Hillary Clinton IS going to be the next Secretary of State…

I guess Hillary Clinton is putting “Country First”, Barack Obama first, as it seems she would be accepting the Secretary of State slot in Barack Obama’s administration.

I mean, if Barack really though that highly of her, why didn’t he put her on the ticket as his Vice-President, why bring her on as Secretaty of State, a position where she is beneath him and Joe Biden, and is also serving at their pleasure and not that of the electorate? The answer is simple of course, Obama knows what all of us know, Hillary is a highly competent person, who would be an asset to any administration, Obama also knows what all of us suspect, he is afraid to have her too close to him as she would steal the spotlight he so dearly craves.

Our advice to Hillary still stands; better to serve as a Senator at the pleasure of the people of New York, than as a cabinet member at the pleasure of Barack Obama, but Hillary knows best.

I just hope Barack Obama does not use her and dump her, the way he used and dumped everyone else in his ascent to the Presidency.

Once she becomes Secretary of State,  the prospect of Hillary Clinton being elected President is effectively down to 0% , which effectively nullifies her whole ambition of cracking the glass ceiling for women. Madeline Albright cracked the ceiling for Secretary of State in the 1990s.

So as Hillary accepts her new position, I wish her all the best, knowing she is bound to do an excellent job.

Posted by PUMA Pundit

Here is an article from the Guardian, UK:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

Clinton would be well placed to become the country’s dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops.

Clinton, who still harbours hopes of a future presidential run, had to weigh up whether she would be better placed by staying in the Senate, which offers a platform for life, or making the more uncertain career move to the secretary of state job.

As part of the coalition-building, Obama today also reached out to his defeated Republican rival, John McCain, to discuss how they could work together to roll back some of the most controversial policies of the Bush years. Putting aside the bitter words thrown about with abandon by both sides during the election campaign, McCain flew to meet Obama at his headquarters in the Kluczynski Federal Building, in downtown Chicago.

Obama, speaking before the meeting, said: “We’re going to have a good conversation about how we can do some work together to fix up the country.” He said he also wanted to thank McCain for his service to the country.

Asked by a reporter whether he would work with Obama, McCain, who has long favoured a bipartisan approach to politics, replied: “Obviously”.

Sources on both sides said Obama did not offer McCain a cabinet job, but focused on how the senator for Arizona could help to guide through Congress legislation that they both strongly favour.

Given Obama’s status as president-in-waiting, the two met in a formal setting, a room decked out with a US flag, and were accompanied by senior advisers. Obama appeared the more relaxed of the two, sitting with legs crossed, smiling broadly and waving to reporters, while McCain sat stiffly, with a seemingly fixed grin.

Although the two clashed during the election campaign over tax policy and withdrawal from Iraq, they have more in common than they have differences. They both favour the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, an increase in US troops to Afghanistan, immigration reform, stem cell research and measures to tackle climate change, and oppose torture and the widespread use of wire-tapping.

Although Democrats made gains in the Senate in the November 4 elections, they fell short of the 60 seats that would have allowed them to override Republican blocking tactics and will need Republican allies to get Obama’s plans through. This was highlighted today when the Democratic leadership in Congress announced that a broad economic stimulus package Obama sought was not likely to be passed because of Republican opposition.

Obama confirmed at the weekend that he would offer jobs to some Republicans. One of the names that crops up most often is Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator who is a specialist in foreign affairs and a critic of the Iraq war.

The “Bitch” and the “Ditz”…

Interesting article from the New York Magazine on how sexism reared its ugly head in the 2008 Campaign… Funny thing is that the same article goes on to reinforce some of the same sexist stereotypes in what is obviously a blatant attack on Sarah Palin. Here is the closing paragraph, perhaps the only part of the article that is somewhat objective:

But among the darker revelations of this election is the fact that the vice-grip of female stereotypes remains suffocatingly tight. On the national political stage and in office buildings across the country, women regularly find themselves divided into dualities that are the modern equivalent of the Madonna-whore complex: the hard-ass or the lightweight, the battle-ax or the bubblehead, the serious, pursed-lipped shrew or the silly, ineffectual girl. It is exceedingly difficult to sidestep this trap. Michelle Obama began the campaign as a bold, outspoken woman with a career of her own, and she was called a hard-ass. Now, as she prepares to move into the White House, she appears poised to recede into a fifties-era role of “mom-in-chief.” It will be heartbreaking if, in an effort to avoid the kind of criticism that followed Hillary Clinton, the First Lady is reduced to a lightweight.

