Hillary And Barack's Magic Pony Ride

Shorter Krauthammer - Am I witnessing a White House foreign policy strategy session or have I blundered into a comedy club?

Except he is not amused.

My fave is probably this bit from the WaPo story about the collapsing Middle East peace talks to which Krauthammer links:

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mitchell report to the White House next week on the administration's goal of restarting the peace talks, they will be describing a situation that has arguably regressed, particularly in the three weeks since a high-level session in New York involving President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama has set a goal of relaunching the peace talks by the end of the year. U.S. officials noted that Mitchell is continuing discussions in Washington with Israeli officials this week and Palestinian officials next week to keep probing whether there are ways around the impasse.

"The fact that they are still talking means there is something to talk about," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.

The weather?  The Yankees?  The possibility that these two recalcitrants are depriving Obama of a chance to make bookends with Nobel Peace Prizes?

The fact that we are still laughing means there is something to laugh about.

Comments

[hit and run]

"Hillary And Barack's Magic Pony Ride"

On Afghanistan, we have http://wap.cbsnews.com/site?sid=cbsnews&pid=sections.detail&catId=TOP&isBlog=true&storyId=5384827&index=3>Robert Gibbs:

"Like the other meetings, there wasn't one magic sentence or one magic phrase," Gibbs said of Wednesday's discussion in the White House Situation Room, in which nearly two dozen officials participated.

GIBBS: And dammit, we will continue to hold these meetings until we find that magic sentence or magic phrase.

Q: Sir, when you say "magic sentence" or "magic phrase", could you give us some idea of what President Obama is looking for.

GIBBS: Well, what the President is looking for, quite frankly, and I think that if I keep adding subordinate clauses to my answer, which I have been practicing for a long time, and no one here has ever called me on, I will end up losing everyone trying to keep up, at which point I could call everyone here an asshole and you wouldn't even notice it you dumb shills, is a sentence or phrase that would allow him to look tough, act softly, guard against him getting blamed should the strategy fail, yet get all the credit should it succeed because he has no idea what he's doing, and again, just to reiterate, we strive to bring the full force of American diplomacy to the situation to resolve the crisis in such a way as to bring hope to a people that are in dire need of hope and change to a people who long for change.

Q: Just to follow up, sir, how many flowers and how much candy do you think the people of New Orleans will throw at President Obama's feet in greeting him as a liberator when he arrives there on Thursday?

[Cecil Turner]

What, they really don't like us? Who'da thunk it? [And they didn't like us before Bush, so the reset button silliness was stupidly counterproductive? Who knew?]

This buncha bozos inspires mirth, not fear, so it's hard to see why any foreign government would view negotiations as something other than an opportunity to raid the candy store. Enter the Russians.

This is leading up to a significant showdown with the Iranians over nukes. Look for an open admission of nuclear capability some time in the next couple of years (perhaps after someone proffers a "nuke free mideast" agreement at the UN . . . which would be doomed from the get-go). It'll be interesting to see how the Israelis play it once they figure out where this is going. But there's little doubt this Administration will cave in rather than take military action, so there's really nothing credible left to threaten. That leaves the next gut check in Jerusalem.

[clarice]

hit, you are so wicked.
We know what the magic sentence(s) is(are): Netenyahu agrees that the Israelis should simply commit suicide as you've asked them, to. They so want to follow other US allies Honduras, the Czech Republic and Poland down the tubes.
We know how much the Norwegian lutefisk besotted nutters love that sort of thing.

[narciso]

I don't think Bibi will go along with that,
by that blogpost that AT didn't publish and
I posted on my own blog, narcisoscorner.
blogspot, back around the time of the first
meeting.Then again I didn't think he'd end up in these negotiations either, lutefish does seem to be the Rosetta here, coming in 2010; the long lost Lutefish Enigma, by Robert Ludlum

[JM Hanes]

"Mitchell is continuing discussions in Washington with Israeli officials this week and Palestinian officials next week"

We've got your Shuttle Diplomacy right here.

Noah Pollak wrote up an interesting comparison of Obama and Netanyahu. While they've both been in office for about the same amount of time, "The political trajectories of the two men have been almost perfectly opposite."

