Look: Hillary watches Bill's convention speech

U.S. State Department Photo.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in East Timor, but that didn't prevent her from watching her husband's convention speech.

Hillary Clinton’s mother, Dorothy Rodham dies at 92

Chelsea Clinton,  Hillary Clinton, and Dorothy Rodham in 2008. Photo courtesy of mysticgirl.wordpress.com.

The Clinton family's statement on Dorothy Rodham's death shortly after midnight today at the age of 92:

"Her story was a quintessentially American one, largely because she wrote it herself." She overcame abandonment and hardship as a young girl to become the remarkable woman she was -- a warm, generous and strong woman; an intellectual; a woman who told a great joke and always got the joke; an extraordinary friend and, most of all, a loving wife, mother and grandmother."

Federal budget: weapons more important than visas

It's sad that the State Department has to compete with the Defense Department for adequate funding to support all of the programs it sponsors and services it provides, e.g. issuing visas to foreign visitors.

You'd think peaceful endeavors would trump war-making paraphernalia like drone fleets, wouldn't you?


Well, not necessarily.  M.J. Lee at Politico reports:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is warning Congress the State Department cannot meet all of its obligations if foreign aid and the department’s budget are deeply cut.

“Well, they wanted us to keep doing what we were expected to do in Iraq, doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and, oh by the way, what you’re trying to do in Yemen, what you’re trying to do in Somalia, what you’re trying to do in Sudan, etc., etc.,” she told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. “But we don’t want to give you as much money, so you just keeping doing that.”

Read more:

The irony of Michele Bachmann’s challenge to Barack Obama

There was a time when Democrats felt secure in holding on to the votes of a majority of women for they felt confident there was no place else for them to go. It’s the same dilemma faced too often by the battered wife. And that in a nutshell explains the abusive treatment Hillary Clinton took in 08 from the DNC and the superdelegates as they scurried off after Pied Piper Barack Obama, the hip young senator who was going to save the world solely by virtue of his personality and those sonorous speeches ringing with the cadences of an evangelical preacher.

Have you seen David Axelrod recently? The once oily smooth fellow with all the answers now looks harried and distraught. Must be tough facing the reality that 2012 isn’t going to be a repeat of 2008.

And then there’s the scary word out of Ames, IA that a conservative woman won the straw poll. Chris Cilliza at the  Washington Post:

AMES, Iowa — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann scored a victory in the GOP Ames Straw Poll on Saturday, a win likely to provide her considerable momentum as the 2012 race ramps up.

“What we saw happen today is this is the very first step toward taking the White House in 2012, and you have just sent a message that Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” said Bachmann (R-Minn.) after her victory was announced.

Got it, boys? A female GOP candidate is set to take down Barack Obama and from the mess the country is in today, you have to think she just might have a chance.

Bachmann’s rise is not just a wake up call for the good ol’ boys in the GOP, it’s also a wake up call for the good ol’ boys in the Democratic Party who called the shots in 08 and declared that racism was taboo, but it was open season for sexism. It must also be kind of depressing at this point for the Dems to realize that Bill and Hillary Clinton are both at the top of their game while Barack Obama is stumbling around, muttering something about “broken politics.”

A word to the wise, oh, great Democratic Party leaders: pick a leader next time.

Must read: Sarah and Hillary: How Art and Pop Culture Reject and Alienate Powerful Women.

via New Agenda

Geraldine Ferraro’s funeral (video)

At the Wall Street Journal, Aaron Rutkoff reports:

One-time U.S. vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s funeral Thursday drew hundreds of mourners, including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Dignitaries joined Ferraro’s three children in offering eulogies.

The ceremony was closed to the media, but attendees described it as a celebration of Ferraro’s life. “It was one of the most beautiful services I have ever seen,” said Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

In the video below, mourners remember Ferraro

 

Profile of Obama speechwriter, “wundkerkind” Jon Favreau, at WhoRunsGov.com omits Favreau’s “groping Hillary” photo

Jon Favreau. Photo credit: Lois Raimondo/TWP via WhoRunsGov.com

While scanning the Washington Post just now, I stumbled on a link to the Post’s offshoot, WhoRunsGov.com, boasting that it “offers the best political profiles on the web.” As luck would have it,  I had unintentionally linked to Jon Favreau’s profile. Favreau as you know has been Obama’s speechwriter since the 08 campaign and the White House speechwriter since January 2009.

