Yes, I know, sounds like too big a job for any one human being. That’s why, when you’ve got this much gall, you’ve got to divide it into 3 parts. Then by the time you finish those, it will almost be Christmas.
Pt. 1 Virginia Couple Crashes Rahm Emanuel Nephew's Bris. Sat. Dec. 12
Pt. 3 Howard Dean Plays "Hide the Salahi." Mon. Dec. 21
In the criminal justice system the people are served by two separate but equally important groups. The Salahi-Golightlies who seem carefree and funloving (yet may harbor a slightly darker past and are are always “going places" frequently uninvited). And the Victoria’s Secret Service agents who just don’t notice. These are their true stories I made up – although the actual events mentioned certainly may be just as creative. for MJ
OK, I know you’re juiced to learn exactly what went down behind closed doors at that Salahi-Golightly subpoena vote a week ago last Wednesday. But right off the cricket bat – as I was saying the other day when accidentally texting the Prime Minister of India -- perhaps a little disclosure is called for.
Emma Peel -- The Avengers. Appealing Michaele Salahi-Golightly (as both adjective and in the gerund-legal sense?) --The Pretenders.
A SECRET SERVICE AGENT ONCE THREW ME OFF A ROOF.
1976, First Lady Betty Ford returns for a visit to Bennington College. We’ve got family there; how to get a good photo for the ol’ scrapbook of golden memories? Spot a news photographer I know from the Boston Globe up on the roof – with cohorts. Eat where the truck drivers do, right?
I climb, I see, I surrender. I get tossed off the roof. Sure the toss wasn't literal, and yet it still could have hurt if everybody hadn’t been so...manmohan-imous. (That's the word I made up to describe the dignity with which the Prime Minister of India has taken all this in stride. But go figure, who knew you needed a press pass?
Now, put yourself in this couple's Jimmy Choos. Who among us hasn’t found himself in a situation where the only possible answer in the debriefing is, “Gee, I dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time?” In fact, I’m starting to worry this might be one of those Kojack moments.
But that's when a friend can often help out. Frequently that special friend is your prefontal cortex. For the rest us, it's hop on the Christmas Bipolar Express and "OMG. Get ready Kelly Ripa!" One minute you’re on cloud 9. The next, you’re in the Martha Stewart wing of the Women’s Correctional Facility in Alderson, WV
feeling just awful. Look at the bright side – probably within commuting distance of the winery. On the other hand, although minimum security, it’s probably harder to get out of than the WH is to get into. Although now, of course, there's no reason to even want to break out, now that Bravo has tentatively greenlighted "Real Housewives of the Alderson WV Correctional Facility" (M. Stewart, exec. prod.).
As Groucho used to say, "You've been a wonderful couple and I've enjoyed making fun of you. But you didn't say the secret service word and the duck didn't fly down and give you $100. Could have been worse; somebody gets a little jumpy and you've almost played You Bet Your Life. See, as far as being screwed, we're pretty much all winners here.
Get a grip, America. How do we know these shenanigans didn’t happen all the time at the Whitehouse before Facebook? Posers on Wall Street take our retirement? Tip ‘em. Posers in a tent go after your arugula, it's special prosecutor time.
Look at another bright side. Homeland Security felt so embarrassed for India, after a whole year they rushed out and nabbed some poor slob in Chicago for that Mumbai unpleasantness. Coincidence? And btw, sure neither was nice, but al Queda/Mumbai. Union Carbide/Bhopal. You do the mathmohan. Yours isn’t the first time "oops" is worse.
The PM knows stuff happens. In the 70s Indian prime ministers had Great Wallenda life insurance premiums; we’re talking William Henry Harrison term limits; dropped like Coldstream Guards in the heat -- and most of those deaths were natural.
That's why they kept showing up in their pajamas before Hillary made this pantsuit thing all the rage. This too shall pass. And a hell of a lot better 15 min. than Real Housewives, ain’t it?
