Long lines and inspiration accompany Hillary Clinton at SU

Even before the doors opened for students to find a seat to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak at Syracuse University Monday morning, a line began to form. Over the next couple of hours, it kept growing as a sturdy column of students, faculty, and community members stretched through campus in the cold rain.

SU Senior Zach Schleien says he arrived at 8:30 am. “We were actually at the very end of the line, but we waited it out. It’s really long, let’s say two and a half football fields,” he said.

His friend corrected him. “It’s half a kilometer!”

At ten, about two hours before the Secretary arrived, security personnel began funneling the crowd of more than a thousand through a row of metal detectors.

Syracuse resident Mary Lou Balcom says she wrote Clinton’s name on the ballot in 2008.

“I don’t really agree right now, with a lot of things that are going on. I would just as soon see us out of Iraq and Iran,” Balcom said. “But I really think she’s very diplomatic. I think she’s doing her best to solve a lot of conflicts.”

Some people who waited didn’t even make it inside, when SU’s Hendricks Chapel reached its maximum seating capacity of 1,100 people. But there was one lucky person who escaped the colossal line, quite by accident.

“You know, I parked the car… I saw a back door, and I walked in!” said Clay resident Ed Stronsky. He guesses that his baseball hat that says “News Junkie” made security personnel think he was a reporter.

For an hour, Clinton discussed policy and the difficulty of foreign diplomacy with her former deputy secretary James Steinberg, now Dean of SU’s Maxwell School.

Grad student Laura Alexander said the event reinforced her decision to take the first part of the Foreign Service exam in June.

“I’m very interested in the development side of diplomacy,” she said. “Being able to affect the lives of others in a positive way… not even to affect them, to enable them to affect their own lives in a positive way.”

Alexander will be able to take her first step this summer as an intern for the State Department.

LINK

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Dreaming of Hillary in 2016 2012

NEXT, NEXT PRESIDENT – Hillary Clinton holds the record for being named Gallup’s most admired woman, 16 years to be exact. Her favorability ratings among the general population are in the mid-sixties and among Democrats she has an 86 percent favorability score. The question now is what is she going to do with this stockpile of good feeling?
She has not always been the most popular or favored political figure whether because she was perceived as too meddlesome, too tough, or not tough enough. But once she became Secretary of State her favorability has remained above 60 percent. And while four years ago her own party was deeply split on her fit as presidential candidate today Democrats from all wings of the party want her to be the nominee in 2016.

According to a poll just released by Public Policy Polling Hillary Clinton has got it in the bag. If the Democratic primary were to be held today she would receive 57 percent of the vote with Vice President Biden coming in at a very distant second with less than 20 percent.

As in 2008, Hillary Clinton has very solid support among women where nine out of ten lady Democrats have a favorable opinion of her. Among the gentleman, that figure drops slightly but only to 8 out of 10 having a favorable opinion of her. And while the glass ceiling isn’t completely cracked, it’s getting there — this poll found that only 10 percent believed that the Democratic nominee should be a man.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denied that she will seek elected office after stepping down from her current position. More specifically she has denied interest in running for the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination. And while her husband confirms her intent not to run he very recently opened up the door to such a possibility when he said on Good Morning America that if she changes her mind and decides to run, he’d be happy.

Well, according to public opinion a whole heck of a lot of people would also be happy. But there is a Latina friend of mine in Austin, Texas who would be ecstatic. This friend has affirmed to me on multiple occasions that if Hillary Clinton were to run she would quit her job (a very prestigious one at that) and move to Washington DC to work for her campaign without pay!

While the Latino community came to embrace Barack Obama as the nominee and has since consistently supported him, Hillary Clinton was the Latino electorate’s first love in 2008. She won the Latino vote in every primary with the exception of Illinois, by one point, and Virginia.

Clinton wasn’t everyone’s first love in 2008. However, over the course of her tenure as Secretary of State she has been able to woo those who initially did not love, let alone like her. She has gained a respect separate from that of her experience as First Lady or elected official. Through her role on the national stage Hillary Clinton has earned new respect and deepened it among those who already had it.