The flattering profile of Mr. Favreau begins:

Favreau might have one of the most difficult jobs in President Barack Obama’s office. The wunderkind is charged with writing speeches for a politician considered one of the best speakers of his generation.

I was not surprised, but nevertheless disappointed to discover the profile failed to mention one of the more scandalous episodes in Favreau’s brief career in DC that was covered exceptionally well in a post dated Dec. 5, 2008 at Top of the Ticket (LA Times) by Andrew Malcolm titled “Obama Speechwriter Photographed Groping Hillary Clinton Likeness.”

Favreau is on the left.

 

Malcolm writes:

It might have seemed funny during the party. But a photo has surfaced in recent hours of President-elect Barack Obama's newly-designated chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, groping a cardboard cutout of the administration's newly-designated secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

That's Favreau on the left in the above photo (the fellow in the Obama staff T-shirt pouring beer in the pretend politician's mouth is unidentified). The photo was first published on the Washington Post's 44 blog.

The shot of the 27-year-old writer with his hand on the 60-year-old cardboard senator's breast reportedly appeared for about two hours on a Facebook page Thursday afternoon before disappearing, along with numerous other Favreau pictures, including one of him dancing with the cardboard female secretary-designate.

An Obama spokesman says Favreau has apologized to the former first lady, who gave Obama a run for his massive piles of money during the Democratic primaries. 

The transition official said Favreau has "reached out to Sen. Clinton to offer an apology," an unfortunate choice of words under the photographic circumstances, as the Swamp's Frank James points out in his item. 

Read more:

Hillary Clinton’s popularity soars even as she places women’s rights at the center of US foreign policy

 Secretary Clinton meets with Belarusian and Belarusian-American human rights activists including "We Remember" President Irina Krasovskaya and Belarus Free Theater co-founder Natalya Kolyada to discuss recent events in Belarus. State Department Photo by Michael Gross

In her recently published must-read article in the Guardian, Madeleine Bunting marvels that Hillary Clinton’s popularity continues to soar as she places women’s rights at the center of US foreign policy.

Bunting writes:

Many of her statements can be routed back to the idealistic internationalism of 70s feminism. Astonishingly, she has managed to bring the feminism for which she was loathed in the early 90s (as the first lady who didn't stay home and bake cookies) into the heart of the state department and foreign policy, and is still clocking high opinion poll ratings.

From the start Clinton left no one in any doubt where she stood: women's rights are "the signature issue" of this administration's foreign policy, she said. She mentioned women 450 times in speeches in the first five months in office. "Transformation of the role of women is the last great impediment to universal progress," she declared, and began to develop what is her standard line: women's issues are integral to the achievement of every goal of US foreign policy.

Or put more simply: the empowerment, participation and protection of women and girls is vital to the long-term security of the US. Last month this rhetoric was translated into policy in the long awaited Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which aimed to redefine US foreign policy around civilian power. "We are integrating women and girls into everything we do… in all our diplomacy with other governments… in our work on conflict and crisis," said the state department's briefing.

Read more:

David Corn: political hate machines are wrong depending on their targets

David Corn at Politics Daily is up in arms as 2010 fades into memory. He wants to know if POTUS can beat back the Obama hate machine in 2011.

I seem to recall that Corn was a vocal part of the Clinton hate machine in 2008 that went all out to destroy Bill and Hillary in order to assure Obama’s nomination. Guess David Corn thinks hate machines are wrong depending on their targets.

It’s the hate machine mentality that No Labels hopes to replace in the American political process with the radical notion of civility and cooperation in moving the nation forward.

The Founding Fathers had no labels. There were no political parties when they wrote the U.S. Constitution.

Here’s the New Year’s Eve update from No Labels:

Dear No Labeler--

From all of us at No Labels, we hope you’re getting to spend time this week with your loved ones and close friends. While the political world is mostly quiet, we’ve been hard at work planning for an exciting January and an incredible 2011. There’s a lot of hard work ahead for all of us, but we can’t wait to get going.  We're sending you this message because you've taken the first step by signing up to join us online or at a No Labels event, and we're counting on you to continue forward with us in the weeks and months ahead!

