President Obama greeted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at his State of the Union address earlier this week

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 2012. State Department photo/ Public Domain

Karen DeYoung

Like President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she hasn’t been watching the Republican primary debates. But at least Clinton has an excuse for tuning out — she says she’s quitting government after the election no matter who wins.

“What could we do to persuade you to run for vice president?” a staffer asked at a State Department town hall meeting Thursday, referring to  cyclical rumors  and the wishful thinking of some supporters. “Oh, my goodness,” Clinton replied.

“I will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone and that transition can occur,” said Clinton, who has insisted repeatedly that she will be a one-term secretary. “But I think, after 20 years …of being on the high wire of American politics, and all of the challenges that come with that, it would probably be a good idea to just find out how tired I am.”

The famously workaholic secretary said she has “no idea” what she will do in the future, and doesn’t want to think about it because it might divert attention from today’s diplomatic tasks. The election, she said, is going to “suck up a lot of the attention from following areas that we think are so important,” including “trying to resolve frozen conflicts” and “trying to build up America’s reputation” in the world.

But that might be good thing, she said, because “maybe we can even get more done” if the rest of the country is fixated on the polls.

“It’s a little odd for me to be totally out of an election season,” Clinton said. “But, you know, I didn’t watch any of those debates.”

And what about that vice president question? Although friends and colleagues say neither she nor the White House is interested, Clinton took a pass.

“I am happy to work with Vice President Biden, who does an excellent job and is a huge advocate and support for this department,” she said.

WP article link

Ms.Sreep’s favorite woman from Revolutionary Times is Deborah Samson who dressed as a man and joined the military to fight for her country. Upon her discovery, she won a commendation from the US WAR Dept…She was wounded in battle and had to sue the government for her disability pension of $40.00/mo which she received until her death at the age of 66.

Her story of courage and valor is below the jump-

SIGN “THE DRAFT HILLARY PETITION” HERE

Hillary discussing her goals for America

Statue of Deborah Samson at Sharon, Massachusetts public library, She served in the Revolution as "Robert Shurtlieff of Uxbridge, Massachusetts"

Deborah Sampson was born in Plympton, Massachusetts, a small village in New England, on December 17, 1760. Although her family name was originally spelled ‘Samson’, without the ‘p’, Herman Mann’s biography of her used a mistaken spelling and it is under this spelling that she is most commonly remembered. She was the oldest of six children of Jonathan and Deborah Bradford Samson, both of old Colonial stock; the elder Deborah was a descendant of William Bradford, once Governor of Plymouth Colony. Her siblings included Jonathan, Sylvia and Jeremiah. The family lived in Middleborough, Massachusetts, during her youth. Her family was poor, and when they received word that Jonathan Sampson had drowned in a shipwreck in 1765, they were forced to go into service as indentured servants. Jonathan Sampson, who was Deborah’s father, told the family that he was going to England. However, some sources say that Jonathan Sampson instead sailed to Maine and remained there for the rest of his life.

Deborah lived in several different households; first with a spinster, then with the widow of Reverend Peter Thatcher, and finally, in 1770, she ended up an indentured servant of Deacon Jeremiah and Susannah Thomas.

When she turned eighteen and was released from her indentured servitude with the Thomas family, she became a school teacher, rejecting the suggestion that she marry, even though she did marry later on.

Army

In 1778, she felt the need to do her part for the war and wanted to enlist in the Continental Army. In that day and age, women were not allowed to enlist, so she disguised herself as a man. She had little trouble doing this, since she was tall and educated. Even her own mother failed to recognize her while she was disguised as a man. In disguise, the local recruiting office enlisted her under the name of “Robert Shurtleff” of Carver. Because of the notable manner in which she held a quill pen, she may have been recognized and did not report the next day for service. On May 20, 1782, she tried again, this time successfully enlisting in the army on the muster of Master Noah Taft of Uxbridge, under the name of her deceased brother, Robert Shurtleff Samson, [1] and his/her residence as Uxbridge, Massachusetts.[1] Her signature still exists in Massachusetts records.[1]

She was chosen for the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment[1] under the command of Captain George Webb. The unit, consisting of fifty to sixty men, was first quartered in Bellingham, Massachusetts and later the unit mustered at Worcester under the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, commanded by Colonel Shepard. Although she had some trouble with the men in her regiment after she looked in on the men changing, her distant cousin, Reverend Noah Alden, a minister in Bellingham, kept her secret.

