THIS IS SURELY THE DUMBEST STATEMENT OF THE WEEK, which is no small accomplishment given that the Roberts hearings are underway:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.
Give it to me, Tom. I’ll find some things to cut. Starting with your salary, which you don’t seem to be earning . . . .
UPDATE: Okay, I take it back. The dumbest statement of the week comes from Andrew Sullivan, who doesn’t seem to get the difference between “today” and “yesterday” in a post from this morning criticizing something I quoted last night, but which he attributes to “today” as, I guess, evidence of my obliviousness to this morning’s terror bombing in Iraq.
Sorry Andrew, but I’m not capable of precognition. On the other hand, I can read a clock. Jeez. I confess that I don’t understand why Sullivan is so desirous of scoring cheap points at my expense these days, but this is pretty lame. As Jeff Goldstein put it in a different context: “Andrew Sullivan is completing his transformation into a Kos Diarist.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Matthew Cook thinks that Tom Delay is smarter than he looks:
Delay set up the entire congress, (R) and (D)! No one in congress can come forward and say that Delay is false without offering up some examples. I think you will notice the silence from both houses. Note that Delay also said “My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I’ll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet,”.
A few readers seem to think that DeLay was being sarcastic. I guess that’s possible, but here’s a quote from one of his colleagues, in the same story: “‘This is hardly a well-oiled machine,’ said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. ‘There’s a lot of fat to trim. … I wonder if we’ve been serving in the same Congress.'” If it’s sarcasm, it misfired rather badly.
Meanwhile, I think today’s news proves my emailer right, and undercuts Andrew’s chronologically-challenged point: Yesterday, at a press conference with the Iraqi President where good news was presented, all we heard from the press was Katrina news that might make Bush look bad.
Today, there’s bad news from Iraq, and it’s splashed all over the front page of the NYT’s website. Because, I suspect, the press hopes it will make Bush look bad. Andrew used to be cognizant of such issues, but lately he seems to have joined the herd himself.
LATER: Sullivan admits “a failure of editorial sloppiness on my part,” but somehow suggests that he didn’t mean what the post said. That’s sloppy. As for the “diarist” bit, well, I think the shoe fits. Sorry if it pinches.