Jim Addison: Is Mrs. Clinton Nuts

Mrs. Clinton touts her experience, and the fact she thinks herself ready to lead our nation in a time of war.  Yet Mrs. Clinton said this, from AFP:

Hillary Clinton Friday called for an independent, international probe into Benazir Bhutto’s murder, as turmoil wracking US anti-terror ally Pakistan reshaped debate in the White House race. The Democratic front-runner weighed into the crisis just six days before first 2008 party nominating contests, as candidates brandished their national security credentials following the ex-Pakistani premier’s death.”I’m calling for a full, independent, international investigation,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN.

To which Jim Addison, Wizbang,  retorts “Is [Mrs. Clinton] nuts?”

Such outrageous remarks should never be spoken by a United States Senator, much less by a major party Presidential candidate. She is unfit to serve in the office she now holds, and certainly unqualified for promotion. 

Mrs. Cinton might not be certifiable, but she sure lets her Nieman Marcus sized ego over power her Macy’s brain.

Buried deep within the bowls of the  National Defense Authorization Act for 2008, was a provision to allow trial lawyers to loot funds intended to reconstruction of Iraq.    Don Surber calls this “Sue the victims.”    I just call it greed.

The worst politicians of the day are Dirty Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for doing the bidding of the trial lawyes.

Rest assured, President Bush vetoed the bill.

Utter and total green-eyed jealousy prevents me from posting Bryan’s, Hot Air, video tribute to Mrs. Pelosi’s Swamp,    Byran examines Mrs. Pelosi’s promises and provides a video score card, and does find one promise Mrs. Pelosi did keep.  She changed the House cafeteria menu.

Aside to Bit, we ought to promote Michelle, Byran and the entire gang at Hot Air to honorary Swamp Stompers.

I have directly observed how more and more Iraqis have grown to hate al Qaeda as much as Americans do. Al Qaeda has lost all credibility there, both from a religious standpoint as well as strategically

Michael Yon.

One person,  Benazir Bhutto, one death, two Posts, Washington and New York  and two completely different takes.  

David Ignatius, Washington Post, came to laud the late Benazir Bhutto, via RCP:

Try to imagine a young Pakistani woman bounding into the newsroom of the Harvard Crimson in the early 1970s and banging out stories about college sports teams with the passion of a cub reporter. That was the first glimpse some of us had of Benazir Bhutto. We had no idea she was Pakistani political royalty. She was too busy jumping into her future to make a show of her past

Not so with, Ralph Peters, New York Post, via RCP.  Peter comes to bury Bhutto:

A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will now become a martyr. In death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her country

Ignatius’ take may well explain Mrs. Clinton’s attempt to align herself in Bhutto’s public image, brave pioneering feminist.    Peters’ may touch on the truth, greedy politician lusting for power and wealth. ?

Ah, yes, Ron Paul. Never have so many braincells been inactive for so long.

James at OTB:

The top story on Memeorandum this morning is a piece from Little Green Footballs entitled “Ron Paul Blames US Policy for Bhutto Killing.” The author links a CNN video in which Paul says that our support for the Musharraf government “does annoy some people” and “just gives incentives for people to resort to violence.”

That’s OK.
Obama laid pretty much the same charge, in his comments.. it’s all OUR fault. In short, you can’t fit water between Paul and Obama.

Telling, that.

I mean, this guy calls hismelf a Republican, and yet is part of the “Blame America First” nonsense?

Promoted, from comments.

We live in dangerous times and we need a leader who can make rational and sober assessments of the real world.   Sadly for us, we a have gaggle of candidates in both parties who either are hopelessly naive, or just plain stupid with respect to foreign affairs.

Fools have suggested that while we should not stop Iran from going nuclear, we should attack a nuclear Pakistan.    I humbly suggest that we ignore the advice of fools, even if they running for president, and instead heed Victor Davis Hanson, via National Review:

If there is any fallout from this tragedy at home, it is to remind us that radical Islam has the ability to change world affairs in a matter of minutes (at least if taking out a democratic leader vying for control of a nuclear Pakistan qualifies), that the war against Islamic radicalism goes on, and that we should look carefully at those who wish to be commander-in-chief in the years ahead.