Posted by PUMA Pundit

As Barack Obama gives his campaign staff huge bonuses… Hillary’s Campaign still in the red by $21 million…

When you consider the fact that Hillary Clinton chose to put personal ambition aside and support Barack Obama’s quest for the presidency, Obama’s latest decision to give his campaign staff humongous bonuses while not lifting a finger to help Hillary retire her debt is just shameful. Then again, Obama has never been a person with whose name virtue is associated.

From the New York Daily News:

Barack Obama ended his campaign so flush with cash he’s telling staffers… they will be getting extra paychecks worth a month’s salary, the Daily News has learned.

“It was totally unexpected, and you can’t believe how helpful this is with the holidays coming,” the lower-level worker said. “A lot of people thought they were going to be broke and would have to try to find a job in this rotten economy. It’s a huge help.“

In addition to the cold cash, staffers also have the option of keeping their campaign-issued computers and BlackBerrys - but must pay income tax on the hardware if they do.

It’s an almost unprecedented move at the end of a presidential campaign, even a winning one, because usually they are flat broke, having taken public financing and gone through every last penny.

But Obama skipped public financing and raised more than $600 million, including more than $150 million in September, and nearly $40 million in the first couple of weeks of October.

If this silver parachute approaches his September payroll, it’ll be worth upward of $3 million. 

And while Obama splashes his staff with cash, Hillary Clinton is still in hock for about $21 million, including about $13 million she lent herself and will never get back.

Although she’s banking on Obama to help her pay down the remaining $8 million, he can’t use any leftover campaign cash. He’d have to tap his donors anew for her. 

It is a well known fact that Obama is still fundraising, in fact it seems his list (or part of it) has been given to the DNC to raise funds, so what stops him from tapping his list to help the one person two people Bill and Hillary person who campaigned tirelessly for him in key battleground states, and whose support undoubtedly helped ensure his victory?

Posted by PUMA Pundit

Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State… Not likely if Hillary has some common sense left…

Well, what can I say. If Hillary Clinton is hell bent on putting a nail in her own political coffin, so be it.

For a woman who is a sitting Senator, serving at the pleasure of the people of New York to trade that position to be the Secretarty of State serving at the pleasure of Barack Obama. Well, bigger political miscalculations have happened in the history of the Republic.

If Hillary accepts, and I hope she doesn’t, she will literally bring an end to her political career, and join the league of political has beens like that other former Secretary of State, Colin Powell. It was vastly experienced and respected Powell, who squaneded whatever respect and goodwil he may have had when he went in front of the UN and misrepresented lied about the true state of affairs vis-a-vis Iraq on behalf of the  inexperienced and inept George W. Bush…

So Hillary, if our advice means anything to you, and with your going all out for Barack Obama during the campaign, it’s hard to say that it does, please stay in the Senate and serve this country. This is infinitely better than engaging in crass political opportunism and serving Barack Obama as his Secretary of State…

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Barack and Michelle Obama… Hillary Who? Plus what if Hillary had taken on McCain?

Awesome payback! Hillary and Bill went all out for him, and what do they get? Let’s hear CBS tell it:

Personally, I believe the Clintons are letting themselves be taken to the cleaners: For them, it’s all give and no get. Politico.com goes on to report something I’ve blogged about several times: President-elect Obama still has not helped Senator Clinton retire any of her campaign debt–something which was widely reported last spring as part of his pledge to her if she would get out of the nomination race.

Then again, it’s a free country, and the Clintons can let themselves be used, abused, and bruised by their own party for as long as they want. Politico.com reports Senator Clinton has already written off her taxes the $13 million she loaned her own campaign during the primaries. Ouch! And the Clintons didn’t just support Obama; they hit the campaign trail with force and talked him up until Senator Clinton went hoarse. There’s still the business of $7.9 million she owes to vendors. Maybe he’ll come through and help her pay off that debt.

If President-elect Obama helps Senator Clinton, it will make him look not only Clinton-friendly, but more important woman-friendly. Woman-friendly is not his style, at least not so far. Remember he apologized to a reporter for calling her “sweetie” during the campaign? Now his wife’s role as first lady will be, in her own words, “mom in chief.” Take “Obama” out of the equation and this type of behavior seems positively retro. The trial balloon of ousted Harvard President Lawrence Summers as potential treasury secretary was yet another slap to Obama’s multitude of female supporters.

