HillBuzz

Do you have popcorn to pop or nachos to eat for tomorrow?  Buffalo tenders and crudite? Spinach and artichoke dip? Sausage and marshmallow pizza from Pie Hole in Boystown?

Yah, big surprise the HillBuzz gang’s not all revved up for the Super Bowl on Sunday (Super Bowl, what’s that? If there’s not blue tights, a speedo, and a red cape involved, how super can it really be?) but we’re like sugar-fueled kids on Christmas Eve waiting for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to appear at his impeachment trial tomorrow and let slip all sorts of crazy on an unsuspecting nation.

Well, kids at Christmas who love politics, anyway, in January, not Christmas, and are all in their 30s. But, otherwise, it’s basically the same.

And Santa’s a medium-sized wild and crazy Serbian guy rocking a perfectly-coiffed pompadour, with Heaven knows what up his sleeves, or what twists, turns, tricks, or Charo in store.

Tomorrow, Rod Blagojevich will dance, not bullfight.

Because, seriously, the man’s good at what he does, and the seeming insanity of his recent behavior has a punchline tomorrow you will not want to miss.  We plan on live-blogging his impeachment trial appearance for those of you who won’t be near your TVs.

We would not miss this for the WORLD.

Blagojevich is Lex Luther with a really bad wig, 95% less supervillainy, old school showmanship, and big brass ostrich egg, uh, gumption. He’s the matador entering the coliseum at sunset, in his most dazzling disco polyester, unarmed and uninvited, ready to shake, rattle, and let the dice roll.

The clodding bovines in our state senate have no idea what they’re in for.

We have no idea what’s going to happen, but are sure dying to find out.

Who knows how Blago will emerge — besides taking another flourished step into perverse legend.

Why is it so funny to mock Bush and not Obama?

Here’s one of those things that bother us.

The media eviscerated former President George W. Bush for trying to open a locked door in Beijing in 2005, in a room and building he had never been in before, in a country in which he does not speak the native language, when all the doors around him looked exactly the same and he’d just come off a grueling flight overseas and endured countless meetings, interviews, and briefings.

EVISCERATED.

Why is this different from what Obama did?

With footage of that mistake continuously looped into every clips reel cobbled together to mock the former president.

And yet, today, Obama (in his own home, in his own country, where he not only speaks the native language but is hailed as the greatest orator of all time by a fawning press) tried to walk through a window and the media looked away, slurping the purple Kool-Aid of Lethe.

We personally don’t think either of them should be ridiculed for trying to open the wrong door (or window, as the case may be), because all of us who don’t have media trailing us everywhere do this sort of thing all the time.

But, if the press even pretends to be fair (which, admittedly, it doesn’t), it needs to remember that what they did to Bush is what they should do to Obama.

A door’s a door. Even when it’s a window.

A mistake’s a mistake.

Fair’s fair.

Believe it or not, the most bizarre thing to happen in Chicago for a while has nothing even remotely to do with Governor Rod Blagojevich or his three ring circus of an impeachment trial – it was Mayor Daley’s appointment of Ron Huberman to head up Chicago Public Schools.

Who?

For those of you not from Chicago, Huberman’s the new Obama around here (Obama Part Deux, as we call him) — a man beloved by the Chicago political machine, and Mayor Daley personally, who has been pushed up through the ranks at breakneck speed, regardless of his actual accomplishments or abilities, mainly because of his look, style, and telegenic image.

He is Mayor Daley’s chosen successor when our imperial mayor decides to step down from office, after the 2016 Olympics (which will be Daley’s personal triumphe and swansong). It’s been clear for some time that Daley wants Huberman to be our next Mayor, running in 2018 after Daley retires as the longest-serving Mayor Chicago’s ever seen.

Thus, Huberman is Daley’s personal pet project, regardless of his ability to actually deliver on any of his promises. He’s openly gay (and very often seen at Sidetrack here in Boystown), biracial, a former beat cop, and until yesterday, the head of Chicago’s failing transit system, the CTA.

Not that he did anything to improve the CTA in the last two years, and leaves it deeper in debt and further up the creek without paddles than he found it.

Two years ago, without having any experience with major transportation systems, Da Mayor appointed Huberman head of an agency crippled with disintegrating infrastructure, lazy employees, massive budget shortfalls, and probably the greatest source of graft and corruption in a 50-mile radius of Chicagoland.

