Monday, May 18, 2009

White House v. Pelosi?



I am not a huge Bill Kristol Fan; however, I was reading one of his articles today and it made me think about something:
But did Panetta simply decide on his own to send this letter? It’s almost inconceivable. Panetta is a former member of Congress and a former White House chief of staff. President Obama made him CIA director only four months ago. Even if his motivation for the letter was in part driven by an institutional imperative to defend his agency, Panetta would have understood the political implications of humiliating a House speaker of his own party. He surely at least ran the letter by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to get clearance. It’s also possible that Panetta was encouraged to send the letter by Emanuel.

This raises the question: Does Emanuel (and, presumably, President Obama) want a chastened Pelosi to remain speaker? Or are they following the model of the Bush White House in December 2002. Then, Karl Rove, on behalf of the president, played a behind-the-scenes role in nudging out Majority Leader Trent Lott -- a legislator for whom the White House had little respect, but who had his own power base in Congress, so wasn’t easy for the White House to control? Are Emanuel and Obama happy to be deal in the future with a weakened Pelosi? Or do they want a new speaker, presumably Steny Hoyer?


Now this is interesting. I have been thinking a lot lately about what could be going on behind the scenes of the Obama White House. Emanuel is no stranger to controversy. It would not surprise me at all that his hand is in this somewhere. I also do not think it would be bad for Pelosi to back down some. It was great when she was the top ranking democrat; but she no longer is. There are two democrats that out rank her now, and she needs to be put into her important, but not top-level, place.

1 comments:

JMP said...

Please, less navel gazing and mindless pontificating over nothing much guys.

Try thinking logically here for a change. Then start reading. There's nothing in what either Panetta has said (or issued as a statement to the media) that actually seriously contradicts what Pelosi has said. (Again, another grand tradition, 'We can neither confirm nor deny...'). She said, again, she was not informed about 'water boarding', (read: water torture & traditional Inquisitional torture by half drowning), until After it happened. Not before. Not during. But only Long afterwards. Neither anything Porter Goss has leaked to the manically hypocritical miserable press or what Panetta just released for public consumption contradicts what she has said In Detail. They (BushCo) said & claimed that they had 'legal justification' for water boarding. They did not tell anyone that again, All The Armed Services actually refuted these attempts at legal justifications and told them flatly 'NO'! And at the time of the briefing, she was not told that the torture had been actually carried out. All necessary things to know before anyone might be able to act on any sort of an informed basis.

So really, get your head straight. Stop watching FOX& other silly TV sources, and go try and read some relevant history here. Don't let your opposition, (and yes, they ARE the opposition and would love to destroy you & I both), Define Reality For You. This is all a noisy side show meant to distract & slow any momentum for serious change. But of course it fascinates some small minds. JMP


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-18/gops-torture-tricks-backfire/