It’s Tuesday, July 17th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, Bret Stephens makes a point we’ve shared with you for years:

The Hillary Myth

Can anyone name an achievement to justify the adulation of our secretary of state?

 

Suddenly we’re supposed to believe that Hillary Clinton is a great secretary of state.

Eric Schmidt of Google calls her “the most significant secretary of state since Dean Acheson.” A profile in the New York Times runs under the headline “Hillary Clinton’s Last Tour as a Rock-Star Diplomat.” Another profile in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine is titled, wishfully, “Head of State.” The two articles are so similar in theme, tone, choice of anecdote and the absence of even token criticism that you’re almost tempted to suspect one was cribbed from the other.

The Hillary boomlet isn’t a mystery. She never lost her political constituency. In the cabinet she looks good next to Janet Napolitano and bright next to Joe Biden. She looks even better next to her boss. Democrats belong to the party of hope, and Barack Obama is hope’s keenest disappointment.

So Mrs. Clinton is back, resisting appeals for her to run in 2016 the way Caesar rejects the thrice-offered crown. No doubt she would have made a better president than Mr. Obama. But is that saying much? No doubt she’s been a hard-working and well-briefed secretary. But that isn’t saying much, either.

What would make Mrs. Clinton a great secretary of state is if she had engineered a major diplomatic breakthrough, as Henry Kissinger did. But she hasn’t. Or if she dominated the administration’s foreign policy, the way Jim Baker did. But she doesn’t. Or if she had marshaled a great alliance (Acheson), or authored a great doctrine (Adams) or a great plan (Marshall), or paved the way to a great victory (Shultz). But she falls palpably short on all those counts, too.

Maybe it’s enough to say Mrs. Clinton is a good secretary of state. But she isn’t that, either.

Mrs. Clinton is often praised for her loyalty to her boss, even when she loses the policy argument—as she did over maintaining a troop presence in Iraq.

Loyalty can be a virtue, but it is a secondary virtue when it conflicts with principle, and a vice when it’s only a function of ambition. Cyrus Vance resigned as Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state when the president, facing a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, authorized a disastrous rescue operation in Iran. Would that make Vance a lesser public servant than Mrs. Clinton?

Mrs. Clinton is also given high marks for her pragmatism. But pragmatism can only be judged according to the result. Is the reset with Russia improving Moscow’s behavior vis-à-vis Syria? Has a “pragmatic” approach to China moderated its behavior in the South China Sea? Is the administration’s willingness to intervene on humanitarian grounds in Libya but not Syria a function of pragmatism or election-year opportunism?

What about the rest of the record? It would be nice to give Mrs. Clinton full marks for the Libya intervention, except she was an early skeptic of that intervention. It would be nice to give her marks for championing the Syrian opposition, except she has failed to persuade Russia, China or Mr. Obama to move even an inch against Bashar al-Assad. It would be nice to give her marks for helping midwife a positive transition in Egypt. But having fecklessly described Hosni Mubarak as a “friend of my family” in 2009, it’s no wonder Egyptians take a dim view of the Obama administration.

Then there’s Iran. In the administration’s fairy tale/post-facto rationalization, the U.S. was getting nowhere internationally with Iran under George Bush. Then Mr. Obama cunningly offered to extend his hand to the mullahs, knowing that if they rejected it the U.S. would be in a better position to act internationally.

Nearly everything about that account is false. The Bush administration was able to win three U.N. Security Council votes sanctioning Iran, against only one for this administration. The “crippling” sanctions Mr. Obama now likes to brag about were signed against his wishes under political duress late last year. Since then, the administration has spent most of its time writing waivers for other countries. Even now, negotiations with Tehran continue: They serve the purposes of a president who wants to get past November without a crisis. They also serve the mullahs’ purposes to gain time.

Now Iran is that much closer to a bomb and the possibility of a regional war is that much greater. The only real pressure the administration has exerted thus far has been on Israel, whose prime minister is the one foreign leader Mrs. Clinton has bawled out. She should try doing likewise with Vladimir Putin.

Ultimately, Mrs. Clinton cannot be held accountable for the failures of a president she understood (earlier and better than most) as a lightweight. But the choice to serve him was hers, and the administration’s foreign policy record is hers, too. It’s a record that looks good only because it is set against the backdrop that is the Obama presidency in its totality.