Part of that graft is the $900 million+ mythical “transportation hub” Daley’s buried underneathe Block 37′s new eyesore development in the heart of the Loop: it’s basically a pharaoh’s tomb of wasted riches, an enormous unusable train station hundreds of feet below street level, without access to trains, sealed off indefinitely until billions in federal funding can be pumped into Chicago to dig monstrous tunnels below the watertable that reach out to both O’Hare and Midway (soon to be Barack H. Obama International Airport). This is Daley’s unrealistic dream of building privately-contracted Japanese-style bullet trains to race nonstop from both airports to this “transportation hub” in the center of the city, bringing people from both airports to the Loop in 12 minutes (instead of 45-75 minutes or so, depending on delays) for about $15 a ride. November 4th was a very good day for Daley, as an Obama Administration means stimulus funds will most likely be sunk into this, as it greatly helps Chicago’s Olympics bid.

Installing loyalist Huberman at CTA was a move by Daley to keep the real costs of the Block 37 transportation hub underwraps, while doing whatever else Daley wanted, no questions asked. Huberman was promoted to high positions not because he is the most qualified, but like Obama before him, because his biography is “inspirational”: Huberman went to the University of Chicago part-time at night while working as a Chicago cop to get his MBA. He is a bright and attractive biracial gay man, who by nature of his appointment to any agency, brings diversity on many levels to a classicly image-conscience city. Mayor Daley is a showman, and knows full well that his own gruff persona needs a slick, attractive, puppet like Huberman carrying out his orders.

But putting a man with no education background, who was never even a substitute teacher or reading tutor, let alone expert in school management or professional education, in charge of one of the largest failing school systems in the country is madness, even for Daley.

There are worse choices to head Chicago’s public schools.  Barbara Bird Bennett, the administrative disgrace who drove Cleveland’s public schools into the ground for seven years, comes immediately to mind. Huberman is definitely not on that scale of willful ineptitude and gleeful corruption, but he’s completely out of his element handling the hydra of titanic problems facing Chicago’s schools.

And Huberman’s replacing Arne Duncan, who Obama elevated to Secretary of Education, despite his poor performance here with Chicago’s schools.  So, in essence, like with a lot of things, Chicago’s problems are now the nation’s, as things on the ground here in the Windy City get worse than they were before.

Unlike the CTA, though, which the media here largely ignores and everyone accepts as unmanageable and hopeless, people are emotionally invested in public schools because of the children they serve. Who have parents…who are upset today someone uncertified to even teach in a school and unqualified to be a principal of one is now in charge of ALL of them.

Daley was very smart to make this appointment this week, with all eyes on Blagojevich, thus limiting the news coverage of the appointment. While Huberman’s tossing back Pilsners at Sidetrack celebrating his new job, we wonder just how bad the school system will get under a charismatic, attractive, machine-backed man who wants to bring his own special blend of hope and change to a failing system (just like the hope and change he didn’t bring to the CTA, though he promised everyone lemonade and pixie dust).

Sound familiar?

ABC 7 Chicago — Live Stream of the Blagojevich Impeachment Trial

Check out the link above: it’s a live stream of the Blagojevich Impeachment trial here in Illinois.

Honestly, we don’t know what to tell you about what’s going on with this, because we have no idea how to clarify what Governor Blagojevich is doing. We have our own theories, and those of others here in Chicago, but there’s no clear consensus. But some of you have asked for our take, so here goes:

(1) The news media claims Blagojevich is crazy and doomed. This is the same news media that claimed Harry Reid could bar Roland Burris from the Senate and HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy would move to Washington and assume Hillary Clinton’s seat. We all know how those matters worked out, so the media’s drumbeat against Blagojevich makes us wonder what’s really going to happen to him. Lately, when the media insists something, it’s been dead wrong.

(2) Local politicians we know all say Blagojevich will be convicted in the Senate trial this week. But, like (1) above, these people all thought Burris would be barred from the Senate and Kennedy would replace Clinton. So, this doesn’t sway us either.

(3) People we know who worked for Blagojevich in the past say he is erratic, egotistical, money-grubbing, and hard to deal with, but they say the man is SMART, and as crazy as a fox. None of the seemingly crazy things he does stems from any actual mental illness — they are very much calculated. He hasn’t survived as long as he had, involved in as many shenanigans as he’s been involved in, without being good at what he does. The nonstop national media Blagojevich has been doing is puzzling, to be sure. To some people, he’s just out there making himself look crazy; to others, he’s making the whole impeachment in Illinois look like a colossal farce. That’s particularly true when it comes to insisting over and over again that he’s not being allowed to call witnesses he wants for his own defense, like Obama advisers Valerie Jarret and Rahm Emanuel. By doing that, he’s impeaching the impeachment process, and in his own way making those sitting in judgment of him look like a kangaroo court.  But, to what end? Does he intend to embarrass state senators into acquitting him? Will voters hold that against those state senators in the next election? Who is the real audience for those TV appearances?

