Her team transformed the former Democratic White House contender's massive campaign debts into a $3 million mountain of political cash, according to federal fund-raising records through the end of June.

Clinton's failed presidential bid is now $1 million in the black, and her old Senate campaign committee has $2.1 million in the bank, much of it transferred in from the presidential account.

(Excerpt) Read More Here

"This isn't about me," President Barack Obama said last week, maintaining that his manic push for a vote on health care reform is all about us.

In fact, the big rush is all about him and his attempt to hurriedly get his problematic notions on health reform enacted into law before his quickly falling approval numbers drop him completely into the cellar.

Last Tuesday, a story in USA Today on the growing qualms about President Obama's policies reported that his overall approval rating, after six months in office, ranks him "10th among the 12 post-World War II presidents at this point in their tenures."

Only the approval ratings of Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford were worse. Ford's public support took a nose dive after his pardon of Richard Nixon. Clinton stumbled right out of the chute with his "don't ask, don't tell" position on gays in the military. That was followed by putting Hillary in charge of redesigning the nation's health care system.

Ranking third from the bottom among America's post-World War II presidents, Obama is behind Republicans George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower after their first six months in office, as well as Democrats Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

More specifically on key issues, public support for President Obama's proposals on the economy, health care reform and the overall role of government is in rapid decline.

By 50 percent to 44 percent in the USA Today/Gallup poll, those surveyed disapproved of how Obama is handling health care policy. On the overall role of government, 52 percent said Obama is calling for too much expansion in government power and 59 percent said his policies are producing too much government spending.

On his overall handling of the economy, President Obama's current disapproval rating of 49 percent to 47 percent represents a swift turnaround from his 55 percent to 42 percent positive rating just two months ago.

Rather than re-thinking any of his key proposals in the face of this growing public disapproval, Obama's answer was to try to ram a health care bill through Congress, as well as a global warming bill, before the August recess — even if no one had the time to even speed-read what's in the legislation.

In his book "The Fatal Conceit, " Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek provided some insight into this lethal combination of arrogance and stupidity.

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design," advised Hayek.

Before the "obvious economic failure of Eastern European socialism, it was widely thought that a centrally planned economy would deliver not only 'social justice' but also a more efficient use of economic resources," Hayek wrote. "This notion appears eminently sensible at first glance. But it proves to overlook the fact that the totality of resources that one could employ in such a plan is simply not knowable to anybody, and therefore can hardly be centrally controlled."

In other words, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama just don't know enough — can't know enough — to design or run a complex economy. It's not just that neither of them has even run a successful hot dog stand. The problem is that there are too many millions of transactions in an economy, too many interactions and unintended consequences, for any one person or any single committee to understand — even if they all went to Harvard.

The "fatal conceit" is that they think they are able to shape the world to match their collectivist visions.

The good news is that we know what works. What's delivered the goods to the greatest number of people in world history — delivered unprecedented levels of both freedom and prosperity — is economic freedom, individual initiative, self-interest, competition, voluntary exchange, private property, decentralized and spontaneously self-organized markets and highly limited government.

What hasn't worked is government coercion and centralized planning, or, as Hayek put it, "the deliberate arrangement of human interaction by central authority based on collective command over available resources."

Source

"We acknowledge now with President Obama that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem that we face with climate change," she said. "We are hoping a great country like India will not make the same mistakes."

She was referring to Obama's statement in Italy earlier this month that the U.S. had "sometimes fallen short" of its responsibilities in controlling its carbon emissions.

Speaking at a news conference on the pool side patio of the Taj Mahal Palace & Hotel, which was strewn with bodies after terrorists attacked this coastal city last November, she cast India and the United States as allies in the fight against terrorism.

"Yesterday's bombings in Jakarta, Indonesia, provide a painful reminder that the threat of such violent extremism is still very real. It is global. It is ruthless. It is nihilistic and it must be stopped," she said.

"We have a great sense of solidarity and sympathy, having gone through what we did on 9/11," she added.

Her voice rising, Clinton insisted that the U.S. demand for international action against terrorist should not be taken lightly.

"We know how important (it is). We are fighting wars to end the threat of terrorism against us, our friends and allies around the world." She said India can choose its own way of contributing but must be part of a broader effort to defeat the threat.

"We expect everyone" who shares the U.S. goal of a more stable world "to take strong action to prevent terrorism from taking root on their soil and making sure that terrorists are not trained and deployed" from their territory to carry out attacks elsewhere, she added.

