Hillary and Tony Blair

Secretary Clinton Hosts Tony Blair

Feb. 4, 2009

Secretary Clinton meets with Tony Blair, Quartet Envoy at the State Department.

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Caroline OUT! WOO-HOO!

Puma volunteers and concerned New Yorkers…. CONGRATULATIONS! You WERE MARVELOUS!

You NEVER GAVE UP! tpt/NY and madam… you girls were GREAT!

From Out of Nowhere, Caroline withdraws her name from consideration for Senate

Earlier posts from around the web:

01/21/2009

.Just Breaking; and seems to be complete surprise; Caroline withdraws her name from consideration for Senate bid, citing “personal reasons.

NY POST

Caro line Kennedy has told Gov. David Paterson that she is withdrawing her name from consideration to replace outgoing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate, The Post has learned.

Kennedy cited “persoal reasons,” according to sources.

MORE: Caroline The ‘Certain’ Pick For Dave: Rivals

Her stunning move comes as sources revealed that Paterson had intended to appoint her to the now-vacant seat today.

The 51-year-old Camelot daughter’s decision removes the highest-profile name in the ring to step into Clinton’s seat, as she departs after getting confirmed as President Obama’s Secretary of State today.

The surprise decision leaves a crowded field of about 15 people, mostly elected officials, vying to replace Clinton – including Long Island Rep. Steve Israel, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

For the first time on Tuesday, shortly after Obama was inaugurated, Paterson acknowledged publicly that he is considering state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for the slot.

Why Caroline?

Does anyone have any idea why we need Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg as an inexperienced Senator to represent New Yorkers? Suggestions requested!

It seems to me Caroline benefits from the percs of being a Senator more than New Yorkers benefit from her taking up a seat she is unqualified to act upon.

Isn’t what she is doing in direct contradiction to what her father said at his Inauguration Speech?

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask, what YOU can do for your country!”

Caroline has never done a ding, dang thing, except telemarket for donations before she hired someone to do that for her.   And is it really in the best interest of the People of New York for a Senator and her entire family to have such close ties to a president that they may have to say “NO” to when legislative issues come about that are NOT in the best interests of the People?

How do we know she has the capability to “Just Say No, Obama?”   I believe that is a salient point that just doesn’t compute and New Yorkers need to respond in kind with their fears especially to the Governor, who  under pressure from the TOP,   is scheduled to appoint her!

THUMBS DOWN for Caroline’s appointment to NY senate Seat..

Heres hoping Governor Paterson isn’t foolish enough to risk the anger and revenge of New Yorkers IF he appoints Caroline to Hillary’s seat!

It’s not like Caroline, if she intends to involve herself in politics, would snub an offer of an Ambassadorship to England, would she? There would be a certain historical symmetry to Kennedy becoming Ambassador to the Court of St James’s (the official title of the US ambassador to the UK). Her grandfather Joe was ambassador from 1938 to 1940, though he hardly covered himself with glory.

A successful stint in London by Caroline – and she seems admirably well-equipped for the job – would help remove the tarnish from that part of the Kennedy legacy. (Some insist Joe Kennedy was a Nazi sympathizer. I am not supporting the claim. Just stating it exists.) Plus Caroline is living with the fact, it’s not just herspotty voting record. I have read that she has been very parsimonious in giving financial backing or any kind of public support to fellow NY democrats running for office over the years.

For one who has shunned the public eye and shunned politics, who has no experience of actually running for office in any capacity, and who has done nothing for the State of New York (this is a Statewide office, not a New York City position) to presume that the job should be handed to her on a platter because she was born a Kennedy is not only ludicrous but insulting to those NY politicians who have labored for years for the party and the State.

Let her go to London. At least she can do no harm. I am sure that she is qualified to host dinners and order flower arrangements and preside over affairs of state and lost X-Pats Passports without much trouble. Caroline can make a run at the NY Seat next year, that is if she’s really interested in representing the state’s electorate.

I have to add, don’t you just love the fact that she has now dropped her married name? I guess Schlossburg doesn’t quite have the same cachet. If London isn’t quite good enough for Caroline, she should consult Joe (the former plumber) the War correspondent. He seems to have found the formula for winning over people simply because he can speak Truth to Power and really mean it.

Marist College released a poll showing 40 percent of voters back Cuomo to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton. Kennedy was favored by 25 percent; Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, 6 percent, and Reps. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) and Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), each 5 percent.

Cuomo’s support has surged since a Marist poll last month showing Kennedy and him tied. In the new poll, 62 percent said Cuomo would do an excellent or good job as senator, while only 41 percent said the same of Kennedy.
Poll Link

SNL closer to reality than mainstream Media…

FAIR AND BALANCED MEDIA COVERAGE? YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!

