I Got The “Whatever Happend To’s”
I was just sitting back reminiscing some of the top stories of the past year or so and I got a case of the “What ever happened to’s”.
Like what ever happened to all the congressional hearings we were supposed to have investigating the price gouging being carried out by the major oil refiners and gasoline companies.
The Democrats marched the CEO’s of these companies before their committee and accused them of everything from price fixing to treason. Our favorite California Congresswoman Maxine Waters even threatened to have these private companies socialized (she meant nationalized, but the slip of the tongue was classic Freudian). Could it be that Congress decided not to allow the American public to study the fact that the federal tax on gasoline is twice the percentage of the refiner’s profits? Oh they talked about how they were going to rein in these mammoth profit machines and they certainly kept the headlines filled with sound bites for a while. They even put some toothless restrictions on oil futures trading. But I just don’t recall them actually doing much else to the focus of their wrath, the big oil companies, and now it’s old news.
Or, what ever happened to Nancy Pelosi and her claim that she was going to hold public hearings about being completely uninformed by the CIA about the enhanced interrogation techniques being used on the most hardened terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. She repeatedly stood before the press with cameras rolling and microphones pointed and called the CIA agents liars. Even the newly appointed CIA Director Leon Panetta was dragged into this cat fight in an attempt to protect the agents. Pelosi would have none of it. She swore she had never been told and was prepared to prove it. Right up until it was announced that lying to a congressional committee is a felony as was presenting false evidence. But Pelosi, at least publically, promised to get the whole story out to the masses and clear her name. It seems like this investigation is being handled by the same folks that work for OJ Simpson in his attempts to find the real killer. After over a month of outrageous claims it all just went away. How I do wish Pelosi would follow it.
And whatever happened to Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell and his presidential mandate to “Push For Peace’? It was only a couple days into the Obama administrations term that the new Messiah introduced George Mitchell as his go to guy who was going to make it all better between Palestine and Israel. Obama had been campaigning for 2 years on the premise that if we just had open dialog on a fair and even basis with the terrorist groups Hamas and the PLO we will be able to break the cycle of violence and bring a lasting peace to this war torn region. Much was made of this by the press as this was actually the job of the new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But Mitchell was picked and with great fanfare sent on his way to the Holy Land. He has been back and forth several times to reinforce the Obama position of “Can’t we all just get along” but to no avail. There is no peace, there is no negotiation and as far as I can tell there is no Special Envoy George Mitchell anymore either.
Which leads us to our next “Whatever happened to” as in Hillary Clinton? During the Bush administration then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on every news show every day shown working on some major project with the executive branch or the military leaders. She was doing what she was supposed to be doing, acting as the country’s chief envoy in all foreign matters. After big promises and a few lesser appearances Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has all but been relegated to cutting the ribbon at Wal-Mart openings. She has made a few swings around the globe but other than presenting her Russian counterpart with a button that instead of saying RESTART was emblazoned with the Russian word for OVERCHARGE, can you think of any mission she has been on that could be considered even mildly successful? OK, how about this, in the past twelve months can you name any mission she has been on (other than the one where Bill picks up his drunken party girls)?
Oh, there are a few more that I will save for later in the week. Like Tom Daschle, Roland Burris, Increased Muslim Cooperation, The National Organization of Women (NOW) ,and how about that new age of diplomacy that was going to have the European Union eating out of our hand.
Much like beauty, success is in the eye of the beholder. You’d have to have some pretty poor peepers to find some in this administration’s first year.
Maybe that’s why the biggest “Whatever happened to” belongs to a free and truthful press corps.
BigFrick is off Thursday, but I will be back on Friday.
Barack Obama, congress, democrats, diplomacy, failure, Hillary Clinton, media
