The Unravelling of American Empire in Arabia

How will America handle the fall of its Middle East empire?

By Peter Oborne Last updated: February 24th, 2011

TELEGRAPH

"2011 will mark the removal of many of America’s client regimes in the Arab world. It is highly unlikely, however, that events will thereafter take the tidy path the White House would prefer. Far from being inspired by Twitter, a great many of Arab people who have driven the sensational events of recent weeks are illiterate. They have been impelled into action by mass poverty and unemployment, allied to a sense of disgust at vast divergences of wealth and grotesque corruption."

Empires can collapse in the course of a generation. At the end of the 16th century, the Spanish looked dominant. Twenty-five years later, they were on their knees, over-extended, bankrupt, and incapable of coping with the emergent maritime powers of Britain and Holland. The British empire reached its fullest extent in 1930. Twenty years later, it was all over.

Today, it is reasonable to ask whether the United States, seemingly invincible a decade ago, will follow the same trajectory. America has suffered two convulsive blows in the last three years. The first was the financial crisis of 2008, whose consequences are yet to be properly felt. Although the immediate cause was the debacle in the mortgage market, the underlying problem was chronic imbalance in the economy.

For a number of years, America has been incapable of funding its domestic programmes and overseas commitments without resorting to massive help from China, its global rival. China has a pressing motive to assist: it needs to sustain US demand in order to provide a market for its exports and thus avert an economic crisis of its own. This situation is the contemporary equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the doctrine which prevented nuclear war breaking out between America and Russia.
Unlike MAD, this pact is unsustainable. But Barack Obama has not sought to address the problem. Instead, he responded to the crisis with the same failed policies that caused the trouble in the first place: easy credit and yet more debt. It is certain that America will, in due course, be forced into a massive adjustment both to its living standards at home and its commitments abroad.

This matters because, following the second convulsive blow, America’s global interests are under threat on a scale never before seen. Since 1956, when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pulled the plug on Britain and France over Suez, the Arab world has been a US domain. At first, there were promises that it would tolerate independence and self-determination. But this did not last long; America chose to govern through brutal and corrupt dictators, supplied with arms, military training and advice from Washington.

The momentous importance of the last few weeks is that this profitable, though morally bankrupt, arrangement appears to be coming to an end. One of the choicest ironies of the bloody and macabre death throes of the regime in Libya is that Colonel Gaddafi would have been wiser to have stayed out of the US sphere of influence. When he joined forces with George Bush and Tony Blair five years ago, the ageing dictator was leaping on to a bandwagon that was about to grind to a halt.
In Washington, President Obama has not been stressing this aspect of affairs. Instead, after hesitation, he has presented the recent uprisings as democratic and even pro-American, indeed a triumph for the latest methods of Western communication such as Twitter and Facebook. Many sympathetic commentators have therefore claimed that the Arab revolutions bear comparison with the 1989 uprising of the peoples of Eastern Europe against Soviet tyranny.

I would guess that the analogy is apt. Just as 1989 saw the collapse of the Russian empire in Eastern Europe, so it now looks as if 2011 will mark the removal of many of America’s client regimes in the Arab world. It is highly unlikely, however, that events will thereafter take the tidy path the White House would prefer. Far from being inspired by Twitter, a great many of Arab people who have driven the sensational events of recent weeks are illiterate. They have been impelled into action by mass poverty and unemployment, allied to a sense of disgust at vast divergences of wealth and grotesque corruption. It is too early to chart the future course of events with confidence, but it seems unlikely that these liberated peoples will look to Washington and New York as their political or economic model.
The great question is whether America will take its diminished status gracefully, or whether it will lash out, as empires in trouble are historically prone to do. Here the White House response gives cause for concern. American insensitivity is well demonstrated in the case of Raymond Davis, the CIA man who shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore. Hillary Clinton is trying to bully Pakistan into awarding Davis diplomatic immunity. This is incredible behaviour, which shows that the US continues to regard itself as above the law. Were President Zardari, already seen by his fellow countrymen as a pro-American stooge, to comply, his government would almost certainly fall.

Or take President Obama’s decision last week to veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Even America itself accepts that these settlements are illegal. At a time when the Middle East is already mutinous, this course of action looks mad.

The biggest problem is that America wants democracy, but only on its own terms. A very good example of this concerns the election of a Hamas government in Gaza in 2006. This should have been a hopeful moment for the Middle East peace process: the election of a government with the legitimacy and power to end violence. But America refused to engage with Hamas, just as it has refused to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or to acknowledge the well-founded regional aspirations of Iran.

