From top rival to top aide: The Clinton-Obama detente

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I have heard some speculation about why Obama would want Hillary Clinton out of the Senate. The speculation was she was block his health-care plans, and he wanted her out of the way.

Now, Obama will be her boss. I wonder who will boss who?-------Trickyvikki

From top rival to top aide: The Clinton-Obama detente
By Elisabeth Bumiller


New York Times

Posted: 11/22/2008 05:50:21 PM PST


WASHINGTON — The thaw in the resentful relationship between the most powerful woman in the Democratic party and her younger male rival began at the party's convention this summer, when Sen. Hillary Clinton gave such a passionate speech supporting Sen. Barack Obama that his top aides leapt out of their chairs backstage to give her a standing ovation as she swept past.

Strategic move

Obama, who was in the first steps of what would become a strategic courtship, called afterward to thank her. By then, close aides to Clinton said, she had come to respect the campaign Obama had run against her. At the least, she knew he understood like no one else the brutal strains of their epic primary battle.

By Thursday, when Obama reassured Clinton that as secretary of state she would have direct access to him and could select her own staff, the wooing was complete.

"She feels like she's been treated very well in the way she's been asked," said a close associate of Clinton, who like others asked for anonymity because the nomination won't be formally announced until after Thanksgiving.

Few are predicting this new relationship born of mutual respect and self-interest will grow into a tight bond between the new president and the woman who will be the public face of his foreign policy, though some say it is not impossible. They argue that a close friendship between the two powerful officials is useful but not essential, and isn't a predictor of the success of the nation's top diplomat.

Intellectual bond

While James Baker was extraordinarily close to President George H.W. Bush and is widely considered one of the most successful recent secretaries of state, Dean Acheson was not a friend of President Harry Truman, and Henry Kissinger did not particularly like President Richard Nixon.

"Two of the nation's greatest secretaries of state in the modern period, Dean Acheson and Henry Kissinger, were not personally close but were intellectually bonded to their presidents," said Walter Isaacson, the author of a biography of Kissinger and the co-author, with Evan Thomas, of "The Wise Men," a book about America's postwar foreign policy establishment. "I think that Obama and Clinton could form a perfect partnership based on respect for each other's view of the world."

In the Obama-Clinton relationship, advisers say, the relatively smooth nature of their talks about the secretary of state job indicate that both, for now, have a working chemistry.

From top rival to top aide: The Clinton-Obama detente

U.S. Kills Al-Qaeda Suspect

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U.S. Kills Al-Qaeda Suspect
Strike in Pakistan Claims Fugitive Tied to '06 Airline Bomb Plot
By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 23, 2008; Page A14

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 -- A suspected al-Qaeda operative linked to a 2006 plot to blow up British airliners was killed Saturday in a suspected U.S. missile strike in northwestern Pakistan, according to two Pakistani intelligence officials. At least four other extremist fighters were also killed.

The officials said the al-Qaeda suspect was Rashid Rauf, a man who held dual Pakistani and British citizenship. The attack came from an unmanned U.S. Predator aircraft, which fired at least two Hellfire missiles at a suspected Taliban compound in the village of Ali Khel in the restive tribal area of North Waziristan, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about missile strikes.

The dead also included at least three foreign fighters, the officials said.

Rauf, a former resident of the British city of Birmingham, was suspected to be the ringleader in an alleged al-Qaeda plot to blow up commercial jetliners flying from Britain to the United States. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Bahawalpur in August 2006 after British officials learned of the alleged terrorist operation, which authorities said included a plan to smuggle liquid explosives and camera flash detonators on board at least 10 airplanes. The plot led to widespread restrictions on items travelers could carry onto planes.

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said British officials were investigating reports that Rauf had been killed but could not confirm his death.


Before his arrest, Rauf's alleged ties to the Pakistani terrorist group Jaish-i-Muhammad stirred strong suspicions among intelligence experts that he also might have had connections with rogue elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, also known as the ISI. Jaish-i-Muhammad, banned in Pakistan, has played a leading role in an ISI-supported proxy war with India over the disputed northern territory of Kashmir. The group is widely suspected to be behind the abduction and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

Rauf's association with the group is thought to have begun around the time he married a close relative of the group's founder, Maulana Masood Azhar.

A Pakistani court dropped terrorism charges against Rauf in late 2006. Pakistani authorities, nonetheless, offered to extradite him to Britain in connection with the airliner plot. But suspicions about his connections to Pakistani intelligence agencies deepened after he escaped from custody last December. Pakistani security officials said Rauf slipped out of his handcuffs after police allowed him to stop at a mosque in the capital, Islamabad.

Rauf's attorney at the time, Hashmat Habib, said Rauf was subsequently taken into ISI custody. Until Saturday's strike in North Waziristan, Rauf's whereabouts were not publicly known.

Habib, reached at his offices in Pakistan, said he was aware of the reports but could not confirm whether Rauf had been killed.

