DAVID GREGORY: Before I get to my final question on Israel, with a big meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister coming to meet with President Obama. Marco Rubio is on this program in just a few minutes in saying it's time for the administration to publicly acknowledge that the reset with Russia is dead. Do you acknowledge that?
SECRETARY JOHN KERRY: Well, I don't know what you mean by the reset.
Thanks to Irene in (the comments to the previous post) for calling attention to that (as an illustration of my observation: "I take that to mean Kerry is weak and he knows it.")
And here's Hugh Hewitt, writing yesterday about the upcoming 5th anniversary of Hillary's reset button.
It is astonishing that so failed a figure would presume to seek the presidency but she is measuring herself against Joe Biden so that is a partial explanation. I have asked a number of pundits, reporters or elected officials to tell me what she accomplished in her long tenure at State....
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"I have asked a number of pundits, reporters or elected officials to tell me what she accomplished in her long tenure at State…."
They're beating the bad guys, here, domestically.
That's enough,...
She may not run, either health or age, and they are still raising money as fast as they can. Typical Clinton behavior.
We have a short period to discuss her record before the window closes and we have transitioned from Everything Is Racist to Everything Is Sexist.
Christopher Hitchens nails the Putin introduction to American impotency:
"No one here I suppose would have forgotten the moment when George Bush met Vladimir Putin, who had chosen for the day to decorate his chest with his grandmother's ornate Russian Orthodox crucifix. Enough for the President to be convinced and to say that just to look into those beautiful limpid eyes was enough to see that he was a person of deep spirituality and sensitivity. I think by the way in a fairly strong field that's one of the stupidest things any president has ever said."
Crack. "They're beating the bad guys, here, domestically."
Who they?
Are there any bad guys anywhere other than here?
Peregruzka (what Hillary! thought meant "Reset") actually means "Overloaded" as in "In-over-their-heads".
They're doing a reset on the reset comment.
Howard, citing Hitchens writes:
Enough for the President to be convinced and to say that just to look into those beautiful limpid eyes was enough to see that he was a person of deep spirituality and sensitivity. I think by the way in a fairly strong field that's one of the stupidest things any president has ever said."
So, BUsh was taken in, initially by Putin. By the end of his administration though things had gotten so belligerent that when Obama came on board he said a reset was needed.
Meaning, if Bush was naive about Putin initially he soon got wise. Obama, however, thought that Bush getting wise to Putin was the problem. so doubled down on saying that Putin in fact was a good guy after all.
And now we need a reset on the reset. So, if Hitchens were still alive what would he say about Obama's naiveté? If Bush's statement was one of the stupidest ever said by a President what does that make of Obamas recommitment to being a fool?
Prof.
HRC is the next POTUS. No question about it.
Why?
Here are 3 reasons:
- NYT/NPR/PBS/MSNBC want her to the POTUS. They make the decisions for the country. Voters do not matter. They will do as told.
- GOP hates women, minorities, and science.
- No one else is there in any party. America does not have a deep bench for POTUS wannabes. Because politics is not considered a noble profession. So, smart people are not invited. The POTUS is based on DC. If you are not from DC, then you cannot be a POTUS. HRC is based on DC. Her life is in DC. She is the next POTUS.
Hey! There was a memory hole around here before! What happened to it?
I wonder at what point John Kerry will get the courage and explain that this is a spontaneous demonstration of Russian soldiers in response to a movie, Global Warming, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Israeli occupation.
Michael,
Who they?
The Democrats.
Blogger jacksonjay,
Are there any bad guys anywhere other than here?
Sure - lots of 'em - but conservatives have a habit, of wanting to be the big fish, and succeeding,...
Hillary! Because 8 years of an Affirmative Action Hire worked so well, lets go for another 4 of the same!
I marvel at the digs at Bush for the eyes/soul comment. How ignorant is it to not know, or not acknowledge the eternal truth that when you want to get someone on side, you say nice things about them? What was Bush to say, "Fuck you Vlad you horrid beast, now help me with al Queda?"
And fyi, Russians take "soul" seriously; complimenting/insulting them on their soul is trenchant praise/criticism. As Hillary! learned. So it's astonishing to me how people seem to think, or pretend to think, that this was a loss.
High Level Emergency Meeting.
John Kerry: "Vladimir, let's reset. Please pull your troops out of Ukraine."
Putin (taking off his shirt and handing Kerry a tube of tanning lotion): "Put on back."
Kerry (rubbing the oil on Putin's back): "You should use a higher SPF."
Putin: "Is OK."
Kerry: "What about your troops?"
Putin (heading for his helicopter) "They use same. Is army issue. We talk later, yes?"
HRC and Kerry both working for Obama. What's the plan, what's the strategy? What are the results? However much damage done by Bush, et al to the great standing of the U.S. in the world as a result of the Clinton/Allbright successes, beyond bowing our way down to the baseline, what's happened?
Wow, that reset button is a nightmare. That's worse than "I don't bake cookies!"
