Archive for September 17, 2008

Hillary says no to Palin

September 17, 2008 at 10:05 pm · Filed under foreign affairs, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Sarah Palin is raining on Hillary Clinton’s parade, literally.  Clinton was planning to attend a rally in protest of President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad of Iran, who will be in New York next Monday at the United Nations.  But, after learning the Sarah Palin is now expected to attend, a Clinton spokesman confirmed the former first lady will not attend the demonstration.  “(Palin’s) attendance was news to us, and this was never billed to us as a partisan political event,” says a Clinton spokesman.

My question is, would Clinton have been attending this rally if she had won the Democratic nomination for president?  I think not.  Because no matter the distaste for Ahmadenijad, this is no time for saber-rattling from the highest offices in our land, or from those who would occupy them.  And for Sarah Palin to have insisted that the United States could not “second guess” Israel if it were to bomb Iran in an unprovoked attack is the kind of careless, breezy diplomacy that President Bush (43) has been widely criticized for, and actually chastened away from in his current approach to Iran.

Here is where knowledge of the Bush Doctrine comes in.  Ahmadenijad has said horrible things about Israel–suggesting it should be wiped off the face of the earth being the worst among them–but he has not attacked Israel, and must certainly know that if he did, the United States would retaliate swiftly.  Would we side on the sidelines if we learned Pakistan were going to launch a pre-emptive attack on India?  

I deeply believe in a Jewish state, and want to see peace between Israel, a Palestinian state and the rest of the region.  But if Israel were to attack Iran, such an attack could unleash a world of hatred and hurt against Israel (and no doubt, the United States) from terrorist enclaves and their sympathizers around the world. The goal of the next administration must be to reduce worldwide tensions, not incite them further.

I feel quite sure, however, that as much as this photo op of Veep Palin bashing Ahmadenijad, the United Nations meeting provides Palin an opportunity to force a head of state to meet with her and bolster her foreign policy credentials.  I’m guessing it’s going to be Angela Merkel (female bonding photo op), Nouri Al-Maliki (which almost counts for having been to Iraq, right?) or perhaps with Nicolas Sarkozy, an equal opportunity photo-opper out to boost the French presidency after that whole “old Europe” thing.

One wonders, while in New York, will the vice presidential nominee find time to stop by Wall Street?

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Every part of the economy I oversighted

September 17, 2008 at 2:50 am · Filed under domestic policy, Politics ·Tagged , , , ,

When the economy is teetering on the brink between a deep recession and just a bad hangover, the thing to really pull us out of it in a hurry would be a 9-11 style blue ribbon commission to study what went wrong.  They’ll get to solutions on the next panel, I assume.

I don’t even know what Senator Obama’s six-point plan on the economy is.  The fact that it has six points is six legs up on McCain’s commission.  We don’t have time for a commission to be your BIG plan…

It just boils down to what I was saying in an earlier post, you can’t be “fundamentally a de-regulator” who is “always for less regulation” and then whoop and holler about the lack of oversight by the government.  Please!  The dictionary definition of oversight IS regulation.  But perhaps McCain was confused by the other common use of the word “oversight”– something you OMIT to do….

Oversight. noun

1 a: watchful and responsible care b: regulatory supervision <congressional oversight>2: an inadvertent omission or error

Now, when CBS morning show host Harry Smith asked McCain if he is prepared to deal with the economy he bragged about his chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee.  Of course, he neatly overlooked the fact that as its chairman he must not have sufficiently “oversighted” (that’s not even a word!) the whole economy under his purview when he had the chance.

Smith: “Let me ask you this. Earlier this year on the campaign trail, you said — or you admitted that you didn’t know a lot about the economy. Why should voters trust you in these perilous times with the economy of the United States?”

McCain: “You know, that’s one of the interesting things about having long conversations. The point is, I was chairman of the Commerce Committee. Every part of America’s economy, I oversighted. I have a long record, certainly far more extensive of being involved in our economy than Senator Obama does. I understand the economy. I know the issues-“

Smith: “Well, if that’s the case, wouldn’t you bear more responsibility for some of the crisis we’re in then?”

Now, McCain doesn’t like to brag too much, so it’s helpful that his aide Douglas Holtz-Eakin gives him the kind of credit he deserves.  Holding up his blackberry, Holtz-Eakin declared, “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”  Behold!  And he saw that it was good.

Oh, I kid.  But really, I think the folks at Coloradopols.com may be able to clear up this little misoverestimating incident:

McCain is pretty old, so maybe the advisor meant that he invented the actual blackberry – you know, the fruit.

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