Krauthammer's article must have gone to press before China actually announced that it is looking for a closer relationship with Iran. So we've got Russia and China, competing for Iran. What could possibly go wrong?

[Original MikeS]

The magic word is pre-concession. Obama claims his strategy of preemptive concession is working because our adversaries are accepting his concessions without conditions.

Says Obama, "Look how much I've conceded in just a few short months."

[Tom Bowler]

Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends.

Methinks Krauthammer is badly confused here. The Putin and Lavrov are Obama's friends. It's us tea partiers who are the enemy.

[JM Hanes]

Abe Greenwald said it all, last week:

Obama has coasted along by declaring every fork in the road a false choice and then walking straight into the middle of nowhere.

[narciso]

Oil makes the world go round, until large scale tritium production for fusion comes around. The consequences of the 1973 oil shock led to Kamal Adham's Camp David initiative, which ultimately claimed Sadat.
a product of "Tumbleweed's" other projects.
This also led to the Shah's aspiration for
leadership, which ultimately toppled him and the Iran/Iraq War, the Gulf War and our
current "Troubles" The Siloviki, the Ilkwan
and the Sauds, the PLA all know the world doesn't believe the world runs on unicorn dust, but Petrol, texas tea, black gold, or what other's have called 'the ' devil's excrement'.

[clarice]

JMH, that is fantastic!

[Charlie (Colorado)]

a sentence or phrase that would allow him to look tough, act softly, guard against him getting blamed should the strategy fail, yet get all the credit should it succeed because he has no idea what he's doing

Dude, that is the best one-sentence summary of the Obama Way that I've ever seen.

[centralcal]

Rush just announced an evil scheme to get the media to turn on Obama.

Rush is going to endorse him and his policies.

Too funny!

[narciso]

JM, you really need to update your site, that last was certainly blurbworthy.

[Rob Crawford]

Am I witnessing a White House foreign policy strategy session or have I blundered into a comedy club?

Well, Walt Disney World just closed their "Adventurer's Club" dinner/comedy show. Maybe some of the actors from that have gotten jobs in the Obama administration?

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

It's always a good idea to keep in mind why we have a problem with Iran in the first place. From the end of WWII through the 70s Iran (under the Shah) was a staunch ally against communism.

Iran's northern border abutted the Soviet Union, and the Shah's large army and air force were a formidable adversary they had to be concerned with. Naturally the KGB wanted to weaken the Shah. So they struck an alliance with Iran's clerics, who hated the Shah for weakening their power (and incomes) through his westernization reforms--women got not only the right to wear western clothing and get an education, but the vote. All religious beliefs were tolerated in the Shah's Iran.

Along comes Jimmy Carter in 1977, who proclaims that 'we are over our inordinate fear of communism', and the Shah is no longer America's honored ally, but one of the world's worst human rights abusers. The man actually imprisoned members of the Tudeh (communist) Party!

It didn't take Carter long to completely undermine the Shah, including sending American generals to speak to his counterparts in the Iranian military to warn them against resisting the forces of Ayatollah Khomeini. Unfortunately for them they took their (non)marching orders, and when the radicals took power they executed those officers, along with the communist prisoners in the Shah's prisons--they were atheists after all.

The problem with Iran today is the direct result of Jimmy Carter's stupidity in the late 70s. And Barack Obama is a bird of the same feather.

[narciso]

Where did you read this, Patrick, I don't recall that aspect in Taheri's book on the subject. The Tudeh was kind a non existent force by the mid 70s, although they had formed the core of Mossadegh's support in the 50s. His land reform plan, did a good
deal to alienate the merchant class, the bazaaris, other policies ticked off the mullahs

[glasater]

I work with an Iranian and he is a friend.

He verified to me that Patrick R. Sullivan's comment above is absolutely correct.