Earlier, Clinton attended a ceremony commemorating the Mumbai attack, which killed 166 and raised tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan. At the event were five staffers from the Oberoi Hotel and 10 from the Taj, including general manager Karambir Kang, who lost his wife and two children during the three-day siege.

The event was closed to reporters.

In a memorial book she wrote: "Americans share a solidarity with this city and nation. Both our people have experienced the senseless and searing effects of violent extremism. And both can be grateful and proud of the heroism of brave men and women whose courage saved lives and prevented greater harm on 26/11 and 9/11. Now it is up to all nations and people who seek peace and progress to work together. Let us rid the world of hatred and extremism that produces such nihilistic violence."

She also met with 11 Indian business leaders, including Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, the largest privately held company in India.

Echoing remarks made by Ambani at the meeting, Clinton said that India should leapfrog the developed world to come up with its own innovative way to encourage environmentally friendly growth.

"Just as India went from a few years ago having very few mobile phones to now having more than 500 million mostly cell phones by leapfrogging over the infrastructure we built for telephone service, we believe India is innovative and entrepreneurial enough to figure out how to deal with climate change while continuing to lift people out of poverty and develop at a rapid rate," she said.

Seeking to assuage Indian concerns that the U.S. pressured India into making concessions to Pakistan despite that nation's failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack, Clinton emphasized that the U.S. respects India's sovereign right to make its own decisions.

"Discussion between India and Pakistan is between India and Pakistan," she said.

The visit marked a return to the world stage for Clinton, who has been slowed since mid-June by an arm injury that forced her to cancel plans to attend international meetings in Italy and Greece last month and to accompany President Barack Obama on his visit to Russia earlier this month.

Clinton is scheduled to hold talks Sunday and Monday in New Delhi with Indian government officials on a wide range of issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, strengthening trade ties and combatting climate change. She is to attend talks in Thailand later in the week with representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Source

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who broke her right elbow two weeks ago, will not accompany President Barack Obama to Moscow next week, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.

“Secretary Clinton is not going to go to Moscow,” the official told reporters, saying Clinton would name a State Department official to replace her on the Monday-to-Wednesday trip.

(Excerpt) Read More Here

TOWNHALL – Now that Bill Clinton has released the list of his 205,000 donors who have given close to $500 million to his library and foundation, it is clear why he resisted releasing the list while his wife was running for president.

Compelled by the Obama transition team to make it public as a condition of his wife's appointment as secretary of state, it becomes clear that the list is a virtual encyclopedia of conflicts of interest for the husband of a senator, to say nothing of the husband of an incoming secretary of state.

Particularly troubling are the massive donations from Arab governments in the Middle East. How can a secretary of state possibly be impartial in conflicts involving Israel when her husband has gotten tens of millions of dollars from Arabian governments and high-ranking people. Specifically, Clinton got:

Between $10 million and $25 million from:

– The government of Saudi Arabia

Between $1 million and $5 million from:

– Friends of Saudi Arabia

– The Dubai Foundation

– Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid

– Saudi tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi

– Former Lebanon Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares

– The government of Kuwait

– The government of Qatar

– The government of Oman

– The government of Brunei

– The Zayed Family, rulers of Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates

He also received between $500,000 and $1 million from Saudi businessman Walid Juffali.

Pardon us for looking such generous gift horses in the mouth, but it is hard to imagine so many governments, monarchs and businessmen in the Middle East giving money unless it was with some hope of a political return on their investment. Will that return now come with the appointment of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state?

After all, the next secretary of state will be called upon to mediate and negotiate conflicts in the Middle East as her first assignment. How can Hillary Clinton undertake to do so impartially when her husband's library and foundation — over which he has total control — have been bankrolled by the very nations with whom she must negotiate?

The list reveals another key center of conflicts of interest in Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Republic, now home to some of the world's greatest mineral deposits and ruled by a corrupt dictator, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, who according to The New York Times has all but quashed political dissent."

Clinton visited Kazakhstan and met with its president on Sept. 6, 2005, accompanied by Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra. Soon after, Giustra was awarded a highly lucrative contract to mine uranium there. Now, lo and behold, Giustra turns up having given the library and foundation $10 million to $25 million and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative-Canada gave $1 million to $5 million more. And Clinton got $1 million to $5 million from Laksmi Mittal, the fourth wealthiest person on the Forbes billionaire list and a member of the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan.