Anything can happen in four years, but with that stockpile of favorability it would be a shame to not give that glass ceiling that final big crack it needs.

(Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto received her Ph.D. from Duke University and was recently named one of the top 12 scholars in the country by Diverse magazine. Her research on political behavior has been widely published in scholarly journals and cited in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Time, and POLITICO. This column was posted first at NBCLatino, LA Progressive.com and drvmds.com)
-cw

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Hillary Clinton- hardest working woman in the State Dept while Obama Bypasses Congress, Gives $1.5B to Muslim Brotherhood

During a trip through Colorado in December of last year, President Obama spoke of his intention to implement his economic policies with or without the approval of Congress. Said Obama, “And where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves.” It now appears that such a mindset applies not only to economic matters but to the distribution of Foreign Aid as well–in particular, Foreign Military Aid for the Muslim Brotherhood, who now hold the reigns of power in Egypt

“Nevertheless, the news breaking now is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon announce that President Obama will “resume funding for Egypt’s military, despite Congressional restrictions and objections from human rights and democracy advocates.”

“Does this sound like the Hillary Clinton we know? Or has Obama’s executive power taken over every government job rolling over Congress and his Cabinet when it suits his agenda?”

We have more examples of Obama’s subversive behavior. (read on)

BREAKING: Obama White House Using George Soros Owned-Media Matters To Deflect From Fast and Furious!

Once again the Obama administration is openly expressing their links to the Far Left of America – this time using the George Soros funded Media Matters as an official government source to deflect from still-growing criticism surrounding the failed and deadly Fast and Furious gunrunning program.  In addition, new details are now emerging about a 3rd weapon found at the scene of Border Agent Brian Terry’s death – and the Obama administration’s intentional cover-up to hide that evidence.

Excerpt from a just released Washington Free Beacon report:

The Department of Justice is using the liberal “watchdog” group Media Matters for America to deflect questions about the Fast and Furious scandal, including those regarding a gun that might have been used in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In response to an inquiry from the Free Beacon, a Justice Department spokeswoman said in an email that she “was told to direct your questions to the FBI, and also to provide you with a link to this story: http://mediamatters.org/research/201204190011

The link was to a story at the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America supposedly refuting many of Pavlich’s claims. Media Matters is a partisan organization whose founder, David Brock, is also running a pro-Obama super PAC.

In Operation Fast and Furious, federal agents allowed more than 2,000 weapons to be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hand of violent drug cartels, with the intent of tracking them to learn more about the cartels.

Two weapons connected to Fast and Furious were discovered at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was gunned down in the Southern Arizona desert in 2010 by five criminals armed with AK-47s.

However, Pavlich asserts there was a third gun. The book details three separate pieces of evidence that point to a third weapon being recovered and then covered up by the FBI and the Justice Department.

Border Patrol agents, who have since been issued gag orders, were overheard at Terry’s funeral discussing the third gun.

FULL STORY HERE

Thanks to Ulsterman and Breitbart for carrying the torch enlightening America…

Bill Clinton in favour of Keystone; wife to decide its fate

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton weighed in Wednesday in favour of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, the controversial project whose ultimate fate is in the hands of his wife.

Updated: Wed Feb. 29 2012 16:08:11

The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON — Former U.S. president Bill Clinton weighed in Wednesday in favour of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, the controversial project whose ultimate fate is in the hands of his wife.

Clinton, the keynote speaker at the Department of Energy’s conference for clean-technology startup companies in Maryland, wondered aloud why TransCanada didn’t originally propose to build the pipeline around an environmentally fragile area of Nebraska.

“One of the most amazing things to me about this Keystone pipeline deal is that they ever filed that route in the first place, since they could have gone around the Nebraska Sand Hills and avoided most of the dangers, no matter how imagined, to the Ogallala with a different route,” he said.

