Remember when speculation was swirling back in August about Barack Obama’s veep pick? Is it Kaine? Bayh? Sebellius? Whoever it was to be, Jo(k)e Biden famously told reporters camped outside his house before the announcement, “Hey, guys, I’m not the guy.” Of course, as it turns out, he was the guy, and likely knew it all along. Now, the “will she or won’t she” drama surrounding whether or not Hillary Clinton is to be Obama’s Secretary of State seems to be evolving along the same lines.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has engaged three prominent lawyers to help President-electBarack Obama vet her candidacy for secretary of state even as some insiders criticized the pick and advisers to the former first lady said she was weighing whether to take the job if Obama offered it.
If Sen. Hillary Clinton is to be picked by President-electBarack Obama as his secretary of state, it may well depend on a review of the business activities of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
AFP wonders if Obama has taken leave of his senses:
Signs that Barack Obama may make once bitter foe Hillary Clinton his secretary of state are provoking a flurry of questions over the president-elect’s motivation and vision for foreign policy.
Politico claims HRC might be motivated by a desire to retire her debt:
If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes Barack Obama’s secretary of state, she could wipe away her lingering $7.6 million presidential campaign debt.
But Bloomberg says her campaign debt might be a problem:
Hillary Clinton will face a financial decision if she is nominated as secretary of state: what to do about the more than $7 million in debts left over from her presidential campaign
Politico reported earlier today that Hillary might turn the job down:
Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t certain she would accept the Secretary of State post even if Barack Obama offers it to her, several people close to the former first lady say.
Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.
So, obviously, nobody in the press really knows shit. However, none of the so-called obstacles seem to amount to much, and the “she’s thinking about it” stuff sounds like “I’m not the guy.” And, we all know how Jo(k)e feels about Hillary.
Can you say, FISA? How soon the blogger bullies of the “progressive left” forget that they are, in the eyes of real politicians, completely expendable. While they like to pretend they, and they alone, are responsible for every Democratic victory since Ned Lamont, the truth is, not. Unlike PUMAs, they keep being surprized at the realization that Democratic “party unity” is the same sort of public relations sales pitch tool as “hope and change,” and that nobody really in charge actually expects anybody to buy that crap, let alone to be held to it as a principle. Maybe now that Joe Lieberman will be allowed to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, as president-elect Barack Obama hoped, (Lieberman was his mentor) they will finally get the message that they simply exist to suck up as they’re told.
Howard Dean gets it. Nobody invested as much of himself and his reputation into getting Barack Obama elected as Dean did, putting his position as chairman of the DeaNC, his Democracy for America, and his 50 state strategy at Camp O’s complete disposal. DFA lobbied hard against FISA, at one point even asking Senator Obama directly to vote against it on their website. Of course, I can’t find that page now, but I remember it well. At any rate, it seems Dean has learned his “Obama is a fair-weather friend” lesson well. From the Huffington Post:
“My point of view is that Barack won,” Dean said. “He can afford to be magnanimous. And if we happen to win both recounts and Georgia, Joe is the 60th vote. And the truth is — and I certainly don’t have to defend Joe Lieberman because, you know, we have an interesting history — but the fact is, he does vote 90 percent of the time with the Democrats. And no, he shouldn’t have said all those things. But why not clean the slate? Why not start all over again? Why not allow him to vote with us on the 90 percent of the stuff? He will be a good vote on climate change — and this matters. He may be a good vote on election reform, which I hope we will get to. So, you know, he may end up – though it is a little against the odds — he may end up being the vote that allows us to conduct business when Mitch McConnell decides we shouldn’t.”
Greg Sargent over on TPM sounds a bit snippy in his description of a conversation he had with Dean:
Howard Dean says that he’s “fine” with the Senate’s decision not to kick Joe Lieberman off the Homeland Security committee and suggested that the Senate had acted in accordance with what Barack Obama wanted.
In a phone interview with me just after the vote concluded, I asked Dean if he thought the Senate should keep Lieberman. He said that the Senate had acted “in the spirit of unification, which is what the President-elect wanted.”
“He called the shots, and that’s fine,” Dean said, in an apparent reference to the tone Obama has tried to set in Washington as he prepares to take power.
Dean also said he understood the natural human desire for “revenge,” a description that will dismay many of Dean’s allies in the liberal blogosphere, who maintain (as do I) that this wasn’t solely about retribution.