Meanwhile, exit polls show that if it had been a Hillary vs. McCain matchup, things would have turned out very differently… Here is what AP discovered:

What if it had been Hillary?

There’s no way to be sure, but she might have won by even more than Obama did.

Voters in the Obama-McCain race said they would have preferred Hillary Rodham Clinton over McCain by 51 percent to 41 percent, a larger margin than Obama’s 53-46 win.

Among the differences: Women say they would have backed Clinton over McCain by 18 percentage points, bigger than Obama’s 12-point advantage with them. Whites favored McCain over Obama by 12 points but leaned toward the Republican by a narrower 5 points against Clinton. Eighty-six percent of blacks would have backed Clinton — solid, but shy of the 95 percent who supported Obama. Clinton almost matched the two-thirds of people under age 30 who voted for Obama, but nearly one in 10 of them said they wouldn’t have bothered voting at all.

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Al Gore- If you voted for McCain/Palin you are simply NOT intelligent…

“One of the reasons we were all thrilled Tuesday night is it was pretty obvious this was a collectively intelligent decision.”

So I guess all those who did not vote for Barack Obama (including his running mate, Joe Lieberman) are simply unintelligent? At least that’s what this statement by Al Gore implies. 

He made it while talking about global warming and democracy:

The Web has “revolutionized” nearly every aspect of running for US president and delivered an “electrifying redemption” of the founding national principle that all people are created equal, according to Gore.

While at it, someone ought to tell Al that 18 million people who voted for Hillary in the Democratic Primary were NOT created equal to the 18 million who voted for Joseph Stalin Comrade Barack Obama

Barack Obama Gives John McCain the Finger, I guess he wasn’t satisfied with giving one to Hillary…

Barack Obama never learns, does he? He flipped off Hillary during the primaries, and now he flips off John McCain.

Funny Juvenile thing here is that he is actually giving him the finger while commending him. I guess such sophomoric antics are exactly what Obama’s fan club of “dissidents” and students want in a leader.

Posted by PUMA Pundit

Obama’s Speechwriter Boldly Declares She’s a P.U.M.A!

We told you PUMAs are everywhere. It seems one of Barack Obama’s speechwriters is a PUMA…

Aha… Excerpts from her “coming out” article at TheDailyBeast

 

A speechwriter for Obama, Edwards, and Clinton on why she’s voting McCain.

Since I started writing speeches more than ten years ago, I have always believed in the Democratic Party. Not anymore. Not after the election of 2008. This transformation has been swift and complete and since I’m a woman writing in the election of 2008, “very emotional

When we first met, Obama and I had a nice conversation about speeches and writing, and at the end of the meeting I handed him a pocket-sized bottle of Grey Poupon mustard so he wouldn’t have to ask staff if it was okay to put it on his hamburger. At the bottom of the bottle was the logo for “The South Beach Diet” and he snapped, “Oh so you read People magazine.” He seemed to think that I was commenting on his bathing suit picture.

I helped with his announcement speech and others. I worked in the Senate when he was in D.C. One day after a hearing on Darfur, we were walking back to the office. I was still hobbling from a very bad ankle injury and in a very kind and gentle way he offered his arm when we approached the stairs. But later in debate preps and phone conversations and meetings, I realized that I had made a mistake. I didn’t belong. No matter how hard I tried, my heart wasn’t in it anymore.

This drift started on a personal level with the fall of former Senator John Edwards. It got stronger during the Democratic National Convention when I counted the substantive mentions of poverty on one hand and a whole bunch of bad canned partisan lines against Senator John McCain. Some faith was lifted after Senator Hillary Clinton’s grace during a difficult hour. But that faith was dashed when I saw that someone had raided the Caligula set and planted the old columns at Invesco Field.

The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”

As the nation slouches toward disaster, the level of political discourse is unworthy of this moment in history. We have Republicans raising Ayers and Democrats fostering ageism with “erratic” and jokes about Depends. Sexism. Racism. Ageism and maybe some Socialism have all made their ugly cameos in election 2008. It’s not inspiring. Perhaps this is why I found the initial mocking of Joe so offensive and I realized an old line applied: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

The party I believed in wouldn’t look down on working people under any circumstance. And Joe the Plumber is right. This is the absolutely worst time to raise taxes on anyone: the rich, the middle class, the poor, small businesses and corporations.

Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability. And when someone can sit on a stage during the Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live, put her hands in the air and watch someone in a moose costume get shot—that’s a sign of both humor and humanity.