OH, AND BTW
* Hasn't this just been a fabulous experience for learning all about the Asian subcontinent?
• Who can spell or even remember the name of the Prime Minister of India?
• Wasn’t this supposed to be all about him? It's like fights break out at your birthday and the neighbors have to call the police three times.
• Isn’t it bad enough the newscasts kept reminding he wasn’t as important as the president – their president?
YOU'RE INVITED Well those Tareq and Michaele "formal invitations” from the
House Homeland Security Committee should be going out any day now, to leave our intrepid couple quite possibly with the best Chanukah ever. A week ago, the resolution to stick it to the pair for having ditched the previous hearing received more votes than a chorus line of
Susan Boyle female impersonators at a blind gay bar. (Try to get
that image out of your head.)
If you’ll recall, this all came to a head when the Salahi-Golightlies decided to blow off that previous week’s hearing trying to get to the bottom of their gate crashing at the state dinner. Now aka The White House deBhutan Ball for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Could, perish the thought, somebody like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have been able to punk security the same way in a David Yurman bracelet -- if he had only worked a little harder on those gams? Ultimately, was the President ever in any danger from anything but Republicans on the committee? And finally, how could ranking minority member Peter King (R-NY) get more TV time? Enquiring minds on the Fox News Network want to know.
The Democrats, for their part, wanted to find out if it were indeed possible for a couple who looked like they might be fairly well off but not necessarily important to have gotten into anything in their White House besides the Lincoln Bedroom. (If you’ll recall, Shirley McLean dodged a Ken Starr subpoena on this by proving that, when she slept there, she was Lincoln). Or maybe the DEMS just wanted to hang out more where they wouldn’t have to explain to a packed AMVETS hall why they wanted to “take our Medicare and replace it with some bureaucratic government-run program."
To be fair, Michaele is said to have dashed off a lovely handwritten “regrets” note, explaining the ab-sence. According to someone-who-was there but asked not to be identified as Eric Cantor, our source tells us that based on the success of their White House incursion, the couple had unfortunately previously committed to crash a number of other engagements. These included
* the infiltration of an Anacostia fish fry,
* a Silver Spring, MD pep squad fundraising carwash, * a scheduled Caesarian section for a total stranger near Tyson’s Corner, * drinks at the Mayflower with Tiger Woods, and * the Redskins’ afternoon practice in Ashburn, VA. (for Michaele to rehearse the national anthem she believed she had been invited to perform at the New Orleans Saints game this weekend).
The Virginia socialite apologized that it would have been impossible to honor all of these prior commitments and the congressional hearing too, without missing their 5:30p.m. Al Italia flight to Rome, and the following morning's surprise brunch for Pope Benedict XVI. From there it would be on to crash a couple of subatomic particles in Cern, Switzerland, drop in on the Copenhagen climate change summit to accept carbon credits for all the CO2 they've captured and stored in soft drinks, save their friend the President a trip to pick up that Peace Prize in Oslo, and finally, back to Perugia where they were virtually certain they had been asked to submit a friend of the court brief in the Amanda Knox appeal as to why, without prejudice, "a person shouldn’t be held accountable for silly mistakes if she’s also kinda’, you know, hot.”
Tareq Salahi-Golightly later volunteered that the family’s schedule had been so hectic in recent days, what with all the continuing controversy, the couple had nearly forgotten to TiVo that night’s episode of "Survivor Samoa", which they try never to miss.
Sometimes you just have to be............persistent.
Finally, citing the unfortunate miscommunication at the WH the week before, Michaele Salahi-Golightly pled having inadvertently conflated several of her rules to live by. She had misunderstood Woody Allen to have proclaimed, "80% of success is not showing up."
Analyzing the note, the Secret Sevice determined that “Some of it didn’t sound too credible.”
