Credit where due

Michael Bloomberg is, if nothing else, passionate about scolding people for misbehavior. Sometimes he changes targets, too:

Bloomberg cited campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty members during the 2012 presidential race in order to press his point. Bloomberg, an independent, endorsed President Barack Obama's re-election. However, in his speech, he said he found it troubling that so many university employees were on the Democratic side of the race. 

"In the 2012 presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96% of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama," he said. "There was more disagreement among the old Soviet politburo than there is among Ivy League donors."

Bloomberg went on to suggest this data shows universities might not be offering students a diverse array of perspectives.

"Neither party has a monopoly of truth or God on its side. When 96% of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you really have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should offer," Bloomberg continued, occasionally being interrupted by moderate applause. "A university cannot be great if its faculty is political homogeneous."

He made this point at Harvard University, where he was making a commencement address. The politburo reference is a particularly nice touch, because it was specifically designed to piss people off. And it will.

Two further points:

• He's right, of course. Diversity is strictly a demographic concern on many college campuses. Diversity of viewpoint is not.
• He's still a bad choice for public office of any sort because he's rather in love with force. Scolds do serve a useful purpose, as long as they don't have any real power.

Closed circuit to an anonymous poster

If you're tired of raisin farming Hellenists, you'll love this one. A taste:

The Bill Gates family lectures about the need for inheritance taxes; but no one believes that any of their heirs will ever be down to his last million. The Sierra Club fights to divert irrigation water for the sake of fish, but would never offer to chip in some of the Bay Area water supply from the Sierra-fed Hetch Hetchy reservoir for the poor smelt or the beleaguered salmon. It makes sense that the Obamas both deplore the 1 percenters and seek to rub shoulders with them at Martha’s Vineyard or Vail.

Nancy Pelosi lectures about the nobility of illegal immigrants, but stays away from the overcrowded emergency room, public schools for her own grandchildren, and mixed neighborhoods. Harry Reid offers us unhinged lectures about the Kochs, but not about his own mega contributors — while the New York Times fires its female executive editor in a manner that, if Chick-fil-A or Fox News did the same thing, it would go after them for big time. The more John Kerry used to call for higher taxes, the more we assumed that he would try to avoid paying them on his yacht — as big-government Al Gore rushed the sale of his cable-TV channel to avoid a new and higher capital-gains tax rate. When we see universities raise tuition faster than the rate of inflation, exploit part-time lecturers, and berate any invited speaker deemed too conservative, then why would we not expect their presidents to enjoy salaries and perks at rates never before seen in American higher education? Guilt-free privilege is not available to everyone.

Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

Not going to Rochester

I won't be there for the state Republican convention, but I'll make a few guesses:

• Dave Thompson is going to get the endorsement for governor. He's worked quietly, in large measure because his campaign doesn't necessarily have the resources that some of his opponents have, but in the end I suspect he'll prevail because he's a little more in tune with the grassroots of the party than his opponents and his campaign has done a nice job of moving his supporters through to the convention. It will take at least two ballots to get there, but Thompson will get it. Whether he can win a primary against Marty Seifert and well-heeled Scott Honour is another matter, but we'll worry about that when the time comes.
• I'm not sure anyone will leave with the Senate endorsement, and frankly all the candidates have issues. I heard a little of Mike McFadden on the radio yesterday morning and he's improved his game somewhat, but I'm still not convinced that he's the right guy for the job -- he's got money and a lot of institutional backing, but he doesn't do much for the people who will actually need to hit the streets to help his campaign. Julianne Ortman has been a mixed bag in her legislative career, but she does carry the Sarah Palin Seal of Approval, which might help her in some, but not all, precincts of the party. Jim Abeler is a nonstarter.
• So where does that leave us? With a primary fight and a test of the party's strength, especially in getting its endorsed candidates through to the actual ballot.