(4) One theory we have is that Blagojevich accepts the fact he’s going to be booted out of office, but that his TV appearances are designed purposefully to make the impeachment as big of a national joke and circus as possible so it taints all possible juries for his criminal trial. No one will soon forget what’s happening right now…and maybe Blagojevich is counting on that, so jurors down the road will keep thinking back to those TV appearances where Blagojevich repeatedly told anyone who would listen that he was unable to mount the defense he wanted, and that he was unable to call witnesses who he claimed would exonerate him. Perhaps he’s trying to favorably prejudice an anticipated criminal trial jury.

(5) Or, perhaps he’s trying to soak up as much national attention as possible in hopes that he, or his wife Patti, can land a lucrative book deal out of all of this, as the Blagojevich family is in desperate need of money to pay massive legal bills (which is the reason Blagojevich wouldn’t resign, because he needed his $150,000/year Governor’s salary). The crazier and more memorable that Blagojevich makes this trial, the bigger circus he inflates the process into, then the more likely people will want to read all about it.

(6) Or, maybe he’s really just doing this all for his own amusement, enjoying a last dance on the Titanic, playing in his own band all the way to the bitter end. Maybe this is just him being the stubborn, erratic, egomaniac, loving every minute of spotlight in the way other celebrity train wrecks have in the past, from Anna Nicole Smith to Britney Spears and everyone notorious in between. Perhaps he wants more air time on Saturday Night Live. He could be gunning for loads more political cartoons. It could all be about getting his name in as many papers as he can, for probably the last time in his life he can command the national stage.

Maybe…but somehow we don’t think so.

Blagojevich is a bad Governor, no doubt, but when we look at what evidence the impeachment trial’s brought against him, the case is weak, when considered against the awesome constitutional collision of one branch of government removing the other. If all bad Governors were removed, then Bob Taft would have been impeached in Ohio, but he wasn’t.  Bill Richardson would be impeached in New Mexico, but he hasn’t been, and won’t be. We have a lot of bad Senators and Members of Congress too. Can we impeach or remove them all just because they are bad?

Or do their particular individual levels of bad have to rise to such a level, as defined in state constitutions, and as documented in such incontrovertible evidence, that legislative bodies have no choice under the rock solid rules put in front of them to remove these people from office?

Impeachment is serious business, and it sets a precedent.

Because the media’s the quality that it is, we have no idea how seriously the state senators of Illinois are really taking all of this, and how much they are looking towards the future, since Blagojevich would be the first Governor of Illinois impeached and convicted in the state senate.  What does that mean for other Governors after him if impeachment was easier than it should have been?  Will this become a common-used tool in the future?

That’s not how our state constitution was written here in Illinois. In all of our years of statehood, this would be the first Governor removed from office.  There has to be a reason for that, as we’ve had some pretty terrible Governors here in Illinois, as there have been in most states.

And another interesting read here, in an interview with Campbell Brown

1521 – The Diet of Worms begins

1547 – Henry VIII dies, making Edward VI the first Protestant ruler of England

1573 – Articles of Warsaw Confederation are signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland

1754 – The word “serendipity” is coined

1624 – Saint Kitts founded as first British colony in the Caribbean

1724 – Peter the Great founds the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (today’s Russian Academy of Sciences)

1813 – Pride and Prejudice is first published in the United Kingdom

1820 – Russian expedition discovers Antaractica

1855 – First locomotive runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the Panama Railway

1878 – Yale Daily News is the first daily college newspaper in the United States

1887 – World’s largest snowflakes reported in Fort Keogh, Montand (15 inches wide and 8 inches thick)

1902 – Carnegie Institution founded in Washington, DC with $10 million from Andrew Carnegie

1909 – US troops leave Cuba with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

1915 – United States Coast Guard is created by Act of Congress

1916 – Louis D. Brandeis becomes first Jewish SCOTUS Justice

1917 – Municipally owned streetcars take to the streets of San Francisco

1921 – Symbolic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier installed beneathe Arc de Triomphe in Paris to honor the fallen of WWI

1922 – Knickerbocker Storm is Washington, DC’s biggest snowstorm: collapses roof of Knickerbocker Theater (city’s greates loss of life)

1933 – Name “Pakistan” is coined by Indian Muslims seeking independence

1934 – First ski tow begins operating in the US (in Vermont)

1935 – Iceland is first western country to legalize therapeutic abortion

1945 – Supplies reach China over newly reopened Burma Road

1958 – Lego company patents its bricks (Hooray!, shouts Gary McIntire)

1981 – President Reagan lifts remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls, helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut

1985 – USA for Africa records “We Are the World” to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief

1986 – Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff, with seven brave men and women aboard, including the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe

Just watch, this is all going to backfire against the Kennedys in a very big way.