I am Hillary Clinton. I brought out the Play School Reset Button to my diplomatic negotiation.
I swear, Hillary Clinton is the worst politician in the world. Her instincts are horrible. That photograph dooms her. Doom. There is no weight in that photograph, no seriousness, no thought. It's the attitude we want in our fourth grade teachers. It's playful and fun. And utterly unserious and ridiculous.
She will be mocked without mercy. We don't even have to mock her, just run the photograph.
This is worse than Dukaksis in a tank. Imagine Dukakis in a tank holding up a teddy bear or some other childish toy.
Imagine Al Gore carrying a lockbox into his debate.
Folks, it was NOT a "reset" button. It doesn't matter what it was called, under US law (and if someone wants I can go look up the relevant USC citation) it is an "Emergency Stop" button. A red pushbutton on a yellow background may ONLY be used as an "emergency Stop" that means that when it is pushed, all electrical power is killed immediately.
You do not cycle through to the home position. Think of your windshield wipers when you turn off the ignition in mid-stroke.
The Emergency Stop metaphor was actually always a better metaphor than the reset meme. It is doubly so now.
John Henry
It's the American Idol syndrome where contestants tell the voters they "really, really want to be the American Idol" whether their performances justify it or not.
Hillary "really, really wants to be POTUS" whether her performance justifies it or not.
She, like Obama, will be elected by rich people, morons and dupes.
The Clinton geniuses translated "Reset" as "Overload" in Russian, dumb liberals never learn anything.
Michael K said...
She may not run, either health or age, and they are still raising money as fast as they can. Typical Clinton behavior.
Age will not stop her, nor should it. The health buzz is unsourced speculation so far. Take with a pound of salt.
"Whose idea was it to bring the Play School Reset Button to the diplomatic negotiation?"
What a brutal question that would be. Too brutal! No reporter is that mean. But even if you ask the question in the most polite, suck-up possible way, it's still an embarrassing question.
If the answer is Hillary...perhaps she might run as an idiot savant.
I mean, you can't imagine Jeane Kirkpatrick with a Play School Reset Button. Can you? Her middle name is Badass!
And it's pretty hard to imagine Madeleine Albright with a Play School Reset Button. Not her style.
Or Condi Rice. And there was not a lot of gravitas in the Bush administration. Still, though, Play School Reset Button?
It's a disaster.
I wonder if it was Obama's idea?
It was the "easy" button.
Too bad Putin took it mean "reset back to the Brezhnev-Carter era."
The Clinton geniuses translated "Reset" as "Overload" in Russian
Yeah, it's like Obamacare. The idea is horrible. And then they screw up the execution.
What's Hillary going to run on, competence? I still don't understand why she took the secretary of state job. It's a horrible platform for a presidential run (presumably why she retired). And now she's going to be blamed for Benghazi and Ukraine?
I am sure Hillary will run, and she will probably be the nominee. But I no longer think she is a lock for the nomination. It is likely that all the other candidates will gang up on her. And Hillary has a ton of weaknesses.
Watching the Democratic primaries is going to be fun!
being completely unqualified for the job of president didn't stop the Dems from putting forth Obama as their candidate and getting him elected. it didn't stop idiots, including even allegedly smart law professors, from voting for the unaccomplished incompetent because he was black. the Dems will expect the same morons to vote for the similarly unaccomplished and incompetent Hillary because she has a vagina and they need to be on the "right side of history" as if that is determined now.
okay, here is why politics is evil...
Ukraine has been invaded. People are going to die. And I'm happy because this makes Hillary look bad, and it will make the Democratic primaries "fun."
Ugh. I disgust myself.
I think for political junkies we can get caught up in the game. And it becomes like a spectator sport. And we're cheering when we see blood in the water. "Look, Hillary's weak now!"
But this is beneath us. It's bad. It's evil. Life and death is not entertainment for us.
I sincerely and without reservation apologize to the people of Ukraine. They deserve better from us, from our leaders, from our country.
And I hate how callous and glib our politics are. Our media has made us this way. Our leaders go to talk shows. Our leaders tweet. It's bad and it's getting worse. It's corrupting.
I'm taking a break from this.
The Clinton geniuses translated "Reset" as "Overload" in Russian
That's really a lot more telling than you think. The State Department has working for it some of the best translators in this country. Why wasn't one of them used?
Most likely answer, because Hillary trusts the people she trusts, and no one else. So she delegated it to one of her chosen in-circle, with comic results.
When Hillary (I'll skip the !) ran in '08, when she had the famous 2 am telephone ad, and when she talked about all the WORLD LEADERS she knew on a first name basis, everybody accepted that she was the experienced, competent adult in the race. But she had NEVER dealt with a world crisis (and even on the cattle futures crisis she had help), and she knew the WIVES of the world leaders because she had been the U.S. President's wife.
So now she's had 4 years as Secretary of State to prove how incompetent she is -- and neither the press nor most voters will care. She is an unpleasant person (or, as BO said, "likeable enough"), so maybe even Biden can beat her to the nomination, but I wouldn't count on it.