It's Good to Be King

Victor Davis Hanson on the Leader of the Free World:

Think of the following: the Fast and Furious scandal, the VA mess, the tapping of the communications of the Associated Press reporters, the NSA monitoring, Benghazi in all of its manifestations, the serial lies about Obamacare, the failed stimuli, the chronic zero interest/print money policies, the serial high unemployment, the borrowing of $7 trillion to no stimulatory effect, the spiraling national debt, the customary violations of the Hatch Act by Obama cabinet officials, the alter ego/fake identity of EPA head Lisa Jackson, the sudden departure of Hilda Solis after receiving union freebies, the mendacity of Kathleen Sebelius, the strange atmospherics surrounding the Petraeus resignation, the customary presidential neglect of enforcing the laws from immigration statutes to his own health care rules, the presidential divisiveness (“punish our enemies,” “you didn’t build that,” Trayvon as the son that Obama never had, etc.), and on and on.

So why is there not much public reaction or media investigatory outrage?

Because the media love him, of course. He is The One. Hanson has a lot of other reasons at the link and it's worth your time to read them in full, but for me the key one is this:

The media is not just overwhelmingly hard left, but hard left with a chip on its shoulder that its own views are neither accepted by the majority nor usually implemented by government.

All the above scandals and embarrassments would have ruined a Bush, given that such mishaps would have been headlined daily  in the New York Times (e.g., “VA, Benghazi, AP, NSA, IRS overwhelm sinking Bush administration”) or Washington Post (“Bush Cabinet Paralyzed by Scandal”).

For the media, Obama is not Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton whom they overwhelmingly supported. He is quite different — the first gold-plated liberal president since FDR, and probably the last for a while, intent on fundamentally transforming the United States, by redistributing income and accumulated wealth, and recalibrating the American profile abroad.

The media believes that both are socially just and long overdue. Why then nitpick a president on details, when his intentions are noble? 

Yes, sometimes you'll have a little apostasy just for show, which seems to be Ron Fournier's beat as of late, but in the main we'd rather not talk about such things, because, well, we'd rather not. It's a false equivalence, you see, because no matter what The Leader of the Free World does, it's certainly less icky than what some knuckle-dragger from the benighted precincts might attempt. And in the end, oversight is only required for people who require it. Back to Hanson:

The well-off are indifferent to the Obama record, interested only in its symbolic resonance. Doctrinaire liberalism resonates mostly with the very wealthy. We see that by the voting patterns of our bluest counties, or the contributions of the very affluent. In contrast, Republicanism is mostly embedded within the middle class and upper middle class, while liberalism is a coalition of the affluent and the poor.

This has been the case for a very long time now -- I've heard the term "limousine liberal" for my entire life and we have the Ford Foundation and the rest of the old money philanthropic structure bleating for justice that doesn't necessarily extend to the shopkeepers and the entrepreneurs who are grasping for a lifestyle that they aren't qualified to live. It's always amused me when people tell me that Republicans are the party of the rich. That hasn't been true for a long time.

Eagle Benster

The big news around here is that the Benster is an Eagle Scout. We had his Court of Honor over the weekend and it was a wonderful moment for our family. He had to be persistent to earn the rank of Eagle Scout and it's a credit to him that he was able to stay with it, because there were at least a half-dozen times when he could have simply quit.

I've relayed my own Scouting past before -- I never made it past the Webelos rank in Cub Scouting. There were a variety of reasons for that, but the primary one was that scouting wasn't a priority for my family. The scouts in Benster's troop who have successfully navigated the path to Eagle have generally had one thing in common -- they have come from families that support the mission of scouting and are willing to make the time commitment necessary to give the scout a chance to succeed.

Lately, you've likely heard of the latest shaming mechanism afoot for young men, the "check your privilege" meme. Becoming an Eagle Scout is, without question, a privilege, but it's a privilege that is not given away easily. A lot of kids who aren't "privileged" don't have the opportunities that Benster has had to succeed, which is one reason why so few kids become Eagle Scouts. So much depends on families.

Rumble

Here it comes:

After five years of economic crisis, the 2014 elections to the European Parliament were always expected to produce victories for the populist parties that reject the EU and its political values. And so it has proved, with fringe and nationalist movements dealing a blow not just to the European project but to national governments who appear out of touch. 

The populist surge has been startling. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front has won its biggest victory at a national poll since it was founded in 1972. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence party came first, humiliating the three main parties. Denmark’s far right People’s party and Greece’s radical left Syriza also emerged victorious.

