Well, it's official summer has arrived to SE Texas. The temperature when I came into the kitchen for coffee this morning is at 70 degrees and the humidity is above 90%. By my definition, summer has slunk in and it wont be leaving for a while. Luckily for us, we are just south of the storm line that has been dumping rain, lightning, and street flooding on the folks just a county or two away. For two days now heavy rains have fallen just a bit north of where we live here without a drop falling at our house.
I see from the morning emails that Tom Poston has died at the age of 85. I never really thought a whole lot about Tom but when I read the announcement his image immediately popped into my mind from the old Newhart Show. There are a lot of actors out there whose name I know but who I couldn't picture on a dare, so I guess Tom made an impact o me at some level. Rest in Peace, Tom.
The President made this comment yesterday after he Vetoed the Iraq War Funding Bill..."Many Democrats saw this bill as an opportunity to make a political statement about their opposition to the war. They've sent their message."
I suppose the real question is, did he hear the message and understand that it came from the American people and not just their Democratic representatives in Congress? I really doubt it.
While David Ignatius' column is about Paul Wolfowitz, I think his insight is valid. Though I don't know that it's totally about the "we know best" as much as it's about "you don't know nothing".
This disdain for career staff officers -- whether at the Pentagon, the CIA, the Justice Department or an international agency such as the World Bank -- is a defining characteristic of the Bush administration and a big reason for its undoing. Administration officials are arrogant -- no other way to put it. They ignore the advice of the professionals, whom they regard as obstacles to their agenda of transformation. In their impetuous self-confidence, they become wreckers.
This hubris recurs again and again. We saw it in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's high-handed management style, in Vice President Cheney's continuous pressure on CIA analysts to bolster the administration's message on Iraq, in CIA Director Porter Goss's purge of agency officers suspected of disloyalty, in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's treatment of career attorneys at Justice.
Or maybe they are accomplishing exactly what they set out to do...
Source: David Ignatius - The Price Of 'We Know Best' - washingtonpost.com
Time to run...later
