Hillary a ‘Natural Diplomat’?

James at OTB:

Having initially been highly skeptical of Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State, partly on the basis that she had neither diplomatic experience nor a diplomatic temperament, I feel obliged to pass on this observation from Joe Klein (via Andrew Sullivan):

Clinton, who can be spiky, has re-emerged as a natural diplomat. When she heard that Holbrooke and General David Petraeus had never met, she invited them over to her Washington home on a Friday night before the Inauguration. The two men spent two hours in front of a roaring fire with Clinton, getting to know each other, talking about the diplomatic and military division of labor in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clinton’s was an Obamian gesture — enticing the lion to lie down with the lion — the sort of attention to detail that seems to have been replicated across the policymaking spectrum during the Obama transition.

Me in the comments section:

Frankly, James, my own initial reaction is that if Hillary Clinton is to be considered a natural diplomat, given all the baggage she brings with her, it does not speak well of people already in the field of diplomacy, in terms of honesty, termperment, and so on.

I would certainly expect Saint Andrew the Incontinent and Klein to both be scrambling to find warm and fuzzy things to say about her; their position as shills for the left having been long ago secured; They’re simply holding up their end. (Which in Sullivan’s case, brings up mental pictures best left alone)

But If I’m in the field of diplomacy, I think I’ve just been insulted in the worst way.

On the other hand, if the statement is true, perhaps we have now a better understanding of why diplomacy in the hands of the Democrats has been such an abysmal failure. The Middle East, and Jimmy Carter, for example… and if so, that would seem to suggest we’re in for a number of even more glorious failures at the hands of the left because of their over-dependence on ‘diplomacy’… at a time when we can least afford such.

Fred Dicker at :The New York Post:

Caroline Kennedy last night withdrew from consideration to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton – just two months after she rocked the New York political landscape by throwing her hat in the ring, The Post has learned.

“I informed Governor Paterson today that for personal reasons I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the United States Senate,” Kennedy said in a statement released hours after the Post first broke the story.

Hmmm. There’s a rumor going around,  and one allueded to by the piece, that she dropped out the moment she was told she wasn’t getting the job.

Gotta be hard, that.

No, I mean it. Look, She’s always managed to get by on the Kennedy mistique, before, but now, possibly for the first time in her life, she’s being judged by her own individual performance and found wanting. I find it hard to work up any real sympathy, here, but still… what it is.

Odds on fave for the job now? Andrew Cuomo, who currenly is playing the part of NY Attorney General. Patterson’s no dummy; He knows the drill. He knows as do we all in NY, that A.G. stands for “Aspiring Govenor”, and that if he wants to keep his current gig for a while, he’s going to have to divert Cuomo’s ambitions.

Ah yes, the work of the people in action.

Peace versus Freedom, have noticed comments that while 43 tended to talk about Freedom, the one tends to talk about Peace.    The two are not synonymous.   If BO  is as smart as the leftards would like us to believe he is, then he actually knows the difference.    Yet BO talks a lot about peace and little about freedom.    As a test I googled the words Bush and Freedom; then Bush, Peace; then Obama, freedom and last Obama, peace.

With Bush, I got more hits with Freedom than with Peace.   With Obama it was the reverse, more hits on Peace than Freedom.

Methodology note, as there were two President Bush’s, I only compared the readings between the two words and not between the presidents.

Princess withdraws, MSNBC:

ALBANY, New York – The New York Times reported Wednesday that Caroline Kennedy was planning to withdraw from consideration for the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I find the timing suspicious.    Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg withdraws only after the seat held by* Mrs. Clinton become vacant.   Did Blind Man Patterson try to cut his political losses by giving Schlossberg advance notice that she would not be selected?  

*  It was not Mrs. Clinton’s seat.   It was the seat occupied by Mrs. Clinton.  The seat remains the property of the People of New York, yours truely included.

Drop that bomb and walk away slowly, Fox News:

House Republicans want to strike some compromises with the White House over the Democratic economic stimulus plan, after a new report showed the plan could take as long as 10 years to work its way into the economy.

The report came from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and said proposed money for construction, and school and highway repair, would only drip — not gush — into the economy.