The history of the Arab world since the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate in 1922 can be divided schematically into two periods: open colonial rule under the British and French, followed by America’s invisible empire after the Second World War. Now we are entering a third epoch, when Arab nations, and in due course others, will assert their independence. It is highly unlikely that all of them will choose a path that the Americans want. From the evidence available, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are muddled and incapable of grasping the nature of current events.
This is where the British, who have deep historical connections with the region, and whose own loss of empire is still within living memory, ought to be able to offer wise and practical advice. So far the Prime Minister, a neophyte in foreign affairs, has not done so. His regional tour of Middle Eastern capitals with a caravan of arms dealers made sense only in terms of the broken settlement of the last 50 years. His speeches might have been scripted by Tony Blair a decade ago, with the identical evasions and hypocrisies. There was no acknowledgment of the great paradigm shift in global politics.

The links between the US and British defence, security and foreign policy establishments are so close that perhaps it is no longer possible for any British government to act independently. When challenged, our ministers always say that we use our influence “behind the scenes” with American allies, rather than challenge them in the open. But this, too, is a failed tactic. I am told, for example, that William Hague tried hard to persuade Hillary Clinton not to veto last week’s Security Council resolution, but was ignored. It is time we became a much more candid friend, because the world is changing faster than we know.

A Closet Muslim President and a Clueless Secretary of State

Barack Obama and Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner







This is the Left Wing President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, talking about revolution to the Russians, obviously hosable, but you would not want her anywhere near a political office.

___________________________________

American neutrality on the Falklands is a symptom of US foreign policy drift

By James Corum World Last updated: February 26th, 2010
Telegraph

James Corum is Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia. He has taught at American and British staff colleges and is the author of seven books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.

The Bush administration got a lot of things wrong – but at least they usually had some idea of who America’s adversaries were and who America’s friends were. For example, Bush’s policy of maintaining the special relationship with Britain was a simple recognition of the close bonds of alliance, friendship and interests that the British and Americans have had since World War I.

In contrast, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are apparently clueless about some of the most basic aspects of foreign policy: supporting one’s friends and fencing in one’s adversaries. The declaration of neutrality on the issue of the sovereignty of the Falklands issued by the US State Department is clear proof of the uselessness of the Obama administration.

In the grand scheme of things it makes little sense for America to give moral support to the Kirchner government in Argentina. Kirchner is no friend of the US and Kirchner’s government is in deep domestic trouble for its gross mismanagement of the economy and its attempts to suppress the press criticism of the regime at home. One has to wonder what benefit America gets out of hurting Britain on this issue. Perhaps Obama thinks that the more Leftist Latin American regimes will somehow approve of the US. If that is the case, he is truly mistaken, as most Latin American nations dislike the Argentineans, and have little sympathy for the mess Argentina got into over the Falklands.

But this mess is just typical of the drift in US foreign policy – if one can say that it even HAS a coherent foreign policy these days. As I said, at the core of the problem is a simple inability to recognise and support our friends over adversaries. In his first year in office Obama made numerous apologies for America’s past to the Third World, he effusively greeted the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, he bowed low to the Saudi ruler, and called for a “reset” of relations with Russia – all the while implying that America was at fault for all these problems. At the same time he rudely undermined the security of America’s Eastern European allies by cancelling the ballistic missile defence with no notice and no prior discussion, he failed to push for a free trade agreement with Colombia – America’s strongest ally in South America – and he supported Chavez’s allies when they tried (luckily unsuccessfully) to unseat a democratic and pro-US government in Honduras.

A big part of the problem is a Secretary of State who is a lightweight as far as foreign policy is concerned. Obama brought Hillary Clinton into the cabinet for domestic policy considerations. He needed to put Mrs Clinton – and her husband – under tight control. As a powerful senator from New York, she would probably have taken over as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party and been able to challenge Obama’s “Chicago Gang” for control of the party.

Despite the acclaim that America’s mainstream media has heaped on Hillary Clinton over the years, her foreign policy background and experience before becoming Secretary of State was to accompany her husband on foreign trips and preside over “first wives” dinners for the spouses of visiting heads of state. One learns a lot about protocol and ceremonies – but this is no preparation for the real work of making policy. Clinton has no experience or education in foreign policy. She speaks no foreign languages and has never lived abroad. She lacks the intellectual temperament to be a foreign policy leader. Like Obama, she has long surrounded herself with sycophants.

On assuming office, Obama’s vision of foreign policy was simple: he would repudiate past American policies and the whole world would melt before the president’s charm. The administration somehow thought that we really didn’t have enemies with agendas completely hostile to our own – there were just countries that had become offended by US actions and they would happily cooperate with America as soon as the evil Republicans were gone. Well, it hasn’t worked – and there was no Plan B.
With a president overwhelmed by domestic problems, Hillary Clinton has failed to step in and set a foreign policy vision. Simply put, she does not have the brains or the experience to develop a coherent foreign policy vision for America. This is how we get policy mistakes on issues such as the sovereignty of the Falklands.

