Last week when I stopped to refuel my car I spied a sticker on the gas pump which read, "Please prepay before pumping." I found that funny. After all, it'd be pretty tough to prepay after I pumped!
Later I chuckled when reading of Newt Gingrich's outrage over his disappointing 4th place finish in the Iowa caucus, an event he thought he'd win just a few short weeks earlier. "I got Romney-boated," complained the thrice-married, twice-divorced defender of traditional marriage. That Gingrich is a sore loser in addition to being a world-class hypocrite is hardly news, but the irony of his whining about "millionaire consultants" buying TV time to spread misinformation about him was particularly delicious. Gingrich himself has "consulted" (AKA: taken big money to publicly and unceasingly utter egregious falsehoods with impunity) since leaving the House of Representatives under an ethical cloud 13 years ago, and the particular group he's upset with, a "Super PAC" run by some Mitt Romney associates nearly as wealthy as they are unconcerned with scruples, probably wouldn't exist were it not for the machinations of a group Gingrich enthusiastically allied himself with in the past. "Citizens United" is the organization which instigated a lawsuit that culminated with the right-leaning Supreme Court concluding corporations have the same right to free speech as every other citizen does. Were it not for that decision, which Gingrich praised effusively at the time, the millions of dollars worth of scurrilous ads that savaged (and ultimately sunk) him in Iowa might never have been produced, let alone aired.
But while the Gingrich situation was amusing, the indignant comments of
Maine Senator Susan Collins were downright hilarious. She was shocked,
shocked, mind you, that President Barack Obama bypassed Congress to install
Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Since Senate Republicans were blocking Cordray's nomination, the
commander-in-chief installed him with a recess appointment. Such a maneuver
is defined in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution as, "The
designation, by the
Clearly appalled, Maine's junior senator described herself as "deeply
troubled" by the President's action. In her statement Collins said, "Quite
simply, the president should not be circumventing the Senate, and instead he
should work to address the serious concerns that many have with the
structural flaws of this agency, the most important of which is the lack of
budget accountability."
How things change. While chairing the Senate's Homeland Security Committee
from 2003-2007 Collins had a much more casual attitude about vigilance over
taxpayer monies. Her consistent refusal to tighten oversight on expenditures
made her a virtual ATM for the previous administration's poorly planned,
obscenely expensive and ultimately tragic incursion into Iraq. Perhaps the
presence of a Democrat in the White House has helped Senator Collins become
reborn as a dogged protector of America's treasury.
It seems she's also changed her philosophy regarding recess appointments,
because there's no record of her having expressed displeasure over any of
the 171 such designations made by Mr. Obama's immediate predecessor. Among
them: installing vocal, bellicose United Nations critic John Bolton as
America's ambassador to the UN, and appointing Sam Fox as ambassador to
Belgium. Democrats in Congress objected to that appointment for several
reasons, including concern over Mr. Fox's $50,000 donation to "Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth." That group's scurrilous ads about John Kerry helped do
to the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 what Gingrich claims
Romney's pals did to him earlier this month in Iowa.
Maine's other Republican senator, Olympia Snowe, has been silent regarding
Cordray's appointment, but that's likely attributable to her being up for
re-election this fall. Like Collins, who was running for a third term in
2008 and thus unable to find time for a photo op with the controversial
Sarah Palin during the GOP vice-presidential candidate's brief visit to the
state that October (Snowe, unburdened with campaigning for re-election that
year, enthusiastically made nice with the grinnin', winkin'
soon-to-be-former Alaska governor), Maine's senior senator has determined
the best way to avoid offending potential voters is to refrain from taking
(or appearing to take) even moderately risky positions - on anything.
It's too bad Maine's two senators aren't as concerned with their
constituents as they are with maintaining their positions of power and
influence.
Like most elected officials (Republican and Democrat) who've been in
Washington too long, they'll consistently do what's politically expedient,
which these days for Senator Collins means obediently parroting the party
line, even when it's transparently sanctimonious and nonsensical. She and
Snowe are first and foremost self-interested politicians; no more, no less.
And there's absolutely nothing that's funny about that.
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January 8, 2012
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