February 20, 2015--Jeb & A-Rod: Mistakes Were Made

In a speech in Chicago Wednesday, presidential-aspirant, former Florida governor, brother of one president, and son of another, to establish himself in foreign policy terms as his "own man" (to quote him), Jeb Bush said--

Look, just for the record, one more time, I love my brother, I love my dad, I actually love my mother as well, hope that's OK. And I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make, but I am my own man, and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences.

Then, about his brother's decision to preemptively invade Iraq, he torturously added--

There were mistakes made in Iraq for sure. Using the intelligence capability that everyone embraced about weapons of mass destruction turns out not to be accurate.

He did not say that his brother made a mistake by pressing the CIA to "sex up" the intelligence to justify an otherwise illegal war and then waged war based on that cooked information.

What Jeb had to say represents a little progress from what brother George W said after he left the presidency, as part of his efforts to promote his memoir, Decision Points, when he reluctantly acknowledged, in the very passive voice, that "mistakes were made."

On the same day as Jeb Bush's speech, in his own handwriting, Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez wrote--

To the Fans

I take full responsibility for the mistakes that led to my suspension for the 2014 season. I regret that my actions made the situation worse than it needed to be. To Major League Baseball, the Yankees, the Steinbrenner family, the Players Association and you the fans, I can only say I'm sorry.

Who knows how sincere this is but at least he fessed up.

November 13, 2013--Hillary in 2013

If anyone has been wondering if Hillary will run for president in 2016, yesterday there was clear evidence that she is already running in 2013.

From her principal surrogate--husband Bill.

Just the other morning, as Barack Obama's approval rating plummeted well below 50 percent and his disapproval poll numbers soared about 50 percent, Rona and I wondered how Hillary will run against her ultimate Republican opponent and the president she served as Secretary of State.

With Obama on the political ropes--largely because of the disastrous rollout of Obamacare--how will she distance herself from him? It will not work for her to campaign offering four-more years of what we now have.

Bill gave us our first public glimpse of her presidential campaign strategy.

Recall that when she was on ropes of her own after the early primaries in 2008--the upstart Obama was doing so well that it looked as if she was no longer the inevitable nominee--Bill was unleashed in South Carolina to get her back on track.

There he unabashedly played the race card, reminding South Carolinians, after Obama's victory, about how Jessie Jackson had won the Democratic primary there in 1984 and 88 and look what happened to him. The conflating of the decidedly black Jackson with the post-racial half-white Obama was considered by many well below the belt, even for the Clintons who take no prisoners.

Yesterday Bill was back in campaign mode suggesting very publicly that Obama should seek to change the Affordable Care Act to allow people "to keep their current health insurance, just as he promised" when Obamacare was controversially working its way through Congress.

Don't be surprised if Bill Clinton soon tries to put the blame on Barack Obama for the murder of our ambassador in Benghazi, Libya.