In addition, Clinton further fished in troubled waters by taking $1 million to $5 million from Victor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of the controversial former president of Ukraine.

Given the complexities of U.S. policy toward the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, it is hard to see how this massive and incestuous relationship cannot but complicate Hillary's independence.

One of the largest donors to the library and foundation was UNITAID, an international organization largely controlled by France, which donated more than $25 million. And the conflicts of interest are not all just foreign. Corporate bailout recipients and wanna-be recipients donated to the Clinton fund. They include: AIG, Lehman, Merrill, the Citi Foundation and General Motors.

And, almost as an afterthought, the list reveals a donation of at least $450,000 from Denise Rich, presumably in return for her ex-husband's presidential pardon.

How could a United States senator possibly serve dispassionately while her husband was collecting money from these donors on this kind of scale? And how could we have almost elected a president without realizing these conflicts existed? And how on earth can a secretary of state function with these conflicts hanging over her head?

Source:  Townhall

Roads and bridges! What joy. Last week's announcement by President-elect Barack Obama of his massive public works initiative to stimulate the economy won loud applause from me. Not only does the decaying U.S. infrastructure need emergency attention but construction commissions will be far more substantive and enduring than the half-mythical 5 million "green" jobs that Obama was airily promising before the election.

But then I gulped when Obama also pledged educational reform by putting state-of-the-art computers in every classroom. Groan. Computers alone will never solve the educational crisis in this country: They are tools and facilitators, not primary conveyors of knowledge. Packing his team with shiny Harvard retreads, Obama missed a golden opportunity to link his public works project with a national revalorization of the trades. Practical training in hands-on vocational skills is desperately needed in this country, where liberal arts education has become a soggy boondoggle, obscenely expensive and diluted by propaganda and groupthink.

The plurality of moderates and conservatives on Obama's appointments list didn't surprise me, because I never thought he was the flaming radical socialist portrayed on right-wing talk radio (which I listen to and enjoy even when I disagree). As an Obama supporter and contributor, I've been very gratified by his dignified deportment and steadiness at the helm to date. But I must admit to puzzled disappointment with his recycling of Clinton era veterans, who reek of déjà  vu. Surely we might have expected a better mix of fresh faces and progressive voices? Obama's team may have underestimated the labyrinthine personal interconnections and habit-worn loyalties of that cliquish crew.

(Excerpt) Read Entire Article at Salon.com

(WASHINGTON TIMES) At the exact moment Jon Favreau is receiving high praise in pre-inaugural media puff pieces, the 27-year-old chief speechwriter for President-elect Barack Obama (not Jon Favreau, the Hollywood actor/ director) finds himself in a minor mess over a photo from a recent private party showing him groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Rodham Clinton as an unnamed pal wearing an "Obama staff" T-shirt kisses and feeds her beer.

If you haven't seen it, imagine the early stages of the barroom rape scene of "The Accused" with Jodie Foster. Or think prosecutor Mike Nifong's graphic (though false) descriptions of the Duke lacrosse party. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson danced to a similar tune at the 2004 Super Bowl.

Fraternities have been closed for less.

The provocative party pic uploaded to Facebook for a very short time was soon discovered and printed in The Washington Post then disseminated across the Internet and featured prominently on Politico, Gawker and the Drudge Report.

If the photo had exposed a Republican offender, there'd already be a full-bore media scandal and cascading resignations. MSNBC would be rearranging its schedules for a wall-to-wall 24/7 bonanza. Rachel Maddow would finally have her big story. Barbara Boxer, Patricia Schroeder and other righteous feminists would walk up the Capitol steps, reprising the time they tried to destroy Clarence Thomas – for nothing.

Yet so far there is no groundswell of feminist rage in the District of Columbia. The unnamed co-conspirator thrusting the beer bottle into the mouth of the designated secretary of state isn't yet a household slur.

Instead, with the accused being a member of the protected Democratic class, we only have a quick peripheral debate. The mainstream media headlines soften the story's implications: "Obama speechwriter Favreau learns the perils of Facebook" (CNN).

Next time, don't share your coarseness with the world. It's the technology's fault.