[narciso]

Well Stalin, chose to knee cap the Social Democrats in Germany, because he thought the Nazis would further a communist revolution, so there's certain logic there

[Frau Lehrerin außer Dienst]

OT Re Norwegian Peace Prize -
OCTOBER 2003 : NORWAY : EUROPEAN SOCIALISTS MEET WITH TOP US DEMOCRATS, INCLUDING HILLARY CLINTON, JOSEPH BIDEN , RON KLAIN AND STAN GREENBERG --- Norway's Labour Party is joining other European social democrats in linking up with the Democrats in the US. The goal is to be prepared with common strategies if a majority of them on both sides of the Atlantic come back to power. A group of European social democrats, led by former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook, met last week with several top Democratic politicians and party officials. They included US senators Hilary Clinton and Joseph Biden.
They also had meetings with Ron Klain of presidential candidate Wesley Clark's campaign, and Stan Greenberg, former US President Bill Clinton's campaign strategist in 1992.
On the agenda was European concern over current US foreign policy and the effects of globalization.
Espen Barth Eide, who led the Norwegian delegation, said the group met "understanding" that "economic globalization must be accompanied by political globalization."
TAs if we didn't know, there's a whole lot of coordinatin' been goin' on.

[glasater]

Rush in an earlier segment today spoke of Zero and his cohorts corrupting democratic voting--which I truly believe happened in WA state's gov race--culminating in last year's election. He included the NFL situation and some other examples.

I do not understand how this corruption can be countered or combatted.
Zero and his ilk seem to have unlimited funds coming in from donations plus he is using tax payer money to bribe/corrupt everyone else.

[peter]

Indicator. While walking along 161st Street in the Bronx, a half block west of the new Yankee Stadium, I noticed a street vendor, who normally makes his money selling Obama memorabilia, had less than 20 per cent of his wares as Obamaica, with the slack being taken up by Michael Jackson portraits and other chatchkas.

[Extraneus]

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

glasater, as Bartles and Jaymes used to say, thank you for your support.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

The following from a Larwyn email notice:

The Search for the Wikipedia Libelist (important update)

Ralph Alter

Thanks to an intrepid blogger with the tag Trapdoc posting a letter to Mark Steyn, the search for the Wikipedia Libelist responsible for damaging posts to the Rush Limbaugh account has been narrowed to the IP address of a New York City law firm:

"The quotes were added by a user with the IP address of 69.64.213.146. This address has been used mostly to make changes to the article about Rush, but also Karl Rove, Sean Hannity,.. James Dobson and Sara Palin from 2005 until earlier this year.

"While others have noted this in various forums, no one seems to have made the connection that this IP address is used as a gateway by the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP (see here, for example) that all users from that IP address come from the pbwt.com domain.)"

The firm provides a wide array of legal services with a broad spectrum of politically correct causes served:

"It is one of the first major firms in New York City to elect a woman as managing partner. In addition to its Diversity Committee, a group of Patterson Belknap attorneys formed PAC -- Patterson Attorneys of Color -- to assist with the enhancement of workplace diversity and the recruitment, retention and promotion of attorneys of color. Another group, Out at Patterson, focuses on issues relevant to the firm's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, and Women Lawyers at Patterson (WLAP) focuses on women's issues."

[glasater]

You are welcome Patrick....I meant well:)

A dear friend of mine worked as a secretary for the top Air force fellow in Iran in the late seventies. I don't know the rank for sure, but she told me of her experiences in those last hectic days as the Shah was being deposed.
Really fabulous stories--she should write a book. And she was so proud of the fact she actually drove the Air Force guy around the streets of Tehran. Gutsy gal!!

[JM Hanes]

Patrick:

I couldn't believe it when I found out that Obama Inc. had raised Zbigniew Brzezinski from the dead and brought him on board as one of their earliest foreign policy advisors.

[Jane]

I'm starting a war on political correctness.

LUN

[narciso]

He was one of his professors, J.M, but he's still certifiable.

[hit and run]

Charlie:
Dude, that is the best one-sentence summary of the Obama Way that I've ever seen.

Thank you.

Channeling Bob Gibbs has its risks, but the rewards sometimes makes it worth taking.

[JM Hanes]

narciso:

Brzezinski was one of Obama's professors? That explains the other 299 foreign policy advisors. Camouflage.

[JM Hanes]

hit:

It's positively stultifying just to imagine being a member of the White House press pool and sitting there day after day after day.

[Jack is Back!]