The election in 2016 will be the Republicans to win, if they can.
Kerry should have answered:
"That's an overloaded question."
Howard [quoting Christopher Hitchens:]
"I think by the way in a fairly strong field that's one of the stupidest things any president has ever said."
I have the utmost respect for the late Hitchens, but it would be very difficult to top Gerald Ford's assertion (in the 1976 campaign) that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and never would be under a Ford Administration.
Now that is weapons-grade stupid.
The biggest problem with incompetents is that, as part and parcel of their incompetence, they are clueless that they are so.
Think Sec Def Hagel, but the list is very long in this clown show.
Michelle it would be unfair to recognize that what Ford wad attempting to do for political purposes was to speak to the indomitable spirit of the polish people and how that spirit would never be crushed.
That he failed to convey that idea and instead something so breathtakingly idiotic is something altogether different.
Of course little did anyone know at that time just how far carter would go to appease the russian bear and write it off as realpolitic.
Poor Gerald Ford got caught in the sound-bite game. As Althouse said in 2012: "I watched the debate at the time, and I understood what he meant as he said it. I heard how the spinners spun it immediately after the debate and saw how it played in the media and how much it hurt him. If only there had been bloggers back then to push back!"
I, too, watched it at the time and had the same impression.
Here's the context in which Ford made the comment:
THE PRESIDENT. I believe that we have negotiated with the Soviet Union since I've been President from a position of strength. And let me cite several examples.
Shortly after I became President, in December of 1974, I met with General Secretary Brezhnev in Vladivostok. And we agreed to a mutual cap on the ballistic missile launchers at a ceiling of 2,400, which means that the Soviet Union, if that becomes a permanent agreement, will have to make a reduction in their launchers that they now have or plan to have. I negotiated at Vladivostok with Mr. Brezhnev a limitation on the MIRVing of their ballistic missiles at a figure of 1,320, which is the first time that any President has achieved a cap either on launchers or on MIRV's.
It seems to me that we can go from there to the grain sales. The grain sales have been a benefit to American agriculture. We have achieved a 5 3/4-year sale of a minimum of 6 million metric tons, which means that they have already bought about 4 million metric tons this year and are bound to buy another 2 million metric tons, to take the grain and corn and wheat that the American farmers have produced in order to have full production. And these grain sales to the Soviet Union have helped us tremendously in meeting the cost of the additional oil and the oil that we have bought from overseas.
If we turn to Helsinki--I am glad you raised it, Mr. Frankel--in the case of Helsinki, 35 nations signed an agreement, including the Secretary of State for the Vatican. I can't under any circumstances believe that His Holiness the Pope would agree, by signing that agreement, that the 35 nations have turned over to the Warsaw Pact nations the domination of Eastern Europe. It just isn't true. And if Mr. Carter alleges that His Holiness, by signing that, has done it, he is totally inaccurate.
Now, what has been accomplished by the Helsinki agreement? Number one, we have an agreement where they notify us and we notify them of any military maneuvers that are to be undertaken. They have done it in both cases where they've done so. There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.
MR. FRANKEL. I'm sorry, could I just follow--did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence and occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone, whereas on our side of the line the Italians and the French are still flirting with the possibility of communism?
THE PRESIDENT. I don't believe, Mr. Frankel, that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous; it has its own territorial integrity. And the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, I visited Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania, to make certain that the people of those countries understood that the President of the United States and the people of the United States are dedicated to their independence, their autonomy, and their freedom.
"What has Hillary! accomplished as Secretary of State?"
She and her clique may have engineered the "Arab Spring" that failed.
Does "Iran-Contra" ring a bell?
"Does "Iran-Contra" ring a bell?"
Selling old weapons to Iran, which is fighting fascist Iraq, and using the money to support anti-communists in Nicaragua. That's sounds like a really smart idea....
""Does "Iran-Contra" ring a bell?"
Selling old weapons to Iran, which is fighting fascist Iraq, and using the money to support anti-communists in Nicaragua. That's sounds like a really smart idea.... "
Yes, it does. Hezbollah had kidnapped the CIA station chief in Beirut, Bill Buckley . who was then tortured to death. Reagan was convinced to try to ransom him, probably not a good idea, but it wasn't a random action.
The Contras finally won in Nicaragua but the gains were reversed under Clinton. The Sandanistas are still in control but their patron the USSR is gone.
The Buckley kidnapping was misrepresented at the time but was a disaster for the US.
other candidates ganging up on Hilary? Remember, you can not violate her space.
other candidates ganging up on Hilary? Remember, you can not violate her space.
"Iran-Contra" may have seemed a good idea at the time, but it was illegal - right here in the good, old USA, never mind "international law" - and operated by a faction within our government without the knowledge and permission of the officials elected or appointed to be in charge of foreign policy, for whom it created no end of trouble.
... for whom - and their successors in office - it ....
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