Aristocrats seldom see the big picture, and instead lash out at their enemies in fits of irrational rage, never realizing those attacks expose themselves to more harm than they ever could inflict on anyone else.

In essence, the Kennedys are corpulent spiders on silky strings, normally at work in the shadows, tugging and pulling, scraping and biting, filling their webs full of glorious prizes, somewhere high in the rafters outside most people’s daily thoughts.

But when they bare their fangs and come out into the open, as they are now in their attacks against Paterson for refusing to cave into HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy’s demands, the public’s ultimately horrified by what they see, and suddenly remembers these “American royals of the Democratic party” aren’t as all-American, democratic, or deservedly royal at all.

The Kennedys are using the press to hammer Paterson, which has been berating him in New York papers for “mishandling” the appointment to Secretary of State Clinton’s Senate seat.

The only thing is, the people of New York aren’t buying that lie.  A recent poll shows 49% of New Yorkers blame HRH Princess Caroline for the mess, saying she was wrong for demanding appointment to the Senate in the first place. Only 15% of New Yorkers feel Paterson was responsible for any mishandling of the appointment.

Not that the Kennedys’ media agents report any of that.  Instead, they claim Paterson’s approval rating of only 46% in a poll out today is proof the public has sided against him for not caving into the demands of the Princess of Camelot.  Really?  Then why was Paterson only at 44% in approval ratings weeks BEFORE Princess Caroline claimed she was withdrawing her name from consideration for the appointment?

Paterson has always had a low approval rating, below 50%, consistent with other Governors, Senators, or Members of Congress who succeed disgraced predecessors as unelected officials. The whole point in picking someone from upstate New York, like Gillibrand, was to buffer that low approval rating statewide with a voter-gettter who appeals to voters outside the Democrat core, liberal, base that Princess would turn out no better or worse than Paterson or Chuck Schumer would turn it out.

But, the Kennedys will see to it that Paterson’s maligned and attacked in the press through 2010, while Princess is rehabilitated by becoming Ambassador to the Court of St. James, in gratitude from Obama for her help in the primaries.

We don’t think any of it is going to work, though.  Going off to London to send America’s well wishes to Her Majesty, the Queen, and all her subjects just reinforces the aristocratic leanings of the Kennedys.  Princess will be as out of sight and out of mind as she was before 2008, which is in itself a net positive for America’s royal family.  People like Princess better when they can think about her as a young girl with her pony, as the subject of a vaguely pedophilic Neil Diamond tribute, or as the smiling, diamond encrusted debutante at the right hand of her graceful mother, standing next to her intensely hot and regrettably departed brother.

And the attacks on Paterson will go on for another week or so before the public loses interest and moves on to something else. The Kennedys can try to keep this story going for as long as they want, at their own peril.  All it does is keep people thinking about Princess’ entitlement and her disastrous debut in politics.  That makes any redemption the family has planned for her in London increasingly more difficult, if it wasn’t already impossible to begin with.

We actually didn’t believe Paterson would win re-election a month ago, but with Gillibrand at his side, and Chuck Schumer firmly behind the two of them, we now believe all three will win in 2010.

It took a lot of guts to stand up to that lot of greedy, manipulative, self-serving spiders in Hyannis Port. It’s going to take more of that courage and presence to withstand the battering in the media that the Kennedys have planned for Paterson.

But, the Governor’s going to do just fine.

The Kennedys, however, are on their last (eight) legs.

They just don’t realize it, the way aristocrats never do, until the mobs are at the gates with flaming torches and cans of Raid, and suddenly nobody in the palace is in the mood for any more congratulatory cake.

Welcome to reality, Kennedys of Massachusetts, already in progress without you.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed Todd Stern Special Envoy for Climate Change today, saying:

Our Special Envoy’s work will augment the ongoing work of this Department which has been our nation’s leader when it comes to international efforts on climate change since the late 1980s through the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and negotiations related to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as scores of other bilateral and multilateral climate-related initiatives.
The Special Envoy will serve as a principal advisor on international climate policy and strategy. He will be the Administration’s chief climate negotiator. He will be leading our efforts with United Nations negotiations and processes involving a smaller set of countries and bilateral sessions. Because the main cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuel and because the solution rests with our ability to shift the global economy from a high to a low carbon energy base, the Envoy will be a lead participant in the development of climate and clean energy policy. He will participate in all energy-related policy discussions that, across our government, can have an impact on carbon emissions, and will be looking for opportunities to forge working alliances.