Let's be clear about it -- having the National Front within reach of the levers of power is bad. The problem is that having the socialists in power in France isn't any better, as the continuing calamities of M. Hollande have demonstrated. 

The issue in Europe, increasingly, is competence. As it is here:

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton left office with American foreign policy in shambles. She has been unable to make the argument that a single initiative — reset with Russia, lead from behind in Libya, red lines on Syria, deadlines to Iran, complete withdrawal from Iraq, pressure on the Israelis, outreach to radical Islam and Latin American Communist dictatorships — had met with success.

Clinton infamously dismissed the lingering mysteries surrounding the Benghazi deaths with “What difference at this point does it make?” She also refused, despite numerous entreaties, to place the now-infamous Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram on a State Department terrorist watch list.

Eric Holder is the first attorney general to have been held in contempt of Congress. Aside from his divisive language (he called America “a nation of cowards” and referred to African Americans as “my people”), Holder always seems to find himself at the center of scandals. He permitted the federal monitoring of Associated Press journalists. He green-lighted the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scam. He has failed to bring to account rogue IRS officials. Holder is the most morally compromised attorney general since Nixon appointee John Mitchell.

And of course there's more, a lot more, at each link.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...

These guys can't get their crap together:

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

Of course, if you can't protect people in Benghazi, why would you expect to protect people in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the drumbeat grows louder:

A lot of people have been protecting this president for a very long time now. Every time I've thought they would head for the exits, the protectors haven't done so. It will be interesting to watch what happens as election day approaches and Democrats have to run on the Obama record.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago

Things are getting worse:

The principal of Curie High School has put out a warning to students and parents to leave immediately after school and use a different route after six shootings in 48 hours in nearby neighborhoods.

The school is located at 49th and South Archer. The warning was enough to worry people headed inside the school Wednesday night for an evening workout.

“Pretty scary,” said Gabriela Perez. “You can’t be safe anywhere.”

The warning specifically points to the 79th and Pulaski area. About 2 miles from there, near 8400 South Kedzie, a 17-year-old walking in an alley was shot and killed around 5 p.m Monday, a case that’s reminding other teens who travel streets in the area about the potential for deadly violence.

When we lived in Chicago, this area was generally not that dangerous. It's near Ford City Mall and was always a bit of a melting pot. We traveled through the area a number of times and never once worried about our safety. A block south and west of that intersection it looks like this. Times are changing in Chicago, and not for the better.

Just a reminder

You can give someone the Nobel Prize, but it doesn't mean their opinions should carry much weight. Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Krugman in 2011:

Many people still have an image of veterans’ health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago. Under the Clinton administration, however, the V.H.A. was overhauled, and achieved a remarkable combination of rising quality and successful cost control. Multiple surveys have found the V.H.A. providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers. Furthermore, the V.H.A. has led the way in cost-saving innovation, especially the use of electronic medical records.

What’s behind this success? Crucially, the V.H.A. is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it’s free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense. And because V.H.A. patients are in it for the long term, the agency has a stronger incentive to invest in prevention than private insurers, many of whose customers move on after a few years.

And yes, this is “socialized medicine” — although some private systems, like Kaiser Permanente, share many of the V.H.A.’s virtues. But it works — and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of U.S. health care more broadly.

Ask 'em how it worked in Phoenix, Paul.

Coal-ition

You can look past Benghazi and the IRS scandal and the ongoing troubles with the VA hospitals, and many Democratic politicians on the ballot this year would greatly appreciate it if you did that. But if you're a vulnerable Democrat, perhaps the one thing you have to worry about the most is economic disruption from regulation. And there are some very worried Dems right now:

A collection of seven Senate Democrats are pressuring President Obama to scale-back the proposed carbon limits on new coal-fired power plants. 

In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, the senators asserted that the technology the rule is based on is not commercially viable.

"We are committed to improving air quality; however, the emissions standards in the proposed rule are not based on technology that has been adequately demonstrated on a commercial scale," the letter, spearheaded by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.) states.

Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Mark Warner (Va.), all vulnerable Democrats facing reelection in November, signed the letter. 

As is usually the case, the Obama administration is listening to other voices on these matters:

Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer is launching a data-driven campaign across seven states for the 2014 midterms to prove he’s not all talk when it comes to hurting “climate deniers” at the polls. 

