What do you call the drones at the Office of the President Elect – Opies? Well, the Opies have their work cut out for them to recast Hillary from wannabe tea-sipper to foreign policy diva, all the while trying to do a disappearing act on the problems Bill Clinton brings to his wife’s nomination.

The NYT spilled the beans on the hardball negotiations that have been going on with lawyers from the transition team and Clinton’s team, revealing that there’s an 8-point agreement that won’t be made fully public until after Hillary’s Sec of State announcement has had its headline run.

Foremost among the points is Bill’s agreement to release by year-end the names of the 208,000 donors to the William J. Clinton Foundation, which raised $500 million to build his presidential library. The names that have already leaked out are troubling to Hil as Statemeister – Marc Rich’s wife Denise, the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, the governments of Kuwait and Qatar and the son-in-law of Ukraine’s former dictator.

Clinton also will agree to re-incorporate his foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative as separate corporations and, very interestingly, run his speeches by State and possibly the White House prior to giving them. He made over $10 million giving 54 speeches last year, so he’s not going to favor meddling he feels counterproductive to a major income stream.

The NYT opines (in its editorial columns) that releasing the donor names will “eliminate any concerns.” Fat chance of that. With the names being released before confirmation hearings, concerns will abound; it’ll be up to the GOP to decide whether to pounce on them or not. I believe some pouncing is in order.

Meanwhile, the Opies are trying hard to reinvent the record of the campaign, which saw the Prez-elect saying of his State nominee such things as:

“What exactly is this foreign policy experience?” Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”

And incoming White House Counsel Greg Craig saying:

“She did not sit in on any National Security Council meetings when she was first lady. There is no reason to believe … that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton administration.”

But that was then. Count on the Opies to quickly find the other side of Obama’s mouth and stuff it full of fine-sounding words about his problematic nominee.

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y friend Jim usually just gets a hat-tip; this time he gets a post all his own.  Jim, carry on …

In a message dated 10/27/2008 10:43:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, “swingdawg” writes:

I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area, will be incredibly difficult to fix, but the next 8 years of an Obama administration followed, no doubt, by a Biden or Clinton administration should be enough time to repair all the damage that has been done.

Oh, by the way, it was Bush who just ‘Socialized’ the banking/mortgage industry.

Excuse me, but haven’t the Democrats been in charge of both houses of Congress since the last election? What great things have they to show for their turn at the oars?  (Besides a 12% approval rating, the lowest in history, and considerably lower than President Bush’s.)

“Swingdawg” would like to have everyone forget or ignore history and join the folks over at MoveOn.org and Daily Kos and succumb to BDS, but (thanks to the wonderful Internet that Al Gore invented) we can actually go back in time and see what happened.

It was during the Clinton administration (a Democrat if memory serves) that they enacted policies that set up the collapse of the housing market.  1) On November 12, 1999, President Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which for 55 years had prevented banks, the nation’s lenders, to get into the so-called “investment banking” business (stock brokers).     2)  Also in 1999, Clinton appointed Franklin Raines… to become the CEO of the obscure but powerful Fannie Mae giant GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise), which had been “privatized” and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

So the pattern becomes clear. Harvard Law School attorneys – noted for their lack of economic knowledge — create an easy-money system which relies on flakey loans provided by fat-cat financial manipulators who are the primary contributors to the re-election campaigns of the legislators – almost exclusively Democrats. (Some more good history here.)

In 2005, we almost fixed the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac problem, but the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

(Another bit of historical data here.  [NOTE:  Do not read if you are a "Progressive," it is not healthy to be confused by facts after your mind is made up.])

Since your friend writes. “I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area…”, I have to ask if he blames the 9/11 attack by radical Muslims, on President Bush’s policies as well?

Referring back to our Internet history sources once again, it seems that our earlier attacks go back to President Carter’s time (I think that he was a Democrat too), and really ramped up under President Clinton, where in 1993 we had our first attack on the World Trade Center; (and allowed our Special Forces to be humiliated by a pissant Warlord in Somalia); followed by (Oklahoma City in 1995?), the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the coordinated bombings of our two US Embassies (Tanzania & Kenya) in 1998.  President Clinton then finished out his term with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Please put me in the camp of right thinkers who believe that it was President Clinton’s do-nothingness in response to each of these attacks that emboldened our enemies and brought about the Islamist attack of 9/11.

In my opinion, President Bush’s kick-ass response to that is pretty much what has helped keep us safe for these past years, not the Democrats or Progressives!

Your friend might also want to consider how poorly Democrats do in other areas of government.  In spite of what the Media would like folks to believe, it was Democratic Mayor Nagin and NOT President Bush, who left all the school buses parked during Katrina.

Or how about those crime statistics?

