Obama & Caligula

When I grow up I want to be Mark Steyn.

"The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."

Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to "politicize" it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about. For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday:

"There's only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane."

She's right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets. Sure, Caligula put his horse in the Senate, but it was a real horse. At Ohio State University, the rapper will.i.am introduced the President by playing the Sesame Street theme tune, which, oddly enough, seems more apt presidential walk-on music for the Obama era than "Hail To The Chief."

At least Caligula's senator was a real horse. That is brilliance. Unfortunately, it is also observation.

Comments

[Donald Pay]

Sure. What about the embassy security problems during the Bush Administration? What about 9-11, you know, the 3,000+ deaths that Bush-Cheney allowed? I haven't noticed any concern about the deaths that occurred at embassy raids or terrorists attacks during Republican Administrations. So, I ask: should we investigate the far more serious lapses in security during the Bush years?

[Jon S]

Shorter Donald: "I know you are but what am I?"

Donald, are you under the impression that the planning for 9-11 started only on 1-20-2001? Did not Al Qaeda attack the USS Cole in the Clinton administration? Did Clinton not have opportunity to kill Bin Laden and refused (not entirely unreasonably, in my view)? Was not the barrier between the FBI and CIA that made coordination on terrorism harder put into place by Jami Gorlick in the Clinton administration? My point is not to blame Clinton. If I am to blame someone, it will be Al Qaeda. But Donald must sit around naked each morning waiting for the memo from the DNC telling him what clothes to wear.

[Donald Pay]

Uh, the Republicans are the ones playing childish games here.

Romney threatening Big Bird on national TV during a presidential debate is the very definition of childish. Romeny's solution to our debt and deficit problems is canning Big Bird and giving the rich a huge tax cut. That's going to solve our debt and deficit problems, isn't it?

But we shouldn't be so surprised Romney pulled out his Etch-A-Sketch and redrew what Republicans have been doing that since the 1980s. It's become a sick joke--Republicans playing Oscar the Grouch in order to appeal to the idiot white right.

It must be so humiliating for you, but then so is pretending this latest Al Qaeda attack is a huge disaster. It's serious, but stack it up against Republican foreign policy follies, where thousands were slaughtered, and it's nothing. I guess you have a long memory when it comes to threatening Big Bird, but are a bunch of dementia patients when it comes to dealing with the far greater problems that the Bush administration got us into: allowing the 9-11 attacks and lying us into a war in Iraq for no reason. Let's investigate those disasters, and while we're at it, we can put some of Romney's foreign policy advisors on the witness list, since most of them are from the Bush Administration.