Dear Diary

More the Pity
Safely re-elected, President Obama at long last spoke bluntly about the Faustian deals struck by his predecessor, some of them cravenly continued by his own administration. (Maureen Dowd, NYT, 5/25/2013)

Maureen Dowd writes perhaps her most despicable column yet on the Bush family. Considering that she has now written over 10,000 columns on the same topic that is saying something. Drawing on her doctorate in psychology, she once again recycles the Freudian father-son themes that she has written about ad nauseum. We also get Cheney and Rumsfeld redux. Then 'Mission Accomplished.' Then 'The Decider.' We are reminded that Obama, not Bush, killed bin Laden (who knew?) And finally, the snarky description of the gracious former First Lady as 'Laura the Librarian.' 

This is beyond obsession. This is journalistic mental illness. And so we move from despising Dowd to feeling sorry for her. Hopefully her employer can get her the help that she so desperately needs. 


Why Indeed
A reporter asked on Thursday, Why exactly was he running now? “It was a process of figuring out what felt right for the city, what felt right for me,” he said. “I apologize if I inconvenienced you with the scheduling.” (NYT, 5/23/2013)

And now we learn the truth from Weiner-Dog. He had to be sure that running for mayor was the best thing for New York City. Fortunately, it was and no doubt all of NYC breathes a sigh of relief. 


Tip Top
Does the IRS scandal go all the way up to the top? As of now, doubtful. It’s nearly inconceivable that anyone would be stupid enough to have given such a politically fatal directive from the White House (although admittedly the bar is rapidly falling).

But when some bureaucrat is looking for cues from above, it matters when the president of the United States denounces the Supreme Court decision that allowed the proliferation of 501(c)(4)s and specifically calls the resulting “special interest groups” running ads to help Republicans “not just a threat to Democrats — that’s a threat to our democracy.” It’s especially telling when it comes amid letters from Democratic senators to the IRS urging aggressive scrutiny of 501(c)(4) applications. (Charles Krauthammer, 5/23/2013)

Krauthammer's excellent point is a variation of one that we have heard from Peggy Noonan. Namely, Obama did not have to explicitly order the IRS to do anything. They merely listened to his speeches. 

And more from Noonan:

We know the IRS commissioner wasn't telling the truth in March 2012, when he testified: "There's absolutely no targeting." We have learned that Lois Lerner lied when she claimed she had spontaneously admitted the targeting in a Q-and-A at a Washington meeting. It was part of a spin operation in which she'd planted the question with a friend. We know the tax-exempt bureau Ms. Lerner ran did not simply make mistakes because it was overwhelmed with requests—the targeting began before a surge in applications. And Ms. Lerner did not learn about the targeting in 2012—the IRS audit timeline shows she was briefed in June 2011. She said the targeting was the work of rogue agents in the Cincinnati office. But the Washington Post spoke to an IRS worker there, who said: "Everything comes from the top." (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 5/23/2013)


Just Next Door
On Monday, the terminators gained a victory when Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law the "Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act." The bill had been passed by the state legislature the week before without consulting the electorate, possibly because the lawmakers had seen what happened last fall next door in Massachusetts, where voters rejected a similar initiative. Now Vermont doctors will be able to prescribe lethal medication to patients as the state joins Oregon, Washington and Montana in supporting the practice. (WSJ, 5/24/2013)

Key phrase above, of course, is "without consulting the electorate."


Change of Fortune
After years of grueling battles over state budget deficits and spending cuts, California has a new challenge on its hand: too much money. An unexpected surplus is fueling an argument over how the state should respond to its turn of good fortune.
...
Instead, the surplus has set off a debate about the durability of new revenues, and whether the money should be used to reverse some of the spending cuts or set aside to guard against the inevitable next economic downturn. (NYT, 5/25/2013)

It will be fascinating to watch what the Democrat majority in California does with the budget surplus (if it is even real). Will they learn from history and set up that rainy day fund? Somehow we doubt it, but here's hoping.