“The extra cost of (rerouting the pipeline) is infinitesimal compared to the revenue that will be generated over a long period of time,” he added.

“So, I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying later in the day to the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee hearings into energy security, was asked about her husband’s remarks.

“He’s a very smart man,” she said to laughter.

“But he, unfortunately, is not bound by the laws and regulations any longer of the United States to make decisions that follow a certain procedure. And that’s what we have to do.”

Bill Clinton’s comments are certain to cause a stir given his wife has already been accused of a pro-pipeline bias. The State Department is deciding the fate of the $7.6 billion pipeline since it crosses an international border.

In November, the Obama administration deferred making a decision on the pipeline until after this year’s presidential election, citing concerns about the risks Keystone XL’s proposed route could pose to the Ogallala aquifer.

Pipeline proponents cried foul, saying it was a cynical political move aimed at pacifying the environmentalists among President Barack Obama’s base in advance of the election.

In January, facing a mid-February deadline imposed by congressional Republicans, the Obama administration rejected TransCanada’s permit outright, saying it didn’t have enough time to thoroughly review a new route before giving it the green light.

But Obama also assured Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the decision was not based on the pipeline’s merits, but was merely necessitated by the Republicans’ pressure tactics.

Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that TransCanada has submitted a new application for a route that would carry Alberta oilsands bitumen from the Canadian border to Steel City, Nebraska.

“At the same time,” she said, “they’re moving forward with parts of the pipeline like from Oklahoma to Texas, that don’t cross the border and don’t need State Department evaluation or decision.”

The Calgary-based company has also said it is reapplying soon for a presidential permit that incorporates the alternate route around the Nebraska aquifer.

Republicans have not eased up on their attempts to force approval of the pipeline. Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation that would strong-arm the Obama administration into green-lighting Keystone XL as soon as possible.

They believe the pipeline will create thousands of jobs and help end U.S. dependency on oil from often hostile OPEC regimes.

At the White House daily media briefing on Wednesday, spokesman Jay Carney decried the tactics of congressional Republicans.

“Calls to approve Keystone XL right away, again, are insulting to the American people because there is no permit to approve,” he said.

The pipeline has become a rallying cry for Republican presidential candidates as well. After narrowly winning the Michigan primary on Tuesday, Mitt Romney vowed to keep fighting for Keystone XL.

“I’ll get us that oil from Canada that we deserve,” he said to cheers in Columbus, OH.

The Obama administration, meantime, signalled a shift in attitude toward Keystone XL earlier this week when the president praised TransCanada’s decision to carry on constructing the pipeline from Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas.

Hillary Clinton denied the administration was shifting gears in her testimony on Wednesday.

“So why the flip-flop on the Keystone XL pipeline?” Florida congressman Connie Mack asked Clinton.

“I don’t think there was any flip-flop, Congressman,” she replied.

“I think that this was always a matter that had to be evaluated in accordance with legal and regulatory standards. Certainly energy security considerations was a key factor, but not the only factor. There was a lot of concern on the part of one state through which the pipeline traveled.”

Edmonton Paper

Bill Clinton’s Vision

To the Editor:

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

Hillary should be the democratic nominee… Obama should Opt-Out..

If Americans in their infinite wisdom choose to keep a Democrat in the White House through 2016, let it be Hillary Clinton.

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.

The Clinton doctrine on economic statecraft: Clinton to urge U.S. diplomats to put economics at top of foreign policy agenda

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi Sept. 26, 2011. (David Karp/AP)

There is no shortage of players jostling for turf on the complex matter of Chinese currency valuations. Witness Senate Democrats’ vow to take up legislation this week that could sanction China for allegedly undervaluing the yuan–at the cost, according to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), of American jobs.

As a practical matter, the delicate work of managing relations with China–the leading creditor of the United States–falls only in part to America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But if she has her way, she’d have more of a say.

If the fight against terrorism dominated American foreign policy in the decade after 9/11, the decade ahead could well be defined by efforts to manage the U.S. role in the global economy.