Deborah fought in several skirmishes. During her first battle, on July 3, 1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, she received 2 musket balls in her thigh and an enormous cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to just let her die and not take her to the hospital, but they refused to abandon her. A soldier put her on his horse and they rode six miles to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound, but she left the hospital before they could attend to the musket balls. Fearful that her true identity would be discovered, she removed one of the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but her leg never fully healed because the other ball was too deep for her to reach. On April 1, 1783 she was promoted and spent seven months serving as a waiter to General John Patterson. This job entitled her to a better quality of life, better food, and less danger.

After the peace treaty was signed, everyone thought the war was over. However, on June 24 the President of Congress ordered General Washington to send a fleet of soldiers to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to aid in squelching a rebellion of several American officers. During the summer of 1783, Deborah came down with malignant fever and was cared for by a doctor, Barnabas Binney. He removed her clothes to treat her and discovered the band she used to bind her breasts and, thus, discovered her secret. He did not betray her secret; he took her to his house, where his wife and daughters further treated her.

After Sampson recovered she returned to the army, but not for long. In September 1783 peace was assured through the signing of the Treaty of Paris. November 3 was the date for the soldiers to be sent home. When Dr. Binney asked her to deliver a note to General John Patterson, she thought that her secret was out. However, General Patterson never uttered a word; instead, she received an honorable discharge from the service, a note with some words of advice, and a sum of money sufficient to bear her expenses home. Thus, on October 25, 1783, General Henry Knox honorably discharged Deborah Sampson from the Army at West Point, after a year and a half of service.

Deborah Sampson wikipedia

In his Dec. 11 review of Bill Clinton’s “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy,” Jeff Madrick trots out the three fallacies that have prevented conventional liberals from understanding the importance of the Clinton administration’s approach and achievements.

First, he posits an imagined tension between Clinton’s criticism of reflexive antigovernment thinking and his work to end big, bureaucratic government. He also chides Clinton for not pushing for a return to the 80-year-old policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. And he wraps everything up in an accusation of political timidity.

What Madrick and others haven’t accepted is that Clinton actually believed in the new vision of government he put into action. “For at least a decade, the system we constructed in the Great Depression has been breaking down,” he said in a speech in July 1980 — long before he became president and long before his latest book. “Our challenge today, as Democrats, is to recognize that this is the time of transition and respond to it. . . .

I honestly believe the issue is not less government and the issue is not more government. The issue is what kind of government we are going to have.” Clinton’s remarkable consistency over a long career has been a testament to his personal faith in his vision. Madrick and others may not agree, but they should at the very least grapple with the ideas Clinton promoted during a presidency that stands as the most economically successful in the past half-century.

ANDREI CHERNY
Phoenix
The writer is president of the journal Democracy and a former Clinton White House aide

NYT LINK

To our French speaking Friends in Canada and the World… enjoy!

French speaking Video profiling Hillary

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Official 1994 William Clinton White House Christmas Card. Painting of White House Red Room by Thomas McKnight. Produced for the White House by American Greetings co.

Taken almost one year ago today- December 23, 2010- GIVE US HILLARY for PRESIDENT in 2012

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE IT! SIGN THIS PETITION, please.

HILLARY REPLACING OBAMA AS THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE

We advocate this DRAFT HILLARY movement not because of the desire to make political mischief — but to put the country on the right course.

It’s clear that Obama has been unable to build consensus and, with the polarizing campaign he is now running, will be unable to govern effectively even if reelected. Only Clinton can commit the Democratic Party — and, indeed, the nation — to a unification and healing process. This could allow Washington, in a bipartisan manner, to finally address the economic and governmental
crises that now grip America.

We are facing a crisis of national leadership, so citizens should step up and take charge of their country the way demonstrators in the Middle East did earlier this year. And, stunningly, as the people of Russia are now doing.

It’s time to take the decision about America’s leadership out of the hands of the established powers and return it to the citizens of our country. That opportunity to change U.S. politics will appear in the second week of 2012 in New Hampshire.

To seize this moment two things are required:

First, and most important, ordinary Democrats and independents in New Hampshire should mobilize behind a grass-roots effort to write in Clinton’s name during the Jan. 10 Democratic primary.

Second, a committed group of Democrats with resources and stature needs to help facilitate an authentic citizens’ movement — independent of party structure, Clinton and organized interests — to support a massive New Hampshire write-in campaign and put this before a deeply disaffected electorate.

