Lipstick on a Pig? Still a Pig

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

-- Hillary Clinton's now infamous "sniper fire" and oft previously repeated whopper. The claim was proven false when video news footage of her visit to Bosnia surfaced. No sniper fire, no running with her head down. Only children and meaningless officials present.

"There is no crisis to be dealt with or managed when you are first lady. You don't get that kind of experience by being married to a commander in chief."

-- Obama adviser Susan Rice mocking Hillary Clinton's claim of foreign policy experience during the heated Democratic presidential primary last March.



"What exactly is this foreign policy experience? Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

-- Barack Obama, also during the bitter Democratic primary in March.

Obama Team Repackaging Clinton After Campaign Digs

Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:00 AM

WASHINGTON -- It wasn't too long ago that Barack Obama and his advisers were tripping over one another to tear down Hillary Rodham Clinton's foreign policy credentials. She was dismissed as a commander in chief wanna-be who did little more than sip tea and make small talk with foreign leaders during her days as first lady.

"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

That was in March, when Clinton was Obama's sole remaining rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Now, Clinton is on track to become Obama's secretary of state.

And, unsurprisingly, the sniping at her foreign policy credentials is a thing of the past.

Obama adviser William Daley over the weekend said Clinton would be "a tremendous addition to this administration. Tremendous."

Senior adviser David Axelrod called Clinton a "demonstrably able, tough, brilliant person."

Last spring, though, Clinton was targeted with a steady stream of criticism via conference call, e-mail and campaign-trail digs from the Obama camp, all aimed at shredding her self-portrait as an experienced and confident leader on the international stage. Some of those doing the sniping will be taking up key positions _ most likely along with Clinton _ in the new Obama administration.

Liberal hypocrisy time and time again in full display as Clinton retreads and Obama rookies intermarry during the president-elect's redneck wedding transition. Talk about the worst of both worlds!

Time to Pay the Piper, Bill!

Bill Clinton Deal Paved Way for Hillary as Secretary of State

A deal with Bill Clinton over his post-White House work helped clear the way for Hillary Rodham Clinton to join President-elect Barack Obama's national security team as secretary of state, reshaping a once-bitter rivalry into a high-profile strategic and diplomatic union.

Obama was to be joined by the New York senator at a Chicago news conference Monday, Democratic officials said, where he also planned to announce that Defense Secretary Robert Gates would remain in his job for a year or more and that retired Marine General James M. Jones would serve as national security adviser.

The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly for the transition team.

To make it possible for his wife to become the top U.S. diplomat, the officials said, former President Clinton agreed:

· to disclose the names of every contributor to his foundation since its inception in 1997 and all contributors going forward.

· to refuse donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference.

· to cease holding CGI meetings overseas.

· to volunteer to step away from day-to-day management of the foundation while his wife is secretary of state.

· to submit his speaking schedule to review by the State Department and White House counsel.

· to submit any new sources of income to a similar ethical review.

Bill Clinton's business deals and global charitable endeavors had been expected to create problems for the former first lady's nomination. But in negotiations with the Obama transition team, the former president agreed to several measures designed to bring transparency to those activities.

"It's a big step," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said he plans to vote to confirm Clinton.

The former president long had refused to disclose the identities of contributors to his foundation, saying many gave money on condition that they not be identified.

Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky is costing him dearly. Time to pay up, Bill!

"Average" Joe or Hypocrite Joe?