And in many ways, Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic portfolio is increasingly dominated by global economic challenges. Trade issues obviously have a direct impact on America’s efforts to emerge from the present economic downturn–from the battles over the national debt to the need to stimulate job growth. But economic issues also shape other less-noted features of the American foreign-policy agenda, be it the effort to contain fallout from Europe’s debt crisis, to managing the rise of G20 economic powers such as Brazil, Turkey and India—all of whom come bearing their own foreign policy ambitions. As a result, diplomats say, economic and foreign policy are growing ever more intertwined.

“The trading floor is increasingly replacing the battlefield as the forum for state contacts,” according to one of Clinton’s State Department advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as to describe the department’s economic plans more broadly.

So Hillary Clinton has been working hard to beef up the economic bench strength of the State Department, while also mounting a bid for State officials to play a more decisive role in determining U.S. global economics policy. Aides expect her to lay out what they are calling the “Clinton doctrine on economic statecraft” early this month, likely in a speech in New York. Timing and venue for the address are still being worked out, her aides say.

“This is coming from a sense that we are seeing the lines between national security and economic security blur as emerging powers are doing more to advance their economic power, and fitting their national security strategy more around economic interest,” the State Department adviser told The Envoy Friday.

A key precept in this effort is addressing a kind of cultural lag in the antiquated world of bureaucratic Washington. Lead policy makers may recognize the pivotal role that economics plays in global diplomacy–but in many ways, the diplomatic bureaucracy needs to catch up. Clinton’s planned speech is in large part a call to her own agency’s ambassadors, diplomatic staff and analysts to shift their thinking.

And as Secretary Clinton lays out that vision in more detail, she will stress two main bulwarks, aides say. First, she will highlight the need to advance relations with the wider world as part of the effort to revive the American domestic economic order. And second, she will stress that State Department diplomats and foreign policy thinkers need to work harder to understand how market forces are driving first-order national security challenges in hot spots such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

Clinton’s strong interest in global economics issues is hardly a secret. She has denied persistent rumors that she has her eye on the World Bank chief job when Robert Zoellick’s tenure ends next fall.

But such Beltway speculation aside, it’s hard not to notice the many ways that Clinton has started to sound like a World Bank or Treasury official as she holds down her present job at the State Department. And she’s managing the department with a clear eye toward bulking up its economics portfolio.

Clinton has made several recent hires in her corps of advisers, with backgrounds in economics and finance. She has launched a new energy security bureau–headed by special envoy/coordinator Carlos Pascual, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, aided by new deputy assistant secretary Amos Hochstein. She’s brought on a deputy secretary of state for management and budgets from Wall Street (Morgan Stanley’s Tom Nides). And she has been pushing for the State Department to work prominently in framing American economic policy objectives more broadly. That means, in part, elbowing State’s way into inter-agency discussions on U.S. international economic policy-making. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Clinton are at the heart of this scrum; Clinton’s aide won’t handicap her chance of winning–these are diplomats, remember?–but the aide stressed that she’s taking the long view.

In her in-house think tank, State Department policy planning chief Jake Sullivan, and senior adviser Jennifer Harris, a lawyer and economist who worked on the intelligence community’s Global Trends 2025 report (pdf), have been among the key thinkers helping Clinton flesh out her approach to economic statecraft. Sullivan and Harris arranged a “deep dive” on the issue for Clinton back in February.

Clinton explained the logic behind the new economic initiatives recently in Hong Kong.

“As we pursue recovery and growth, we are making economics a priority of our foreign policy,” Clinton said at the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Shangri La conference in Hong Kong in July. “Because increasingly, economic progress depends on strong diplomatic ties and diplomatic progress depends on strong economic ties. And so the United States is working to harness all aspects of our relationships with other countries to support our mutual growth.”