There is already an online petition to draft Clinton, created by Democrats.
“We the undersigned Democrats want a new Democratic nominee for president who can win in 2012. We are convinced that the only person with the national stature, experience … who can win in the general election in 2012 is Hillary Rodham Clinton. We are fully prepared to take matters in to our own hands and launch our own massive write-in campaign,” it reads.

Even if one does not agree with their every argument, we urge everyone who shares our beliefs go to that website now — and to tell their friends to go to there and sign it.

Since 1944, when approval ratings first became reliable, there have been five cases in which the incumbent president had an approval rating below 49 percent a year ahead of the election. Each time, the incumbent party lost.

Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 43 percent — less than Jimmy Carter’s. Obama now has the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history. Many, particularly on the left, have begun to demonstrate with signs reading,

“Buyer’s remorse.”

DRAFT HILLARY 2012 ... Hillary Can Fix This: New Hampshire residents Write in Hillary Clinton for President Primary Day!

In a recent Daily Beast piece, “Hillary Told You So,” angry, frustrated liberals were quoted saying, “No one ever had to tell Hillary” that the economy is crucial, and “Hillary is TOUGHER (and 10X SMARTER ).”

Indeed, the most active calls for Clinton to run have come from the left — indicating that there is substantial support for this idea across the board and not just from centrist Democrats.

Certainly, the recent barrage of articles by former Obama allies saying that the White House has lost white, working-class voters — a key part of the Democratic coalition — is cause enough for Clinton, who has been that voting bloc’s champion in the past, to be the Democratic standard-bearer.

Many argue that our approach is impractical and is unlikely to work because Obama will not stand down. But make no mistake, we are political realists.
As political realists, we know that every recent presidential candidate who has emerged — from Obama in 2008 to Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and now Newt Gingrich — has been citizen-driven. The elites have not driven the process; ordinary voters have filled the void.

Such a void exists now.

Clinton pulled off a stunning New Hampshire primary victory over Obama during the 2008 primaries. There is every reason to believe that, as a write-in candidate, she would get a substantial number of votes in the Granite State next year.

NEW HAMPSHIRE is one state where grass-roots politics predominates. As presidential historian Theodore White wrote in 1965, New Hampshire’s primary allows candidates “to appeal directly to people” and “over the heads of the politicians.”
This primary — traditionally well before other primaries — allows independents to cast ballots for either Democrats or Republicans, unlike most other “closed primaries,” in which only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote on their respective parties’ ballots. It’s justly famous for write-in candidates, who often had substantial success.

In 1964, write-in candidate Henry Cabot Lodge had an upset victory over GOP front-runners Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. In 1968, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson was not on the ballot, but as a write-in, he received nearly 50 percent of all Democratic votes.

A write-in candidacy in 2012 can send a message that the Democratic Party must stand for something more than Obama’s reelection at all costs.

We are not asking the president or the secretary of state to take action. We ask the people of the United States, Democrats and, especially, New Hampshire voters to exercise their right to be heard by writing Clinton’s name on the primary ballot.

Voters have had enough of the establishment powers dictating who can run.

All that is needed is a spark on the dry tinder of political frustration and anxiety. A few Democratic patriots can provide the means to make it possible — and change the course of U.S. history.

article written by: PATRICK H. CADDELL and DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70623.html

Increasingly the question of whether President Obama should be challenged for the 2012 nomination is surfacing among disgruntled Democrats worried about a solid Republican victory next fall.

They’re right to be concerned: the crises facing the United States and the world deserve better than Obama’s oldest established permanent floating re-election campaign.

There’s no doubt Clinton’s tireless and often effective performance as secretary of state demonstrates she would bring more seasoned judgment to the Oval Office than its current resident. Here are a just a few reasons the Democratic Party should bite the bullet and jettison the nation’s one-term Senate orator and try to elect the nation’s first woman president.

Beginning with the political dimension of his conduct of the war in Afghanistan to class war at home, Obama’s priorities seem to be governed more by his re-election timetable than the demands of the national interest and reflective responses to the galloping changes in the global order

Contrary to mainstream opinion, Obama is a mediocre politician. Were it not so, surely he would have known that people get wise to polished repetitive, but empty speeches — and know the difference between bread and butter now and pie in the sky later.