MSNBC Buffoon, Chris Matthews, and Feminist Revenge

It's No Longer Just About Hillary
By Froma Harrop Real Clear Politics

After hearing her name placed in nomination at the Democrats' convention next week, Hillary Clinton will no doubt urge her followers to support Barack Obama. What good that gesture will do for the Obama candidacy remains to be seen. Clinton has already made it several times, but a new Pew Research Center poll shows that 28 percent of her primary voters do not intend to vote for Obama, a number virtually unchanged from June.

Of special concern are women, particularly older ones, whom in the past could be counted on to vote for whatever Democrat was running for president. Many remain scandalized by the sexist attacks on Clinton during the recent campaign. A stubborn 18 percent of Clinton's female voters vow to back McCain, according to a poll for Lifetime television networks. Another 6 percent plan to support neither major-party candidate.


Perhaps Clinton does not possess the magic wand to move her troops. The storyline goes that many women disappointed by Clinton's loss or angry at the nasty campaign just needed time "to heal." Once Hillary gave them the nudge, they'd get with the program.

Thing is, it's no longer about Hillary for many of them. I sat in on a group of high-powered Clinton supporters gathering in New York last week to create a nonpartisan group called The New Agenda. There was little discussion of the current campaign.

The New Agenda's agenda is to look out for women's political interests where the Democratic Party and old-line feminist organizations had failed. The attendees reserved special fury for the Democratic National Committee and its passivity before the misogynistic carnival. One of their specifics is getting MSNBC jester Chris Matthews fired -- and if he intends to run for the Senate from Pennsylvania, to end that idea.

Every member has her own plans for November, including for a few, voting for Obama. Co-founder Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street exec and Clinton fundraiser, told me, "I won't vote for Obama, but I'm not sure what I'll do." Cynthia Ruccia, a Democratic activist from Columbus, Ohio, who twice ran against Republican John Kasich, is supporting McCain -- and organizing other Democrats in her swing state to do likewise.

The McCain camp has noticed. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and McCain's adviser, met with Siskind in New York. She flew to Columbus to confer with Ruccia, Nancy Hopkins, another New Agenda founder, and 75 other miffed Democratic women. (Hopkins is the MIT biologist who famously protested a suggestion by then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers that boys might be innately better at science than girls.)

DNC chairman Howard Dean has called Ruccia twice. "He was just waking up to the thought that women around the country were upset over the treatment of Hillary," she told me. Ruccia tends to doubt that putting Clinton's name to a roll-call vote will mollify many of the female holdouts. "The train left the station a long time ago," she said.

The New Agenda wants to become a women's-voice alternative for the National Organization for Women and NARAL, which they see as moribund and appendages of the Democratic leadership. Members note that when rapper Ludacris sang a pro-Obama ballad calling Hillary "an irrelevant b-," the president of NOW didn't get out of bed to complain.

For many of these women, whatever nice things Clinton says about Obama in Denver won't matter much. They have decided that they can live with McCain, and they're already inoculated against the crude anatomical references that left-wing bloggers will send their way. (There's not one they haven't heard.) Hillary can't do much to change their feelings -- even if she wanted to.

Hillary Campaign $31 Million in Debt (CORRECTED)

Corrected Item: Clinton's campaign debts at $20.88 million
This is an item correcting the campaign debts of the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton as previously reported here.

Due to a mathematical error, the $11.4 million she had previously loaned herself was counted twice, producing an incorrect total of nearly $31 million.

The actual total debt of her campaign, as reported in the campaign finance filing for April, is $10 million in loans to herself plus $9.48 million in unpaid bills.

Additionally, campaign officials said the New York senator gave herself another $1.4 million loan in May, producing a total current debt of $20.88 million. But the latest loan that occurred in May will not show up on finance filings until next month.

The other numbers for Sen. Clinton and other candidates' financial reports stand as written in the original item.

Money shocker! Hillary Clinton's campaign debt soars to $31 million

No wonder Sen. Hillary Clinton was so late filing her required campaign financial reports Tuesday night. Her political team didn't want the shocking news in it to overshadow her lopsided thumping of Sen. Barack Obama in Kentucky.

Now comes the morning after, pay-up time. Clinton's campaign debt has now soared to nearly $31 million, according to numbers crunched early this morning by The Times' campaign finance guru, Dan Morain.

She added another $9.5 million in unpaid bills to venders this past month alone, pushing her total debt to venders and herself to the new astronomical figure, about a 50% debt increase in one month.

According to a campaign release put out Tuesday evening as election returns revealed her big win in Kentucky and loss in Oregon, Clinton raised "approximately $22 million" from other people in April. The release also touted that $10 million had poured in within 48 hours of another lopsided Clinton victory over Obama, that one in Pennsylvania, and said it was the second best fundraising month of her entire campaign.

But the number collected is actually closer to $21 million and the release also neglected to mention that she spent $28.9 million, nearly $8 million more than she took in. She used personal loans to make up part of the difference. She also delayed payments to consultants. Including the $9.5 million in unpaid bills from April, she owes consultants and other venders $19.5 million.