Climate Change is one area where we strongly disagree with the new Democratic Administration.

We do not believe Climate Change is caused by Anthropogenic Global Warming, the way Al Gore and his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” argue.  We believe Climate Change is real, but is being caused by a variety of factors unrelated to human activity, including solar flares and Earth’s wobbly orbit around the sun and own specific rotation.We are coming to the end of a 12,000 year warm cycle on Earth that is regularly sandwiched in between 100,000 year periods of Ice Age. The entire Holocene Era of human civilization fits neatly into this latest global warm cycle.

The pollution humans generate does the environment no good, obviously, but they have absolutely no impact on solar activity, the Earth’s orbit around the sun, or the Earth’s spin on its own axis.

Anthropogenic Global Warming believers dominate the Democratic party, and it’s clear the Obama Administration supports this theory.

It will be interesting to learn more about Special Envoy Stern to see how he balances a dedication to Al Gore’s theories with mounting scientific evidence that something completely out of our control in the solar system is the driving force behind Climate Change.

Especially if the trend of the last two years continues, and the ice at the polar ice caps continues to thicken and we continue to experience record cold across the planet. Already, Gore and his followers no longer use the term “Global Warming”, instead opting for “Climate Change”, in a deliberate rebranding of the issue to distance themselves from “An Inconvenient Truth”.

It will be interesting to watch these positions evolve over the next four years as well.

Is reopening Alcatraz to house terrorists a joke, or something that's really being considered?

Here’s the State Department’s Daily Press briefing, given today by Robert Wood.

The salient points are below, with the most interesting bit being the non-denial of reopening Alcatraz Island as a prison for supervillains (as suggested by John Boehner on Meet the Press this Sunday, in what seemed like just a jab at Nancy Pelosi, but people are taking seriously for some reason today):

* The Administration’s view is that it is unacceptable for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. The Administration plans to consult closely with all of its allies to see what we can do to prevent Iran from doing so, so that is indeed the position of the Administration.

* Obama wants to engage seriously in a dialogue with the people of the Middle East, a two-way dialogue. This Administration’s desire is to reach out to the Muslim world and to  engage.
* The P-5+1 meeting will take place some time next week. It will be at the political directors level. It will probably take place in Germany. It’s an opportunity for the other members of the P-5+1 to hear from the new Administration in terms of what its views are with regard to Iran, and how we can best go forward in terms of trying to convince Iran to give up its nuclear desires.

* It’s not in Obama’s mandate to deal with the subject of Kashmir (disputed territory between India and Pakistan). His mandate is to go out and try to help bring stability to Afghanistan, working closely with Pakistan to try to deal with the situation in the FATA region. With regard to Kashmir, American policy is well-known. India has some very clear views as to what it wants to do vis-à-vis dealing with the Kashmir issue, as well as the Pakistanis. But with regard to Ambassador Holbrooke’s mission, it’s to deal strictly with the Pakistan-Afghanistan situation (and not involve himself in matters with India).

* The Administration is looking at its overall approach to the Middle East, and so that is ongoing – that review. But clearly, we have an interest in seeing democracy being promoted throughout the world, not just the Middle East. But in terms of strategy and policies, those are still to be developed, so why don’t we give the Administration some time and see where we go from there? But, the promotion of democracy is not something that takes a back seat to any specific policy initiative. It’s important for the United States. We have a number of issues that are priorities that we have to deal with. And so right now, with regard to the Middle East, we have Special Envoy Mitchell there, who is trying to help, as I said, bring about some kind of a durable ceasefire and then look at the long term as to how we go forward in trying to get to that two-state solution. So that’s where we are at the moment.

* In terms of the tunnels running from Egypt supplying Hamas with weapons, those tunnels have been a problem. We’re trying to work on a way to deal with that issue so that Hamas cannot be rearmed. And we’re going to continue to work with Egypt and other countries in the region so that we can prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons into Gaza.

* This Administration has certainly looked at that MOU and, again, there’s an ongoing review of our policy in that region, and part of that review is – or what’s going to be a key part of that review is Senator Mitchell’s trip to the region and the results from that.