A popular chain email, Chicago War Zone Information, sloshing around Chicago informs the reader, “Body count.  In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 killed in Iraq.”

Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley. . .  . our leadership in Illinois. . . . all Democrats.  Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago (a lot of good gun control does, huh?). Of course they’re all blaming each other.  Can’t blame Republicans; there aren’t any!

The Illinois state pension fund is $44 Billion in debt, the worst in country.  Cook County (Chicago) sales tax is 10.25%, the highest in country.  (Look’em up if you want).  Chicago’s school system one of the worst in country (despite the millions from Ayres/Obama).  This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois.  He’s gonna ‘fix’ Washington politics?  Give me a break!!!

You might ask “Swingdawg” if he can give an example of where a Progressive policy (other than just a hand-out, of course) has actually improved conditions for a minority group?

Oh, and just for the record…

Demographers have shown that since the 1940s, the Democratic Party has segued from the party of the working middle class to the party whose voters look like a double-hump camel: they are either the poor who vote for entitlements or the extremely wealthy millionaires and billionaires who provide the “juice” to buy the allegiance of the first group.

McCain-Palin 2008!

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“Suppose for example you’re a voter. And you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?” – Bill Clinton in Denver today

I

think the right answer is “Hillary,” but I’m open to other interpretations.

Gosh, the way things are going, Clinton night at the convention might actually, against all odds, turn out to be interesting.

The Hill, from which the quote comes, provided this clarifying bit of additional info:

Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: “This has nothing to do with what’s going on now.”

Not to worry. Clinton insider Paul Begala said of his boss, “He’s totally for Barack.” Concerned that perhaps that wasn’t convincing enough, he added, “He’s totally for Barack.” Just for reference, check out Could You Repeat That?

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ill’s stewing. He wanted to give a big, broad speech (not a big broad speech, if you catch the difference), but the Obama camp has told him to stick to the theme of the evening, “Securing America’s Future,” and talk about foreign policy. Sez Politico:

While Bill Clinton remains angry about how he and his wife were treated by both Obama backers and the news media — and he is particularly resentful at what he sees as unfair allegations that he tried to exploit racial divisions for political advantage — he has made the decision that he will put forward a positive face for Obama’s benefit at Denver.

It is harder to do that when the topic is foreign policy and national security, which lends itself to restrained, rather than boisterous, partisan rhetoric.

“That puts him in a terrible bind, because you can’t give a ringing endorsement when you’re talking about foreign policy,” a longtime Clinton adviser said.

Help me understand this. Isn’t all the Bushitler, WMD, War on Terror in quotes stuff nothing if not boisterous, partisan rhetoric? What’s the bind? Any speaker capable of even a minor barn-burner, and Clinton is much more than that, should be able to get the Dem convention to break into zombie-like chants of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” just by mentioning GOP foreign policy. You know, taking on terrorism, promoting democracy, all that stuff the Dems hate so.

But the same former Clinton adviser quoted above did say something I find utterly above reproach:

“Obviously, the hard thing to talk about with Obama is commander in chief, of all his many talents.”

Yup. Because he has no commander in chief talents. Teleprompter-reader in chief. Looking pretty in chief. Saying a lot of words that say nothing in chief. But not commander in chief?  No, the Clinton guys have that right; no way.

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Unhappy PC Birthday

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verything I have to unlearn, I learned in kindergarten – that’s how Incredible Daughter #1 responded to this story, from BBC:

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy’s school says he has violated the children’s rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

Violated rights? What right? The right to be an utter jerk and suffer no consequences? For a school to propose that this is discrimination is to tell kids that the most important life lesson is to expect to get everything without investing anything.

One of the boys who didn’t get an invitation didn’t invite the perp of this horrific social crime to his own birthday party. The other boy simply didn’t get along with birthday boy. No matter! Life is happy! We’re all equal! Kumbayah!

Remember: The Dems think Europe is the cat’s meow and won’t be satified until they’ve morphed American independence and frontier spirit into a clone of Sweden. And Obama’s friend, radical educator William Ayres, is at forefront of the effort to use the schools to accomplish that goal.

A China You Haven’t Seen

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piegel has a photo gallery posted along with its story Lives Under Chinese Communist, Caught on Film that you ought to take a look at. Here are the two that moved me the most.

First, let’s look at a photo typical of what we see out of China today, symbolic of its emergence on the global economics playing field.

Relaxing on the hood of his new Mercedes is Li Xiaohua who was previously a Red Guard who was forced to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. His rebirth as a successful capitalist is symbolic of the new China. But we shouldn’t forget that the old China still exists, as shown in this photo of barge-pullers on the upper Yangtse River:

Why are these men naked? Because they own so few clothes that they don’t want to wear them out doing this hard labor.

China has a long way to go, despite the happy face the Beijingoists try to slap on the mess they rule. Continue Reading »

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