Not to mention the total $11.4 million she has loaned herself.

The likely Democratic nominee Obama continues to vastly out-raise Sen. John McCain, but the presumed Republican nominee is closing the money gap with the significant help of his party, according to new campaign finance reports filed Tuesday.

McCain disclosed he had $21.7 million in the bank at the end of April, compared to....

...Obama’s $46.5 million. But the Republican National Committee is proving to be a real financial equalizer for the Arizona senator with the notorious disaste for fundraising.

With significant time and help from President George W. Bush, the RNC ended April with $40.6 million in the bank—10 times more than the Democratic National Committee, which had a modest $4.4 million in the bank.

The Democratic Party's fund-raising also was a fraction of the Republicans' in April--a mere $4.7 million, compared to $19.8 million for the RNC.

The DNC’s cash in the bank actually fell from its March total, which was $5.3 million. Democrats have tapped former Vice President Al Gore in an effort to draw donors to party fund-raisers.
Party money can be used to help the nominees in a variety of direct and indirect ways during the general election campaign. Parties can pay for voter registration, voter turn-out efforts and advertising.

McCain’s primary fight has long been over, which allowed him to limit spending to $6.4 million last month. Democratic front-runner Obama raised $31.9 million last month and spent $36.4 million, according to his report filed late Tuesday.

McCain disclosed he received $17.8 million in contributions in April, pushing his total receipts to $100.4 million for the whole campaign, less than half Obama's total of $266.6 million since January 2007.

The freshman Illinois Democrat scooped up $31.9 million last month, a 20% drop from the $40 million he raised in March. He collected $55 million back in February, which seems millions of dollars away.

--Andrew Malcolm LA Times

Hillary's Horse

Hillary ekes out a victory in Indiana, but is trounced in North Carolina. There is no momentum and a bruised candidate is downing a Crown Royal or two in some hotel room. Tomorrow the reality of the fall will set in. The race is over and Hillary lost.

Hats off to Obama

It is election day in South Carolina. The process continues and the way it looks from here is that in the general election, Barack Obama would be the strongest Democratic candidate. Doug on the previous thread posted this:

doug said...

Obama running against two phoniest Democrat losers on the Planet.
---
Weak End Update [Mark Steyn]
This is pretty good knockabout:

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork - something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and
Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant,
'What's your biggest weakness?'"

Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School.
"If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street.
Sometimes they don't want to be helped.
It's terrible.'"

Game, set, match, Obama!

Sat Jan 19, 03:22:00 AM EST

Hillary Dancing Towards Defeat

It may be too close to call, but not too close to feel. It feels like Obama to me. Hillary stripped of a few of her seven veils of inevitability will not be pretty. It does not look good for her.

_____________________

Is this the end of the Clintons?
Posted by Toby Harnden on 02 Jan 2008 at 07:04
Telegraph

Was I witnessing the last throes of the 15-year-long Clinton political psychodrama in Ames, Iowa yesterday? Here’s my newspaper piece on Hillary’s final plea for support in tomorrow’s caucuses. The case she made was far from compelling – that she’s human (honest) and that she has unrivalled experience. Both propositions are debatable and she was much less compelling than Barack Obama and John Edwards have been in recent days. She seems to have had some kind of speech therapy to create a softy-soft voice that made me long for the grating shrillness of yore.

The Obama campaign is supremely confident that victory is within its grasp. “So what?” I hear you ask. Iowa is a sparsely populated, unrepresentative state in which on the Democratic side only 124,000 people caucused in 2004. Surely it can’t matter that much? Don’t bet on it. If Hillary loses tomorrow, her presidential bid is likely to collapse like a house of cards.

For all the arguments against Iowa having such disproportionate influence – and Christopher Hitchens airs some good ones with characteristic aplomb here – it does mean that pre-packaged, calculating politicians like Hillary are scutinised and exposed (we’ll see if Mitt Romney is too).

All the money and establishment backing she had behind her couldn’t prevent her getting caught out by voters asking her about Iran and Iran, discovered planting softball questions and rumbled for having advisers forwarding smear emails about Obama. She tried to remain aloof and away from the voters but it didn’t work – if anything, the seeds of her demise (if that’s what it turns out to be) lay in that strategy.

When an incumbent-style campaign is built on a sense of inevitability, it comes under huge strain when hit by an early defeat. The bubble is burst – which is what will happen if Hillary loses Iowa to Obama in Iowa (if she loses to Edwards, the picture will be less clear).

Of course, if Hillary pulls through then it’s difficult to see how Obama and Edwards can beat her – this is absolutely their best shot. Adam Nagourney of the “New York Times” argues here that Iowa might mean nothing. That’s possible. But my hunch is that it will end up meaning everything.