The aggressive iconography of two young drunk men taking advantage of a life-size cutout of a woman – especially a powerful one – would bring an elite college campus to a standstill, force a housecleaning of a Fortune 500 company, ground the Air Force Academy and would, in most cases, ruin the career of a Republican staffer or elected official.

Every sexual harassment training manual makes exceedingly clear that this type of behavior is intolerable. If only former President Bill Clinton could offer his sage advice on sexual harassment and put this conundrum to rest.

If, for instance, President Bush's former speechwriter Michael Gerson had been caught in flagrante cartone, he would have stepped down before the president could fire him. If not, the media, the feminist establishment and the Democratic Party leadership would have destroyed Mr. Gerson and Mr. Bush and crafted a "culture of harassment" umbrella descriptor to hang around the administration's neck in perpetuity.

In GOP land, apologies and resignations are never enough.

However, the Democratic double standard on political correctness kicked in immediately as the feminist establishment, the media and even Mrs. Clinton herself came forth to save the fast-rising Obama wordsmith.

Can she fix it? Yes, she can.

Mrs. Clinton ignored the sexism and sexual assault the photo projected and accepted Mr. Favreau's apology through her spokesman Philippe Reines, who weirdly joked, "Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application."

This is not the first time, of course, that Mrs. Clinton has saved a man from exceedingly bad behavior with women. In fact, it's her signature skill.

To her credit, CNN's Campbell Brown sought to put it in the record that Mr. Favreau's actions were not as innocuous as the Clinton spin: "She is joining Team Obama, and, apparently, this photo of her likeness being groped by another key member of Obama's team doesn't bother her a bit. Just good-natured fun, or so her spokesman says. Really, Senator Clinton? Boy, have you changed your tune."

The National Organization for Women, which last struck issuing news releases on why Sarah Palin isn't a real woman, refused to comment on the Obama speechwriter incident.

When NOW's press secretary Mai Shiozaki was reached Friday, she first claimed not to have seen the Favreau photograph. But when called later, she offered two reasons for not weighing in: "I haven't looked into it" and "I have a 5 p.m. deadline. … I am already late."

The New Agenda, a new nonpartisan group for women's rights, and perhaps a valid heir apparent to the dying NOW brand, did speak out: "These antics ought to be summarily condemned by President-elect Obama. He ought to fire Jon Favreau. If he does not fire Favreau, he risks fostering the perception that he condones Favreau's disrespect toward Senator Clinton. He also risks encouraging this sort of behavior in other young men toward women who are not merely cardboard cutouts."

But as it is, Mr. Favreau is primed to set the tone of the incoming president as he crafts Mr. Obama's much-anticipated inaugural address. With Democrats in control of the House, the Senate, the media and academia, perhaps Mr. Favreau can be a mensch and declare over the era of media double standards benefiting Democrats; perhaps he can give a nod to Gloria Steinem's "One Free Grope" rule crafted for Mr. Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky flap; and perhaps he can make a rhetorical bow to the new breed of permissive feminists with this hoary old chestnut: "You've come a long way, baby."

Source:  Washington Times

Question No. 58 in the transition team vetting document for the Obama White House asks that applicants: "Please provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g. Facebook, My Space, etc.)"

Question No. 63 asks that applicants "please provide any other information … that could … be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect."

For a while there this afternoon, President-elect Barack Obama's immensely talented chief speechwriter, 27-year-old Jon Favreau, might have been pondering how to address that question.

That's when some interesting photos of a recent party he attended — including one where he's dancing with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of secretary of state-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and another where he's placed his hand on the cardboard former first lady's chest while a friend is offering her lips a beer — popped up on Facebook for about two hours. The photos were quickly taken down — along with every other photo Favreau had of himself on the popular social networking site, save for one profile headshot.

Asked about the photos, Favreau, who was recently appointed director of speechwriting for the White House, declined comment. A transition official said that Favreau had "reached out to Senator Clinton to offer an apology."

Favreau is not the first campaign aide whose online presence has proved awkward. Last March, John McCain aide Soren Dayton forwarded an anti-Obama YouTube video to his private Twitter feed linking Obama with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, leading to his suspension from the campaign. And in 2007, two bloggers hired by former North Carolina senator John Edwards stepped down after blog posts they had written before he hired them became a subject of controversy.

Favreau's case seems unlikely to be so dire; Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines cast the photos as evidence of increased bonhomie between the formerly rival camps.

"Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application," he said in an e-mail.

