Random Thoughts

Unthinkable

I don’t have the words…

This tragedy just continues to echo around us. The depth and breadth of suffering is unthinkable.

Elsewhere, the Anchoress has a powerful update on Haiti.

And here is an inside scoop from the aid efforts of the USNS Comfort (H/T Confederate Yankee).

He didn’t know what he was signing

You can’t make this stuff up.

President Obama’s “green jobs” adviser is distancing himself from the “9/11 truthers” — Americans who say the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks may have been an inside job — releasing a statement late Thursday that says he didn’t read carefully a petition he signed in 2004 calling for an investigation into the Bush administration’s knowledge of an impending attack.

In the statement, Van Jones also apologized again for several inflammatory remarks he made prior to joining the Obama administration. It was his second apology in two days.

An aide to Jones told FOX News on Thursday night that the green jobs czar “did not carefully review the language in the petition.” The aide did not say when Jones signed the petition or when he became aware of the controversy…

Jones’ second mea culpa comes after a Wednesday apology in which Jones said he uttered “offensive words” in February when he called Republicans “assholes.” He said the remarks “do not reflect the views of this administration” and its bipartisan aims.

But such statements just scratch the surface of Jones’ past commentary, and could present a dilemma for the Obama administration as it struggles to pass health care reforms and other priorities, including a climate change bill championed by Jones.

Jones has consistently leaned on racially charged language, pointing the finger at “white polluters and the white environmentalists” for “steering poison” to minority communities, as he makes the case for lifting up low-income and minority communities with better environmental policy.

A declared “communist” during the 1990s, Jones once associated with a group that looked to Mao Zedong as an inspiration.

Jones’ exceptional past is reminiscent of associations noted during the presidential campaign, when then-Sen. Barack Obama doggedly fended off claims that he was tied to radicals and overzealous activists.

But with now-President Obama entering the perhaps trickiest phase of his young presidency — building the kind of consensus around health care reform that President Clinton could not — a divisive figure could prove disfiguring.

You think?

Everyone knows congressmen don’t read bills before they sign them. So why should Jones be responsible for signing a nutjob petition? I mean, really, do we expect people in Obama’s administration to be conscientious and diligent, ethical and honest? Of course not! Remember, this is the president who put a tax cheat in charge of the IRS, the first of a string of nominated tax evaders including Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, and Nancy Killefer.

Given how willing Obama is to take on people with all kinds of unsavory past political and financial baggage, it’s amazing that he’s way behind in hiring for key administration positions (H/T The Moderate Voice)

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary…He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

Honestly, it’s better than the Marx Brothers. Heck, put Joe Biden at a microphone and it’s darned close to a Marx Brother’s movie (as envisioned by Moneyrunner at The Virginian)…

Gateway Pundit reveals even more of Van Jones’ wacked background.

And Michelle Malkin describes the pattern we are seeing as

…a leitmotif that runs through my czar, cabinet, and nominee withdrawal chapters of Culture of Corruption: Obama czardom is the deliberate end-run around transparency. Van Jones did not just accidentally slip through the cracks of the Obama vetters. They knew what he espoused before they installed him.

If only it was all simply a movie, and the well being of our country was not at stake.