House of Eratosthenes

All is as expected: The FARK kids can’t put together a coherent thought about it. Arianna Huffington, desperate to be credited with assembling tomorrow’s most popular left-wing talking point, has cleverly blended together the two old standby ingredients whining and gloating. It will probably work.

The Washington Times wants to know how things went this far without more involvement from our mainstream press. Good question.

Obama is, of course, shocked — shocked! — to learn of Van Jones’ extremist views. But not so fast, says the Wall Street Journal opinion page.

Mr. Jones was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which was established, funded and celebrated as the new intellectual vanguard of the Democratic Party. The center’s president is John Podesta, who was co-chair of Mr. Obama’s transition team and thus played a major role in recommending appointees throughout the Administration. The ascent of Mr. Jones within the liberal intelligentsia shows how much the Democratic Party has moved left since its “New Democrat” triangulation of the Clinton years.

Mr. Jones’s incendiary comments about Republicans and his now famous association with a statement blaming the U.S. for 9/11 had to have been known in some White House precincts. He was praised and sponsored by Valerie Jarrett, who is one of the two or three most powerful White House aides and is a long-time personal friend of the President.

Our guess is that Mr. Jones landed in the White House precisely because his job didn’t require Senate confirmation, which would have subjected him to more scrutiny. This is also no doubt a reason that Mr. Obama has consolidated so much of his Administration’s governing authority inside the White House under various “czars.”

This gets into a question I have long had about the “czars.” My question doesn’t have to do with the obvious lack of congressional oversight, or what-would-we-find-out if the czars did have to appear before a Senate panel and win confirmation.

My question is, instead: Why does the org chart have to look this way?

Take a look at the way things have to be, as President Obama is first sworn in. We have a cabinet that evolves over time, acquiring new seats much more often than it loses any, and is currently at fifteen plus seven cabinet-level officers. If President Obama has any intention of trimming these down, I’ve yet to hear about it. Then, to this, we add the czars. The definition of a “czar” is not necessarily a measurable thing, so it will be a subjective matter to determine how many such posts Obama has created. CNN says “nearly thirty” and Fox News reports “nearly three dozen.”

Wow, that’s nearly sixty really smart people helping Obama make decisions about things.

Obama doesn’t need help making decisions about things, though. This is a guy who thinks nothing of announcing the police acted “stupidly” in responding to an entirely local incident, in the same breath as admitting He is missing the facts required to decide such a thing. I’ve been listening to Him for three years now, and I’ve not yet once heard Him say He knows something because of something someone else pointed out to Him. Not unless you count that racist asshole preacher of His that He doesn’t want me to think about anymore.

Apart from Rev. Wright, there’s been absolutely nobody. Not His sainted grandmother, not Michelle, not Rahm, not “Nobody Messes With Joe” Biden, not one single soul has told President Obama something Obama felt was worth using in a decision Obama had to make. Not once!

So why does our President need fifty-eight people to help Him make decisions? He has yet to demonstrate His need for even one. There’s no leadership-bandwidth to be conserved here. If Obama was in my kitchen when I was opening a box of Cheerios or unclogging my garbage disposal, He’d have plenty of comments about all the mistakes I’d be making, and how I should be doing it. And He’d tell me all about it without ever whipping out His cell phone and using a lifeline. He’d correct me in the middle of the most meaningless and arcane tasks, fully confident in His own glorious advice, be His advice solicited or not, and He’d do it without breaking a sweat.

The only answer I can see, is that the fifty-something butts in the chairs represent solutions in search of a problem. It must be a classic Washington story of graft. They are fifty-something people who are owed something.

Van Jones reflects badly on the country, in a darkly humorous way. We Americans are a real funny duck, you know. We’re constantly bitching and moaning about our corrupt officials ripping us off, and when we find out one guy profits from a decision and another guy makes a decision, and they happen to know each other, we screech. Perhaps that’s healthy. But every single election is the event by which we “finally take our house back from these crooks,” and just a heartbeat later we find cronies paying each other off out of our tax coffers, nothing’s changed…and we still tolerate it.

So here’s an idea. Don’t go looking for a replacement for Van Jones. Instead, get rid of a whole bunch of czars. Then go after the cabinet. Make it look like George Washington’s, with just four posts. Obama wants to restore His approval ratings; that would do it.

But of course He won’t do that.

The only answer I can see, is that the fifty-something butts in the chairs represent solutions in search of a problem. It must be a classic Washington story of graft. They are fifty-something people who are owed something.

I think you’ve really gotten to the root of the problem here. Nailed it. Nice analysis, Morgan. Seriously.

I actually hadn’t taken the thought process this far on the whole czar-as-adviser thing, but now that you have, I’m intrigued and beginning to wonder exactly whats in it for all these people. I did notice, now that you mention it, that Obama brought an awful lot of his crooked Chicago buddies into the Administration with him – people that were surely instrumental in him getting to where he is.

And for that matter, I doubt very much that he’s actually cut off all communication with the “racist asshole preacher” Jeremiah Wright. We’re supposed to believe that Obama has simply turned his back on someone who’s been a friend of the family for over 20 years? Please.
- cylarz | 09/08/2009 @ 06:43
The only answer I can see, is that the fifty-something butts in the chairs represent solutions in search of a problem.

Looks like cylarz and I both got snagged on the same thing.

This is how Progressive Politics works. They know what they want to do. They just need an excuse to do it, a candy wrapper, if you will, to wrap around the rabbit droppings so we’ll take their little policies, one little dropping at a time.

Only right now since they haven’t been in a position of power in so long, they have a gigantic pile of horse manure they’d like to … ahem, “process” into a soylent green-like food substitute and put a majority of us in such a position that we’ll have no choice but to ask, “please, suh, may I ‘ave some moh?”

Oh, and as far as the ~~czar~~ special advisory position? He will continue to do what he’s been doing, just not in an official government position. He’s not going to get a 6 figure salary from the taxpayers to do it. That’s ok, Soros will likely pick up the tab.

Apollo Alliance. He’s a major player in it. Was before he got appointed. Is now. Will remain. And they write the bills that nobody reads.

The Bills That Nobody Reads …. hmmmm…. has a “ring” to it, doesn’t it? 😉
- philmon | 09/09/2009 @ 07:56
His model is literally the New Deal. There is a revolutionary book, and they have it.
The cabinet had no power, its functions were run out of the White House (observe Hillary’s dissapearance). They were referred to as dictators, as in dictating, before that word gained other connotations. Now they are czars.
The Congress was compliant, and willingly so. It took two years to scare the Supreme Court, four to change it.

The brains behind Obama are identical to those behind Roosevelt, but Obama is not Roosevelt. Roosevelt never fumbled as he destroyed, Obama has already fumbled.
- jamzw | 09/09/2009 @ 09:47

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Van Jones AftermathTuesday, September 8th, 2009

Van Jones Aftermath
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009