The Upside Of Being A PINO’s Secretary Of State

The PUMA side of the blogosphere is just as conflicted  about Hillary Clinton being appointed Secretary of State by Barack Obama, the president-elect we all know and loathe, as are their mirror image, alter ego, Obamabot  blogger bullies.  The hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing, clothes rending faction of PUMAs wailing about Clinton’s betrayal sound like a Kos/HuffPo “Paul is dead” recording about Obama’s selection played backwards.  Get over it.

Yeah, I said it.  It’s hard to see what the fuss is all about.  First of all, Hillary as Secretary of State pisses the Clinton Derangement Syndrome suffering blogger bullies off royally.  Reason enough for me to support it.  But, more importantly, Clinton will likely be the “Best Secretary of State EVER;” she not only deserves the job, she’ll be great at it.  Plus, we all know Obama is still the same unqualified, inexperienced candidate he’s always been, and was never going to be more than President In Name Only, so, if he’s going to be the public face of a “shadow” administration, it might as well be a Clinton one.  A cabinet full of Clintonites with Hillary herself in the lead is the very best we could hope for, given the circumstances.

All of Obama’s appointments seem to be laying the groundwork for Hillary.  His loyalists have been relegated to positions answerable to him, not the country.  Axelrod, Gibbs, and Jarrett are White House staff hired to manage perceptions and don’t pose much of an impediment to actually getting work done.  Let them send out “hope and change” memos while the Clinton contingent handles things.  They’re good at it, and that scenario is probably the one sold to Bill and Hillary by the Democrats at the end of the primaries.

Hillary Clinton is a practical politician, smart enough to know where real power lies.  Keeping the Obama p.r. machine out front insulates Clinton from the kind of counter-productive right wing maneuvering that hampered the first Clinton administration.  Obama might be the president, but if Hillary becomes the Secretary of State, he’ll be president of the second Clinton administration, only this time, Hillary will be in charge.  And, if the Democrats are smart, this is the way they’ve planned it all along.

After the dust of the primary contest settled, all the bluster of the blogosphere has been nothing more than misdirection.  That’s what scares the blogger bully boyz so bad.  They’re finally waking up to the fact that they dedicated their efforts, money, and a significant portion of their lives to help elect Hillary Clinton’s water boy.

Celebrate, PUMAs, celebrate!

Hillary’s “Official?” Not Quite

In the mainstream media’s attempt to boost it’s deservedly shrinking profile, the battle of the “unnamed sources” vs. the absolute truth rages on.  The Reuters headline quoting the New York Times screams “Clinton Accepts Obama Secretary of State Offer: NY Times.”  Citing Clinton “confidants,” when they’re not citing each other, both articles are basically rehashing variations of the same themes everybody’s been pushing since Clinton and the president-elect met in Chicago.  The only “twist” is that now she’s said to have “decided.”  Right.

Mrs. Clinton came to her decision after additional discussion with President-elect Barack Obama about the nature of her role and his plans for foreign policy, said one of the confidants, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the situation.

Mr. Obama’s office told reporters on Thursday that the nomination is “on track” but this is the first word from the Clinton camp that she has decided.

So, Clinton and Obama talked, but she didn’t tell him she’d accepted an offer he hasn’t officially made yet?  And this is news?  Now, in another “unnamed sourced” article, Reuters is walking it back from the edge of satire in a new article claiming that Obama has now unofficially selected Timothy Geithner as Secretary of Treasury.

A senior Democrat told Reuters in Washington that Obama wanted Geithner for the Treasury job, but had yet to make a offer. He did confirm that Summers was no longer under consideration.

Reuters is also quoting NBC as saying that Bill Richardson might “officially” be offered Secretary of Commerce:

NBC also reported that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson — who was one of a crowded pack of Democratic presidential early this year — could receive Obama’s nod to become commerce secretary.

Associated Press says Geithner is “likely” and Clinton is “on track.”  In other words, nobody knows nothing, but they’ve got deadlines and phony-baloney jobs to justify.  To put my two cents worth of speculation in the mix, absolutely nothing has changed since Obama offered the job to Clinton in Chicago and she accepted.  In fact, an equally plausible case could be made that they worked out the deal when they met at Dianne Feinstein’s house back in June after Robert Gibbs played “hide the candidate” with the press on Obama’s campaign plane.  Everything reported since the Chicago face-to-face has been mainstream media gossip and blogger bully bullshit.  He offered, she accepted, done deal, game over, it’s a wrap.

