One looks at the current scene in the capital and wonders whether to laugh, cry, take a sedative or kick the cat. It’s new-appointment time so speculation has to do with who will succeed State Secretary Clinton, who has stayed out of the country since the Benghazi Massacre and is (or was – who knows?) now in Australia in her important role as official U.S. wine-taster. Defense Secretary Panetta has also been absent quite a lot and in Australia, perhaps to check out Aussie beer.
UN Ambassador Rice has been all but deified to take Clinton’s place, and she has the main credential, namely, an inordinate ability to lie. Clinton graphically described her 1996 narrow escape from terrorist-snipers in Bosnia during the 2008 campaign (ran for her life, with Chelsea hanging on). It didn’t happen, of course, as the film she should have known about proved. It was a monstrous lie. Her latest monstrous LIE about Benghazi and the infamous film has cemented her fitness for office (actually grounds for an immediate firing).
Rice lied to five major networks on the same day about what happened at Benghazi but the president took her off the hook in his 14 November press conference (the first in 8 months), simply stating that she reported what she’d been told, but didn’t say who lied to her. He also said he would, if he desired, nominate her, despite statements by Senators McCain and Graham (“outrageous,” the cads) that they would work to defeat the nomination, as if they could in Harry Reid’s dysfunctional Senate.
Defense Secretary Panetta is said to be on the way out, too, so a replacement must be found. Senator John Kerry has expressed an interest in the State job and perhaps in the Defense slot as well. He carries some baggage, of course, in both areas. When he cashed in his Purple Hearts in the Vietnam conflict (lost about a half-day’s work account serious wounds, one self-inflicted), he returned to Naval Reserve status and went to Paris to meet with North Vietnamese folks and undercut U.S. efforts to end that conflict, not that a lowly navy lieutenant actually mattered, no matter the size of his ego then, and still huge. That was state-department business.
He also threw his medals “over the fence somewhere” in a sort of hippy-dippy “Jane Fonda protest,” an extreme act of “loyalty” to the Navy (denied later). As a result, he was “swift-boated” by the Naval officers who knew him back in the day and who helped him lose his bid for the presidency in 2004.
Kerry voted for before he voted against the Iraq action, perhaps checking some poll or other to have his mind made up for him. He is definitely not secretary material for either job and a Senate hearing concerning either would be the best show in town. Especially since Kerry has continued his deceptions in campaigns as recent as 2004, every senator should read or reread the extremely well-documented (19 pages of notes) Unfit for Command before even considering him for any position. A greater fraud than Obama, he’s a pathetic liar and a disgrace, but that might qualify him in this administration.
Geithner will be leaving as Treasury Secretary. He’d cheated Uncle Sam out of four years worth of taxes when nominated in 2009 but paid up for only two (seems like about $38,000) since the other two dissolved account statute of limitations and he was too, too patriotic to pay an honest debt anyway. Obama nominated or was about to nominate some other tax-cheaters to jobs but they bowed out, as was not the case with former Senator Daschle, who paid up well over $100,000 but was too smeared anyway to get a job.
This tendency to cheat on taxes, of course, makes Daschle the front-runner for the Treasury job but he may have skipped some other tax-payments in the interim and may prefer not to pay up only to lose another costly chance at being a bureaucratic nabob anyway. Majority Leader Reid might be right for Treasury based on his information during the campaign that Romney had paid no taxes for ten years. A LIE of that magnitude qualifies him for any position in the cabinet.
Jack Abramoff, lobbyist extraordinaire, has been out of jail for a couple or so years and has even written a book about Washington corruption, so he might be a good choice for Treasury…he knows how to handle and mishandle money. Maybe Bernie Madoff could be sprung from his 150-year sentence to handle Treasury. Maybe he could cheat Europe and India out of a few trillion.
Of course, musical chairs could be in order for the cabinet. Homeland Security diva Napolitano might fit in at State. She had the wisdom to replace the term “terrorism” with “man-caused-disaster,” and warned early-on about keeping an eye on those potentially dangerous GIs retuning from the Middle East. She could be replaced by Attorney General Holder, who sues whole states when they have the audacity (of Hope) to enforce federal laws, keeping in line the administration’s anti-state posture.
The vice president has very little to do so maybe he could take over Holder’s bailiwick and sue the Catholic Church for daring to question the judicious use of abortions as population-control.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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