Add this word to your dictionary
To-bin-esque [TÅ-bÇn-esk]
-adjective
1. Prone to producing simplistic analyses of political issues. My unemployed uncle’s drunken rant about national security was positively Tobinesque.
2. Unable to master basic html commands.
I’ve been a newspaperman long enough to know what a dog-and-pony show looks like, and that’s what the Pelosi delegation is getting in its kick-sand-in-George’s-face fact-finding trip to the Middle East. The Congress people are treated as high rollers are in Vegas: they’re comped on this and that, driven to and fro but in the end they’re considered suckers to be used and discarded. Does Nancy Pelosi or any of the others (including Louise Slaughter) on this very expensive junket expect to bring anything back in the way of insights or advice that the Bush administration will use in conducting foreign policy? Even if they gain insights, George would rather go hunting with Cheney than go along with anything Pelosi suggests. This is politics through and through, and on the public dime. Make that a lot of public dimes.
What’s interesting here — and particularly Tobinesque — is that he manages to find an angle which is completely wrongheaded but in a way that is different from the idiocy we’ve hearing on Drudge, etc.
We have a 2.7 trillion dollar annual federal budget. Should we really skimp on sending our Congressman on fact-finding missions to hot spots? Is that not the very definition of penny wise, pound foolish? For the record, I’m all for sending Congressmen to Iraq, Syria, and Israel. If they come back and say stupid things — as John McCain and Randy Kuhl did — I’ll criticize that. But I applaud them for checking things out for themselves.
It’s called Congress doing it’s job.
Related posts:
So - Congress should just do what its told? rely on the information given it? Well - I guess if it works for main stream media why not.
At a billion plus per week Iraq we can afford a plane trip to Syria
What is interesting is it is about Pelosi and using her as an example.
As opposed to McCain who had what sounds like a heavy company with Air Support escort him in the market so he can prove how safe it was. Not to mention the several presweeps that had to occur as well as probably the rest of a battalion on the perimeter to prevent anyone disrupting the proceedings.
Somehow Nancy Pelosi in a government jet gets the attention and we are spending a billion plus per week in Iraq and that does not.
Of course, Tobin is guilty, in his Tobinesque way, of ignoring the facts that no Republican sympathizer will ever admit … that Republican Congresscritters visited Syria just prior to Pelosi.
Tobin, in his Tobinesque way, would have you believe that talking to the leader and government of Syria (or elsewhere) can yield no useful insights. Its as if Tobin, in his Tobinesque way, is saying that Congress has no role in making laws and setting policy that can affect our foreign policy. Tobin, in his Tobinesque way, is saying that George is King and how dare anyone do anything that George isn’t going to approve of.
Now what was that about Tobin’s use of html?
Mr. Tobin, if you read this, you should start responding to comments on your blog posts… that’s half the fun of blogging!
I love it when your Army background comes in handy in the analysis.
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