Steyer is using his success in last year’s Virginia governor’s race, where he funneled $8 million to destroy then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s bid, as a beta test for his midterm models.

The battle will be joined in about two weeks, when the EPA issues new regulations. Watch carefully.

il miglior fabbro

Mitch Berg asks the right questions concerning the convenient candidacy of Hannah Nicollet, the libertarian at the head of the DFL-lite Independence Party ticket. Read the whole thing.

The Jackson on the Nightstand

Spend a billion, get a bone:

Four ballots into a tension-filled process, the Minneapolis Super Bowl pitch built around the new Vikings stadium triumphed Tuesday over party magnet New Orleans and 2012 host Indianapolis to bring the NFL’s premier event to Minnesota in 2018.

U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis, former Carlson Cos. board chair Marilyn Carlson Nelson and other members of the Minnesota delegation danced, jumped up and down, hugged and high-fived on hearing the news. Their raucous cheers and exclamations of “We did it!” reverberated through the hallways of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood, where the high-stakes drama had just played out.

“The way they jumped for joy was the way I felt inside,” Vikings owner Zygi Wilf said later at a news conference.

People want to be happy about all this, and that's fine. We'll revisit it eventually. I just want to make two brief observations:

• The economic impact is overstated. If having the Super Bowl in your town was a way to drive greater lasting economic success, New Orleans, which has hosted the event ten times, would be the richest city on the planet.
• One of the more ridiculous assertions that I've seen made is that the economic benefit to Bloomington and St. Paul will be huge, because visitors to town will be able to get to the venue easily using the light rail line. This is ridiculous, of course -- people who go to Super Bowls don't typically rely on public transportation, no matter how spiffy and cool it is. And unless we see dramatic improvement in trip times, no one is going to want to use the Green Line.

But that's okay -- haters are gonna hate and all that. Enjoy your moment, kids.

Lightning Round 052014

My house almost got struck by lightning yesterday -- the percussive force of the strike knocked a clock off the wall. Time for a little thundering:

• Kevin Love, reluctant Timberwolf, apparently wants out of Minneapolis. This might be the most doomed franchise ever. I have to figure that the Wolves will trade him for Joe Smith.
• Some weapons-grade sarcasm from America's most beloved politician. As is often the case, she has a good point, which most of her detractors won't see from their houses.
• My beloved Packers take a calculated risk in bringing in a talented but troubled tight end, Colt Lyerla, last seen enjoying some blow. It's evident that the Packers don't think Jermichael Finley is coming back and are willing to take a flyer on an undeniable talent. In the past, the Packers wouldn't get near someone like this. Not sure what it means, but it means something.
• Sometimes the obvious point is the one that must be made. John Fund demonstrates.
• I'll have to come back to this one, but let's just say I'm amused to see that Hannah Nicollet is going to head the Independence Party ticket as the gubernatorial candidate. The first question to ask -- do you fully support the IP platform, especially its visceral reaction to the Citizens United decision?

Priorities

You've likely heard a fair amount in recent days about the scandals surrounding VA hospitals. It is horrible that up to 40 veterans in the Phoenix area died while being parked on a secret waiting list.

See, these veterans missed a bet. If you need medical services, you just have to pick the right ones:

Bradley Manning, who now demands to be called "Chelsea," was sentenced to a 35-year stretch in Leavenworth after being found guilty of "six Espionage Act violations and 14 other offences for giving WikiLeaks [founder Julian Assange] more than 700,000 secret military and U.S. State Department documents, along with battlefield video." Despite still maintaining male genitalia, a Leavenworth County District Judge ruled last month to Manning's official name change without any opposition from the US Army, all presumably at taxpayer expense.

As cited by Health.com, the total cost of sexual reassignment surgery ranges from a total of $40,000 to $50,000 for "mid-range transition, including surgery." Not ending there, the cost of hormone therapy ranges from $25 to $200 per month, "depending on which hormones are prescribed."

Worth every penny.

Just throwing it out there....

Theory: if the Democrats and their union pals actually succeed in getting the minimum wage raised to $15/hour, it will hurt young people, a key demographic for the Dems. At $15/hour, a lot of long-term unemployed people, who are essentially stranded from the traditional work force, would likely re-enter the work force.

