I'm looking quickly at the coverage as we wait for another hearing to start and I'm seeing 'accountability' being tossed around by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius -- here for Reuters, here for Bloomberg News.
"Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible," Sebelius is quoted as saying.
What the hell does that mean?
I am so sick of these liars.
"I take accountability," "I am accountable," "I am responsible," "Hold me accountable," . . .
I'm so sick of it.
What it really means is: There is no accountability.
Accountability is not words.
An official who says they're taking accountability is just another liar these days.
We don't make them take accountability.
They toss it around in an open hearing and then, months later, in an interview, they'll say they took accountability.
If you're taking accountability for something that's negatively impacted thousands of Americans that means you're resigning or you're being fired.
I am so sick of these frauds who toss around "accountability" but never deliver any.
The reality is Kathleen's an idiot. She's always been an idiot. She made that clear when she stepped on the national stage. As Ava and I noted February 3, 2008 in "TV: Nah-nah-nah, Hey-hey-hey, Goodbye:"
We didn't have much time to ponder because the network was trying out a new show, An American Response. Though not normally fans of the rescue show format, after the sedate and hopefully series finale of Make Room For Bully, we could use a little action, maybe some sirens and smoke. But the only fire we saw was in a fireplace and we realized that either we were watching an extended commercial for Duraflame logs or else someone was attempting to recreate FDR's fireside chats.
The main character, well, the only character, was a woman named Kathleen Sebelius and we quickly grasped from that nervous, masculine energy that it was Jane Lynch resurrecting her role of Christy Cummings in Christopher Guest's hilarious Best In Show.
What she lacked in action, she made up for in delivery giving just the right sting to the pompous words her character was reciting while wearing a blouse that appeared to have no buttons and to plunge to the waist. Obviously, we weren't the only ones disturbed by that since CBS blocked the bottom fourth of the screen with a red bar and a CBS logo. Lynch is really too good of an actress to go the bra-less T& A route and we had to wonder what that said about actresses today that Lynch would think that was how a governor appearing on national television would dress?
Maybe she was just attempting to spice up the vague dialogue which even her look-but-don't-touch, frosty demeanor could only do so much with. For instance, she declared, "As governor of Kansas, I am the commander in chief of our National Guard. Over the past five years, I have seen thousands of soldiers deployed from Kansas. I've visited our troops in Iraq; attended funerals and comforted families; and seen the impact at home of the war being waged." We couldn't figure out whether that was bragging (a resume being floated for higher office?) or if she was treating the illegal war like a faux pas.
But it disturbed us. As did her repetition of "join us" and "will you join us?" -- which spooked us so we expected her to begin chanting "One of us, one of us, one of us, one of . . ."
She was supposed to be delivering the Democratic response (to Bully Boy Bush's final State of the Union address), she wasn't appearing on Playboy After Dark.
What was the alternative to Kathleen? Governor Jon Corzine addressing the nation in a jock strap?
Kathleen's been an embarrassment from day one.
She's clearly ethically challenged and unqualified.
A year ago, at Third, we noted:
Wednesday, the OSC released a [PDF format warning] a judgment, "The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) sent findings to the President today from its investigation of complaints of prohibited political activity by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. OSC concluded that Secretary Sebelius violated the Hatch Act when she made extemporaneous partisan remarks in a speech delivered in her official capacity on February 25, 2012. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or influence to affect the outcome of an election."
That should have been "end of story" on the events themselves.
But Jake Tapper (ABC News) reports Sebelius dug her hole even deeper:
In a letter to [OSC head Carolyn] Lerner, Sebelius seemed to take issue with the some of the report, noting that she reimbursed the U.S. Treasury for related expenses. It “seems somewhat unfair to conclude that, as a result of my off-hand statements, I used my official title for political purposes,” she wrote, saying “the violation was technical and minor. These are not the type of violations that the Hatch Act is intended to address.”
Sebelius said she told the USC investigators that while she regretted making the statements that converted my participation in the event from official to political…keeping the roles straight can be a difficult task, particularly on mixed trips that involved both campaign and official stops on the same day."
If Sebelius finds it difficult to keep her "roles straight," the easiest way to fix that problem is to fire her. She broke the law. As Tim Funk (McClatchy Newspapers) reported of the 2007 violation of the Hatch Act, "In that last case, General Services Administrator Lurita Doan was fired by President George W. Bush."
The title of that Third Estate Sunday Review piece? "Where's the accountability?"
Today, with yet another major screw up, Kathleen wanted to insist that she was taking accountability.
Then resign.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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