House of Eratosthenes

I disagree with our current President on a number of things, on that much I am sure, but I have some uncertainties about His mental stability when I read about situations like this:

The White House on Friday rejected House Republicans’ subpoena for all internal communications related to the $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee, instead providing 135 pages of documents that administration officials say meet the “legitimate oversight interests” of congressional investigators.

In a letter to top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee Friday, White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said the documents “do not contain evidence of favoritism to political supporters or any wrongdoing by the White House in connection with the Solyndra loan guarantee.”

Solyndra, a California solar panel maker that received the $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee in 2009, filed for bakruptcy [sic] in September. The GOP has pounced on the Solyndra bankruptcy, raising questions about the administration’s green agenda.

An administration official said the documents offer little new insight into the loan guarantee to the failed solar panel maker.

“The Bottom line: No news here. It’s the same stuff you’ve seen before,” the administration officials said. “There’s no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
:
The White House withheld about a dozen pages of documents related to the restructuring of the loan guarantee “because of the deliberative nature of the communications.” Ruemmler offered to make the documents available to committee staff for review.

Just weird. This “I’ll just pontificate voluminously about your many personal shortcomings that become obvious when you ask me this question” thing. Weird, weird, triple-grade-A weird, and no I’m not likely to downgrade that rating any time soon. It permeates this administration and it’s obvious it’s a case of the fish rotting from the head down. Typical spoiled brat baby boomer bullshit. Someone got spoiled, someone was never, ever asked by His mother and stepfather what He was doing with a stolen cookie in His hand and a shattered clay jar at His feet. And now, anytime He’s asked a question He doesn’t want to answer, it automatically means something is wrong with the person asking it. Really? What if it was, say, four years ago and it was President George Bush getting embarrassed over Solyndra…anyone want to promise me it wouldn’t be a junior senator from Illinois leading the charge to force the White House to show what it’s been up to?

Well, not leading. Sonorously intoning a bunch of hubbub about “transparency” and “responsibility.” Make no mistake, let me be clear. That wouldn’t happen? Seriously?

But what really worries me is the act of withholding the twelve pages that are “deliberative” in “nature.” The White House offers to disclose them in committee. The other 135 pages, it has released, and these 12 it’s going to sit on. Not a word is mentioned about the particular sensitivity of the twelve pages, let alone why any such sensitivity would exist.

There are only two possibilities here: The twelve pages reveal something the White House would just as soon not become public knowledge, for some reason, or there’s nothing particularly special about the twelve pages, and withholding some little tidbit is a crucial and non-expendable part of Barack Obama’s way of “disclosing” things. Just His passive-aggressive, childlike little way of saying “fuck you.”

You know what’s kinda freakin’ me out here? I’m not ready to eliminate either one of those. There could very well be something in the twelve pages, since you have to parse what Obama says very, very finely. Bill Clinton, backed into a corner, famously began to split hairs over the meaning of the word “is.” President Obama has clearly borrowed a page from that book. Maybe even twelve pages.

On the other hand, I can’t think back on any occasion, not a single one for the last three or four years, in which Obama was prevailed upon to disclose something He did not originally see fit to disclose, and just plain went ahead & did it. Has He ever driven a car? What happens when a cop pulls Him over and asks to see His driver’s license, registration and proof of coverage? Does He just produce the documents like the rest of us do? If He does, then in doing so, He displays a behavior I’ve not seen Him display in any public setting in any of the long years since I became aware of Him, in spite of the many opportunities made available for Him to do so. Always, always, always some line is drawn somewhere. And there’s always a thick wall of sound bites dispensed about the many personal things that are wrong with whoever is asking to see it.

It has the look of a mental malady. This need to say “I’ll show you this, but I’ve made a unilateral decision to sit on this other thing, over here. And oh, by the way, you should not be asking to see anything at all.” In fact, this situation itself is even more preposterous than usual. Barack Obama is essentially deciding that the committee should review 135 pages instead of 147 pages, because at some point between pages 136 and 147 the situation starts to become intolerable, might bore the members of the committee, and will certainly waste the committee’s time. Up to that point, on the other hand, the situation’s kinda sorta okay, just a little irritating. He’s essentially saying “Here’s a sub-selection for you to review, since we pointedly refuse to turn over the whole thing because you guys are a bunch of poopie-heads. As you can see, there’s nothing here. That makes you even bigger poopie-heads, for asking in the first place.”

You know, these two possibilities that may explain this? I still can’t think of any third one; but the two are not mutually exclusive. Both may apply.

I recall the winter between 2002 and 2003, when Congress demanded to see documents that would support President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. I’m trying to envision what would happen if that president responded the way this president is responding to the Solyndra subpoena. This effort to envision that alternative timeline, is proving most challenging to me in the details, but not in the generalities.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

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“No News Here, Same Stuff You Saw Before”Saturday, November 12th, 2011

“No News Here, Same Stuff You Saw Before”
Saturday, November 12th, 2011