If you were an employer forced to pay $15/hour for labor, would you rather hire an 18-year-old kid, or would you rather hire a 55-year-old with a long and dependable work history?

Discuss.

Meanwhile, in El Lay

Getcha popcorn:

SI.com has learned that Clippers owner Donald Sterling has hired prominent antitrust litigator Maxwell Blecher, who has written a letter to NBA executive vice president and general counsel Rick Buchanan threatening to sue the NBA. The letter, sources tell SI.com, claims that Sterling has done nothing wrong and that "no punishment is warranted" for Sterling. Blecher also tells Buchanan that Sterling will not pay the $2.5 million fine, which is already past due. Blecher ends the letter by saying this controversy "will be adjudicated."

Blecher's letter makes clear what many have anticipated: Donald Sterling will not go down without a fight and that he is taking active steps toward litigation. A letter of this type is considered a precursor to the filing of a lawsuit. Blecher's letter offers no ambiguity about Sterling's intentions.

"We reject your demand for payment," the letter tells Buchanan, who on May 14 informed Sterling by letter that he must pay the $2.5 million fine.

There was never a chance that Donald Sterling would go away quietly. This is gonna make the Frank McCourt circus look like a dignified procession.

Cause and effect

How things happen in the real world. First, you get this:

In the latest skirmish in a year-and-a-half-long war for higher wages, fast food workers in the United States are staging a 150-city-wide protest — and taking their fight overseas.

Fast food workers in at least 33 countries and 80 cities on six continents will join their U.S.-based counterparts, for an expected 230 strikes and protests worldwide, from Seoul to San Salvador, from Brussels to Bangkok, from Auckland to Casablanca. Early in the day, the campaign’s website, FastFoodGlobal.org, showed photos of protesting workers in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Denmark and Bandung, Indonesia.

U.S. workers are demanding $15 an hour — about double the federal minimum wage — in cities such as Oakland, New York City and Raleigh, with first-time protests in Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia and Sacramento. Targeted establishments include McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC.

Then, you get this:

McDonalds recently went on a hiring binge in the U.S., adding 62,000 employees to its roster. The hiring picture doesn't look quite so rosy for Europe, where the fast food chain is drafting 7,000 touch-screen kiosks to handle cashiering duties.

The move is designed to boost efficiency and make ordering more convenient for customers. 

It's also cheaper than paying cashiers $15/hour. But there's an added benefit:

In an interview with the Financial Times, McDonald's Europe President Steve Easterbrook notes that the new system will also open up a goldmine of data. McDonald's could potentially track every Big Mac, McNugget, and large shake you order. 

All that data is a beautiful thing if you're a marketer. You can send coupons or special offers to customers as an additional incentive to visit your location. There are any number of jobs that once took a human being to do that may no longer exist. And remember, cashiers aren't the only jobs that could go away:

Hamburgers are a multi-billion dollar business, and while fast food chains have got the process down to an efficient production line process, making them is still labor intensive with armies of burger flippers and sandwich assemblers. In a move that could put millions of teenagers around the world out of their first job, Momentum Machines is creating a hamburger-making machine that churns out made-to-order burgers at industrial speeds and aims to use it in its own chain of restaurants.

And it's not just fast fooders. You see automatic checkout lanes in more and more places. Recently a new Walmart opened in Roseville, a few miles from my house. They have about a half-dozen automatic check-out kiosks, which are able to take cash and dispense change, along with taking plastic. The automatic check-out lanes are already in place at grocery stores as well. You can't get $15/hour for a job that no longer exists.

Truth and Target

Gregg Steinhafel left Target last week and now all manner of recriminations are pouring out. Perhaps the most interesting one came yesterday from Jeff Jones, a senior executive there, who did something very un-Target like: he went public:

In an unusual move, Target’s chief marketing officer posted a 750-word candid commentary titled “The Truth Hurts” on the networking site late Monday. By Tuesday, it was blowing up on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, sparking discussions about the “Target culture” and the need for the Minneapolis-based retailer to innovate.