All Politics is Dirty. The Clinton 3% Solution.

Barack Obama is the recipient of a very tough political strategy from the Clinton campaign. The strategy is basic: Peel off marginal constituencies. It works best in a cumulative and sequential assault.

First, remind everyone that Obama is black, that will cost him let's say 3% who will never vote black. Next, remind everyone he is or has been Muslim, another 3%. He is young and inexperienced, 3%. He admittedly used drugs and until recently was still a chain smoker, 3%. Those four together make for a 12% advantage. That is a very big deal and lethally effective. Obama has almost no defense to such a strategy.

DECEMBER 17, 2007, 9:45 PM
Kerrey Tries to Explain Obama ‘Muslim’ Remarks
By KATE PHILLIPS NYT

Yet another day, yet another Clinton campaign surrogate explaining remarks made about one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top rivals, Senator Barack Obama.

Let’s step back for a minute. Former Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat from Nebraska and president of the New School in New York who has just endorsed Senator Clinton, said this in a dispatch (it’s the second item in the linked post) this morning from Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post:

“The fact that he’s African-American is a big deal. I do expect and hope that Hillary is the nominee of the party. But I hope he’s used in some way. If he happens to be the nominee of the party and ends up being president, I think his capacity to influence in a positive way . . . the behavior of a lot of underperforming black youth today is very important, and he’s the only one who can reach them.”

Kerrey continued: “It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

It’s probably not something that appeals to him? We don’t think we’ve seen anywhere that Mr. Obama has disowned his name, and in fact, he recently took heat from the Clinton campaign and Senator Clinton herself for talking about his breadth of experience — uh, foreign experience — by citing the fact that he spent part of his childhood growing up in Indonesia.

Well, Mr. Kerrey’s comments rippled around on Monday, in part because the Muslim-mentions permeate the Internet and are pervasive among the derisive comments on many blogs, including our own here at the Caucus. Mr. Obama’s father was indeed Muslim, from Kenya, but the senator is a Christian, as he says over and over — an especially important point in regions like Iowa or South Carolina where Christians form an influential part of the Democratic voting base. And an especially important point given the anti-Muslim sentiments that rival those of anti-Mormonism when it comes to Republican Mitt Romney, though granted for different reasons, that waft through various Internet venues (including our own).

So today, CNN’s correspondent John King asked Mr. Kerrey in the SitRoom about those comments:

Mr. King: Now, senator, you say that at a time when Barack Obama has to go out from time to time in his events and tell people “I’m a Christian. I’m a Christian,” because he thinks there’s a smear campaign going on under the radar about who he is, trying to maybe peel some people away who might get worried about a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.

So some would say this is cynical — a new Hillary Clinton supporter doing this to try to stir this up again.

Mr. Kerrey: Well, it’s now. … And I think that he is qualified. And the two things that I liked very
much about him, that I think will add a tremendous amount of value if he becomes the nominee and gets elected is the fact that as an African-American he can speak in an authentic way to underperforming black youth, who I think will follow his example.

And, secondly, I do — there is a smear campaign going on. And people are acting as if he’s an Islamic Manchurian candidate. And I feel it’s actually a substantial strength. He is a Christian.
Both he and his family are Christians. They’ve chosen Christianity. But that connection to Indonesia and a billion Muslims on this Earth I think is a real strength and will add an awful lot of value in his foreign policy efforts.

Mr. King: Well, you have to know when you’re about to say something like that, that some will twist it, especially in this age of the Internet and blogs. Did you think about that before you talked about it, or is it Bob Kerrey saying this is what I think; I’m going to say it?

Mr. Kerrey: No, it’s something — by the way, I’ve told Barack Obama when I’ve met with him. It’s something that I’ve spoken about before. So this is not something that just sort of came out in the head-birth (right term, my question?) out there in Iowa. I’ve thought about it a great deal. I’ve watched the blogs, try to say that you can’t trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa.

I feel quite opposite. I think it’s a tremendous strength whether he’s in the United States Senate or whether he’s in the White House. I think it’s a tremendous asset.

O.K. Reel back to last week. New Hampshire’s William Shaheen, spouse of Jeanne Shaheen, Senate candidate and former governor; he is one of the Clinton campaign’s co-chairmen who stepped down after the Clinton camp disavowed his speculation in an interview about how the Republicans would use Mr. Obama’s admitted drug use — in his youthful days, uh, into his college years, doing marijuana and cocaine — against the Democrats. It played along the riding theme that Senator Clinton is espousing again and again that she is “battle-tested,” has no surprises in her background because it’s all out there and has been vetted.

Then this week, Mr. Kerrey — however in character as he is wont to speak his mind — raises the Muslim-madrassa-middlename Hussein of Senator Obama.