I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.

When people say how excited they are about this election, I can now say, “Maybe for you. But I lost my home.”

How a Ghost Army Delivered Mississippi to Barack Obama in the Primaries…

You thought we’ve forgotten, ey? Not at all. During the Mississippi Democratic Primaries, Barack Obama won 265,502 votes in Mississippi, an amount equal to 61.2% of the total votes cast. Hillary came in a very distant second with 36.7% of the vote, the other candidates split the difference. 

Well, when something seems too good to be true, it usually is, and reports coming out of the state provide us with the following ultra-amazing information:

Mississippi’s voter situation is hard to believe. Places like Madison County have over 123% more registered voters than people over the age of 18.

Hmmmm. Interesting aye? Considering the fact that this is the breakdown for the votes in Madison County, the picture of what happened in good Ole’ Miss becomes increasingly clear:

Candidate	Votes	% of votes
Barack Obama	9,810	76%
Hillary Clinton	2,881	22%
100% of precincts reporting

But let’s get back to the story:

Sue Sautermeister, First District Election Commissioner in Madison County, tried to purge the rolls, but ran into trouble when it was discovered it takes a vote of three of the five election commissioners and the purge cannot take place within 90 days of a federal election.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is the first to admit the situation with voter registration in this state is terrible.

“It is terrible,” he says. “Combined with the fact that we don’t have voter ID in Mississippi, anybody can show up at any poll that happens to know the people who have left town or died — and go vote for them.”

Wow, you mean, wait, you don’t say? People who no longer exist get to vote?

“Whenever we have a third party determined by payment, for example, as they did in Benton County — ‘walking-around’ money — and they determine what that vote is going to be, they’ve taken your vote, whether they may have voted like you would have or not, they’ve still thwarted the process and they’ve still have taken your vote away from you,” added Hosemann.

Hmmm Benton County? Vote buying? I wonder how Benton County voted? Let’s see:

Candidate	Votes	% of votes
Hillary Clinton	859	55%
Barack Obama	658	42%
100% of precincts reporting

Ah, it actually went to Clinton, but then again, with about 1,500 people voting, out of 6,000 adults, there wasn’t much room for monkey business.

But, let’s get back to the article:

Sue Sautermeister is working hard in the First District of Madison County to start a purging of the voter rolls as soon after the election as possible. She has file drawers full of names of people who haven’t voted in years and are known to be dead.

“We have people who registered in 1965 who have never voted,” she says. “We have 486 people (registered who are) over 105.”

Wow! 486 Centerinarians in one county, I wonder if they would all walk to the polls or ride in a motorcade…

Hosemann says 190,000 new voters have registered for this election and he believes the turnout will be historic.

So we have the living and the dead both voting together, this is definitely change you can believe in! I have the audacity of hope that I would run into my dead grandparents at the polling booth, that would be kind of cool, wouldn’t it?

Posted by PUMA Pundit

 

Sarah Palin Slams Barack Obama for Not Vetting Hillary Clinton

Seems Sarah is pointing out how Obama talks the talk but does not walk the walk when it comes to women voters, ABC News’ Imtiyaz Delawala Reports:

“When it came time for choosing, somehow Barack Obama just couldn’t bring himself to pick the woman who got 18 million votes in his primary, and that seems to be too familiar a story isn’t it?” Palin said at a rally in Henderson, NV yesterday. “How it is for so many American women that the qualifications are there, but for some reason the promotion never comes?

Palin went on to state:

“You’ve got to ask yourself why was Senator Hillary Clinton not even vetted by the Obama campaign?” Palin continued. “Why did it take 24 years, an entire generation from the time Geraldine Ferraro made her pioneering bid until the next time that a woman was asked to join a national ticket?”

‘In the long history of our country, 74 people have held the position of President or Vice-President, and why have the major parties given America only two chances to even consider a woman for either office?” Palin asked. “This glass ceiling, it is still there, but it’s about time that we shattered that glass ceiling once and for all.”

Palin also spoke about Obama’s personal attitude to equal pay for equal work when it comes to women who work in his Senate office…

“Out on the stump he talks a good game about equal pay for equal work, but according to the Senate pay roll records women on his own staff get just 83 cents for every dollar that the men get,” Palin said of Obama. “That’s 9,000 dollars less every year that he pays the guys. Does he think that the women aren’t working as hard? Does he think that they are 17 percent less productive?”

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