I think the only hope for the GOP is walk away from Mrs. Pelosi’s stink bomb and hope the Blue Dogs come to their senses.

Must have been the Congressional Medal of Honor recipients were issued purple tickets, Jonn Lilyea, This Ain’t Hell:

Obama blows off Medal of Honor recipients

According to TSO who was at the “Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball”, this newly sworn-in President for the first time in 56 years blew off the ball (that’s 14 Inaugurations).

Some background on the ball

The American Legion sponsors the ball, which recognizes recipients of Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. It started in 1953 for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first inauguration.

Event co-sponsors include 13 other veterans service organizations, among them the Military Order of the Purple Heart and the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

So where was our new President instead of honoring Medal of Honor recipients who by some miracle are still alive?

I suppose this could be written off as some inadverdent oversight.   But  breaking a fifty-six year old tradition due to over sight, is hard to accept.   Was BO’s ommission due to ignorance or indifference?

Breaking:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The sole source of the U.S. salmonella outbreak involving contaminated peanut butter appears to be the Peanut Corp of America’s Blakely, Georgia processing facility, federal officials said on Wednesday

DG to FDA.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere.. Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble

Gonna be a short one today, I’ve got some personal issues today.

• In answer to some email, I really wish I could have a positive outlook about our immediate future. I really do. But I tend to be driven not by hope, but by fact. I’ve been listing the reasons for this repeatedly in many, many posts, over a period of the last year and more. Sorry that some of you can’t wrap your minds around that one.
• One of the sore spots for me is Obama’s insistance that he can do both growth and ‘fairness’ at the same time. Forgive me, but economic growth, and the leftist version of ‘fairness’ are oil and water… they simply do not mix. Biggest current example is the economic mess w find ourselves in, which is the direct result of liberals trying to make owning a house abide by their version of ;fair’. The Markets figured that one out, already, too.
• The Denver Post openly wonders if dissent is still patriotic.
• Amazing. Not 24 hours after the whitehouse.gov site was changed, and the local newspapers are already using the graphics from it.  Budwiser, and Coke, and any commercial, image drive operation would call that a good imaging campaign.  If the media did that from, say GWB’s version of Whitehouse.gov, there would be no adopting the kittens the Democrats… and the press… would have.  As it is, it’s clear to me that in the new order, the press’s official function is as Democrat party cheerleaders.
• Another UN official. Another Kiddie Porn bust. Ho-hum. Nothing unusual.
• Portland Mayor Sam Adams, also involved in a sex scandal, involvng the mayor and an 18 year old boy. Almost like there was a pattern,  here, or something. Oh, and of course the article doesn’t mention it, so I will… Adams is a Democrat. Pattern there, too, but don’t dare mention that point in public.

• “I’m serious now: we have to watch out for health care. If they get it, then democracy as we know it is finished.”

  That was Rush Limbaugh, just now, and here’s how dim he is: when they pass universal health care, it will be democracy fulfilled.

  Look, Billy, I know where you’re going with this, but slow down a sec. Your statement seems to assume that there’s enough popular support for government healthcare to get it voted in. Thing is,  I seem to recall a rather serious and resounding ‘no’ from the voters on the subject of  ‘Hillarycare’ as it was called then… and the Clintons were voted in by a wider margin than Obama was. I take that as indictaion of narrower support for Obama policies, including healthcare.  As such, I’ve no reason to think Obama’s going to change that voter resistance anytime soon, which means that the only way government healthcare will be enacted is if the will of the voter is bypassed. And, we both know, the Democrats have a history of doing exactly that at need.

From Brian Faler, Bloomberg: 

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of President Barack Obama’s plan found that most of the approximately $355 billion in proposed discretionary spending on highways, renewable energy and other initiatives wouldn’t be spent before 2011. The government would spend about $26 billion of the money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report said.

Memo to Mrs. Pelosi:  Find a new plan or prepare to find a new job.

Barack Obama had over two months to plan and then execute his inauguration.  BO’s team utterly failed. Peter Scoblic, Plank:.

