Correction to article of Mon 12/21: I incorrectly stated that Americans were barred from travel in Pakistan in 1981. The State Department warned Americans that travel in Pakistan could be dangerous. Pakistan at that time was issuing 30 day visas. I have been unable to determine what national passport Barack Obama was traveling under, although it has been established that he was then living with his maternal grandmother and her husband in Hawaii at the time.

Isn't it wonderful? Mrs Clinton spending money we DON'T HAVE now, the way she wished she could have spent it during her husband's presidency. Gives you that warm glow, like a bonfire at the State Department. That fuzzy feeling that all liberals know and love, when their `well intended' programs create HAVOC that they don't have to pay for, solve, or be held responsible for because their INTENTIONS were good.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

On January 1, 2007, Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken  published a widely read article in the LegalTimes entitled, "How Does Your State Rank on The Democracy Index." Gerken argued that just as the Environmental Performance Index ("EPI") shamed countries such as Belgium to upgrade their environmental practices, a "Democracy Index" would embarrass state and localities into reforming their electoral administration through competition.

Since Bush vs. Gore in 2000, the debate about electoral reform has been dominated by anecdotes and overheated abstractions. Liberals like me have long suspected that states such as Ohio and Florida were deliberately disenfranchising minority voters sympathetic to Democratic candidates. Conservatives complained that voter fraud and urban political machines were allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots at the expense of Republican candidates. With her article, Gerken contended that a Democracy Index would replace a debate dominated by shouting with data driven arguments instead:

In Barack Obama's first speech to Congress Tuesday, February 24 the president mentioned that China had a renewable energy law on its statute books.  He declared that the U.S. must move in that same direction.

China's landmark renewable energy law took effect January 1, 2006, prompting the government to issue a number of pertinent new rules and technical criteria.

According to World Watch Institute, "In particular, financial subsidies and tax incentives for the development of renewable energy sources -- including wind power, solar energy, biomass, and others -- are in the enactment process."

One new regulation based on "feed-in laws" that had generated success in advancing renewables in Germany and other European nations addressed the core issues of pricing and fee sharing for on-grid renewable energy.  

After the bombastic attitude of the Bush-Cheney regime highlighted by insults at the leaders of France and Germany for advocating analysis and waiting rather than swiftly launching war in Iraq over swiftly refuted rationale, what was vitally needed for the Obama administration was selecting a Secretary of State with knowledge of the world and a flair for diplomacy.

Prior to the time that Hillary Clinton was elected to serve New York in the U.S. Senate she had been the nation's first lady.  Those tandem experiences provided Clinton with significant opportunity to meet numerous world leaders and travel far and wide.

Hillary Clinton has embarked on a mission to reframe American objectives and present a positive image to the world, filled with diplomatic decorum with optimism while curtailing gunboat diplomacy and childishly insulting symbols as manifested by serving "Freedom Fries" on Air Force One and other comparable mischievous behavior.

Clinton should be given high marks for her activities in Beijing beginning with the optimistic message she conveyed on behalf of joint cooperation.  Clinton is well aware of the recent Chinese assistance rendered to the United States during its current economic calamities in securing bonds.  

by Cody Lyon
Ultimately, picking Caroline Kennedy to succeed Hillary Clinton as Senator from New York might send a disturbing message to Americans, the world, but perhaps more importantly, to the children of New York state.

Mary Anne Berkery of Brooklyn's November 23 letter to the New York Times editors stated:

"The reason most Americans supported an unknown, untested, thinly experienced Barack Obama as president was that they were desperate for real change.  His unequivocal mandate was to bring change.

"Instead, we watch as he appoints person after person from the Clinton political machine, creating a virtual third Clinton presidency -- the very re-creations many of us had worked hard to prevent.

"Instead of taking the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has taken the mantle of Bill Clinton.

Standing at or top of the list of why the Republican putatively "Christian love" right wing hates Bill Clinton is because of his deft political skills, which helped him to wrest their presumed monarchical possession of the presidency and then renew his White House occupancy for a second four year term.

After having seen how the hate mongering, frequently racist antics of Lee Atwater along with fellow henchman George W. Bush and others attacked Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988 by using the Willie Horton Case and the pledge of allegiance as wedge issues, Clinton in 1992 used a shrewd ploy to enable his candidacy to fight back against hate campaigning.

In addition to instituting what was termed the War Room in Little Rock, Clinton launched a Rapid Response Team.  It was coordinated so deftly that George H. W. Bush, used to getting away with excesses in 1988, was stunned when the Democratic responders had thoroughly rebutted his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in Houston before he finished delivering it.

If there is one person who is probably smoldering more than any other Democrat at this moment it would figure to be Hillary Clinton.  The bilious Republican right has unloaded venomous insults against Hillary through the years at an equivalent level to the political Molotov cocktails figuratively hurled at her husband.

by Cody Lyon
"Is Palin and her party's attempt to elevate her into a tomboyish tough love Mom with conservative virtues a party that deep down, at least appears to be complacent with a woman knowing her place in the grand political game of the true powers that be in the western world? While it might be true, that the Republican party claims to be a party that endorses a stronger philosophy of individual responsibility, does the scent of hypocrisy not waif through the minds of millions of women who recognize it is also a party that would deny them the right to choose? "

***

Originally posted at Huffington Post.

With all the talk of Hillary Clinton becoming Barack Obama’s running mate, let’s pause for a moment to push out the brain fog. Although I find Senator Clinton worthy of respect and admiration for her finer qualities of character and for what she has been able to accomplish in her political life, the sane truth is: she should not be vice president. Here’s why:

     First, of course, are all the usual arguments against it, e.g., her Iraq war vote; her assassination comment; her old-style politics in a year when the presidential nominee will be running as the candidate of change; her divisive, politics-of-destruction campaign strategy in the primary; her “most hated politician” ranking in the polls; the past Clinton scandals waiting to be dragged out of the closet, her husband’s loose cannon-unpredictability, etc. Despite the advantages touted by Clinton supporters (If you don’t pick her, we’re going to make you lose the November election!), Hillary’s baggage would end up being a distraction to the Obama campaign. In the end, Hillary in the VP slot on the ticket would do Obama and the Democratic Party more harm than good.

     But all that aside, the real reason not to put Hillary in the VP position is because Obama has steadily and repeatedly shown that he is a dignitarian—defined as someone who values and chooses to live by principles of dignity for all—and he aims to run his campaign and his administration on such principles. Clinton, in contrast, has shown the opposite; what, in the parlance of dignity, would be termed rankist. Rankism is abuse of the power that comes with rank. It includes a wide range of behavior, such as: common snobbery, bullying, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, using political status for personal gain, segregation, torture, or pressuring smaller nations to serve the best interests of a larger nation. It is also the “ism” that encompasses all other “isms”—in cluding racism, sexism, classism, and ageism, all of which have been present in this year’s primary campaigns. Rankism is currently so pervasive in our culture—and so unrecognized as a concept—that it goes largely unnoticed. The way to unify the party and the country is to target rankism, thereby simultaneously addressing the other “isms” currently at play on the political scene.