Join us on Monday, January 3rd for our weekly Citizen Leaders’ call to get the New Year going. We’ll be telling you all about our plans for the first meetups and sharing some exciting news about what we have planned for January. Please click here by Sunday at 12:00 EST to RSVP for the call and receive the dial-in.

In the meantime, while you’re wishing your friends a healthy 2011, make sure they’ve signed the No Labels Declaration so our democracy can be healthier too!

Sincerely,

Nancy Jacobson & Mark McKinnon
Co-Founders of No Labels

P.S. To remind you of how far we’ve come, we’re including three of the many pieces written about No Labels in the past few weeks. We have momentum!

A No Labels solution to Washington gridlock?
Can a centrist movement succeed?
Editorial: A welcome addition to the civility trenches

Advocating adult behavior in politics, commerce, and foreign affairs

 Secretary Clinton speaking at the International Human Rights Day Town Hall, Dec. 10, 2010

I’m here to tell you that adversarial politics becomes wearing after awhile. Like many of my brothers and sisters in the blogosphere who supported Hillary Clinton in the 08 primary, I continued to express my disillusionment with the sexism and misogyny that arose in the left wing of the Democratic Party and among its media allies well after Obama took office and even after he appointed Hillary as secretary of state.

Bill and Hillary Clinton made peace early on with the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party, but I was still protesting at Katalusis until I burned out in early Feb. 2010. By then several of my blogging pals from 08 like Heidi Li Feldman and LadyBoomerNYC had also shut down.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to resuscitate Katalusis and was surprised to discover that my perspective on American politics had changed in an interval of several months. It’s as if I’ve grown to fit the status I claimed in 08 when I registered to vote as non-affiliated. Consequently, when the No Labels political movement arose recently, I was ready to sign on.

In my opinion No Labels advocates adult behavior in our participation in the democratic process instead of managing local and national elections like corrupt athletic contests. Our politics reflects the same poorly regulated competitive games we see played out in our internal commerce and in trade relationships with other nations and too often in our foreign policy in general.

It’s time we examined all areas of our lives and moved toward an ethic of cooperation rather than competition in addressing the problems we face internally and in relationship to the wider world. It’s possible humanity might find more satisfaction in developing positive relationships than racing one another in efforts that unabated will ultimately destroy the planet.

Training for civility in politics, commerce, and foreign affairs might well begin in attending events and activities sponsored by your local interfaith community. The St. Paul Interfaith Network hosted dialogue sessions last fall that featured two Palestinian speakers one evening and a week later two Israeli speakers.

They were each invited to tell their personal stories of growing up in what has long been essentially a war zone. Mind you, participants in the program and attendees were required to treat one another with respect.

At the final session, Ron Young, a consultant for the National Interreligous Initiative for Peace, emphasized that both the Palestinian and Israeli stories were true and urged that peace is possible now.

I would argue that if the St. Paul Interfaith Network can conduct civil discussions of contentious issues like the above, there is no reason why we can’t adopt similar practices in other areas of our lives.

Two years later and oh, how America loves the Clintons

Amazing. Flashback to the 08 primary when the Journolisting media were busily smearing Bill and Hillary Clinton as racists; the smug Bob Schieffer was speculating on the air that Bill was deliberately trying to undercut Hillary's campaign; and "liberal" pundits, Dionne, Rich, Herbert, Robinson, et al, were accusing Hillary of harboring death wishes for Obama.

Lately, wherever you scan online news coverage, there's Bill Clinton's smiling face being lauded with yet another honor. If he isn't on demand at the White House to assist President Obama, he's making headlines for his newly adopted vegan diet. Politico has it:

Sarah Palin may have riled People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) this year with her televised animal slaughter, but at least one politico has earned the organization’s praise. President Bill Clinton has been named PETA’s 2010 Person of the Year, the animal rights organization announced Monday.

And in case you've missed it, Hillary, the woman labeled "too polarizing" for the Dems to nominate in 08, was voted on October 7, 2010 the most popular political figure in the nation, receiving a favorable rating of 64 percent in a Bloomberg National Poll.

Michelle Obama came in second, and President Obama lagged behind in third place.