Thematic? Who knows. Code? Orchestrated? Anyone’s guess. But let’s think about the cumulative effect. That is what matters. Only words are heard, seen, read … over and over. Playing into wild rumors on the Internet that the Washington Post has already been criticized for reporting a few short weeks ago.

We asked the Obama campaign for comment on Mr. Kerrey’s comments to CNN. No response coming soon, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, we’ll wait and listen and watch. Whisper campaigns reverberate off the buzz words.

Hillary's 911 Moment. Very Presidential.

Hillary was very cool under fire. A nut-job duct taped road flairs around his waist and held a store front campaign office hostage. Hillary was in Washington, not reading stories to children when it happened. According to MSNBC, she looked very presidential when she spoke to the nation later in the evening. Hillary used a microphone in lieu of a bullhorn.

Hillary did look very snappy during the evening chat to calm the nation. It was after cocktail hour, so I was already quite calm, but the background during the live talk had a darkened White House feel. You could almost picture Marine One off to the side.

I am very relieved.

Here is how the New York Times saw the moment:

Analysis: Clinton Calm in Hostage Crisis

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 1, 2007
Filed at 6:39 a.m. ET

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) -- When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for -- namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.

''I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well,'' she declared as she stood alone at the microphone.

Little more than three hours later, just in time for the 11 p.m. local news, Clinton reaffirmed that perspective. In New Hampshire, she embraced her staffers and their families, and lauded the law enforcement officials who brought a siege at her local campaign headquarters to a peaceful conclusion.

It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.

Aides said Clinton was home Friday afternoon, getting ready to deliver a partisan speech in Virginia to the Democratic National Committee, when she was told three workers in her Rochester, N.H., headquarters had been taken hostage by a man claiming to have a bomb.

Police later arrested 47-year-old Leeland Eisenberg of Somersworth, N.H., and charged him with kidnapping and reckless conduct. They said he walked into the office, demanding to speak to Clinton and complaining about inadequate access to mental care.

The aides said Clinton immediately canceled her trip and began working the phones. She later told reporters she had New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a fellow Democrat, on the phone in eight minutes.

Over the ensuing five hours, as a state trooper negotiated with the suspect and hostages were released one-by-one, Clinton continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials.

''I knew I was bugging a lot of these people, it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that I knew everything that was going on so I was in a position to tell the families, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that they asked of me,'' the New York senator said.

At the same time, the woman striving to move from former first lady to the first female president was eager to convey that she knew the traditional lines of command and control in a crisis, even if the events inside the storefront on North Main Street were far short of a world calamity.

''They were the professionals, they were in charge of this situation, whatever they asked me or my campaign to do is what we would do,'' Clinton said.

Along with taking charge while giving the professionals free rein, Clinton offered up a third dimension to her crisis character: humanity. She said she felt ''grave concern'' when she first heard the news of the hostage-taking.

''It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time,'' Clinton said.

It was a thawing moment for a stoic figure who once snapped that she opted for professional life instead of staying home to bake cookies.

She buttressed it with one final message. Clinton sought to use the sad moment as a national teaching opportunity, another skill often employed by presidents.

She paid tribute to the thousands of believers who set aside their lives every four years so they can propel presidential campaigns on little more than blood, sweat and tears.

''They believe in our future. They work around the clock. They are so committed to their cause, and I just want to commend every one of them from every campaign who really makes what is a sacrifice and a commitment,'' Clinton said. ''A lot of them postpone school, leave their families, move across the country, and I'm so grateful for them every single day, and I'm especially just relieved to have this situation end so peacefully without anyone being injured.

'Bomber' takes hostages at Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters
BY STEPHANIE GASKELL IN ROCHESTER, N.H., AND
CORKY SIEMASZKO IN NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Saturday, December 1st 2007, 4:00 AM

A deranged man claiming to have a bomb invaded one of Sen. Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign offices Friday, took a half-dozen hostages - and kept cops at bay for five hours before meekly surrendering.
When 47-year-old Leeland Eisenberg finally gave up, he stripped off the device he had taped to his waist - harmless road flares - then lay facedown on the street before heavily armed cops.
It was a dramatic ending to a five-hour ordeal that transfixed the country and forced the Democratic front-runner to cancel a speech for party faithful in Virginia.
It also cast the spotlight on a disturbed man with a history of mental illness and substance abuse who moved to tiny Rochester, N.H., from Massachusetts to escape a troubled past.
Clinton, who flew to New Hampshire from Washington to hold a press conference in Portsmouth, praised her staffers for their courage and "coolness under pressure" and thanked law enforcement for getting them out unharmed.
"This was a tense and difficult day for my campaign and me," she said. "It affected me not only because these were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother. It was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger - everything at the same time. I am grateful it has ended so well."
Clinton said she kept the hostages' families posted on developments during the day, getting information from authorities by "what seemed like bugging them from minute to minute to minute."
She later met with the freed hostages and their families.
It was the first time in recent memory that hostages had been taken at a presidential candidate's office, and it prompted calls of concern from Clinton's rivals, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)

...(the rest here)

Hillary and Rudy Slipping... Now Another New Yorker?