I hear Gibbs and Axelrod have been asked to track down Vince Flynn in order for the Once to get Mitch Rapp's telephone number. Desperate times require desperate measures.

[hit and run]

JMH, do they sit? Or kneel?

[PeterUK]

"But Mr Obama said "no world order which elevates one nation above others" could succeed in tackling the world's problems. "

So the boob counts himself as one amongst the Chavezistas of the world,downplays American exceptionalism, gets his foreign policy made in Norway and wonders why nobody listens.

[bad]

Excellent, Jane!!

[sbw]

Oh, my Gawd, Jane... just tracked your link down...(liked the blog post, BTW) and wondered where WESO was onlt to find you are 15 miles from where my sister lived in Wales. She now lives in Worcester.

[bad]

So the boob counts himself....

Hey, watch it mister!! I've got a couple of boobs right here who are extremely offended with that particular characterization...

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Jane, you rock!

[caro]

Jane has crazy quilt avatars!

[Frau Lehrerin außer Dienst]

As I recall, Brzezinski was at Columbia during the glorious Obama period, but there's no proof of the Once and Future Presidebt's having been in a class ofhi s. In fact, Zbig stated that he did not remember meeting Obama at Columbia.

[Frau Lehrerin außer Dienst]

I have a sinking feeling that Wade Rathke will soon attempt to organize avatars...

[Rob Crawford]

In fact, Zbig stated that he did not remember meeting Obama at Columbia.

Inconclusive -- no one remembers meeting Obama at Columbia.

[narciso]

That's bizarre, how could Brezizinski not be his advisor, considering the subject of
his thesis, then again I don't want to end
up in Rense, and Laroucheland

[Appalled]

I had been seeing these avatar things when previewing comments, and wondered if mine -- which looked suspiciously close to Obama's campaign symbol, was TM's way of tagging me. But now I see that PUK has the same one, I know that's not the case.

[hit and run]

He has other ways of tagging you, Appalled.

[megapotamus]

My memory, limited reading and predisposition endorse the Sullivan Summation above. Since our beloved Leftleaning citizens are happy to return to the days of Iraqi partition to explain enmity in the ME I think we are on firm foundation going back to the Carter administration, on grounds of tone. But it's time to dump issues of ettiquette anyhow. That font of depravity, Jimmy Carter is the proximate cause of Iran's current position as belligerent jihadi powerhouse and dang it, I can actually recall warnings to that effect. Carter rivals Gore as the modern politician with the worst record and character, now that Edwards is retired.

[PeterUK]

You're getting better bad,good!

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'...endorse the Sullivan Summation...'

Thanks, and I endorse your 'That font of depravity, Jimmy Carter...'

My summary did a great injustice to Carter's depravity by leaving out the gory details of his (and the Brits) campaign to oust the Shah, and the appalling treatment he received after abdicating. It was only Anwar Sadat's saving the Shah that prevented him being returned as ransom for our captured diplomats in Tehran, where they were planning to torture him to death publicly.

I'm not making that up.

[PD]

The problem with Iran today is the direct result of Jimmy Carter's stupidity in the late 70s.

There's also his funding of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan that turned into the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Great work all around.

[PD]

where they were planning to torture him to death publicly.

Hard to imagine adherents of The Religion of Peace doing such a thing.

[PD]

And speaking of T.R.O.P. and an earlier topic on this thread, boobs, those wacky Sharia-ists just can't make up their minds.

[Gmax]

If we are starting a Jimmy Carter stupidity bash, I can tell you right now this thread is nowhere near long enough for all the posts it will take. Odd and even gas days for rationing, and telling everyone to turn down their thermostats and shiver in the dark. The country was plenty glad to waive goodbye to the peanut farmer from Plains. I always thought Billy Carter was the one in the family with right attitude for the Presidency. And even a drunken sot like Billy could have done no worse...

[narciso]

No, we're only going by foreign policy mistakes that this administration seems to want to 'enbiggen' just from this example, in the LUN

[Neo]

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam has been released on $100 million bail on criminal charges in an alleged insider-trading scheme that federal prosecutors claim netted millions in illegal profits.

$100 million bail ... why isn't this big news ?

Oh, by the way, he donated to a lot to Democrats.