At least Tina Fey’s mimicking of Sarah Palin was in good fun with Sarah Palin included in the joke. The unabashed ridiculing of Sarah Palin by the Media particularly Katie Couric was for what good reason?
Reporting the news as it was happening in a fair and balanced way? The unjustified cutting insults thrown at her family was for what good reason? Presenting a warped image of Sarah Palin’s personal life? To embarrass and humiliate her casting her as a less than capable intelligent contender for the VP slot?

Sarah Palin taking the bull by the horns… Good on her!

“I’ve been interested to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope. … It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”

Turning the tables on the media has it’s benefits. It will be on Sarah Plain’s terms not theirs. Their questions will be without notice. Responsible for answers that will be analyzed, scrutinized and dissected by the public.

Dean remained silent during the sexist and misogynistic attacks against Hillary and Palin during the election season. Only after the election did Dean finally speak up in outrage. But the outrage was feigned. Good riddance to Howard Dean.

If Gov. Rob Blagojevich is guilty of trying to sell a Senate seat in Illinois, then Caroline Kennedy is guilty of trying to buy one in New York.

It is time to lay the Camelot myth to rest, and it is time for Caroline to stop using the name Kennedy to get an appointment that she doesn’t deserve and instead use the name Schlossberg to apply for the many jobs she is eminently qualified for.

If Gov. Paterson appoints Caroline Kennedy to the United States Senate, it will be (to use the words that were said of the gifted attorney Sir Thomas Inskip when he was appointed England’s Minister for the Coordination of Defense in 1939, a job he was not qualified for) “the most cynical appointment since Caligula made his horse a consul.”

King will unseat Queen Caroline in 2010.. Paterson will be a memory..

A 2010 showdown between Pete King and Queen Caroline could spell disaster for New Yorkers.

Yesterday, Pete King in meetings with GOP leaders has been given the go ahead for a challenge in 2010 for the NY Senate Seat. One would ask, where is the benefit to New Yorker’s having Ted Kennedy’s niece taking up an important senate seat simply because they are historically and biologically related?

Has the Senate unilaterally made a promise to the Kennedys whatever legislation Caroline crafts for passage will receive universal bipartisan support?

Have the Kennedys received a written promise from the constituency of NY they will support her in the 2010 election in spite of an abysmal senate performance helping to allay NY’ers severe economic conditions?

In light of Mrs Schlossberg’s plummeting poll numbers dropping 31 points and the threat of Pete King challenging her next year. It seems the odds on not on the side of the Democrats for retaining a Democrat in the NY Senate seat.

“Caroline Kennedy’s popularity has suffered a “clear hit” as a result of her public campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat, while Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s positive ratings have shot up, according to a new poll.

According to Public Policy Polling, of Raleigh, N.C., 44 percent of New York State voters now say they have a less favorable opinion of Kennedy than they did before she started vying for the position. Thirty-three percent say it’s made no difference, and 23 percent report now having a more favorable opinion of her.

Cuomo now leads Kennedy 58-27 in a survey of the preferences of state voters. Among Democrats, Cuomo is ahead of Kennedy 54-34 percent; a month ago, the survey found Kennedy ahead of Cuomo by 44-23 percent among Democrats.”

Does Governor Paterson actually think New Yorkers will simultaneously suffer from short term memory loss when they step into the voting booth in 2010, after he deliberately appoints an obviously unliked and inept replacement, Caroline Kennedy, for Hillary Clinton’s seat?

WE NEED ACTIVISISTS CONCERNED FOR NEW YORKERS

PLEASE SPEND 5 min AND SEND A MESSAGE CAROLINE KENNEDY IS NOT THE CHOICE FOR THE NEXT NEW YORK SENATOR!

Here is a usable format you can print out and fax in 5 min or less:

Dear Concerned NY State Citizens & Others:

We ask you to join in an effort to ensure that Caroline Kennedy does not get selected as Sen. Clinton’s replacement for NY State.

After learning Rep. Charles Rangel is close to Gov. Paterson, we thought that this would be a great way of getting our message through to our Governor. We are not sure if any of our petitions or other correspondences are reaching Governor Paterson at this time.

We are aware that Congressman Rangel prefers faxes to e-mails;
thus a fax campaign would be the best way to reach him.

