not a gun trafficker.”

Quote of the Indeterminate Time Interval – Hillary Clinton redux!

Victor Davis Hanson dredges up an old quote from then-Senator Clinton:

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.

Of course, that was back in 2003, when dissent was patriotic, and wars were evil, and a Democrat wasn’t in the White House.

As Secretary of State Clinton made clear yesterday, that is no longer the case.

Quote of the Indeterminate Time Interval – Hillary Clinton

I can’t believe she actually said this:

But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

Congratulations, Hillary. You’ve made me too furious to comment coherently.

You know, if we’d continued drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

Instead of forcing oil companies to stop drilling, then maybe we wouldn’t have to tap into the strategic reserves because of unrest in a pissant backwater that we don’t even get oil from; 85% of Libya’s oil goes to Europe!

So not only are we wasting our strategic oil reserves for no good reason, we’re spending our own money and materiel to support Europe’s incompetent attempt to depose Qaddafi.

This must be that smart diplomacy I keep hearing about.

Quote of the Indeterminate Time Interval – Jake

Jake said this the other day in the comments to my no-knock warrant clarification:

Our nation has, for all practical purposes, become not a constitutional republic of democratically elected representatives, but a plutarchy, governed by a political class to which entry generally requires significant personal wealth.

While this is a good observation, it’s today’s news that really drives it home; 80% of big dollar bundlers have received positions in the Obama administration.