Bloomberg Teams with Nancy Reagan

Monday, November 12, 2007 12:17 PM

By: Newsmax Staff

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is meeting this week with Nancy Reagan and hosting a fundraiser for the Ronald Reagan Library — and political observers say the link between the two would be a boost for Bloomberg if he runs for president.

Ronald Reagan’s name is frequently invoked on the GOP campaign trail and Republican candidates sought to link themselves to his legacy during the first GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., in May.

If Bloomberg does decide to run as an independent, “his only real chance of winning is to attract people from across the spectrum,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told the New York Sun.

“This certainly is one way to get the attention of Republicans. There are going to be a certain number of Republicans disgruntled with the nominee, no matter who it is.”

Bloomberg left the Republican Party in June, sparking speculation that he was positioning himself for a presidential run as an independent.

Bloomberg and Nancy Reagan share an interest in stem cell research. Last year Bloomberg donated $100 million to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, much of which was earmarked to fund stem cell research, Reuters reported.

Nancy Reagan became a vocal proponent for the research after her husband developed Alzheimer’s disease, which is opposed by many conservatives.

Political consultant Joseph Mercurio told the Sun that Bloomberg’s meeting with the former first lady at his Manhattan townhouse and the Reagan Library fundraiser are part of a schedule that increasingly suggests he is eyeing a White House run.

He will speak Friday at a National League of Cities convention in New Orleans, and is planning a trip to the Bali in Indonesia to attend a U.N. summit on climate change in December.

Hosting the Reagan Library fundraiser and being photographed with Nancy Reagan, Mercurio said, “sounds like a very good thing to be doing if you are a presidential candidate.”

© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Al Qaeda Defeated in Anbar. Al-Maliki Suspicious. Al Gore Leads over Hillary.

Remind you of Hillary, just a little bit?

All true. Good news from our favorite province: Anbar 'almost' free from al Qaeda's grip Washington Times , but even better news for those entertained by Democratic politics. Strange as it seems, Iraq may not be quite as large in the coming presidential election as once thought. More and more concern about the economy, energy, environment and immigration seem to be ratcheting Iraq down the political thermometer. And how about our own Nurse Ratched, was there a little bit of a melt down in the campaign of Hillary Clinton?

It seems as if a lot of Democrats think so:

Al Gore Leads Top Democratic Candidates in "Blind Bio" Poll
Submitted by Julie on November 2, 2007 - 7:50pm. Elections 2008 News Politics U.S. Politics

Zogby International recently conducted a "blind bio" telephone poll which revealed that former Vice President Al Gore is currently favored over leading Democratic candidates by likely Democratic Party voters across the nation.

In a "blind bio" poll, candidates names are not used. Instead, their names are replaced with a brief description of their biographies.

The poll showed that when likely Democratic voters were given descriptions of the top three Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, along with the biography of Al Gore, Gore won with 35% support. Clinton captured 24%, Obama snagged 22%, and Edwards trailed far behind with just 10% support. Gore's bio was the top choice for both men (39%) and women (31%)m and was most favored by younger voters.

Self-described liberal Democrats strongly favored Al Gore's bio (43%), over those of Clinton (21%), Edwards (17%), and Obama (12%). Moderate Democratic voters, who are believe to most closely represent the choices of likely Democratic voters overall, also showed the greatest preference for Gore's bio at 36%.

The poll was commissioned by AlGore.org, an organization dedicated to getting Al Gore to run for the presidency, and was conducted from October 24-27, 2007. It included 527 likely Democratic voters nationwide, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.

Thinking the Unthinkable. China and the US Dollar. (Part Two), The Clinton Effect.

Comment: Make no mistake about it, the Clintons think they have found a winning strategy with China. Hillary unloaded big time at last night's Democratic AFL-CIO debate. There are plenty of areas to clean up between the US and China relationship. No part of the relationship is more perilous than the financial partnership that has evolved. It is too big and too critically unbalanced. It should not be manipulated to serve political ambitions. The Clintons are playing with fire.

Hillary Clinton has called for legislation to prevent America being "held hostage to economic decisions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo". With foreigners controlling 44% of the US national debt, America is acutely vulnerable. One US currency strategist has said, the Telegraph reports, that Clinton is sending a message to the US Senate as legislation is prepared for the August session.

"The words are alarming and unambiguous. This carries a clear political threat and could have very serious consequences at a time when the credit markets are already afraid of contagion from the subprime troubles," .

Lay Off Or Suffer The Consequences, China Tells US
FN Arena

China has often been curt in the past year when dealing with constant US pressure to allow the renminbi to revalue at a more rapid pace. Yesterday Beijing turned the heat up another notch.