Source:  Washington Post

Having upended the Democratic Party, largely over his different views on foreign policy and the war in Iraq, he now turns to the leader of the ancient regime he ousted, derided, mocked, and criticized to take over the top international-affairs position in his administration.

No longer, apparently, does he distrust Hillary's "judgment," as he did during the debates when he denounced her vote on the Iraq war resolution. Now, all is forgiven. After everything Obama says he stood for, the only change he apparently truly believes in is a fait accompli.

Apart from the breathtaking cynicism of the appointment lies the total lack of foreign-policy experience in the new partnership. Neither Clinton nor Obama has spent five minutes conducting any aspect of foreign policy in the past.

Neither has ever negotiated anything or dealt with diplomatic issues. It is the blonde leading the blind.

And then there is the question of whether we want a secretary of state who is compromised, in advance, by her husband's dealings with repressive regimes in Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Dubai, the U.A.E., Morocco, and governments about which we know nothing.

These foreign leaders have paid the Clinton family millions of dollars — directly and through the Clintons' library and/or foundation — funds they can and have used as personal income.

How do we know that she can conduct foreign policy independently even if it means biting those who have fed her and her husband? But the most galling aspect of the appointment is that it puts Obama in the midst of an administration that, while he appointed it, is not his own.

Rather, he has now created a government staffed by Clinton people, headed by Clinton appointees, and dominated by Hillary herself. He has willingly created the same untenable situation as that into which Lyndon Johnson stepped when JFK was assassinated in 1963.

Johnson inherited a Cabinet wholly staffed by Kennedy intimates with Bobby himself as attorney general.

LBJ had no choice and had to spend two years making the government his own. But Obama had all the options in the world and chose to fence himself in by appointing Hillary as secretary of state, Clinton Cabinet member Bill Richardson for Commerce, Clinton staffer Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, Clinton buddy (and top lobbyist) Tom Daschle to HHS, and Bill's deputy attorney general, Eric Holder, to Justice.

Presidents Clinton and Lincoln similarly appointed what Doris Kearns Goodwin has famously called a "team of rivals" to staff their Cabinets and administrations.

Lincoln named all of his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination to senior posts in his Cabinet and Clinton staffed his White House and much of his Cabinet with ambassadors to other wings of the Democratic Party.

George Stephanopoulos was his ambassador to House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, Harold Ickes his emissary to organized labor, Al Gore his delegate to the environmentalists, Leon Panetta his liaison with congressional committee chairmen, Ron Brown his man in the black community, and Henry Cisneros as his go-between with the Hispanic community.

In each case, the president acted to bolster his ties with the factions of his own party because he feared how he would fare with his party in total control of Congress. Neither the Republicans of 1861 nor the Democrats of 1992 saw the president from their own party as their natural leaders.

Lincoln's colleagues had chosen him only after a deadlock between the two front-runners had paralyzed the convention. Clinton got the nomination only after Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, the party's favorite, had pulled out. Each man was elected with barely 40 percent of the vote. So each felt constrained to share power with their rivals.

While Obama was not the early favorite of his party, he does not need to defer so ostentatiously to those who fought him for the nomination. His general election mandate clearly entitled him to name who he pleased. But he has chosen to nominate men and women with no loyalty to him and no real stake in his future.

And standing above all his appointees like a president-in-exile, is Hillary Clinton.

If Obama needed any warning about how Hillary will play the game, he need only look at how she handled her appointment. She forced Obama to see her by publicly complaining that she had not heard from him.

When he raised the possibility of her appointment to state, she then leaked word that it was in the works. Even the announcement of her appointment was not made by Obama but leaked by Hillary's "confidants."

Hillary will be a loose cannon as secretary of state, vindicating her own agenda rather than that of the president and burnishing her own image at every turn. Not since Cordell Hull in the '30s have we had a secretary so interested in running for president.

Not since William Jennings Bryan in the 1910s have we had a defeated nominee named as secretary. Obama will not be able to control Hillary nor will he be able to control his own administration with Emanuel as chief of staff. He will find that his appointees will march to the beat of their own drummer — if he is lucky — and Hillary's if he is not.

Either Obama has chosen to put himself in this untenable situation because he is not wise in the ways of Washington or because he plans to be little more than a figurehead. Given his campaign, neither seems likely. But his promise of change has proven so bankrupt that maybe the rest of his candidacy is too.

Source:  Dick Morris