S-O-S
So this past meeting of the House Homeland Security Committee had been widely trumpeted as the tipping point. SS-SOS Day in our nation’s capital (Should we Slip the Salahis the Old Supoena? Day). They met, they talked and voted to go for the gold. It had to be. All America remains on the edge of its unreserved seats to get to the bottom of what truly went down at the Nov. 24 White House home invasion – or as it is undoubtedly being branded somewhere “EastGategate.” The how, the why and a few whos thrown in as a special Chanukah treat.
“Enquiring minds” will just have to wait until Sunday’s Part 3 of SALAHING FORTH to get a handle on some of those startling revelations from this Kordespondent. Today we will just tell you how the subpoena vote we’ve been talking about really went – just as if we weren’t even making it up.
THE SUNDAY FUMIES
You may already have heard some of it on the Sunday morning TV talk shows, where the usually laconic and unexcitable pundits were still all over the case.
As one example in a nutshell, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Eleanor Clift and Pat Buchanan came to blows over whether the episode constituted just a "caper" or a genuine "home invasion." It was only after Ms. Clift had Buchanan nearly pinned in her patented stepover-toehold that Mort Zuckerman interrupted to ask, "Hey, aren’t we supposed to be on the McLaughlin Report?"
Cokie Roberts concurred about them having gotten off at the wrong bus stop; then opining that had this been a true home invasion, Obama’s mother-in-law would have been spirited away to Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location – currently underused except by a number of elected officials, golfers and their 129 or so mistresses.
Noting that every other house in Potomac, MD now had a "safe room," George Will questioned why the White House wouldn’t also have one? He said if the behavior of other recent first family children were any indication, the lair could double for Malia and Sacha "time outs."
To which this week’s guest, White House senior advisor David Axelrod contributed, "For 20 years we thought Jerry Wright’s Trinity United was a safe room – and look where that got us."
In Hollywood, interviewed on “Entertainment Tonight,” writer-producer Aaron Sorkin suffered minor contusions after serial slapping himself in the forehead while mumbling, “Why didn’t I think of something like this? We could have had Heather Locklear."
That’s possibly why, and I am not making this up, two days before the prom, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) decides to get out in front of this and, even before the vote, announces something to the effect of “Vote-schmote, Ken and Barbie, I’m just saying don’t make any big out-of-town plans for January.”
He then almost immediately receives a letter from the couple’s lawyer. No not that lawyer; new lawyer. Old lawyer -- who, if we’re honest, we’ll have to admit really may have ended up being more of a White House concierge -- had proclaimed the couple totally innocent and – perhaps a little too precipitously --agreed Defense Department emails would see them fully vindicated.
New guy’s letter just said something like “Do what you want fellas, but if you call them, my clients are taking the fifth.”
So you would have thought the subpoena hearing a week ago would have been anticlimactic, right? Well that’s because you weren’t privy to what went down after they had to adjourn behind closed doors. You won’t get any of that from the MSM, but you will get the skinny on that vote from me, here.
TWAS TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS and all through the House Homeland Security Committee, creatures were stirring.
Now, Thompson! now, Rogers! nnw, Miller and Olson! On, Carney! on, Cuellar! on, Owens and Cleaver!
The announcement that the Virginia couple -- and I'll agree that couple being a number, they're beginning to sound like the Chicago 7 -- would “Take the fifth,” immediately gets the California members of the committee all bent out of shape. That’s what happens when you spend so much time within the Beltway you forget about your Pilates
Republican Dan Lungren of Northern California hops up like one of his Calaveras frogs, "Freeloaders again. They own a damned winery for the love of Mike. Where I come from, Ernest and Julio wouldn’t show up without at least a litre". Adds San Jose's Zoe Lofgren (D),
"And what do you want to bet their fifth is a box?"
Dina Titus (D-NV) asks if her colleague from San Jose will yield 15 seconds, then advises,
"I'm in for a sawbuck on the box."