'Average Joe' Biden Rents $4 Million Home

Thursday, November 27, 2008 11:02 AM By: Chris Gonsalves Joe Biden may portray himself as a lunch-bucket Democrat with working-class roots, but when it comes to the holidays, the vice president-elect parties like a Kennedy. Biden and his family caused a stir Wednesday aboard the high-speed ferry from Hyannis, Mass., as the Delaware senator made his way to his traditional Thanksgiving getaway, a rented $4 million home on the eastern end of trendy Nantucket Island. "We always go over for Thanksgiving the last 33 years," Biden told the Cape Cod Times as he made his way to the ferry dock, a stone's throw from the famed Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. Biden said he typically traveled to and from the island retreat unnoticed. But all of that has changed since the election. "There was a lot of state troopers and Secret Service involved in this with bomb-sniffing dogs," Philip Scudder, vice president of Hy-Line ferry told the local newspaper. A Coast Guard cutter followed the ferry for the one-hour trip to Nantucket. Meanwhile aboard Hy-Line's Gray Lady ferry, the senator's handlers kept him separated from other passengers in a small section on the ferry's upper deck. Popping the collar of his tweed jacket, the 66-year-old Biden read the newspaper, took family photos, and sported iPod earphones for much of the trip, according to the Cape Cod Times. Once on Nantucket, the Bidens will celebrate Thanksgiving at a 5,280-square-foot home on scenic Polpis Road near Sesachacha Pond. Biden rented the house from local builder Larry Maury, son of well known Nantucket entrepreneur John Maury. According to Forbes Magazine, Nantucket boasts the highest median property values in Massachusetts. In addition to its quaint and historic waterfront villages, the island is also famous as a seasonal playground for the rich and famous. Some of Nantucket's notable part-time residents include NBC's Chris Matthews, comic-couple Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, heiress Teresa Heinz and husband Sen. John Kerry, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, designer Tommy Hilfiger, and retired GE CEO Jack Welch. Vice president-elect Joe "Chia Pet" Biden, man of the people. How about spreading some of that wealth around, eh, Joe?

From the "Office of the President-Elect"

Cabinet Picks: What's the Obamassiah Smoking?

Woodward Knocks Clinton SoS Choice

Now that it's considered a foregone conclusion that Sen. Hillary Clinton will be the next secretary of State, the chattering class is weighing in, including legendary reporter Bob Woodward. FishbowlDC has obtained an advanced transcript of this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show", in which the famed Washington Post reporter had this to say about Clinton's nomination as SoS:

"Being president is about control, and tell me who ever controlled Bill or Hillary Clinton. They can't control each other. ... I think it's because Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker and others have convinced Obama, 'You're going to have to focus like a laser on the economy. That's issue Number One. And give Hillary and Bill the world.' ... I think people are fantasizing or smoking something if they think Joe Biden's going to call Hillary Clinton up and say, 'This is what we want you to do.'"

"Change," You Said? Oh, Never Mind!

Nov 20, 2008 7:13 pm US/Central

Obama Advisers To Public: Temper Expectations

Mike Flannery

CHICAGO (CBS) ― President-elect Barack Obama and his inner circle fear that some voters expect him to turn around the economy, wind down the war in Iraq and, perhaps, cure cancer -- all by the Fourth of July.

They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports.

A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon.

"This might be a long haul," said Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary of labor. "2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won't be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years."

Now on Obama's transition team, Reich worries about what happens after the new president is sworn in Jan. 20.

"We all have to be very careful about the expectations that we are putting on this man, our president-elect," Reich said. "If we all assume it's going to be the first 100 days, we're going to be disappointed."

The man who was Obama's chief campaign strategist is moving to lower expectations, too.

"We are inheriting an array problems unlike any president has faced, maybe since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932," David Axelrod said. "It's not gonna be easy, not gonna be quick."

Rick Jasculca worked for President Jimmy Carter, President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton. He said Obama will need every bit of his skill as a communicator.

"If people see you reaching across the aisle and they see you making progress -- going forward rather than going backward -- I think people will give you the benefit of the doubt," Jasculca said.

This whole "change" thing was the greatest political campaign fraud ever perpetrated on the American people in the history of the Republic.

The More Things "Change..."

Obama's future Secretary of State? Why? Was Madeline Albright not available?


Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services? Heloooooo, "Universal" Health Care!

The Return

Check out those t-shirts.

Paglia on Obama-Ayers, Sarah Palin and Liberal Democrats' "Grotesque Lock-step Parade of Bourgeois Provincialism"

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan -- nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.

-- The Indefatigable Camille Paglia

Now Reading ...

Only 48?

Here are some of my favorites:

Lie #3: FDR Knew in Advance About the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

Lie #7: The "Peace Movement" Activists Were Not Dupes of the KGB

Lie #9: Mikhail Gorbachev, Not Ronald Reagan, Was Responsible for Ending the Cold War

Lie #29: Bill Clinton Was Impeached over Sex

Lie #37: Global Warming Is a Fact, and It's a Man-made, American-Driven Problem

Lie #47: The Reagan Tax Cuts Caused massive Deficits and the National Debt

With Boundless Gratitude

Finally: Moribund Mainstream Media Ask "Obama Who?"