Hat Tips; article,  John Hawkins, Conservative Grapevine; photo, FF2

Scientist Patrick Michaels writes in the American Spectator Thursday that if a major journal reported the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought it would be front-page news in every paper.

He writes: “But what would happen if a paper was published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought?” Well, Michaels says nothing would happen. He and fellow scientist Ross McKitrick published a manuscript in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres earlier this month saying just that — that the world has warmed only half as much as previously thought.

Michaels — who is a member of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — states that his findings show temperature records should not always be trusted, because many are recorded in urban areas. Michaels says scientists have known for years that urban areas are warmer than rural ones and that temperatures collected in cities are biased.

That’s Hume’s Holiday replacement at Fox last night. (Bret, I think?)

If there’s a better way of exposing the bias of the press than this, I can’t think of one. Anything that fits the liberal mantra gets printed. Anything that doesn’t, gets ignored… just as described here.

COALITION FORCES DISRUPT AL KUT CRIMINAL ELEMENT NETWORKS, 11 TERRORISTS KILLED

Posted: 27 Dec 2007 04:23 AM CST

COALITION FORCES DISRUPT AL KUT CRIMINAL ELEMENT NETWORKS, 11 TERRORISTS KILLED

IRAQI POLICE UNCOVER MAJOR WEAPONS CACHE

Posted: 26 Dec 2007 07:43 AM CST

IRAQI POLICE UNCOVER MAJOR WEAPONS CACHE

A crazy day, yesterday. For yours truly, lots of irons in the fire, some web development, my day gig some home duities, but of course, as with all of us, yesterday, before I even started the day came the news about the Benazir Bhutto assassination. So, while working through the days chores, I had some time to think about the implications of this, always making the assumption that the Pakistani government had nothing to do with her death.

In the end, even the additional security that the former prime minister was screaming about would not have made any difference. While that point is somewhat arguable, it is far less arguable that Musharraf having any direct connection to her death is highly unlikely at least.

Fox News’ John Gibson apparently working form the same foundation as I have been all day, makes what I think is an important point about the Bhutto killing, today:

Bringing modernity to Pakistan means bringing the Islamic extremists to heel. that’s an enormous problem in Pakistan where the Secret Service is riddled with Taliban sympathizers, where the military has been in cahoots with extremist agents for years, and the Western part of the country is controlled by extremists and is a no go zone for the Pakistani military.

So Bhutto was on our side, in the sense that she knew how dangerous Al Qaeda types were for her country and she was determined to see that they could not and would not take over.
In staking a position against Islamic extremism that was in many ways even tougher than the position taken by President Musharaff, it was clear that the extremists could not let her regain power in Pakistan.

So even though today’s carnage was on the other side of the planet, it really did strike close to home, and all Americans should be worried about what happens now. The way Americans can deal with this crisis is to carefully consider their vote. This election is about the same issue the last election was about… the War on Terror. It’s not about health care, and as important as our economy is, it’s not about that either.

We need someone who has the strength of mind and the resolve to see through an ugly fight that will have to be fought. It’s not a choice. The people who killed Bhutto would kill you too, and if the next president gives them a chance, they will do it.

In the end, there is nobody with the strength of mind and the resolve that Gibson talks about, amongst the crop of Democrats running for the White House. It’s just not there. More, there are a few running under the Republican banner, most notably Ron Paul, who don’t either.

I’ve seen an awful lot of commentary today, as regards the fallout of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on American politics. At the end of the day, however, the only questions that really matter as regards the political fallout for the United States, and for that matter the remainder of the world, are the points that Gibson raises in his ‘My Words’ segment last evening.

Michelle notes Andy McCarthy:(Michelle didn’t do up a link for that)

A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country’s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent.