The U.S. military has stepped up a campaign this year targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban havens along Pakistan's mountainous border with Afghanistan. Military officials say the surge in activity has had a debilitating effect on militant operations in the region.

But the attacks have drawn criticism from Pakistan's top military officer, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani. Kiyani, who formerly led the ISI, and other top Pakistani officials have said collateral damage and civilian deaths from the missile strikes could increase anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war against Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan.

Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

U.S. Kills Al-Qaeda Suspect

Message from The National Republican Trust

If you could help them out in any way, it would really be appreciated. ;)
GOPTrust.com

Message from The National Republican Trust PAC
From Scott Wheeler




Dear Supporter:D-Day has begun.

With your help and the help of almost 50,000 other Americans, we at the National Republican Trust PAC — also known as GOPtrust.com — have begun our TV assault in Georgia against Barack Obama and the left-wing Democrats who want total control over Congress.

Our new TV ad has begun to run across Georgia exposing Obama’s plans.

As you know, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is fighting to keep his Georgia seat in GOP hands.

It is critical he does so. Chambliss will be the key Senate vote in stopping Obama’s radical agenda.

But Sen. Chambliss faces an incredibly stiff challenge from his opponent Jim Martin.

Just last week Obama, Chuck Schumer and Washington Democrats poured almost $1 million into the state to defeat him.

They are bussing in thousands of “organizers” to snatch this election from the GOP.

This is why our campaign is so vitally important.

Fox News analyst Dick Morris says this election is vitally important to all of us across the country.

Morris says if Obama wins the Georgia seat, he will ram through Congress a radical agenda on taxes, guns, abortion — he can even shut down talk radio!

Dick Morris says we at the National Republican Trust PAC “are leading the fight to save Chambliss and keep Obama from getting a filibuster-proof Senate.”

Dick says this won’t be easy for Chambliss because the Obama camp has more money and they are experts at voter turn-out — the key to winning this race.

But Dick says we can still defeat Martin and Obama.

We need your help today to do it!

Please donate to our cause by Going Here Now.

See our new TV ad exposing Obama and Martin — Go Here Now.

Thank you.

Scott Wheeler
Executive Director

P.S. We now have about one week before the December 2nd run-off election. We can leave nothing to chance. We need to raise millions to stop Obama. Please help us today by calling our Donor Hotline at 1-866-957-1467 or Go Here Now.

Paid for by The National Republican Trust PAC.
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
2100 M St. NW Suite 170-340 Washington, DC 20037-1233
Contributions to The National Republican Trust PAC are not
deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
No corporate funds are accepted.

Message from The National Republican Trust

Roger Ailes on FNC's 'Obligation' to Not Derail Obama Transition

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2008/11/21/roger-ailes-fncs-obligation-not-derail-obama-transition

This is nonsense. Fox has been the best cable news out of all of the rest. I just hope that the staff doesn't heed what Roger Ailes told them. I have noticed that some of them have stopped talking about Obama. They don't need to stop because they started in on GWB the day he got nominated and have only recently let up on him.

Roger Ailes on FNC's 'Obligation' to Not Derail Obama Transition
By Ken Shepherd (Bio | Archive)
November 21, 2008 - 12:36 ET

News Corporation executive Roger Ailes has told Los Angeles Times reporter Matea Gold that he has advised employees of the Fox News Channel that "all presidents deserve time to get their team on the ground and get organized" and that "we have some obligation in a new presidency not to attempt to destabilize it."

Via TVNewser (paragraph breaks removed):

Ailes responded to the report in the New York Daily News that he instructed FNC to tone down attacks on President-elect Barack Obama. He denied giving specific orders, but said he told staffers "all presidents deserve time to get their team on the ground and get organized." "We have some obligation in a new presidency not to attempt to destabilize it," he said. As for whether the big stars will heed the advice, he tells Gold: "Who knows? Most of them do whatever the hell they want."


What say you, reader? Is Ailes right to urge his staffers to not go full throttle at the Obama transition? Does his advice adhere to the "fair and balanced" motto or risk sending a pro-Obama message? If it is "fair and balanced," is that good journalism or a poor business model given the outright left-wing boosterism other networks, particularly MSNBC, have shown team Obama?

Roger Ailes on FNC's 'Obligation' to Not Derail Obama Transition

Was the Mainstream Media fair and balanced on the election?

You decide. Look at these links.


http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/11/03/cable-news-ratings-for-october-31/7471

http://www.journalism.org/node/13436

Was the Mainstream Media fair and balanced on the election?

How Obama got elected

Check out this site. It will make you sick to think that these people voted and canceled out your votes. howobamagotelected.com/

How Obama got elected

Second Update: Open Letter to Mr. Obama

http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/Update/Update2008-11-12.htm

This site is taking up money to: "We are in the process of raising $90,000 to pay for the publication of the Open Letter and a room at the National Press Club to publicly discuss any response by Mr. Obama."

