It's a Noonan Day in America!

Today, the Pegster has some deep thoughts about the deep state:

"President Obama says he didn’t know the U.S. government was tapping Angela Merkel, and you know, maybe he didn’t."

I think she means Angela Merkel's phone. Anyhow.

"Maybe they’re bugging so many people it’s hardly news to them when they bug the chancellor of Germany. Maybe they mentioned it to the president, maybe not. Maybe they don’t know." Maybe they're bugging Joe Biden by repeatedly rick-rolling him. Maybe they're watching too much Bugs Bunny. Maybe they're starting an insect collection. It's hard to say. It could go either way.

"Maybe they will choose to be courteous to the president, stop the tap and present Germany with evidence the tap has stopped."

Trust, but verify--except during Oktoberfest.

"But maybe the deep state will think it doesn’t have to be pushed around by some joker who’ll be gone in a few years, to be replaced by another joker."

Why so serious?

Then P-noon goes on for a few paragraphs verbatim quoting Bob Woodward on the JFK assassination, from when she was on "Face the Nation" the other day. Anyhow back to parties in Northern Virginia:

"It is more bureaucratic than that, more banal, less colorful, less dramatic. It is more James Clapper than James Angleton, more Vienna, Va., than mildly sinister McLean dinner party."

It's more inside baseball than that alley behind Wrigley Field, more Alain Badiou, than Gilles Deleuze.

"But it is actually the big thing our country should be talking about now, needs to be talking about and would be talking about if only our president had not decided, a few years ago, to blow up the U.S. health-care system."

Too bad the Joker blew up the U.S. health-care system. I mean that as a metaphor for detonating a bomb, which corresponds closely to the CBO's assessment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in this metaphor, kind of like how Dodd-Frank was a Hiroshima, metaphorically-speaking, but not literally the same thing. Anyhow, too bad we can't do much talking right now, or even writing op-ed pieces about whatever comes to mind.

"Bonus anecdote." About "a famous European leader," who "looked crestfallen" after learning that someone is always spying on him.

"Later, to an aide, he said, 'I guess the only way to guarantee my privacy now is to sit crouched in the bathtub, with a big blanket over my head, talking to myself.'"

This guy sounds a bit more Charlie Brown than Jacques Chirac, more Bed-Stuy hipster party, than Upper West Side gala.