Democrat Loretta Sanchez of Anaheim announces, "The heck with this, I'm going to Disney Land. Laura Richardson (D-Torrance) says, "Close enough." Democrat Jane Harman makes it unanimous with "I'll Segundo that."
The rest of the committee, representing few vineyards, were evenly divided. Ranking Republican Peter King (NY), Mike Rogers (AL), Paul Broun (GA) and Charlie Dent (PA) said they would vote for compelling the couple to testify. Democrats Thompson (MS), Henry Cuellar (TX), Bill Owens (NY) and Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX) leaned in the other direction.
In a rare display of bipartisanship, Pete Defazio (OR) and Gus Bilirakis (FL) said they couldn't decide whether to fantasize about Tiger Woods' mistresses or the news that his knockout wife has a twin sister. In either case they speculated Tiger had likely been “transgressing the brains out” of quite a few of the former. A motion to subpoena the materials would have been nonbinding, but most on the committee preferred that at least some of the videos themselves would.
IN THE HOUSE: HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE FANTASIES "ON THE TABLE?"
Tiger Twins "Fore?" Octotiger? In their dreams.
The Chairman asked it be entered into the record that when this kind of guy behavior finally becomes socially acceptable, like it is where
Sen. Ensign lives, he'll probably be too old to "buy into" either that
or Medicare.
With the Front Royal 2 question unresolved, the committee moved on to this past week's security breach -- the classified TSA screening manual that was posted all over the Internet. Cris Carney (D-PA) expressed concern,
"How does Amazon get ahold of something like that?" he wanted to know. He felt Amazon should be called on a "point of order."
It was at this point that a brief recess was called to allow the TSA Training Supervisor, who, for purposes of national security would only be identified by his first name -- Tavis -- to demonstrate one of the about to be introduced new TSA strip search techniques the agency was now concerned al Queda "might find a way to circumvent."
As the supervisor demonstrated with a group of volunteers from the Department of
the Interior, the procedure will require an airline passenger to "first put his or her left foot in, then take that same left foot out. Then repeat the procedure with the right foot, and so on through a prescribed selection of other body parts.” On a need-to-know basis, the TSA rep. told the committee the new twist would be that, the searchee would then be required to stir each of the designated organs, rather than simply “shake them all about” as in the previous protocol.
Representative Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) introduced a resolution that she “didn’t need to know that.”
The procedure had been extensively beta tested over the Thanksgiving holiday on groups passing through the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport – including eight times on a suspicious party calling themselves the Kilgore College Rangerettes. All of whom executed each maneuver flawlessly -- although who even needed to ask?
Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorist Risk Assessment (true) declared that she didn’t want to know that either, and moved to amend Rep. Kirkpatrick’s resolution to include the word, “really.”
The committee was assured all passengers would be fully advised that any declassified video footage could be used on a Japanese game show. Which attracted the notice of the Swiss consul general, whom the Salahi-Golightlies had asked to represent them at the hearing in an unofficial capacity.
Concluding his testimony, the trainer was disappointed to inform the committee members that the agency had not been quite as successful in responding to the Department of Health's recent RIM (Reduction in Mamograms) recommendation with the development of a non-radiation-centered luggage screening technique. The technique, called DOND, developed under a $1,000,000 government contract with the consulting firm of Howie Mandel and Associates had been shown to be only .001% effective with a margin of error of +/-24 and had "pretty much only involved 'guessing.'"
The Chairman then found it unnecessary to advise represntatives Kirpatrick and Harman, "Nevermind, we get it."
Truly, they were all over the place. Mark Souder (R-I) asked to be recognized for a question about airline security. Incredulously, he wanted to know if the name Chesley B. 'Sully' Sullenberger III, could possibly mean there actually had to be at least two prior Chesley B. 'Sully' Sullenbergers?"
