We appear to be moving into the “troubling institutional failure” stage of the Cartagena hooker scandal, as the Washington Post reports that one of the fired Secret Service supervisors posted some lewd comments about Sarah Palin on his Facebook page, back when he was part of her security detail during the 2008 presidential campaign:
David Chaney, one of two supervisors forced out of the Secret Service this week in fallout from an embarrassing prostitution scandal, posted at least two photographs of himself with Palin, along with another in which a woman in a revealing bikini top stood in the background, looking at Chaney.
That photo was captioned: “not in front of my son.”
Chaney wrote of his assignment guarding Palin: “I was really checking her out, if you know what i (sic) mean?” after a friend commented on the picture posted in January 2009.
Appearing on Fox News, Palin responded to the news by saying, “Well, check this out, bodyguard – you’re fired!”
Palin went on to hope the randy ex-agent’s wife kicks him out and puts him in the doghouse, “as long as he’s not eating the dog along with his former boss.” Oh, yes, my friends. She went there.
“Boys will be boys, but they shouldn’t be in positions of authority,” Palin pointed out, a theme she tied into Congress failing to pass a budget, the conduct of the White House, and GSA overspending. “I’ve had enough of these men being dogs, and not being responsible.” In fairness, it would have been more accurate for her to say she’s had “just about enough” of men being dogs, since she did just suggest inserting one more of them into a dog house.
Palin said the Secret Service imbroglio is “a symptom of government run amok” and, along with the GSA scandal, gave us an unflattering look at government “playing with the taxpayer’s dime. “It’s like, who’s minding the store around here?” she asked. “The president, for one, he better be wary, there, of when Secret Service is accompanying his family on vacation. They may be checking out the first lady instead of guarding her.”
She went on to say that it was time for President Obama to take charge of these renegade agencies and get some heads rolling. Van Susteren relayed a comment from an audience member wondering if this might help Mitt Romney, who she misquoted as saying “I like to fire people,” even though she was trying to make a point in his favor. That’s a great example of how false narratives get woven into the public consciousness through lazy reporting and thoughtless repetition.
In case you’ve forgotten that whole flap, which happened about forty distractions ago, Romney actually said: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say, ‘I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’” He was talking about health care, although he probably wouldn’t hesitate to fire someone who was failing to give him good Secret Services either.
Palin contrasted this with Obama’s widely-noted “poor management skills,” and noted that the President should be held accountable for the people he appoints to run government bureaucracies. Van Susteren said she thought Obama should “take responsibility” for these agency scandals, along with the bad economy – which is almost as funny as Palin’s dog-eating joke.
The Washington Times has a piece this morning about Obama’s latest round “blame Bush” rhetoric. After three years in office, Obama blamed his predecessor for tax policy, “global economic chaos,” North Korea’s missile launch, and slow job growth – all in the span of just over a week. The media keeps assuring us that Obama has an advantage over Mitt Romney in the “likeability” department, but I’m not sure when sniveling whiners became “likeable.” Although we’re also assured that the blame-Bush strategy has some purchase with the public, I’m a little skeptical that “RE-ELECT ME BECAUSE I’M HELPLESS” will work out as a campaign slogan.
Palin does a great job at tying all of these scandals together into a theme of out-of-control government and abandoned responsibilities. Every level of this titanic, bankrupt super-State is signaling that accountability is dead, discipline is a joke, and taxpayer dollars are regarded as toilet paper.