* Our policy on Hamas has been very clear in terms of what Hamas needs to do if it’s going to play a positive role in the region. Up until now, it has not. And we’ve gone over those criteria. And those criteria remain in place and our position toward Hamas remains the same.

QUESTION: On Guantanamo, Mr. Wood, it is true that you are going to transfer the prisoners from Guantanamo into Alcatraz, San Francisco? There are extensive reports to this effect (this is a reference to what John Boehner suggested Obama do with the 245 terrorists that would be freed if Guantanamo is closed and those men are repatriated to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other countries of origin that would just release them back into the wild in short time).

MR. WOOD: Lambros, what we are trying to do – we’ve been having discussions both internally and, of course, with other countries around the world with regard to how we deal with the question of transferring detainees from Guantanamo, since President Obama has made a decision that we’re going to close Guantanamo. So let me just leave it at that in terms of – HillBuzz NOTE: As crazy as it sounds, Wood did not shoot down the idea of reopening Alcatraz Island as a prison for terrorists and supervillains.  Right in Nancy Pelosi’s backyard.

MR. WOOD: We’re having discussions (with the European Union about the Guantanamo detainees). I don’t want to get into, you know, the substance of those discussions. I’ll let those governments – the European Union speak for itself. But this has been ongoing for quite some time in terms of trying to find countries that will take back these Guantanamo detainees. So it’s ongoing, and these discussions are being dealt with in a diplomatic way, quietly, and we’ll just go from there.

* Kenya has been in discussions with a number of countries in terms of bringing pirates to justice. Kenya has offered its services in terms of prosecuting pirates off of the coast of Somalia. And so that’s all I have on that issue for you at the moment.

* George Mitchell, he’s in Cairo today. He met with EU High Representative Javier Solana, Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit, and the Egyptian General Intelligence Services Director Omar Suleiman. The meetings, as they were described to me, were productive. And we have said that Senator Mitchell will be out in the region trying – on basically a listening tour and hearing from our allies in the region in terms of what’s the best way to go forward in terms of not only stabilizing the situation with regards to Gaza, but also, as I said earlier, the long-term approach to how we bring about that two-state solution that we all want to see happen.

* Six party talks are essential in dealing with North Korea. We want to do what we can to make sure that North Korea adheres to the agreements that it said that it would abide by. And so that’s really where we are. There hasn’t been any change of late. We want North Korea to sign on to a verification protocol and all of the details in writing. The North didn’t want to do that. So the ball really is in the North’s court with regard to meeting its – meeting the obligations that it agreed to.

* The Administration’s Middle East policy is under review and – is carrying out a review of, you know, its Middle East policy. Syria needs to play a productive role in the region. There’s a lot more that they can do to help facilitate Middle East peace. And we want to see Syria play that positive role. To date, we haven’t seen that.

* The name issue between Athens and Skopje (regarding Macedonia) is a subject of discussions between the two governments involved (because Greece has a province of Macedonia that’s separate from the country Macedonia, and the two conflict over the name). And of course, we want to see a resolution to it.

Sarah Palin has launched SarahPAC, a political action committee with energy independence as its chief driving issue.

Palin is uniquely positioned in Alaska to make energy independence for America a reality — which was one of the cornerstones of Hillary Clinton’s own presidential campaign, and something all Americans want across party lines.

Palin’s also target #1 for the Left, which is intent on demonizing her at every turn.  No doubt, this post will fill up with the same usual hateful comments about Palin that the Kool-Aid Gang loves to regurgitate. They don’t do that sort of thing to Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Haley Barbour, Fred Thompson, or other high profile Republicans. Either they just hate women (because they love saying nasty things about Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand, and other women we support), or Palin rattles these people on an irrational level unseen since Ronald Reagan.

That’s a good thing, Republicans.

That means she’s doing something, and is capable of great things, so the kooks, loons, and moonbats want to take her down before she ever has a chance to do all the things we expect her to do.

Starting with becoming the leading voice in energy independence, of which she’s well on her way today.

She’s got a servant’s heart, a grizzly’s determination, a firm grasp on energy policy, and the undivided attention of all of us moderate Democrats who want her to succeed.

Go, Sarah, go!

Someone is selling replicas of this wooden sculpture, which Obama calls “The Egg of Power” and now keeps in the Oval Office.

According to Michelle Malkin:

The wooden sculpture that Barack Obama has brought into the Oval Office combines African tribal tradition with a poignant message. Obtained on a 2006 visit to his ancestral Kenya, the “Egg of Power” symbolizes the fragility of chiefly power: According to an ancient proverb, power is like an egg; if it’s held too tightly, it breaks, and if it’s held too loosely, it will slip from grasp.