Whether it be Travelgate, Whitewater, the mysterious reappearance of the Rose law firm records, the Hillarycare fiasco, coming under “fire” in Bosnia, the vast Right-wing conspiracy against her perjuring, philandering husband, carpetbagging as a Senator from New York or her service as Secretary of Misstatements, as we’ve noted numerous times before, Hillary’s always been about….

….and just as effective.

In a related item, here’s another failure to add to Hillary’s laurels:

Law of the Sea Treaty All But Dead

 

A treaty governing the high seas is all but dead in the Senate as two Republican senators announced their opposition Monday, giving conservative foes the necessary votes to scuttle the pact. Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — both mentioned as possible running mates for likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — said they had serious concerns about the breadth and ambiguity of the Law of the Sea treaty and would oppose it if called up for a vote. 

The Constitution requires two-thirds of the Senate — 67 votes — to ratify a treaty; Portman and Ayotte bring the number of opponents to 34 along with Sens. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.

The development was a blow to the Obama administration, military leaders and the business community led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who had argued that the treaty would improve national security and enhance U.S. standing in the world. They had pressed for ratification of the treaty, which was concluded in 1982 and has been in force since 1994. The United States is the only major nation that has refused to sign the pact.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and other conservatives have led the campaign against the treaty, contending that it would undermine U.S. sovereignty. DeMint heralded the latest development on Twitter, saying, “34 Senators now oppose LOST, sinking the misguided treaty.”

The treaty establishes a system for resolving disputes in international waters and recognizes sovereign rights over a country’s continental shelf out to 200 nautical miles and beyond if the country can provide evidence to substantiate its claims. The United States has abided by the rules of the treaty since President Ronald Reagan’s administration.

But Portman and Ayotte were not swayed. “Proponents of the Law of the Sea treaty aspire to admirable goals, including codifying the U.S. Navy’s navigational rights and defining American economic interests in valuable offshore resources,” the two said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “But the treaty’s terms reach well beyond those good intentions. This agreement is striking in both the breadth of activities it regulates and the ambiguity of obligations it creates. “

The two also raised concerns about authorization of international and judicial entities. “The United States would be binding itself to yet-unknown requirements and liabilities. That uncertainty alone is reason for caution,” Portman and Ayotte wrote.

So why, inquiring minds want to know, was Hillary advocating so actively for ratification?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had told Congress in May that the treaty could be a boon to business as U.S. oil and natural gas companies now have the technology to explore the extended continental shelf, which could be more than 1 1/2 times the size of Texas and rich in resources.

Yeah….as if the most anti-energy Administration in history would ever grant the permits necessary to exploit deep-water drilling ANYWHERE off America’s coastlines.  Brazil, however, is another matter!

No, given the Pentagon’s lock-step enthusiasm for anything this Administration proposes, no matter how adverse the impact on our nation’s defenses and with Hillary’s premeditated prevarication, we think this is one dance America had best sit out.  Besides, were our leadership only of a mind to use it, the United States already possesses all the lawful authority it needs at sea:

And since we’re on the subject of Team Tick-Tock’s never ending string of misstatements, misconceptions and outright deceptions, in today’s “Buck You” segment, Conn Carroll’s Morning Examiner details The Dear Misleader’s willful misinterpretation of Harry Truman’s concept that….

 The Buck Stops With You

 

Pressed to defend his false attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital President Obama told ABC News Friday:

Well, here’s what I know, we were just talking about responsibility and as president of the United States, it’s pretty clear to me that I’m responsible for folks who are working in the federal government and you know, Harry Truman said the buck stops with you.

That is an interesting line of attack for Obama to be making. Romney is claiming he should not be held accountable for decisions made by Bain Capital from 1999 through 2002 because he was on leave and did not make any of the decisions in question. Sounds straight forward enough.

But what about everything that has happened under Obama sine he was sworn into office? The murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Fast and Furious. The Solyndra bankruptcy. The GSA Las Vegas spending scandal. Twenty-three million Americans either under or unemployed. 8.2 percent unemployment.

Who would Harry Truman say should be held accountable for all of that?

Why, he’d surely blame the subject of today’s “Where Have We Heard THAT Before?!?” segment, courtesy of FOX News:

Obama to business owners: ‘You didn’t build that’

 

Where HAVE we heard that before?!?