President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy — or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy — to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine!

If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.

I doubt much of anyone was considering her in the kind of light that McCarthy projects this as.  All politics end up being focused on the path of least evil. Like it or not Bhutto, for all her faults… and I agree there were many… was the best path… and that’s why she got killed by Al Quieda.  And that’s soemthing that Michelle notes by way of quoting Wretchard:

Political murder kills not only the candidates, but the process to which they belong. Pakistani politics might not miss Benazir Bhutto as an individual, but it will surely want for the elections in general.

Elections have rarely been able in and of themselves to bring about stable democratic rule. Normally things are the other way round. It is the existence of the elements of democracy that have brought elections into existence. Whether those elements now exist in Pakistan is the question…The next few days will show whether the Pakistani Army — for it will surely not be the Taliban — can rededicate itself to electoral democracy. Pakistan needs its George Washington. Unfortunately it only has its Pervez Musharraf.

I’m actually encouraged by the noises currently coming from Musharraf, but we’ll see.

How successfully the elements Wretchard speaks of are maintained will in the end decide if Radical Islam takes hold in the government there.

Update: (Bit)

Boortz, who is supposed to me on vacation agrees with my take here:

Then there’s President Bush’s statement after the killing of Benazir Bhutto was wimpish .. at best. Not once did he invoke the dreaded “Islam” or “Islmanic” word. What happened to Bhutto yesterday goes to the core of this menacing religion. Pakistani President Perves Musharraf had the guts to say “Islamic extremists.” George Bush did not. Just remember, these people didn’t do anything to Benazir Bhutto that they wouldn’t like to do to tens of millions of Americans. The threat is only going to get worse until we start calling Islam what it truly is … a glorified death cult. If Muslims want to change this perception then let them stop whining about their negative image and start doing something positive to change it.

Memeorandum has a fair group of reax this morning. I expect this will dominate the news util after the new year. Come to think on it now, I wonder if that wasn’t part of the deal… I wonder if the killing wasn’t timed so as to maximize impact on our news cycles here. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was.

The Clinton’s have become prolific, albeit rather inept, liars.    Steve Gilbert, Sweetness & Light, compares Mrs. Clinton’s press release to her autobiography:

She just can’t help herself:

I came to know Mrs. Bhutto over many years, during her tenures as Prime Minister and during her years in exile.

Sure she did.

From Hillary’s (ghostwritten) autobiography, Living History, pp 322-4:

If Mrs. Clinton had any real experience, she would cite.  Rather as she has none, she forced to invent it.   How sad.  How much just like a Clinton.

Ann Althouse obviously has a much greater willingness to parse Mrs. Clinton in detail than I do.  Professor Althouse catches this snippet of Clintonspeak:

Writes David Linkin (linked by Stephen Kaus). He’s talking about Hillary Clinton in a maddening exchange with David Gregory. What struck me is this. She starts by deflecting Gregory’s characterization of the way her campaign has treated Barack Obama. She calls it “inaccurate,” and when Gregory asks what was unfair about it, she says, “I’m going to let voters decide that, not the press.” Get it? Not the press.Then, referring to her status as “a proven leader,” she says, “That’s what The Des Moines Register said….” In other words, the press. She then proceeds to answer every probing question with the Des Moines Register:

So while Mrs. Clinton doesn’t answer to the press, she quotes the press whenever convenient.

In the OTB Caption contest.

Attention Bitsblog readers in and around Northeast PA… (Which is actually a town in in north WEST PA)

Anything going on for New Year’s Eve Fireworks around Erie PA this year? I’m not finding anything on the web.

Leave some feedback, please.

Ann Althouse makes the shocking discovery that NBC News has nothing.   Ann vlogs about NBC’s programming after it was known that Benazir Bhutto had died.   

It is even worse.   Worse than having nothing, NBC News has Keith Olbermann.

Hat Tip:  Ann Althouse.