I cannot even imagine the logistical skill and dedication required to pull off an event of today’s magnitude. And, given the million-plus emotional people I just watched on the Mall via my DVR, much of the inaugural planning was clearly successful. But there was a massive breakdown of planning–what little of it there appears to have been–for those folks who had Purple tickets to this morning’s festivities.

The same one who picked the team which planned his inauguration, now wants to pick the team that will control your health care.    As you being wheeled into a BO run emergency room, pray to God that you do not have the Purple Ticket.

James Joyner, Outside the Beltway:

WaPo’s Inauguration Watch blog notes that “Many visitors today were turned away before the beginning of the Inaugural events. Even ticket holders had trouble getting into the ceremony. People with purple, silver and blue tickets in particular reported being shut out of their designated locations.

BO’s botched inauguration merely left his supporters out in the cold.   If BO botchs health  care, he will be leaving you dead.   Sure the Ted Kennedy’s will alway have health care, but what about all those given purple tickets?

McQ notes, this morning, something that bothered me last night, as well:

If there is indeed an “era of maturity” evident, it has nothing to do with the leftists of this country. Indeed, even on this day, they just couldn’t help their childish selves:

But when Dick Cheney first rolled onto the giant TV screen, looking with his cane and trademark grimace like a villain in a Harry Potter film, the thousands of people gathered in SF’s Civic Plaza to watch the DC inauguration hooted as one. Their first mass shout-out of the morning.

[…]

Goodbye. Don’t let the chopper door slam your chair on the way out.

Well, that particular was one I didn’t know about, but I had heard about the crowd responding with their (Offkey) rendition of Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him) Goodbye” when Bush took the podium.

That’s just low class. I mean, maybe…  maybe it’s acceptable at a sporting event, such as a hockey game…(Though it’s always struck me as unsportsman- like) but at an an inauguration? Sorry, that’s low class, bordering on NO class.

And as Bruce says:

But remember, now is the time to unite as one, because, you know, they won and whining like a spoiled brat (or throwing shoes at the White House) and pitching fits in the street because you didn’t get your way is no longer cool. 

Indeed. These same morons will be the ones screaming we’re not being ‘polite’ and ‘fair’ and ‘respectful’ when any question… any question at all, arises from the right about Obama.  They’ll be the ones saying the Presidency should sheild the office holder from such attacks. Yet, look at what they do themselves when the tables are reversed.

As ye sew, so shall ye reap.

Barack Obama may or may not be a pragmatist.   If BO is pragmatic it is only in the political sense, how to keep his seat of power.   Dubya liked to bill himself as “The Decider.”   BO is more like the hesitator.   Peter Finn, Washington Post, reports:

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Jan. 20 — In one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — a clear break with the approach of the outgoing Bush administration.

Our Constitution recognizes the right to a speedy trial.      What constitution principle allows for a defendent’s trail to be delayed for three months while the convening authority ponders in what forum to try them?    If  these Club Gitmo patron are not dangerous, then BO should release them.   If  they are dangerous, he should procede with their trials.    Leadership means making decisions, not merely voting Present.

Addendum:

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, seems puzzled:

The delay would only be meaningful if Obama intended to free all of the Gitmo prisoners, something that the ACLU has urged. Somehow, I don’t think Barack Obama would be that foolish. It would be tough to win re-election as the man who set Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 actors free simply to win favor from Europe’s elite.

How smart BO actually is remains to be seen.

I have another piece up over at Pajamas Media, this morning. Here’s a taste:

You see, while the numbers suggest that there has been no president since Richard Nixon or — depending on how you judge these things — Harry Truman who has left office with a lower approval rating, I dare to suggest  that Mr. Bush is going to be vindicated over the next four years by President Obama himself. Vindicated not in rhetoric, since left wing rhetoric is always and forever vitriolic against any successful Republican. No, Bush will be vindicated thanks to the policies sure to be adopted by Mr. Obama and the Democrat-run Senate, House, and  State Dept.

Read the whole thing here.

We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, where brown can stick around, when yella’ will be mella’, when the red man can get ahead, man- and when white will embrace what is right. Let all of those who will do justice and love mercy say ‘Amen’. AMEN! Say AMEN. AMEN!…and Amen.AMEN”

Joseph Lowery as attributed by Gateway Pundit.