“All of us here today recognize that a strong economy at home is vital to America’s leadership in the world,” Clinton similarly told the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition conference in July, before sounding a retrospective note about her tenure at State. “After spending two and a half years as your Secretary of State, traveling nearly 600,000 miles, I have reached one overarching conclusion: Simply put, we need to up our game.”

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/clinton-doctrine-economic-statecraft-clinton-moves-put-economics-110046068.html

Will Hillary run for 2012? Poll shows 68% approval rating among Americans

YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING patiently… to hear these words… take the poll at the link:

Will Hillary run for 2012? Poll shows 68% approval rating among Americans!

Last updated at 2:10 AM on 6th April 2011

The possibility of a last-minute presidential dash by Hillary Clinton has been raised after it emerged that her popularity among voters has almost reached an all-time high.

The Secretary of State’s favourable rating among Americans has soared to 66 per cent from just 61 per cent in July 2010.
The impressive figures raised hopes among her supporters that Clinton will take advantage Obama’s nose-diving popularity and run for president in 2012.

A stand-out candidate has yet to emerge in the early days of the presidential and the promising figures suggest that Clinton could become the first U.S. female president.

Clinton first became widely known among Americans when her husband was elected president Bill Clinton and she was First Lady.
At this point her popularity was at its highest point. Two further dips in form saw her rating dip to 44 and 45 per cent before jumping to 65 per cent when she was sworn in to the Obama administration.

The role of Secretary of State has traditionally been viewed favourable among voters. Colin Powell, a previous holders of the position, saw his ratings soar to as high as 80 per cent and Madeleine Albright reached 69 percentage points.

But the challenge for Clinton should she run for president will be to retain her popularity during an election campaign that will see her policies scrutinized.

With a 66 per cent rating revealed in a Gallup poll, Clinton is more popular than the president, more popular than the vice president, and more popular than she has ever been for much of her time in the national spotlight since 1993.

Clinton enjoys extraordinary popularity among women with 77 per cent of women over 50 backing her. She also receives support from a solid slice of support from independents and 40 per cent of Republicans.

Even among men across the age spectrum her popularity was found to be 59 per cent.

A second poll from Quinnipiac University released yesterday showed that 48 per cent of voters disapproved the job President Obama is doing and almost half said that he does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012. The figures are all-time lows in the university’s tracking of the president.

A Clinton campaign would see her pitched against her former boss, Obama, who recently announced he will run for a second term term of office in 2012 in what advisers are hoping will be a billion-dollar campaign.

A second term would enable him to cement and expand the policies he has begun at the White House but the fanfare that greeted his success in 2008 has largely diminished.

The announcement to run for president will allow the President to begin raising money in earnest for what advisers hope will be a record-breaking haul of more than $1 billion.

But if he does win re-election, Clinton has signaled her intention to step down as Secretary of State fueling speculation that she could be lining up a run in 2016.

She has reportedly been unhappy with Obama’s failure to show leadership during uprisings in the Middle East.

‘Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,’ a source told The Daily.

‘If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretaries of State — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.’

The other candidates who have declared their intention to stand for president include Randall Terry from the Deomcrats, Newt Gingrich from the Republicans and Sarah Palin.
“Daily Mail Link”

Mea-Culpa— Regrets from a professor who fought Hillary in the Primary to elect Barack (the failure) Obama!

“Hillary for president”

August 05, 2011| By Christopher Sprigman

During the 2008 presidential primaries, Hillary Clinton ran an ad called “3 a.m. phone call.” The ad juxtaposed pictures of sleeping children with the insistent ring of a telephone. A grave voice asked us to consider who we would want in the White House when the phone rang at 3 a.m. with news of trouble. The message was clear: Barack Obama lacked the strength to be president.

I remember how angry that ad made me. I was newly hired as a junior professor, working hard to get tenure. My nonworking hours were, however, devoted almost entirely to getting Obama elected.

Read the rest here:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-08-05/news/ct-oped-0805-hillary-20110805_1_spending-cuts-gop-controls-hillary-clinton