In our two prior articles we discussed our intention to publish a full-page open letter to President-Elect Obama in USA TODAY. In effect, the open letter would be a Petition for Redress of a violation of the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution (Article II, Section 1).

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees a citizen’s Right to Petition officials of the Government for Redress (i.e., for a Remedy) of alleged violations of the Constitution. Inherent in the Right to Redress is the citizen’s Right to a response.

We are in the process of raising $90,000 to pay for the publication of the Open Letter and a room at the National Press Club to publicly discuss any response by Mr. Obama.

Time is of the essence. We would like to publish the open letter next week and hold the press conference at the National Press club one week later, in advance of the dates when the Electoral College’s state electors are certified cast their votes. If Mr. Obama is not able to prove his eligibility, the electors will have to cast their votes for someone else for it would be treason to the Constitution to cast their votes for a usurper.

The purpose of this update is twofold: (1) to provide the updated total of the funds received to date; and (2), to review some of the evidence.

Second Update: Open Letter to Mr. Obama

Obama's Draft Registration Raises Serious Questions

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/11/exclusive_did_n.html

I found this interesting. Go to that site and see the form they have.

November 13, 2008
EXCLUSIVE: Did Next Commander-in-Chief Falsify Selective Service Registration? Never Actually Register? Obama's Draft Registration Raises Serious Questions
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By Debbie Schlussel

**** Copyright 2008, Must Cite Debbie Schlussel and link to DebbieSchlussel.com ****

*** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATES ***

Did President-elect Barack Hussein Obama commit a federal crime in September of this year? Or did he never actually register and, instead, did friends of his in the Chicago federal records center, which maintains the official copy of his alleged Selective Service registration commit the crime for him?

It's either one or the other, as indicated by the release of Barack Obama's official Selective Service registration for the draft. A friend of mine, who is a retired federal agent, spent almost a year trying to obtain this document through a Freedom of Information Act request, and, after much stonewalling, finally received it and released it to me.

But the release of Obama's draft registration and an accompanying document, posted below, raises more questions than it answers. And it shows many signs of fraud, not to mention putting the lie to Obama's claim that he registered for the draft in June 1979, before it was required by law.

Obama's Draft Registration Raises Serious Questions

The Night We Waved Goodbye to America (Peter Hitchens)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084111/PETER-HITCHENS-The-night-waved-goodbye-America--best-hope-Earth.html

The Night We Waved Goodbye to America (Peter Hitchens)

By Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail, UK:

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell - or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship - its nearest equivalent - is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.

Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.

If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.

He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.

Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).

I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.

And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated - but rather hesitant - invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will - ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.

Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.

They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King - in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.

If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.

If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.

And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.

Yes we can what?: Barack Obama ran on the ticket of change

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street - which runs due north from the White House - the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party - the Republicans - to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

The Night We Waved Goodbye to America (Peter Hitchens)

Hillary Clinton and John McCain-Please say no!!!!!!

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/former_foes_on.html

The reason I want them to say no, is because we need those two in the senate. If Obama goes too far, I believe they will stand up to him. If they take positions, they will only be there for 4 or 8 years.

I am also wondering if McCain's meeting with Obama has something to do with his Senate resolution that he got because of his birth in Panana. Maybe Barack Obama wants the favor returned?

There is a case of a suit on Obama that is in the Supreme Court right now. The Justice is Clarence Thomas. Defano is fighting for a stay on the electorial votes going to Obama, on the grounds that Obama is not a "natural born citizen".

Former Foes on Obama's Radar

Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor November 17, 2008 10:19 AM
Today for President-elect Barack Obama is all about his former rivals.

For the first time since his historic victory, Obama meets in Chicago with his Republican opponent John McCain. Obama's designated White House chief of staff, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, and one of McCain's closest confidantes, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina will also be in the room.

"It's well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality," the Obama transition office said in a statement.

But there has also been rumors that Obama might even tap his former foe for a Cabinet post, though that seems highly unlikely.

More likely is that Senator Hillary Clinton, who battled Obama for the Democratic nomination for more than a year, might actually become his secretary of state. Speculation has been swirling since their private meeting last week that Clinton might want to leave the Senate and be Obama's point person to -- as they both vowed during the campaign -- restore America's standing in the world.

But with the economy in a nose-dive, a new poll out this morning found that the selection of secretary of state is far less important to Americans than the next treasury secretary.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey asked which position would matter most to the country's future: the Secretary of State, who oversees foreign policy; Secretary of Defense, who oversees military policy; or Secretary of the Treasury, who oversees economic policy.

The reply: 41 percent picked treasury secretary, 25 percent secretary of state, and 24 percent defense secretary. Also, 77 percent of respondents said they were very confident or somewhat confident that Obama would make the right decisions in selecting his cabinet.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain-Please say no!!!!!!