Government denies Clinton asked Israel to apologize to Turkey

In an earlier post, I reported that the Netanyahu government had refused a request from Secretary of State Clinton to apologize to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara incident. Israel Radio reports in its 11:00 pm news update that the report that Clinton asked Israel to apologize is 'not accurate.'

JPost is reporting that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that he regrets that the decision

Obama and Clinton trash US interests

In an earlier post, I linked a New York Times article that had this quote from Hillary Clinton: “It’s not going to be any news if the United States says Assad needs to go,” Mrs. Clinton said at the National Defense University. “O.K., fine, what’s next? If Turkey says it, if King Abdullah says it, if other people say it, there is no way the Assad regime can ignore it.” Barry Rubin analyzes this

Netanyahu tells Clinton Israel won't apologize to Turkey

Prime Minister Netanyahu has told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Israel will not apologize to Turkey for last year's Mavi Marmara incident. That's final - for now. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refused requests by US Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton on Tuesday to apologize to Turkey for the deaths of nine IHH activists aboard the Mavi Marmara in May 2010, Army Radio reported

Saudi Arabia withdrawing ambassador from Syria

It's a sad commentary on the lack of American leadership in foreign affairs that 'our friends, the Saudis' are taking the lead to do what America should have done weeks ago. After 70 more people were killed by the Syrian army on Sunday, the Saudis have announced that they are calling home their ambassador from Syria for consultations. When will Obama and Clinton wake up and do the same? "What is

The Obama epic fail from A to Z

Bret Stephens does a masterful job of categorizing the Obama Presidency's epic failure from A to Z, although I hope and pray that he's wrong about Z. Here are some highlights. A is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%.B is for the federal budget

Hillary Clinton's reformer murders 121 in Hama

Troops acting on behalf of the man whom Hillary Clinton called a 'reformer' and 'capable of change' four months ago massacred at least 121 people in Hama on Sunday (ignore the number in the video).Let's go to the videotape.Notice that in Syria. when they start firing, everyone ducks for cover.Here's another one. Let's go to the videotape.Were they firing from the minaret of a holy mosque? Can you

Clinton wants Obama to veto foreign aid bill

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked President Obama to veto the foreign aid bill voted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee if it reaches him. In particular, she mentioned provisions cutting aid to the United Nations, and restricting aid to the 'Palestinians,' Egypt and Pakistan. Clinton said in a letter Tuesday that she would urge President Barack Obama to veto the bill if it

Your tax dollars at work paying terrorists

In a report to Congress, Palestinian Media Watch has confirmed what I reported previously, namely that the 'Palestinian Authority' is using American aid money to pay salaries to 'Palestinian' terrorists being held in Israeli prisons. But they have also quantified it: The 'Palestinian Authority' is paying over $5 million per month from US aid money to terrorists in violation of US law. In effect,

Obama administration eases up on Syria again

Well what a surprise. The Obama administration has eased up on its criticism of Syria. It's no longer calling for Assad to go. But Clinton backed off on Saturday, saying the administration still hopes that Assad's regime will stop the violence and work with protesters to carry out political reforms. On Monday, European Union ministers also called on Assad to implement reforms and made it clear

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

Hillary is what the Clintons look like with their pants up. Their much-vaunted political savvy turns out to be a big nothing: The supposed masters of "the politics of personal destruction" can't turn up anything better on Obama than some ancient essay from his Jakarta grade school, plus a few limp charges of plagiarism. And instead of getting the surrogates to crowbar the enemy every time Hillary opens up on him she looks mean and petty, and he gets to do his high-minded Obamessiah routine.

Their star quality was also, as noted above, mostly a giant bluff.

Mark Steyn - 2-23-08

The end of Hillary's Potemkin village

On January 7th, I speculated on the possibility of Hillary withdrawing from the race based on reports from insiders. Those stories were premature, but only by a little more than a month.