Greg and all the other pissed off bloggers don’t understand the lesson Dean has learned so well; Barack Obama doesn’t give a spit what you think, want, or care about. Not only that, Dean knows that as far as Obama’s concerned, anybody who thinks they might be uniquely useful might as well be Kleenex tissue or toilet paper; use it once and throw it away. As Hillary Clinton also learned, you either hop aboard the Obama Express and hold on for dear life, or you stand on the platform and watch the train pass you by. Your choice. But then, TPM knew that, too. Or, should have.
In the case of both Senator Hillary Clinton’s and attorney Eric Holder’s damned near certain appointments to Secretary of State and Attorney General, respectively, the Obama team seems almost pathologically obsessed with popular approval. Will the Senate approve? Of course. Do Republicans support it? Doesn’t matter. Are the blogger bullies upset? Who cares, they caved on their big, bad FISA position, they’ll suck up as they’re told. What about the public? They’re clueless.
Doesn’t this guy realize he won? Is he the only person on the planet who doesn’t get how popular he is? He could appoint Zippy the Pinhead to head Homeland Security and get away with it. Somebody should tell him, he gets to choose. And the bottom line is, no matter what, the chips are going to fall where they may. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to decide which is worse, making a potentially unpopular decision, or looking like a wimp.
Given the fact that during the primaries, nothing excited the tinfoil hat wearing lunatic fringe of the PUMAsphere and the right wing like a good “George Soros backs Barack Obama” conspiracy theory, an article in today’s Bloomberg News should send PUMA-inspired sales of Reynolds Wrap straight through the roof. Entitled, “Soros Funded Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Font” the article documents the influence of the Soros-backed Center for American Progress:
Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.
Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign.
“What CAP has done is recapture the role of ideas as an important political force, something the Republicans had been better at for 25 years,” said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, a non-partisan policy-research organization in Washington.
CAP’s president and founder, John Podesta, 59, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of three people running the transition team for president-elect Barack Obama, 47. A squadron of CAP experts is working with them.
Claiming that though the group is not the largest think tank in the business, it may well be the most influencial to the Obama administration with at least 10 members on Camp O’s transition team, the article features a few enthusiastic quotes from CAP’ers on their mission:
“Others strive to be objective, we don’t,” said Jennifer Palmieri, CAP’s vice president for communications.
Podesta likes to say, “we’re not a think tank, we’re an action tank,” said Dan Weiss, an environmental activist who joined CAP last year.
George Soros has been quoted as saying that removing George Bush from office was the central focus of his life and something he would sacrifice his entire fortune to achieve if somebody could guarantee it. Since that wish was going to come true this year anyway without costing him a dime, maybe Georgie found a better use for all that leftover dough. Quoted in the New York Times in January, he said this:
‘’I personally support Obama, but I don’t have any particular relationship,’’ said Mr. Soros, who has sometimes been a contentious figure in criticizing American economic and political actions. ‘’If he talks the way I talk, he would have no chance of getting elected: So I wish him well, but I don’t talk to him.’’ (Mr. Soros did help play host at a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama at the home of Paul Tudor Jones II, another prominent hedge fund manager, in May.)
Mr. Soros added that he had ‘’very high regard’’ for what he depicted as Mrs. Clinton’s statesmanlike qualities. ‘’I prefer Obama because I think he would bring more radical change,” he said. “But if she is the candidate, I will be very supportive of her.’’
Maybe Soros’ think tank figured out that his interests would best be served with Clinton as Secretary of State in an Obama administration. If so, the fact that the self-appointed blogger bullies and Obama staff KoolAid drunken true believers are being reported by Politico as being “roiled” is an even more delicious irony than it otherwise would be.
From his supporters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to campaign aides of the soon-to-be commander-in-chief, there’s a sense of ambivalence about giving a top political plum to a woman they spent 18 months hammering as the compromised standard-bearer of an era that deserves to be forgotten.
“These are people who believe in this stuff more than Barack himself does,” said a Democrat close to Obama’s campaign. “These guys didn’t put together a campaign in order to turn the government over to the Clintons.”
Runnin’ ’round the ‘net, found these William Ayers tidbits. Seems Biily Sunshine was ready to hand out “get out of jail free” cards when he gave a “talk” (that’s ’60’s-speak for “informal speech,” like “had a coffee” is similar hippie jargon for “hosted a coming out party in my home for a good friend of mine”) somewhere in Washington D.C. tonight; the details are rather sketchy. The Washington Post says he will be at “Busboys and Poets” Tuesday to talk about his two books on education, but that the event has already occurred. Neato – time travel, far out.
