Turkish Daffy

From CBS News:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was not aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had worked to further the interests of the government of Turkey before appointing him, the White House says.

The comments came two days after Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., filed paperwork with the Justice Department formally identifying him as a foreign agent and acknowledging that his work for a company owned by a Turkish businessman could have aided Turkey’s government.

Original movie poster

The Wizards of Oil

From The Washington Post:

Three major oil industry executives agreed on one thing in a pair of Senate hearings Tuesday: Someone else was to blame for the drilling rig accident that triggered the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The senior executives from the oil behemoth BP, the offshore oil drilling company Transocean and the oilfield services contractor Halliburton pointed fingers at each other in seeking to explain what caused the accident that set afire and sank the Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 people.

…snip…

BP blamed the failure of Transocean’s blowout preventer and raised a new question about whether Transocean disregarded “anomalous pressure test readings” just hours before the explosion. Transocean blamed decisions made by BP and cited possible flaws in the cementing job done by Halliburton. And Halliburton said that it had faithfully followed BP’s instructions and that Transocean had started replacing a heavy drilling mud with seawater before the well was sealed with a cement plug.

To the tune of If I Only Had a Brain, written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, as performed by the fabulous Ray Bolger:

Lamar McKay:

I sit here, oh so coyly, don’t know why the gulf’s so oily,
But I’m here to proclaim,
That I couldn’t say for certain,
But I think that Halliburton,
Is the company to blame.

Demagangery

From The Fix at The Washington Post:

Evan Bayh’s announcement […] that he and 14 other Democratic senators had begun to meet weekly to discuss ways in which the moderate/centrist wing of the party could ensure its voice is better heard by the White House and Senate leadership is the latest example of the Indiana Democrat’s increased willingness to critique — and tweak — the Obama administration.

Original DVD cover.
[left to right, bottom: Mary Landrieu (LA), Herb Kohl (WI), Claire McCaskill (MO), Mark Begich (AK), Mark Warner (VA), Evan Bayh (IN); top: Ben Nelson (N), Joe Lieberman (CT), Mark Udall (CO), Jeanne Shaheen (NH)]

I always thought they were seedy!

From the International Herald-Tribune:

Democrats scored some convincing victories in both houses of the U.S. Congress, picking up at least five Senate seats, ousting Republican incumbents in New Hampshire and North Carolina and capturing seats in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico left vacant by Republican retirements.

…snip…

In North Carolina, the senatorial career of Elizabeth Dole, one of the most famous names in Republican politics, came to an end at the hands of Kay Hagan, a state lawmaker whose portrayal of Dole as a Washington insider suggested that she was out of touch with the people of her state.

John Sununu, a first-term Republican from New Hampshire, lost his Senate seat in a rematch with former Governor Jeanne Shaheen, who had relentlessly tied him to President George W. Bush.

Original DVD cover.