Bet that.

I Go To Obama

“What school you go to?”  “I go to Obama.”  Yep, 440 mostly black and Hispanic kids will be answering that question that way from now on.

It was only a matter of time. A New York school has been renamed in honor of President-elect Barack Obama.

The former Ludlum Elementary School, in Long Island’s Hempstead Union Free School District, was renamed at a school board meeting Thursday – effective immediately. The new name is the Barack Obama Elementary School.

School officials say most of the 440 students there are black or Hispanic, and Obama’s victory is a source of great pride.

Kinda gets ya right about (lower) here, don’t it?

The creep factor abounds.

Maybe Next Time They’ll Pay Attention

“Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.” Barack Obama, October, 2002.

Barack Obama has never been anti-war.   Let me repeat that.  Barack Obama has never been anti-war.  On the contrary, he has actively advocated for war, his promise to “end the war in Iraq” was only to facilitate moving the troops to Afghanistan and maybe Pakistan.   By his own admission, he has only ever objected to “dumb wars.”  So, why are so many anti-war types so surprised and disillusioned about his “hawkish” cabinet picks?  And what makes them think they won the election for him?

Not being the most politically savvy person in the room (yeah, yeah, take your shots,) the terms “liberal” and “progressive” seem to me to be used almost interchangeably in the media.  And, from what I can tell, both groups are royally pissed at the candidate they supported with all their hopey changey hearts, who now seems determined to renege on all the promises they feel he made them.  But what did he really promise?

“There is a line between ‘moving to the center’ and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized. And, of late, he’s been doing a lot of unnecessary stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician,” said Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos, the top site of the liberal netroots community.

That quote is from a July, Washington Times article.  Have the progressive/liberal factions currently crying, “Oh my God! Oh, my God! He’s betraying his base!” like latter day Chicken Littles with a new mantra, just now woken up from a self-induced hypnotic spell?  Marc Armbinder makes a wishy-washy case for Obama to appoint Republicans to his administration to help push through his liberal/progressive agenda, but it doesn’t make much more sense to me than Salon’s “liberals-in-the-closet vs. so-called progressives” essay which seems to suggest that the true meaning of “liberal” is “center-left, neoliberal progressive.”  Or, vice-versa.  Whatever.

Brave New Films, part of the Brave New Foundation and associated with Brave New Pac, the rah-rah Obama political PAC that has produced anti-McCain campaign ads in conjunction with Howard Dean’s Democracy For America, is running a Firedoglake post on it’s website which claims that even Pat Buchanan is feeling sorry for the way the “progressive netroots” is getting screwed by Obama.  In July, Kirk Tofte, reporting on this year’s “Netroot Nation” and quoting many of the event’s attendees who described themselves as “libertarian progressives,” said their confusion about their own identity made Obama the perfect candidate for them.

However, all this Obama Drama is pretty disingenuous, if not patently bogus.  Only the most KoolAid-drunk self-delusioned fringe folks could have ever seriously believed that Obama was really the “Kumbayah, Teach The World To Sing” poster boy they tried to make him out to be.  If his NAFTA-gate, 2nd Amendment, FISA, and pro-war stances didn’t give them a clue, some of their favorite leg-tingling media outlets should have.  In July, Salon ran a piece on OpenLeft’s post, “Why It’s Important to Note That Barack Obama is NOT Liberal or Progressive.”

Of course, most of the latest “Barack’s Breaking My Heart” lamentations center around reports that Obama has/is going to offer Hillary Clinton the office of Secretary of State.  Given the realities of Obama’s policy positions, it’s hard to make an ideological argument against Clinton’s appointment without twisting oneself into a pretzel.  Therefore, the “betrayal” is characterized as being one of the always empty promise of “hope and change.”  Which means that these “progressive/liberals” are either trying to couch their “Clinton Derangement” in acceptable terms, or they just haven’t been paying attention.