If Barack Obama is still an "unknown" it's because people like Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw have failed miserably in their journalistic duty to inform the American people about the political ideology of the president-elect in the months before the November election.

Will the likes of Rose and Brokaw in the Moribund Mainstream Media take responsibility for their dereliction of duty when disaster befalls the American culture, society and economy or chaos inflicts the international scene? I rather doubt it.

O, well, they can always blame George W. Bush, I suppose.

Think Ahead

Man, and I thought liberals posted hateful comments here BEFORE. Wait until they get a hold of this post.

Rahm Emanuel: Obama's Consigliere

Emanuel accepts job as White House chief Nov 6 01:55 PM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic officials say Barack Obama's fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel has agreed to be White House chief of staff.

One of Obama's first decisions as president-elect was to ask the Illinois congressman to run his White House staff. Emanuel accepted Thursday after struggling over family and political considerations.

Emanuel serves in the House Democratic leadership and will have to resign his seat and put aside hopes of becoming House speaker.

Emanuel is a fiery Democrat who served as a political and policy aide in the Clinton White House. His selection is a shift in tone for Obama, who chose more low-key leadership for his presidential campaign.

A "shif in tone?" Has anyone in the media considered that maybe it's not a "shift" at all but what Obama planned to do all along? Choosing a hyperpartisan to be his hitman?

Emanuel, whose truculent style Democratic strategist and fellow liberal hitman Paul Begala describes as "a cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache," is set to become the second most powerful man in the world.

First, Biden. Now Emanuel. Let's hear it for change.

Still NOT Spreading the Wealth Around

"I want my money today! It's my money! I want it right now!"

-- Unnamed temporary Obama campaign worker

"I'm disappointed. I'm glad for the president but I'm disappointed in the system."

-- Diane Jefferson, former Obama campaign worker


Get ready for more disappointment, Diane. A whole lot more.

Chris "Hardball" Mathews' New Job: Make the Obama Presidency "Work"

"I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work."

-- Chris Mathews, "Hardball" host and President-elect Barack Obama's mainstream media representative.


Don't tell me that these media types are not in the sack for Obama. Mathews is caught confessing that he will continue to carry the water for Obama. That's not journalism. It's cultism and sycophancy.

Free Gas, No Mortgage: Thank You, Barack Obama!

"I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car. I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. If I help [Barack Obama], he will help me."

-- Peggy Joseph, Obama rally attendee.

I don't blame people like Ms. Joseph for thinking the way they do. I blame Obama and his campaign for allowing this kind of thinking to be perpetuated.

If recent news reports are to be believed, Obama and his acolytes are already working at toning down lofty expectations that they built during the campaign in order to get votes from individuals like Ms. Joseph. That's "change," alright.

NORM!

Silver Lining 3: Ashwin Madia Is No Bobby Jindal

From State Republican Representative to U.S. House Republican Representative: Erik Paulsen
goes on to win and keep Minnesota's 3rd District in the Republican column

Silver Lining 2: Franken Not Taking His Senate Defeat Well

Al Franken, when he heard Coleman beat him, barely but fair and square.

Oops! Sorry. Wrong picture. Here it is. Uncanny resemblance to the fictitious Clown Prince of Crime, don't you think?

Why the long face, Al?

Silver Lining 1: Congratulations, Michele Bachmann!

Thank You, John and Sarah!

Obama's Amerika

Schumer: Free, Dissenting Speech = Pornography

Here they come. If news organizations, talk radio and other news and opinion outlets (blogs?) don't conform to the liberal concept of "fairness" and "balance," meaning no criticism allowed, they will be treated the same way as pornography. This is probably going to be the first mission of Barack Obama's "Civilian National Security Force."

PRAY

Lord, deliver America from evil this election day. Amen.

Socialism Kills ...

A Civilian National Security Force? Why Not? It Worked Quite Well for Hitler

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

-- Herr Barack Obama


I seem to remember that Adolf Hitler had one of those. They started as Brownshirts and morphed into the SS. Is that what Obama means by "the change we need?"

Reminds you of something else?