You did not believe BO’s linem about being post-racial and post-partisan?

Dittos to Drew M., Ace of Spades.

From Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, via Macsmind:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Today:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — More than two-thirds of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for race relations has been fulfilled, a CNN poll found — a figure up sharply from a survey in early 2008.
Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.

Michelle:

One of the areas of American life where the dream remains unfulfilled is public education. Teachers’ unions and government school protectionists have stood in the schoolhouse door, blocking innovation, competition, and parental choice – leaving minority children and their families to languish in some of the country’s worst schools

About the only people who cite King’s quote on character are some whites.   Race merchants like the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and BO himself, have made character off-limits.

Back babies are harvested by the abortion mills of Planned Pasrenthood, disarmed black citizen are gunned by by armed thugs, poor black children are trapped in failing schools and traditional marriage values are mocked.     Is this really KIng’s dream?   I, for one, doubt it.   What say you?

Update and bump:  Much the same message, albeit in a slightly different language, video:

Hat tip: Stop the ACLU.

As noted by Mark Hemingway, National Review:

Soon [Conngressman Jim] Moran stormed out of the building and angrily confronted the police officer looking at his wife and shouting, “Is this the one?” He then got in the officer’s face and insisted that he did not know the proper procedure. Moran’s wife was then allowed in the building under her husband’s congressional escort

I suppose it was too much too expect that the representive ot the Eighth Congressional District of Virginia would know the difference betwen the choosen one and a  Capital police officer.   Then I suppose to some, like Moran:  They all do look alike.    Click on link for full sized picture.

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere… Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble

Since I’ve already given you my thoughts on today’s events, before they even occurred, it’s down to some random tidbits.

• Today marks the end of being able to blame those Waskilwy Wepublicans for the problems the Democrats face. Going forward, they’ve nobody to blame but themselves. I suspect they’ll find the mantle an uncomfortable fit.
• If there’s a bight spot in Obama, it’s one that’s getting under-reported. I found this one in The Hill, (and I see Boortz has linked it as well…)
  

  Government can only do so much … And if we’re just waiting around for somebody else to do it for us, if we’re waiting around for somebody else to clean up the vacant lot or waiting for somebody else to get involved in tutoring a child, if we’re waiting for somebody else to do something, it never gets done.

  Heh. Nice try, but somehow I suspect that following that logic to it’s conclusion is beyond Mr. Obama. More certainly, it’s beyond most of his followers.  We’ll touch this one I’m sure, several times over the next couple years as examples present themselves.

• Oil’s below $34/BBL today.  Oh… wait a second… it’s below $33. So why is gas edging up slightly?  Rather simple, really; Refining capacity issues, as we start dealing with cracking other fuels and whatnot. Heating oil, for example.  Remember what I’ve been saying all along, gang… Crude and the supply thereof is only half the picture. And don’t forget, we’re going to see refineries shifting to summer blends in most areas soon enough… which will cause a distilate supply slowdown, just like every year.  Still, I don’t see that much of a change for early summer’s pricing at the pump. If it goes above $2.50 I’ll be surprised.
• That Hamas has turned it’s ire away from Israel and onto Fatah shouldn’t be much of a shack to anyone’s system. Such idiologies always attack the weak. Observe, though, how few are objecting to their use of torture. Telling, that.
• You will reacall I mentioned that today’s party was taxpayer funded by way of  companies that we’ve bailed out? ABC News agrees.
• Bruce notes the religion of ‘Global Warming” is falling out of favor.
• Yeah, I’d be doing it, too, Billy.  Think of the lives that would be saved in the end. Talk about public service.
• Oh, by the way, Billy, while I have you… I see Joe Farah agrees with you, though from a different angle. So does Limbaugh. So do I.
• There is justice in the world after all.
• I’ll sign onto this one, Andy.  But I wonder if it’ll be such a problem, with Obama in the WH. I figure since there’s a liberal in charge, their objections to our war on terror will melt away faster than… welll… you figure it out.