Art has always been an integral part of African life, and wood carvings are expressions of power and ritual in the life of the tribe. Wood is the most popular material used in native sculpture, since it can be found in abundance. Skilled carvers use simple hand tools to create these stunning works of art — gouges, chisels, mallets, and pointed instruments. Although no two pieces are ever identical, as carvers meticulously hewn each piece according to the grain and texture of the tree, each is rich in symbolism, conveying a guiding principle of leadership, one that has been embraced by the President.

Offered is an authentic artisan work of art, true to the exquisite wooden sculpture in the President’s office. The “hand” is carved from the hardwood of the Monkey Pod tree, with interlocked, wavy grain and colors that range from medium tan to dark brown; the “egg” is lathe-turned from the hardwood of the Coffea Arabica tree, a species that produces the majority of coffee consumed in the world. This remarkable work of art stands 10-inches high and weighs 1 1/2-pounds.

That 2006 trip to Kenya, referenced above, was a visit to campaign for his cousin, Raila Odinga, who wants to overthrow the US-backed secular Kenyan government and install Shari’a law there, like they have in parts of Nigeria (coincidentally we’re sure, the parts where women are brutalized, forcibly circumcised, and treated worse than animals). When Odinga didn’t win in 2006, his supporters stoked race and tribal riots to plunge Kenya into as much chaos as possible.

Not that the American media reported any of this during the campaign (and, to be fair, not that the Clinton or McCain campaigns ever raised any of the Obama-Odinga connections either).

But if that magic “Egg of Power” from that 2006 trip to Kenya’s made it into the Oval Office, we wonder what other souvenirs of Obama’s time with Odinga will make it into American policy towards Africa, and Kenya in particular. Especially with Samantha Power, the most dangerous woman in the world, still lurking around, with her own desire for American military intervention across Africa driving everything she does.

This must just be some kind of Yemeni misunderstanding (like that time Chandler kept lying about a job in Yemen to get away from Janis, and then ended up having to fly to Yemen because she insisted on going to the airport with him, and then hilarity ensued on Friends, as usual.  Zany Must See TV!), because the election and inauguration of the “The One” as president was supposed to make the entire world love America, in what is now the eight-day-old “Golden Age of Obama”.

O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!

You remember all of that hooey.  One of the key reasons Obama’s followers insisted he should be our 44th POTUS was because “the world hates America, and we need the world to love us again”. And Obama was supposed to be the bridge to that unprecedented, unadulterated lovefest.

Well, people in Yemen with guns never got that message, because they shot at the US embassy there again yesterday, for no apparent reason besides their all-consuming, unquenchable, pay-no-attention-to-whomever-is-POTUS, hatred of America.

Apparently, they’re working under directives of two Yemeni Al-Queda members who were held securely at Guantanamo Bay for some time, but were released recently (and immediately returned to Al-Queda as commanders to pick up where they left off).

But, of course the 94 Yemeni terrorists currently being held in Guantanamo Bay’s detention facility will never, ever in a million years become Al-Queda operatives or commanders once Obama closes the prison and deports them back to Yemen.

According to Reuters:

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he expected the repatriation soon of 94 Yemenis held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, adding that they would be living with their families at a center to undergo “rehabilitation … to rid them of extremism” before being released.

Because the plan is for Yemen to send all of those terrorists back home to their families for a spell, before letting them loose into the world again. Considering the fact Al-Queda members tend to be brothers, uncles, cousins, fathers, and sons, recruited from large extended families, sending former Guantanamo Bay detainees to be rehabilitated by living with these people is like sending Liza Minnelli to the Kennedy compound for rehab and detox, with Ted Kennedy as her sponsor and designated driver.

That’s zaniness that practically writes itself!

It is only a matter of time before the 245 foreign nationals currently held in Guantanamo Bay’s facilities to be back on the streets of Afghanistan and Pakistan, by way of brief stops in Yemen, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, or their other countries of origin.  With extremely lax European travel and immigration rules, they could easily be on the streets of London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, or Paris too.

Say what you will about former President Bush, but the dangerous fanatics in Guantanamo didn’t make it back onto the street on his watch — and coincidentally we’re sure, there hasn’t been another attack on US soil in more than seven years. Bush is not perfect (and never claimed he was), but he certainly did something right.

And part of that was realizing how quickly shuttering Guantanamo Bay will send its detainees right back into the Al-Queda cells they came from.

Chandler had better luck getting rid of Janus than we’ll have keeping these fanatics from falling back into their old ways. It’s like a bad rerun where we know exactly what’s going to happen, but no one’s inclined to wake up and change the channel.