China's trade surplus with the US continues to grow, and its holding of US dollars continues to grow, despite all the softly-softly fiscal and monetary measures taken by the Chinese government over the last few years. The renminbi is pegged within a trading range against the US dollar, at a level which represents significant undervaluation. This has allowed China's export industry to explode into the force it is today.

The US is the largest buyer of Chinese exports. The US has also outsourced much of its production process to China in order to take advantage of minimal wage costs. US companies have invested in the Chinese growth machine. In turn, China has parked the vast majority of its foreign reserves - garnered from its global export sales - into US Treasuries. As Americans have lapped up Chinese exports, the US has built an historically large current account deficit. In short, China funds US spending.

The result has been the loss of US jobs in traditional manufacturing industries and, as far as the US is concerned, a perilous debt situation. It also hasn't helped that recently many Chinese exports, from toothpaste to toys, have found to be compromised in quality and in some cases downright dangerous. There has been a build up of support on Capitol Hill from both sides of government to introduce protectionist measures as a means of forcing Beijing's hand. This has not been well received.

The wave of support is building momentum as presidential favourite Hillary Clinton hitches her wagon to the anti-China train. This now has Beijing very concerned.

"Thanks to the trade surplus, China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars, and China's foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest, are mostly in US dollars," said He Fan, an official at the leading Communist Party body the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in the China Daily. "Such a big sum, a considerable portion of which is in the form of US treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the US dollar as an international currency.

"But the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell US dollars once the renminbi appreciates dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the US dollar against other currencies."

In other words, you force an appreciation - we trash your currency. And China has every opportunity to do so simply by selling out of its massive US treasury holdings, just as the likes of Russia, Switzerland and several other countries have begun to do.

But what Fan is most eager to point out is that the real loser in any attempt to force Beijing's hand will actually be the US itself.

If the renminbi appreciates too fast, Chinese exports will be reduced. The US will then need to turn elsewhere for its necessities and may not find cheaper. The US international balance will not be improved.

If China loses market share, economic growth will slow, thus reducing demand for US imports. Neither will this improve the trade deficit.

If the renminbi appreciates, profits from US investment in China will be eroded.

"As a matter of fact," said Fan, "the US has more to gain if China maintains the renminbi at a stable level".

The London Daily Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes Chinese state media is calling any move by Beijing to start selling US Treasuries as the "nuclear option". Perhaps not the best choice of phrase, but the implication is obvious. As Evans-Pritchard suggests, such action could trigger a US dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

"It would also cause a spike in US bond yields," notes Evans-Pritchard, "hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds more than US$900 billion in a mix of US bonds."

He Fan's China Daily interview backs up comments made last week by finance chief at China's Development Research Centre (which holds cabinet rank). Xia Bin suggested Beijing's foreign reserves should be used as a "bargaining chip" in talks with the US.

Hillary Clinton has called for legislation to prevent America being "held hostage to economic decisions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo". With foreigners controlling 44% of the US national debt, America is acutely vulnerable. One US currency strategist has said, the Telegraph reports, that Clinton is sending a message to the US Senate as legislation is prepared for the August session.

"The words are alarming and unambiguous. This carries a clear political threat and could have very serious consequences at a time when the credit markets are already afraid of contagion from the subprime troubles," he said.

There is already draft legislation in place, calling for trade tariffs on Chinese goods. US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson has suggested any such sanctions would undermine US authority and could trigger a global cycle of protectionist legislation.

The threats on Capitol Hill last week prompted a group of in excess of 1,000 economists from both sides of the political fence to implore politicians not to go down the protectionist path. The last time such a group took such measures was to campaign against Herbert Hoover's intended equivalent actions. He ignored the advice and went ahead anyway. Therein followed the Great Depression.

Hillary losing her groove. You go girl.

A big Boo Hoo to the sad white liberals that discover that blood is thicker than water. There was old fool Imus, who had been kissing Harold Ford's booty for some time, desperately calling out for a return favor when the I-team Ho-down took the old boy Lo-down.

Now we have the shocking revelation that Hillary may get Baracked in her ample booty. It seems the blood is up again and the catfish are jumpin away from another white liberal that learns blacks like everyone else except white liberals are tribal and take care of their own. So it should be. mmm m mmmmmm.

Drudge Reports:
BLACK LEADERS NOW ON FENCE ABOUT HILLARY
Mon Apr 23 2007 21:03:39 ET

Only four months ago, the vast majority of prominent black elected officials in New York were expected to support the presidential candidacy of their state's favorite daughter, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But no longer, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Tuesday Page Ones.

In a series of interviews with the paper's Ray Hernandez, a significant number of those officials said they were now undecided about whether to back Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

"The officials described themselves as impressed with the strength of Obama's campaign in recent weeks, saying it reflected a grass-roots enthusiasm for Obama that they noticed among black voters in their own districts."