Amateur Hour

Billy Rich is done, no hay oficia, and never trust a man with a neck like a pale hamster. A California company paid the governor $110,000 and received contracts worth $1.4 million. This was presumably something BHO and Co. knew about and just ignored.

For the new appointment, I vote for Ed Markey. Anyone from New Mexico is now verboten, Schweitzer and Sebelius are heartland Democrat governors who need to stay put for party-building, Ed Rendell though I love him is another man with a hamster-like neck and thus untrustworthy (seriously, you think Chicago politics is old-school? Try Philadelphia), ditto anyone with hands in pockets of Oil or Coal.

So the questions are two: Are all America's governors desperate for cash? And, What does an Obama administration possibly stand to gain by hiring all these Clintonites?

What was it that Billy Rich brought to the table? His exaggerated Hispanicness, even if it exists and accrues a political benefit, has nothing to do with the rational execution of the administration's energy policy; at Homeland Security or HHS it might, maybe. It's not a payoff for Billy Rich's endorsement, since getting that was like pulling shark teeth. Surely those allegedly numerous but really just very vocal Hillary-or-the-Highway, Limbaugh Democrats would have been appeased by Hillary's own appointment; Rich does nothing for them.
This was a lazy choice, made in haste, and it's coming back to bite BHO on the ass. I'm going to go watch Philadelphia vs. Minnesota...