You can contact Congressman Rangel here: Fax: # 212-663-4277 /
phone: 212-663-3900

DC office: Fax #202-225-0816 / phone # 202-225-4365

e-mail- rangel@mail.house.gov

Feel free to use the following form letter add your own comments or create your own and fax it to Charles Rangel. Send copies to your family & friends so that by Monday Jan. 5th 2009, his office will be flooded with faxes & phone messages when he returns.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Dear Congressman Charles Rangel,

It has come to my understanding that you are a confidant to Governor Patterson. I would like to request that you get this message to him as I am not sure that he is receiving any of the letters, faxes, or emails that are sent his way. This request has to do with my respectful resistance to the “possible” choice of Caroline Kennedy to replace Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jr.

I have nothing personally against Ms. Kennedy, but my concerns for our State and America are more important at this time. Whoever is ultimately selected for our State Senate position needs to meet the following criteria in my opinion:

# 1- The selectee must be qualified to be ready on day one. Senator Clinton has started a number of projects that her replacement might not be able to continue immediately. It is imperative that her replacement be able to be ready immediately to take over Sen. Clinton’s jobs. In March this year, Gov. Paterson’s ability to immediately take over in the Governor’s seat helped us to avoid a real disaster in NY State.

# 2- Senator Clinton deserves someone that supported her during her Presidential bid for office. Many of us have lost faith in the political process and what our role has been in it. Let’s not even get started on how the media behaved against her during the primaries. There are many people in NY State and across the country that would appreciate having their voices heard. Sadly, the mess that is going on over in IL is not surprising to many of us. We do not wish for NY to appear to be handling this position in the same manner. Whoever gets this seat, should be ultimately qualified and seen as such. Appointing anyone without the proper experience, such as Caroline Kennedy, would appear to be just a political favor.

# 3- It would be helpful to know that women do not lose another spot in their already low US Senate representation. There are many women in NY that meet the benchmarks previously listed. These include, but are not limited to the following: Carolyn Maloney, Geraldine Ferarro, Yvette Clark, or Kirsten Gillbrand. Appointing a qualified female to Sen. Clinton’s position would be a benefit not only for our state, but for our nation, as well.

In conclusion, please seriously consider this request. In this time of an “American Idol Generation”, it is gett ing harder and harder to explain that being a celebrity does not necessarily equate to being a good representative for the people. Should Caroline Kennedy still wish to be a Senator for NY, she should wait and run for that position in two years.

Thank you for bringing my concerns to our Governor.

Sincerely,

(sign name)

(print name)

All NY’ers will be grateful for your participation, once again, Thank You!

Kennedys’ calling in favors for Caroline’s support ?…

$$$$ is one thing- Favors are quite another. Favors are the invisible commodities that are the more powerful of the intangibles having the power to move mountains.

Now, see what happens when you are not too eager to jump to and openly support a controversial candidate, even if she is a Kennedy?

Key legislator to back Kennedy

Albany, N.Y.

“Despite early reservations, New York state’s most powerful legislative leader said he’ll support Caroline Kennedy for the U.S. Senate if the governor names her to the seat expected to be vacated by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told the New York Post he’s rethinking his views on Kennedy because he thinks Gov. David Paterson will soon pick her to replace Clinton, President-elect Obama’s choice as secretary of state.”

However, Silver is not tipping his cards just yet as to the reason for his sudden change of heart. Where suddenly, seemingly overnight, he has developed a firm grasp framing the debate how his prior concerns have been alleviated… We are left to speculate. Does this mean Paterson has confided in Silver that he actually intends on naming Caroline as the new Senator from NY? So, it is safe for Silver to openly support Caroline because she is inevitable? Or has Paterson demanded he have outside support before he makes his announcement official, Caroline WILL BE the new Senator filling Hillary’s seat?

Seattle Times

And this for backup: (amazingly, the most qualified candidate Carolyn Maloney’s name is curiously missing from the lengthy role of candidate possibilities.)

“Two people close to Paterson told The Associated Press they believe the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy will be Paterson’s choice. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter. Kennedy’s supporters include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent who is another important ally for Paterson.

Silver had previously suggested that Bloomberg and his supporters had hijacked the selection process for their own political gain. Many of Kennedy’s advisers have close ties to Bloomberg.

Paterson has sole authority to name someone to the Senate seat for the next two years. Under state law, there would be an election to fill the last two years of Clinton’s term in 2010 and another for a full six-year term in 2012.

Other hopefuls for the seat include a half-dozen members of Congress and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo.”

NewsDay

Caroline using last life-line, “you know”, “um” as her final answer!

Tina Fey voice..

Caroline: “I can see the Nation’s Capital from my house, “you know”, my 5th Ave Apt”..!