"The remaining Republicans will be hunted down and defeated. The presidential campaign has left me scarred and deformed. My resolve has never been stronger. In order to insure the security and continuing stability, the American democracy will be reorganized into the First Socialis Empire for a safe and secure society. Said safety and security will be enforced by my own personal civilian national security force. Heil me!"

-- Excerpt of a possible Obama inauguration speech

Al Franken: Dirtbag Extraordinaire

Norm Coleman says that "this time Al Franken has crossed the line." The awful truth is even uglier. With Al Franken, there is no bottom. He will keep sinking lower and lower.

Al Franken: the face of the Minnesota DFL.

Tim Walz: Teaching Responsibility

"As a high school teacher, the most important lesson I taught was responsibility."

-- Tim "D.U.I." Walz


Walz should run for president. Linda Pfeilsticker would make an ideal running mate.

Obama's "Auntie Zeituni," Illegal Alien

AP: Obama aunt from Kenya living in US illegally
Nov 1 12:08 AM US/Eastern
By EILEEN SULLIVAN and ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango's case

Obama says he didn't know aunt's illegal status

By Nedra Pickler, Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO – Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Saturday he didn't know his aunt was living in the United States illegally and believes that laws covering the situation should be followed.

The Associated Press found that Obama's aunt had been instructed to leave the country four years ago by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from her native Kenya. The woman, Zeituni Onyango (zay-TUHN on-YANG-oh), is living in public housing in Boston and is the half-sister of Obama's late father.

A statement given to the AP by Obama's campaign said, "Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed."

The campaign said it was returning $260 that Onyango had contributed in small increments to Obama's presidential bid over several months. Federal election law prohibits foreigners from making political donations. Onyango listed her employer as the Boston Housing Authority and last gave $5 on Sept. 19.

Onyango, 56, is part of Obama's large paternal family, with many related to him by blood whom he never knew growing up.

Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., left the future presidential nominee when the boy was 2, and they reunited only once — for a monthlong visit when Obama was 10. The elder Obama lived most of his life in Kenya, where he fathered seven other children with three other wives. He died in a car crash in 1982. [More]

Following the law means deporting "Auntie" Zeituni. Does anyone believe it will happen? Would Obama enforce immigration laws if elected?

The Moribund Stream Media do not seem interested to ask if Obama plans to spread any of his own wealth around to benefit "Auntie" Zeituni.

Barack the Tolerant: Endorse Me Or Else

"I hope the candidate that promises to unite America isn't using a litmus test to determine who gets to cover his campaign."

-- Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon, reacting to the news that his newspaper had been kicked off Barack Obama's plane after it ran an editorial endorsing Senator John McCain's presidential bid.


Washington Times Kicked Off Obama's Plane
by Tom Ramstack
Friday, October 31, 2008

The Washington Times, N.Y. Post and Dallas Morning News -- three newspapers that recently endorsed John McCain -- have been kicked off Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's plane in the final days of his campaign.

The Obama campaign informed The Washington Times Thursday evening of its decision, which came two days after The Times editorial page endorsed Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama. The Times editorial page runs independently of the news department.

"This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama's campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporters' pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign," said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon.

News organizations pay campaigns for the cost of traveling on the candidate's planes.

Read The Washington Times' editorial on the endorsement of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain.

Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass said the changes on the plane had "absolutely nothing" to do with the organizations' coverage, an explanation echoed by Obama advisor and communications chief Anita Dunn.

"Demand for seats on the plane during this final weekend has far exceeded supply, and because of logistical issues we made the decision not to add a second plane. This means we've had to make hard and unpleasant for all concerned decisions about limiting some news organizations and in some cases not being in a position to offer space to news organizations altogether," Ms. Dunn wrote in an e-mail to The Times Thursday night.

However, the Politico reported Friday that political considerations also were part of the decision. Bill Burton, another Obama spokesman, said the seat shuffles were an effort by the campaign to "reach as many swing voters as we can."

Swing voters aren't likely to change results among The Dallas Morning News' Texas readership or the New York Post's audience, but The Washington Times is widely read in Virginia, a battleground state where the race could still break either way.

Liberals often vilify me when I point out Obama and his campaign's Nazi-like approach to those they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as their political opponents. Obama is a thin-skinned politician. He cannot handle criticism or opposition without retaliation.

Should Obama be elected, God forbid, what damage will he cause to the First Amendment when he abuses presidential power to silence dissenting voices?