According to HollywoodReporter, ABC has just greenlit a pilot for a new hourlong drama about a hallucinatory cult that’s emerged in America, worshiping otherworldly beings from the stars who claim they’re here to bring hope and change the world (but, really, they’re just all about themselves and their own personal agenda — while also being lizards with human masks pretending to be something they are not).

It’s a remake of the 80s miniseries “V”, and has nothing at all to do with Obama, or anything affiliated with his “O” brand, of course.

“V” and “O” are separated by a half dozen letters in the alphabet and have nothing at all in common.

And the hallucinatory cult in the miniseries that blindly put its faith and trust into the flashy marketing campaign brought to Earth by Reptiloids from another galaxy (who promised everything from fixing the hole in the ozone to ending all strife and conflict on the globe, curing all ills social and economic with their mere presence), has no resemblance whatsoever to Obama voters (who blindly put their faith and trust not into space lizards, but into the flashy marketing campaign and ubermerchandising of the Chicago Obama machine and all that it promised).

Obama is not an alien lizard sent from space to con the world and steal its resources.

Clearly.

And this is totally not the 80s, where people in a miniseries were gullible enough to fall for nebulous promises of a world-changing nature, without ever asking any critical questions about the magical savior sent from the heavens to solve all of their problems under banners of hope and change.

Stoopid people of the 80s!

Thank goodness this special brand of insanity is only found on network TV, where only space lizards and their hallucinating followers ever put up creepy posters everywhere.

And only Reptiloids from space ever foster personal loyalty to themselves over everything that’s come before them, using simple letter-based branding with retro-fascist messianic overtones.

Hope!

Change!

Lizards!

98 – Trajan becomes Roman Emporer after death of Nerva

661 – Death of Ali ends Rashidun Caliphate

1142 – Execution of Song Dynasty General Yue Fei

1343 – Pope Clement VI issues Bull Unigenitus

1593 – Vatican opens 7-year trial against scholar Giordano Bruno

1606 – Trial of Guy “Remember, remember the 5th of November” Fawkes and fellow conspirators begins

1695 – Mustafa II becomes Ottoman sultan

1785 – University of Georgia is founded as the first public university in the United States

1825 – US Congress approves “Indian Territory” in what is now Oklahoma, taking a step towards forced relocation of Native Americans on “Trail of Tears”

1870 – First women’s fraternity, Kappa Alpha Theta, formed at DePauw University

1888 – National Geographic Society founded in Washington, DC

1944 – 900-day seige of Leningrad ends

1945 – Soviets arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland

1967 – Apollo 1 Disaster: astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee killed in a fire during test of spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center

1967 – Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space is signed by 60 nations

1967 – The Doors self-titled album is released

1973 – Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War

1984 – Michael Jackson suffers second degree scalp burns while filming Pepsi commercial

1996 – Niger’s first democratically elected president is overthrow in a military coup by Colonel Ibrahim Bare Mainassara

1996 – Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Governor Sarah Palin is working towards powering Alaska with 50% renewable energy by 2025, in the most ambitious push for green technology and energy independence in the nation.

Go, Sarah go!

Currently, 24% of Alaska’s electric power comes from renewable sources (mostly hydropower).

Palin’s plan encourages cooperation amongst Alaska’s various utilities, weaning rural villages off diesel fuel and onto renewable energy, developing wind farms, utilizing geothermal resources, and expanding hydropower efforts.

Palin’s full plan can be found here, entitled “Alaska Energy: A First Step Toward Energy Independence”.

The recent dramatic drops in oil prices mean Palin’s going to have to juggle this ambitious vision with the reality of sharp drops in state revenues in 2009, but Palin’s always been one to rise to a challenge, and this should be no exception.

We’re now eight days into the Golden Age of Obama, where the oceans are supposed to recede and the storm clouds on the horizon are destined to melt into rainbow showers of delicious, magical Skittles.

Where is all the “change” that was promised during the campaign?  Massive layoffs in all sectors are being announced daily. Banks are failing in California, the real estate market’s falling deeper in the dumps, and one of the few companies making money is McDonald’s (sales up 80% as more and more people must spend less and less on food).

Obama promised miracles.

When will he deliver them? Some of his followers in the video above believe he came from Heaven, “to change America”.

Have we ever figured out what that means, exactly? When will that change come?

We ask because no other candidate in history ever promised so much in an election.  It’s been eight days, and there’s still no plan in place to keep those promises.

Every day, the White House should be held accountable and questioned on when, exactly, all that change will come.