Requesting equal time, Ben Ray Lujan reminded all present that the Salahi-Mahogany -- which incidentally is the Hawaiian greeting for “Thanks for showing up” -- also skipped the previous week’s hearing, so that the sole witness had been Secret Service director Mark Sullivan. The puzzled New Mexico Democrat demanded to know, “Why do all these guys always have names like "Mark Sullivan?"
Republican Pete Olson (TX) shot back at Lujan with a border security issue,
"How come every drug kingpin on primetime TV is always named 'Escobar?' What is an Esco Bar anyway?"
On a point of clarification, the California congressional representatives replied in unison,
"Well it's not a wine bar -- that's fer-sure."
Since the discussion had clearly now moved on to foreign relations, several "birthers" found it curious that if all these refugees in Darfur and Kenya were really suffering so much from climate change and drought, “Why do their robes and head scarves always look so colorful, bright and fresh?"
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) tartly suggested they should go to the dictionary and look up "cold water wash." Souder, Lujan and Miller were ruled out of order. The other two inquiries were referred to subcommittee for further study.
As the debate deteriorated into ad hominem attack, somebody from the back of the room shouted that a special prosecutor should be appointed to determine once and for all, of the Rice Krispy and Keebler elves, which look the most like Harry Reid? (Sorry Harry, but as characterizations have been proceeding so far, "aire of whimsy" isn't half bad -- and we're not just saying that knowing you could punch me to pulp in .25 rounds.)
Snapped at President Crackled at Bernanke Pops Director, CBO
It was then that the Chair introduced “his ‘n hers” subpoena resolutions 3 and 4 for the couple separately. The first, for him, passed 26-3. The second, for her, went 27-2, with Alabama’s Mike Rogers switching his vote, having been a little more "motivated" on the distaff side. (Well, knowing our elected officials, wouldn’t you?)
This was only after Rep. King -- again reminding how crucial the appearance of Michaele in particular might be to the people of the United States getting to see more of him on television -- questioned whether the subpoenas alone would be sufficient? Considering the couple’s demonstrated ability to give even the Secret Service the slip.
Jumping back to “old business,” Candace Miller (R-MI) wanted to also compel an appearances by the Pentagon spokeswoman Michele S. Jones whom the couple had implored to score them tickets to the state dinner. Also the couple’s own public relations representative Mahogany Jones, if only to determine if she might be the same Mahogany Jones holy-hip-hop singer from Detroit that Miller was ”groovin’” to on her iPhone right then – having only recently discovered the "app for rap."
Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) introduced the idea that, if there were in fact two Salahis and two or more Joneses, the committee could haul all of their asses in under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.
King recommended resorting to the weightier YICO statute -- ”Yes I Can” Ochlocrify-Obama — already invoked to lure all those unsuspecting Democrats to the Teabaggers town hall meetings, where they were so successfully folded, spindled and mutilated over the economy and Wall Street bailout.
The New York Republican called the committee’s attention to the fact that YICO provided for the very same “extraordinary rendition” powers another committee had employed earlier to compel the testimony (and ultimate resignation three months ago) of White House special advisor on the environment Van Jones.
Mahogany Jones Michele S. Jones Van Jones Don't blame the messenger. Don't blame the Pentagon. It's not easy being green. (Blame that lunatic Glenn Beck.)
Yvette Clarke (D-NY) couldn't help but observe,
"How many Joneses does this add to the Jonestown Massacre some of you distinguished gentlemen started in on these poor footsoldiers last week? What are we up to now, seven?"
Dina Titus (D-NV) closed the session on a point of personal privilege,
"I'll see your 7 Joneses and raise you 3 more Salahis."
Salahing Forth concludes Sunday with our lightning round: "Howard Dean Plays Hide the Salahi" -- Congressional testimony on what actually happened at the WH state dinner.
Roger Burke, of Dallas, Texas, used to work for the government. Now he does very little on a freelance basis. He occasional shows up at a Native American-owned film production company, yet incongruously indulges the alternate persona of A. Buck Short -- Last of the Jewish Cowboy Poets.