Joblessness and fear of watching retirement savings vanish weigh heavier on the nation’s collective mind than long-range climate change and health care reform. The president’s touted political instincts should have told him all that. But, as James Carville once noted so cogently, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

But while Obama talked jobs and initiated a jobs bill on his sixth day in office, almost all of his mind and determination remained focused on health care — his overriding priority.

There is more. Even a short and substantively fruitless effort in spring 2009 to get agreement on a new U.N. climate change protocol outranked jobs at home on Obama’s must-do list.

Health care came first, no matter what. The president spent a year getting it on the books, while he assured the country that his close to trillion-dollar economic stimulus program was creating jobs.

He lost no time proclaiming the recession over — blind and deaf to the reality that it was a “jobless recovery.” He saw the upticking Gross National Product statistics and forgot or never understood they reflected only record earnings of financial institutions.

Hillary Clinton with her wealth of experience as first lady, a two-term senator from New York and now the world’s leading diplomat would hardly have been so blind.

Obama’s economic stimulus was a bust because, among his many other blunders, he left the writing of the legislation to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in their veto-proof Congress — without benefit of Republican input. As a result, Congress presented him with a Christmas tree adorned with pork barrels, but bare of jobs with a future.

. Her party — and her country — badly need her services. She’s likely the only potential winner the Democrats can muster.

Bogdan Kipling is a Canadian journalist in Washington.

from the William J. Clinton blog:

Here is a short conversation between my friend Rumana and President Clinton Dec 9 at a book signing in Chappaqua. Here is Rumana’s synopsis:

I said to him hello Mr. President me and my friends want to know if Hillary will run, and I mean in 2012 and not 2016. He paused for a sec. And said she keeps saying no but if she gets enough encouragement maybe she will change her mind.

I said you should go to S4h FB page and see we are encouraging her. He put his hand on my shoulder and said if lot more people encourage her maybe she will run. I said Mr. President we are talking about 2012 please do something. He said she needs to know you are there for her and I said please tell her.

Go to the blog Still4Hill to post

http://still4hill.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/please-hillary-run/#comment-23550

………..

Please, Hillary, Run!

December 9, 2011 by still4hill

On this blog there is a long archive which, at some point in August, I began entitling “Media Reads on a Hillary Run.” The comment threads on those posts are chock-full of comments from HRC’s supporters who wish she would run again for POTUS and not wait until 2016 to do so. Many of us are dissatisfied to the point of infinite frustration with the way Barack Obama has squandered his golden opportunity to bring real change as he promised. Most of us did not vote for him and did vote for HRC.

The list of reasons is long, but encapsulated comprises:

1. The Leadership Deficit:

Obama’s inability to break the shell of his West Wing office and reach out to the opposition in a human and social fashion. He would have been far more effective with the GOP had he approached them as human beings, had a few people, Boehner, McConnell over for lunch, and given Lisa Murkowski a congratulatory call for her amazing write-in victory, than he proved to be by having them over for secret meetings where he lectured and adopted the stance of “the adult in the room.”

2. The Stalled Car:

For a long period last year, he and his speech writers really liked that car metaphor, but the truth was that the car was stalled. It stalled over the Gulf oil spill and the jobs the government could have generated with a CCC type effort to clean up the gulf. In fact, from day one, jobs should have been a priority but were put on a back burner for a badly flawed and wanting health care plan wherein he withdrew the single payer option.

3. The Phenomenal Collapsing President:

Every time the Republicans stood shoulder to shoulder, Obama simply laid down on the tracks and gave the GOP what they wanted (or he thought they wanted) before they even demanded it. He was, according to John Conyers, the one who offered up the social safety nets on a silver platter before they even brought up that subject during last August’s budget crisis. The GOP candidates are correct. Obama is an appeaser. Not in foreign policy. He appeases them on domestic issues without even being asked. We have seen almost three years of this!

4. The Hesitation Blues:

How long must we wait? Obama left for an August vacay saying he would introduce a jobs bill after he got back .. after Labor Day. Americans who are out of work could not afford that wait. They do not have vacations, and, while Labor Day is a holiday for those of us who have jobs, they have no holidays. It is simply another day when they cannot look for a job. In the foreign policy arena, he waited longer than necessary to establish the No Fly Zone in Libya, and we do know that HRC rounded up a posse to change his mind.So this evening I have no media articles to prompt this post. Instead I have a short conversation between my friend Rumana and President Clinton this afternoon at a book signing in Chappaqua. Here is Rumana’s synopsis:

“I said you should go to S4h FB page and see we are encouraging her. He put his hand on my shoulder and said if lot more people encourage her maybe she will run. I said Mr. President we are talking about 2012 please do something. He said she needs to know you are there for her and I said please tell her.”