It appears now that Hillary cannot win the nomination. Commenters at Politico.com have done the math. Even if she wins PA, Texas and Ohio, she will not have the necessary delegate total to win the nomination, unless she maneuvers some convention trick that will leave the party in disarray. The piling on has begun. Writers are finally acknowledging the obvious. James Carville has sounded a pessimistic note about her chances.
Tonight, Drudge posts an advance excerpt from the New York Times' Thursday edition:

NYT THURSDAY: Clinton's advisers acknowledged it would be difficult to catch up in race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning 3 states on which she is most pinning her hopes: Ohio and Texas in March and Pennsylvania in April. Dem party's rules would be decided obstacle in efforts to catch up to Obama before voting phase of nominating process ends later in spring... Developing...

These type of statements are not made unless the candidate is doomed. Hillary can see the handwriting on the wall too. My prediction is that Hillary will not wait for the convention. Rather than endure months of defeat and piling on, Hillary will withdraw from the race prior to the convention. The Pennsylvania primary, even if Hillary has not withdrawn by that point, will be an anti-climax. I will go out on a limb and predict that Hillary will withdraw prior to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Either the smaller primaries will outweigh Hillary's gains in Ohio and Texas, or Hillary will lose one of those big states.

[Of course all of this analysis depends on MSM/DNC reports and insiders.]

When the end comes, there will be endless discussion of why her campaign failed, with endless explanations focusing on white noise. The real question is not why Hillary's campaign failed, but why it ever seemed real in the first place. Hillary is one big nothing. She has no accomplishments. She is devoted to one thing -- her own advancement and ambition. If she were a man with no connection to Bill Clinton, she would be indistinguishable from ordinary bureacrat wannabes. Her candidacy and career have been entirely dependent on MSM/DNC sycophancy. She has turned herself into a Potemkin village.

Peg Noonan touched upon this idea in December, but only in relation to this campaign instead of Hillary's entire life:

This thought occurs that Hillary Clinton's entire campaign is, and always was, a Potemkin village, a giant head fake, a haughty facade hollow at the core. That she is disorganized on the ground in Iowa, taken aback by a challenge to her invincibility, that she doesn't actually have an A team, that her advisers have always been chosen more for proven loyalty than talent, that her supporters don't feel deep affection for her. That she's scrambling chaotically to catch up, with surrogates saying scuzzy things about Barack Obama and drug use, and her following up with apologies that will, as always, keep the story alive. That her guru-pollster, the almost universally disliked Mark Penn, has, according to Newsday, become the focus of charges that he has "mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent" and that the top officials on the campaign have never had a real understanding of Iowa.

Peg Noonan was right, but not just about Iowa. The above paragraph is a microcosm of who Hillary is. Hillary spent her entire public life in a series of simultaneous evasions/publicity stunts. If the term "evasions/publicity stunts" seems like a contradiction, consider the following :

- In 1994, she made headlines because she wore pink to a Friday afternoon press conference timed to avoid tough questions on Whitewater.
- Ten years ago almost to the day, she created the label "vast right wing conspiracy" before a fawning Matt Lauer who could do no more than toss her softballs.
- In 1993, she appeared in a fashion magazine photo shoot while her health care task force attempted to dispose of our freedoms in secret.
- She placed her name on a large autobiography that reaped great publicity while saying nothing of substance [the innocuousness of which was later used against her when she attempted to claim credit for accomplishments that were not mentioned therein].
- Hillary's autobiography sold many copies while saying nothing, at the same time that her actions more closely reflected the plans touched on in the college thesis that she tried to hide for so many years.
- She notoriously decried the "politics of personal destruction" while plotting in secret to destroy enemies.

This is not simply a list of scandals - although she has plenty of those in her background. Hillary's public life has been a series of empty gestures, spin and window dressing, all of which exist side-by-side with something Hillary needed to evade. She has spent her life evading and hiding. She gives new meaning to the phrase "hidden in plain sight." Few past presidential candidates have been so well known yet so little understood.

Years from now, we may wonder how she got so close to the seat of power. Her opponents may wonder what they were so afraid of for so long. In fact, her power existed purely as a projection of MSM/DNC spin and the self-fulfilling prophecy of polls. It is only in this age where so many wait to be told what to think that a Hillary could appear to prosper for so long. Only after decades of the welfare state could a large portion of the population be rendered so pliant that a candidacy based on smoke and mirrors would seem viable.