Sarah Palin was practically bludgeoned to death by the media for just being honest. At least she spoke in coherent, contiguous sentences unlike the Columbia Law School graduate, Caroline Kennedy, who cannot convert her thoughts into the spellbinding words necessary if she is to be an effective Senator for New Yorkers!

Can you imagine the length of her first Congressional transcript as she is making her case for her proposed Legislation offsetting the $1B Budget deficit projected for the state of New York seeing the alternative for New Yorkers is severe budget cuts?

Will we be seeing the ingenuity of resourceful Americans under the gun from a sinking economy having hats and T-shirts of all assorted colors printed up with the “You Know” and “um” phrases, replete with an attribution to Caroline Kennedy, flooding the marketplace?

Collector’s Items anyone?

Will there be a battle of the T-shirt phenom, between the Bloomberg advance Team who refuse to give up their lobbying efforts for Caroline and Caroline herself countering with: “They Made Me Do IT!”

as she continues to justify her faux pas of verbal tics accruing even more damage to her disjointed effort for wanting the senate position in the first place?

If I hear Caroline say, “I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY”, want the position of Senator, representing the State of New York because “YOU KNOW, UM”, I’M THE BEST PERSON, “YOU KNOW”, FOR THE JOB, “YOU KNOW”, BECAUSE MY FAMILY, “REALLY, REALLY, REALLY”, HAS A LONG HISTORY OF, “YOU KNOW”, PUBLIC SERVICE….

We’ll have to recommend 2 years of remediation because her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. After all, bad enough we have a dumbed down population that voted for Obama in the first place…Just because, “UM, YOU KNOW”!

The last straw would be appointing a candidate who besides the nepotism factor, after listening to her long enough, effectuates a Brain Freeze not only on New Yorkers but the entire country!

Caroline, a cold, clunky cacophony of cataclysm..

For many, the simplistic fall back for Caroline’s continued awkward foray into the world of politics seems to have arrived at the consensus, it’s sexism , mainly because of her lack of a noodley appendage.

In other words if Caroline were imbued with a noodley appendage, then all would be well and she would be accepted with open arms by the locals as the next senator from NY and any Negative PRESS would magically DISAPPEAR! Hmm.. in this case calling sexism, just isn’t a good fit for Caroline. She has been given far greater latitude by the Press in expressing herself when responding to questions than any of the other female politicians who have gone before her. I’d call it turning a Blind Eye and giving her a big, fat, pass!                                                                 

Remembering the article posted here is from the UK.

Thankfully there are other observations that do, more or less, give us pause, that ‘sexism’ isn’t necessarily always culpable. . The observations made by UK reporter Tim Reid writing in from Washington undeniably focus on the articulation of thought put into succinct pleasing words that comfort the auditor’s sense of understanding good grammar rather than furthering any explorations suited to a ‘sexism’ catchall.

This from Tim Reid:

“Caroline Kennedy’s quest to enter the US Senate has suffered a self-inflicted blow in a series of interviews in which she can only be described as . . . um . . . excruciatingly, you know, unerudite.” (A link to the video of that interview and article is here at the link.)

“During a series of meetings with the New York press, one of which was recorded and is now being admired on YouTube in all its ineloquent awkwardness, the daughter of President Kennedy was vague, unconvincing and displayed a potentially ruinous verbal tic.”

“In one sequence, lasting 2 minutes and 27 seconds, Ms Kennedy, 51, revealed that she had inherited none of the eloquence, energy or charisma associated with other members of America’s foremost political dynasty: she used the phrase “you know” no fewer than 30 times.

“Asked to justify her candidacy – after days spent with handlers advising her on how to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant New York Senate seat – she began in a dull monotone: “Um, this is a fairly unique moment both in our, you know, in our country’s history, and, and in, in, you know, my own life, and um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges, our economy, you know, healthcare, people are losing their jobs here in New York obviously um, arh, you know. . . ”

“Yesterday The New York Times, which published the interview with Ms Kennedy on Sunday – calling her forceful, but vague and largely undefined – released the full 8,500-word transcript of the encounter, revealing a verbal landscape knee-deep in “you knows”. She used the phrase a grand total of 144 times.”

“Michael Goodwin, a veteran columnist with the New York Daily News wrote: “Fantasy is giving way to inevitable truth. The truth is that Kennedy is not ready for the job and doesn’t deserve it. Her quest is becoming a cringe-inducing experience.” ( no grumbling about the NYDN… you have to admit, sometimes a truism emerges that is undeniable)

Tim Reid focuses on a salient point while Mr. Goodwin puts a finer point on the pencil and I believe their analogies, much to my “sexism” relief, are spot on!