This Ain’t Hell says they and a bunch of FReepers protested Ayers at a Washington event that was originally scheduled to be held in a bookstore, but was moved to a church to accommodate all 100 people who showed up.
William Ayers came to DC today to pimp his new book about race as only a pale white guy can pimp a book about race to a roomful of other pale white people. Some of my Free Republic friends were there to inform the public about William Ayers including This Ain’t Hell’s own Encyclopedia Raoul who ended up being the spokesman for the group.
Kerry Pickett, of Eyeblast TV, on their Video Done Right website, (Newsbusters also carried the story) says she was at a D.C. event where Ayers was supposed to be dicussing American education, but was really slamming Fox News and Sarah Palin. Pickett says the audience was a bunch of Ayers lovers and that pissed her off (I’m paraphrasing, here) so she busted up the lovefest with a little major-league hardball. (Not the Chris Mathtews, “oooh, my pants are wet, leg-tingling” kind of Hardball, the “you better have on a cup and a helmet” kind.)
PICKET: Professor Ayers you had an unusual dedication to Sirhan Sirhan in your previous book. Do you regret that?
AYERS: Absolutely, but that wasn’t a dedication…show me. You heard it somewhere. The dedication in Prairie Fire in 1974…It was a manifesto was to all prisoners, and if I were writing a book like that today, I would dedicate it to 2.1 million people in prison. I think it was a stupid thing to single him out, but I also think that we have created a monster in the prison system. We ought to abolish the prison system. That’s what I think.
Abolish the prison system, huh? Wonder what motivated that little philosophical development? Maybe years underground as a roadie for the Partridge Family while running from prosecution will make you disdain legal authority. And anyway, what does he mean, if it wasn’t a dedication, why was it stupid to single him out? What Pickett was referring to was this “Prairie Fire” dedication page listing a whole bunch of political prisoners Ayers obviously hearts, one of whom is indeed RFK assassin, Sirhan Sirhan:
In his first public event since the election, William Ayers, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-founder of the Weather Underground, spoke to more than 250 people in Washington’s Universalist All Souls Church Monday night as part of his book tour. The Weather Underground claimed responsibility for bombing government buildings in the early 1970s and the McCain campaign used Ayers’s early associations with Barack Obama to accuse the president-elect of “palling around with terrorists.”
“I’m a little overwhelmed,” began the soft-spoken Ayers, squinting into the light of several television cameras and speaking over the chatter of camera shutters. “When I set this up six months ago, I pictured ten people sitting around a circle.”
Awww, the bomber guy is shy, isn’t that sweet? And he said he all those people who act like he killed people, or he’s a violent person are just mean, ‘cuz he’s not. Him’s a puddy tat, yes he is, who just wishes he knew Barack Obama better, like everybody else. Humph. So, there. (Yep, paraphrasing.)
But, I digress. Anyway, Three Dollar Bill also came under scrutiny by somebody named Doug Ross (sorry if I’m supposed to know who you are, Dougie, I’m not really as up on my Ayers chroniclers as I should be, my bad) says Ayers is not just a master Fractured Fairy Tale teller, he’s an outright liar. Ross takes exception to Ayers recent Good Morning America assertion that he first met Obama at the “coffee” he and his wife Bernadine/dette Dohrn held to launch the political career of some guy they didn’t know in their home:
I was asked by the state senator to have a coffee for Barack Obama when he first ran for office and we had him in our home and I think he was probably in 20 homes that day, as far as I know, but that was the first time I really met him.
Ross seems to think that since Cannonfire ran a piece showing that event to have been held in November of 1995, the photo above showing Obama on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in May of that same year, means either Ayers is in the habit of putting total strangers in charge of dispersing large sums of money, or he’s a bald faced liar. (Paraphrasing, again)
Remember when speculation was swirling back in August about Barack Obama’s veep pick? Is it Kaine? Bayh? Sebellius? Whoever it was to be, Jo(k)e Biden famously told reporters camped outside his house before the announcement, “Hey, guys, I’m not the guy.” Of course, as it turns out, he was the guy, and likely knew it all along. Now, the “will she or won’t she” drama surrounding whether or not Hillary Clinton is to be Obama’s Secretary of State seems to be evolving along the same lines.
