Mike Barnicle, ‘Political Pyromaniac’

A suicide bomber struck early on Tuesday at an army recruiting office here, killing dozens in the first major bombing of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan — a period made more fraught than in previous years by the looming deadline for American forces to replace their combat mission here with a training role. – Suicide bomber kills dozens

When Joe Scarborough quoted Newt Gingrich on the mosque yesterday on “Morning Joe” it sent Mike Barnicle off. Good for Mike for taking Newt to task, calling him a “political pyromaniac.” The irony is that Mr. Barnicle had coined a term that also applies to himself, especially where Hillary Clinton is concerned.

Mike Barnicle was upset about something else yesterday. The Dept. of Justice ending their investigation of former Rep. Tom Delay sent him over the edge. Not because of the litany of misdeeds of Delay, like the being involved in forced abortions and slave labor. It was something else entirely.

“Six years is inexcusable, inexcusable. …” – Mike Barnicle

Poor Tommy. It was the length of time that Tom Delay had undergone scrutiny by the DOJ. It was just too much for Mike. He intoned a Reagan administration official who’d been investigated, after being exonerated then asking where he was going to go to get his reputation back after it was all over.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Barnicle skipped over the Clinton years. It didn’t matter that the Clintons were sliced and diced for six years, also on taxpayer money, with nothing found but a consensual affair. It evidently didn’t bother Barnicle that Justice Rehnquist helped set up the sting by stacking the three-judge panel, putting Judge Sentelle at the top; or that Ken Starr morphed two separate cases that he himself now believes was a horrible mistake, according to Ken Gormley’s tome on impeachment. That Barnicle couldn’t let his Clinton derangement go in 2008, 10 years after impeachment, is another issue all together, but it puts him in Newt’s class of political pyromaniacs. “Morning Joe” back in 2008:

BARNICLE: Yeah, I think you’re right, Willie. The other thing that came across the other evening — at least to me, but I’m, you know, pretty low-intellect here looking at the thing — is, when she does the slum lord stuff, when she reacts the way she reacts to Obama with just the look, the look toward him, looking like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court, OK? Looking at him that way, all I could think of –

That Barnicle doesn’t even recognize his brother in pyromania is nothing surprising. He puts himself above everyone else, lauding the print press even after their complicity on Iraq, while taking out after new media writers whenever he can, even though we were right on Iraq. Mike having a special hatred for bloggers. That new media is besting print media was proved again through Wikileaks, with facts being stubborn things.

Newt may be a “political pyromaniac,” but he’s got company in Mike.

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