Flap’s Links and Comments for July 27th on 13:51

These are my links for July 27th from 13:51 to 13:59:

• Carney makes an accusation – The Obama administration has never been backward about leaning forward on Fox News. The network has proven a durable, go-to villain to rally the base and stoke indignation against a perceived antagonist on the right.

  But White House press secretary Jay Carney, going after Ed Henry from Fox News on Wednesday, misfired all over the place by also insulting House Speaker John Boehner for being a "showboat" and exposing a level of secrecy and political calculation in the debt limit negotiations that runs counter to promises President Obama ran on.

  The day after the two tangled over Henry's request for specifics on Obama's plan, Carney and Henry were back at it again. Henry asked at the briefing when Obama's plan might be submitted to the Congressional Budget Office.

  "Ed, I understand, we can do this again, OK?" Carney said. "Has the speaker of the House shown you the positions he took in detail in the negotiations that were designed actually to achieve a compromise, as opposed to having a showboat?"

  "We put forward a budget, we put forward a framework," Carney said.

  Questions about Obama's plan — where is it, what's on it — are proving tricky for the White House, because the omission is suddenly getting traction. Talking about an appealing, detailed plan doesn't work if you don't produce the plan. The lack of disclosure also doesn't track with Obama's pledge on transparency.

  The White House explanation — that any plan must be held close so it won't be instantly politicized and defeated is very backroom, politics-as-usual — a way of doing things that Obama vowed to reject.

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• Obama’s Towering Inferno – This is a make-or-break week for me with my own deadline — hence the relative radio silence from me around here. I’ve been trying very hard to reserve a few brain cells on the side to follow the debt-ceiling stuff as I wade through more obscure research. Yesterday, I took time out to watch the Jay Carney grilling discussed in the Corner yesterday. I think it may, in a small way, be a watershed moment. No, not for the country. But for the WH press corps. Carney seemed to be providing a real “Hey I guess you’ve just figured out we’re full of shi…nola” moment.

  It is an amazing thing that the press corps has taken this long to really pin the White House down on the simple fact that Obama is the one playing political games here, creating rules for others to follow while not following them himself.  The public explanation for why he doesn’t want to put forward a plan of his own makes as much sense to me as the Korean-language instructions for a photocopy machine.  All I know is that the White House says it doesn’t want to release a plan because it will be held accountable for having a plan, but no one should criticize the White House for not having a plan because they actually offered one verbally that was full of “specifics” nobody will specify and the Republicans are in the dark about. 

  Oh, and even though the president insists that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling on August 2 — cats will sleep with dogs, disco will come back, Carrot Top will move into the apartment over your garage, the Chinese will put saran wrap over our toilet bowls — he insists that he will veto any plan he doesn’t like should it actually pass Congress. Of course, saying he will veto a plan makes it less likely to pass Congress and hence prevent Götterdämmerung. So there’s that.

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