The piece served as a rallying call for Target employees who have been battered for months with one piece of bad news after another — from missteps in the retailer’s expansion into Canada to the massive data breach to sluggish sales in the United States. And then last week, Gregg Steinhafel, the company’s chief executive, stepped down. Amid so much turmoil and public scrutiny, Jeff Jones’ words struck a chord. He wrote frankly about Target hitting a “rough patch” and of the urgency to challenge the company’s way of doing things in order to resurrect the brand.

“The culture of Target is an enormous strength and might be our current Achilles heel,” Jones wrote. “In the coming days and weeks we will embrace the critiques of Target — whether it’s from outsiders or our own team — like an athletics team puts the negative press on the wall in the locker room.”

Glad that you're willing to embrace the critiques -- here, have a hug, Mr. Jones. Based on my near-decade at Target, and from a decade's remove, I'd offer the following:

• One thing that really struck me when I left Target HQ is how meeting-crazed the place is. It was very easy to have 25+ hours of a typical 40-hour week filled with meetings of varying importance. Meanwhile, the work would pile up on your desk and you didn't have time to deal with it. I often had to spend a Sunday afternoon in the office to get things done that should have been done during the normal course of the day.
• One of the reasons that meetings were so commonplace was simple -- you had to get approval from multiple layers of bureaucracy to do even simple things. And it was common to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to cover your butt.
• The larger problem is that, as the old saying goes, retail is detail. Target has always differentiated itself from its competitors through its attention to detail. It was rare to see a Target store that had merchandise strewn all over the place, as you'd see in a Kmart, or a series of palletized dump bins, as you see in Walmart. Target's always had a mania for the perfect planogram, the buttoned-up 24-foot merchandising run. While this attention to detail is useful, it's not particularly helpful if people aren't finding what they need on the shelf.
• And finding things on the shelf has been an increasing problem for Target. I've said this before, but it bears repeating -- Walmart's biggest advantage is their supply chain management -- they get things to their stores much more efficiently than their competitors. Target's struggled with this for years and the solution, from what I can tell, has been to edit their offerings. The selection at a Target is considerably less than it was even five years ago.

There's more, of course. But that's a start.

Yeah, but

Could this be true?

A leading climate scientist has resigned from the advisory board of a think-tank after being subjected to what he described as “McCarthy”-style pressure from fellow academics.

Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading, said the pressure was so intense that he would be unable to continue working and feared for his health and safety unless he stepped down from the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s academic advisory council.

He said the pressure had mainly come from climate scientists in the US, including one employed by the US government who threatened to withdraw as co-author of a forthcoming paper because of his link with the foundation.

Well....

• Sure, this could be true. It's completely plausible, given the way some climate scientists behave. There's a lot of "we'll have consensus, dammit, d'ya understand" out there.
• The way to combat this is to expose who is supplying this pressure. Backing off in the face of it, then whining about it afterward, doesn't help anyone. Name names. Call these folks out.

Leon takes the long view

And he shall be Leon*

But Panetta and Morell, noting the attack has been subject to many investigations already, said they welcome the latest one in the House.

"If you look at the polling numbers a not insignificant percentage of the American people still have questions," Morell said.

Morell, who said he already has testified four times about Benghazi, said he is 100 percent confident the upcoming investigation will show that allegations "the intelligence community politicized its analysis" are false.

Panetta, a former Central Coast congressman and Democratic Party stalwart, said there needs to be an investigation to lay out the full story to the public. "The problem has been sometimes bits and pieces of information keep coming out" that raise more questions, he said.

Leon Panetta, that is, well described here as a Democratic Party stalwart. So why would Leon Panetta and his deputy, Michael Morell, welcome an investigation that other Democrats want to avoid at all costs? A few guesses:

• I suspect that Morell is correct that the intelligence community did not politicize its analysis. Most likely, that was done by the White House.
• Panetta understands that while Barack Obama and his retinue are in charge right now, the long-term prospects of the Democratic Party matter more than protecting the current occupant of the White House. In fact, if Obama and company are dirty on this issue, it would be a real problem for Democrats going forward.
• There are a whole lot of questions that do need to be answered and they will be answered eventually. It would be better if the matter is put to rest, one way or another, in 2014, rather than later on. 

*Apologies to Bernie Taupin.