This is what socialism is really all about. Socialism is not merely an economic theory or a dictatorial type of government. Socialism implies the remaking of the individual in a way that wipes out his very individuality. Socialism prevents us from acting or thinking without the sanction of the crowd. Socialism takes the most private activities and makes a public spectacle out of them. The sexual revolution is one of socialism's greatest accomplishments. Sex has been taken out of the privacy of one's bedroom and made into a public commodity, where monogamy is treated as old-fashioned and "free love" has reshaped our lives. In the same way, the choice of candidates has been socialized. Choice, itself, has become a communal process. Polls could not retain their power to create bandwagon effects in a nonsocialized society. "Focus groups" instead of "focus individuals" are candidates' tools of choice. It is not merely our doctors that the left wants to socialize - it is our minds.

Hillary is not the real villain here. It is our own tendency to support the inevitable winner that is the villain. It is our own desire to gravitate toward power - or the appearance of power - that is to blame. Rather than analyze Hillary's debate strategy, we should remember every time we asked "can he/she win?" instead of "what does the candidate believe?".

It is our own willingness to follow a trend that encourages those who would claim ownership of that trend. In the end, we can see that Hillary was foisted upon us by those who took advantage of our own "follow-the-leader" mentality. If we ever learn that we can say "no" without wondering whether others are saying "no" too, we will be immune to the Hillary's of the world.

It took 16 years for us to acknowledge that the emporer has no clothes. We will not have that much time when the next "Hillary" comes along.

Quotes of the day - Mark Steyn [McCain vs. Hillary]

It's a shame that neither of them [McCain or Hillary] will lose – that, regardless of who takes the oath come next January, the harmonious McCain-Clinton consensus policies on illegal immigration and Big Government solutions to global warming will prevail.

--------------------------

The Clintons are nothing if not lucky, and Hillary must occasionally be enjoying a luxury-length cackle at the thought of being pitted against a 71-year-old "maverick" whose record seems designed to antagonize just enough of the base into staying home on Election Day. In the 2000 campaign season, running in a desultory fashion for the New York Senate seat, Rudy Giuliani waged a brief half-hearted campaign just long enough to leave the Republican Party with no one to run against Hillary except a candidate who wasn't up to the job.

Has he managed to do the same this time round?

Mark Steyn - 2-2-08

Compare McCain with Hillary

Quote of the day - Robert Novak

[T]he Clinton campaign may be drifting into encouragement of Hispanic vs. black racial conflict by condoning Latino hostility toward the first African American with a chance to become president.

Robert Novak - January 28, 2008

Quote of the day - Hillary Clinton [Iraq]

Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations.

Hillary Clinton - February 5, 2003

Rush on Hillary.

Liberal Quicksand posts an excerpt of Rush Limbaugh's concise summary of all things Hillary.

Bookmark this one.

Quote of the day - New York Daily News

Employing innuendo and half-truths against Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former President, have introduced the politics of personal destruction to the Democratic presidential campaign. They bear responsibility for cheapening the tone of the contest.

New York Daily News

Quote of the day - Debbie Schlussel

Tonight, on the 10th anniversary of Drudge breaking the Monica Lewinsky story, Hillary Rodham Cankles Clinton goes on "Entertainment Tonight," to play "poor little me" to get the sympathy of America's female Democratic primary voters. The promos running on TV show her saying that it's the worst thing that ever happened to her, being cheated on by her hubby.

Will it work? Well, that depends on who the "Entertainment Tonight" viewers are. Are they merely stupid, vapid, celeb-obsessed women, or are they stupid, vapid, celeb-obsessed women who vote?

Debbie Schlussel - January 17, 2008

Quote of the day - William Safire [Hillary Clinton, Travelgate]

The Travelgate issue was and is: was [Hillary's] sworn denial of any "role" or "input" in the firings factually false? Did her pressure cause fearful aides to stimulate a besmearing F.B.I. investigation? Did this lead her Justice Department to bring criminal charges against people later found to be innocent? And did she and her White House minions delay, impede and increase the expense of revealing her improper involvement?

The inescapable answers are yes, yes, yes and yes. Read the evidence and denials in full (oicray.com) and see how her orchestrated lying continues to this day.

William Safire - 10-23-2000

Quote of the day - Camille Paglia [Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem]

Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century. History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.

Camille Paglia - January 10, 2008



Gloria Steinem - 1962