So this is OUR golden opportunity!

Please comment  also at the Facebook page. President Clinton, and maybe even our preferred candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will be looking there for our encouragement. Let’s go all out this weekend and let her see the support that is out here!
Hillary, may we have this dance? You are the best hope to put this country back on the rails. You are the best qualified for this hands down!

We need you! Please, please listen to us. Please run!!!!

Bountiful Blessings on this Thanksgiving Day 2011

November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving prayer — Take time to give thanks

Bluefield Daily Telegraph

When the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in late autumn of 1621, they most likely had no thought of establishing an American holiday. That would not occur officially until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the fourth Thursday in November to be a national holiday for giving thanks to God. The pilgrims were merely doing what they had done for years in the old world, pausing to give thanks to God for His goodness in providing a harvest.

However, that first Thanksgiving on the soil of their new home was certainly celebrated with significant meaning in their hearts. Their landing at Plymouth, Mass., on Dec. 21, 1620, was the fruition of a dream for a new beginning, but it would be followed quickly by great danger. Their first winter was marked with illness and hunger so severe that it threatened to wipe out this fragile outpost in a new world. Barely half of the 100 pilgrims who came on shore made it until spring. Had it not been for some friendly Indians who taught them what crops to plant in this strange land, the settlement would likely have disappeared.

By the time November came, they had harvested their crops and stored up a meager supply of food for the coming winter. They would not forget their custom, however, of setting aside a special time for a harvest thanksgiving festival. For three days they celebrated God’s goodness, inviting their Indian friends, who provided five deer for the feast. In spite of severe hardship and suffering, they wanted to thank God for His provision and for the freedom to worship Him as they saw fit in their new land.

Just a few years after that celebration, the hymn most clearly identified with Thanksgiving, “Now Thank We All Our God,” was penned. The conditions under which it was written in 1637 were every bit as challenging as those the pilgrims faced. German pastor Martin Rinckart served in a town that became a home for political and military refugees during the catastrophic Thirty Years War. Then the Black Plague arrived. There were four pastors in town. One fled and Rinckart buried the other two in the same day. Only he remained to minister to a dying city. He conducted funeral services for as many as 50 people a day, officiating at almost 4,500 funerals in one year. But Rinckart is best known for writing the great hymn that triumphantly proclaims thanks to God:

Now thank we all our God,

with heart and hands and voices

Who wondrous things has done,

in whom this world rejoices;

Who from our mothers’ arms

has blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love,

And still is ours today.

My prayer is that we might recapture the heart and spirit of gratitude to God that was expressed by the pilgrims and by Martin Rinckart. We live in challenging times, difficult for many, but certainly not the magnitude of hardship faced in those earlier days. For most of us, the real challenges that might distract us from giving thanks to God for His bountiful blessings come in the form of ease and plenty. Our day will be filled with sumptuous meals, football games, family fun and last-minute plans for how to execute our Black Friday shopping trip. The very way we celebrate Thanksgiving may well crowd out any thought of the God who has blessed us so.

Please don’t misunderstand me. None of those things is inherently wrong. I don’t want to be a Scrooge (sorry, wrong holiday). But please take time today to thank God for how good He has been to us, for all of the blessings He has provided us. Please thank Him, regardless of your personal or economic struggles, in spite of the hardships of your life. Paul reminds us in the Bible to be “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20), and to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Take time today to give thanks to God for life, for health, for the abundance of material blessings with which He has showered us. Thank Him for your food, for your home, for your clothing, for your transportation, for your job. Praise Him for your family, your friends, your neighbors and your church family. And most of all, by all means, thank Him for what Paul calls His “unspeakable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15). That gift is His Son, Jesus Christ, whom He sent to this world to take the penalty for our sin by His death so that we might be forgiven by God, brought into His family, and given an eternal home in heaven.

If you do indeed carve out time to actually thank God on this day, you may find that your heart begins to resonate with the words of Martin Rinckart’s second (and lesser known) verse of his famous hymn:

O may this bounteous God

through all our life be near us,

With ever joyful hearts

and blessed peace to cheer us;

And keep us still in grace,

and guide us when perplexed;

And free us from all ills,

in this world and the next.

— Dr. John King

senior pastor

Johnston Chapel Baptist Church