The uniform lockstep drumbeat of presidential supporters of late attempts to mollify criticism by suggesting that people listening to the President or his top advisors did not listen carefully enough.
One must apparently scrutinize presidential remarks with an accountant’s eye, a lawyer’s heart and the brain of a professor of Linguistics.
Please note that these skills are not required to actually be the President but they do come in handy, according to most punditry, to simply listen to our humble, self-effacing and (giggle) plainspoken leader and his hydra of gimlet-eyed advisors.
The act of listening to our government’s senior leadership, now, requires each citizen to draw upon high levels of Sherlockian analysis available to no one before the fact and, often enough, no one after the fact.
Cute, huh?
The government is so vast and leader X is so nuanced one must herd videotaped intemperance and crudity past carnival mirrors reflecting craft and complexity before a fair and balanced interpretation can be achieved, say some of the media’s oiled buddas.
What rubbish!
This morning, hired White House guns march ideas of ignorance and stupidity before those fun house mirrors in pitiful defense of their attempted intimidations in the leaking of an undercover CIA operative’s name to hack columnist Robert Novak.
The Washington Post quotes right-wing zombie, and wife of operetta-loving Joe DiGenova, Victoria Toensing excusing the Rovian leak of Valerie Plame’s identity:

It could be embarrassing but not illegal.

Yes, indeed, like so much about this (ahem) administration.
Josh Marshall provides, as an aging TV dinosaur likes to intone, some interesting context and analysis to Karl Rove and the Intimidators’ new Country/Western hit, We Didn’t Know The Spy Was Secret, on his always-excellent blog Talking Points Memo.
Watching the President’s videotaped remarks yesterday after (snicker) quail hunting with 41, I was struck with 43’s marked softening of attitude toward the members of the press pool.
The clipped speech and beady-eyed glare, so noticeable in Washington of late were not in evidence yesterday.
Additionally, though this may be more due to the morning’s “quail hunt”, presidential advisors seem to have “butched up” the Crawford wardrobe.
Yesterday, as he made his odd monkey-like shamble toward the penned-in press, the President’s hunt-appropriate wardrobe of boots and work jeans with a long sleeved work shirt over a white tee appeared far more Texas-appropriate than the dandified candy-colored cowboy shirts we have witnessed this past year or, perhaps, White House advisors just have a gigantic new fun house mirror they are testing in Texas.

Plus!

Ooh, I want one!
The electric Toyota PM is displayed in Tokyo.

Go Speed Racer, go!

And, The Funniest Web Thumbnail!

From TheSmokingGun's homepage, a Nolte New Year?
Mean but funny.

Apologies: The Andrews Sisters, The Cannons and Mark Gould
Photo: Reuters
Image: SpeedRacer.com
- posted by Sean @ 1:33 PM