President Obama, in a speech to supporters, suggested business owners owe their success to government investment in infrastructure and other projects — saying “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” Obama’s comment Friday during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., came just days after he urged Congress to extend tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration only to families earning less than $250,000 annually — part of his argument that top earners have an obligation to pay more to trim the deficit.

“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back,” the president said. “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he said. “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

And here we thought The Obamao’s fellow Nobel Prize-winner Al Gore had invented the internet.  But back to the question at hand; where HAVE we heard this Socialist snow job before?

We’re certain about three things….five things counting death and taxes.

One: The Dear Misleader’s lies and innuendos notwithstanding, at one point in their careers, and that continuously, every business owner has helped pay the salaries of those teachers and construction workers.

Two: Those same teachers and construction workers never risked their life savings alongside that business owner when he personally guaranteed the financing of his business….or its expansion.

Three: It’s no coincidence The Obamao used the heavily-unionized education and construction segments to make his point.

As James Taranto notes:

Several points beg to be made here. First, as Pickett points out, it takes chutzpah for the man who boasts of having personally killed Osama bin Laden to tell businessmen, “You didn’t build that.”

Second, the government did not create the Internet “so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.” It developed the Internet’s predecessor, the Arpanet, as part of what everybody agrees is the legitimate function of national defense–the one area of government Obama is anxious to cut.

Finally, Obama didn’t even come up with this noxious idea himself. He ripped it off from Elizabeth Warren. First the white man steals her ancestors’ land–well, 31/32nds of her ancestors steal the other 1/32nd’s land, anyway–and now this.

Which provides the perfect lead-in for the latest installment of Tales From the Darkside, courtesy of Best of the Web and one Matt Taibbi, an amazingly hypocritical “reporter” from The Rolling Stone:

Mitt Romney delivered what was more or less his stock stump speech to the NAACP last week, famously drawing boos when he promised to repeal ObamaCare. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi professes to regret that the GOP presidential candidate did not offer a more thoughtful disquisition tailored to the audience:

Without accepting blame or admitting guilt, [Romney] could have talked about the increasingly strident tone of the national debate over racially charged issues, and wondered aloud if politicians on both sides perhaps needed to find a new way to talk about these things without fearmongering, stereotyping, or trading accusations. He could have met the racial-tension issue head on, in other words, just by saying out loud the simple truth that white and nonwhite Americans, and Democrats and Republicans both, need to find more civilized ways to talk about their political concerns.

Like all left-wing calls for more civility in politics, this one was insincere. It was unusual only in that its insincerity was especially blatant. Before he got to his pious criticism of Romney for insufficient high-mindedness, Taibbi described the candidate as “not merely unlikable, and not merely a fatuous, unoriginal hack of a politician, but also a genuinely repugnant human being, a grasping corporate hypocrite with so little feel for how to get along with people that he has to dream up elaborate schemes just to try to pander to the mob.” How’s that for fear mongering, stereotyping and trading accusations?

So, here’s to Matt Taibbi….

Imelda Marcos and and the Irish guy from Braveheart confirmed “Taibbi” is an Celtic-Filipino term meaning “vinegar and water”.

What’s also certain is Taibbi gave away his anti-anything-Romney bias early-on by his erroneous “reporting” of the GOP favorite’s grandfather’s supposed penchant for polygamy down in Mexico, a story which ultimately proved to contain as much truth as Team Tick-Tock’s fanciful tales of Romney having committed a felony.

Speaking of thinly-veiled duplicity, as the WSJ details, Dimocrats are….

Toying With Recession

Patty Murray explains why Democrats want to jump off the tax cliff.

 

Democrats must feel really good about their election chances, because their latest campaign strategy is to say how willing and eager they are to leap off the January tax cliff. They’re all but daring Republicans to make the Democrats’ day by refusing to raise taxes before the election.

That was the chest-pounding message Monday from Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who runs her party’s Senate campaign committee. In a speech at the Brookings Institution, she declared that if Republicans won’t raise taxes on income above $250,000 before November, Democrats will gladly let all of the Bush tax rates expire at the end of the year—even on the middle class, and no matter the economic consequences.

To borrow a phrase from the immortal Rodney D., “The last time we saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it!”

“If we can’t get a good deal—a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share—then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013 rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus,” Mrs. Murray said, in what sounded like an ultimatum.

That bit about throwing middle-class taxpayers “under the bus” is political spin, because Republicans say they’re ready to vote to extend for another year the current tax rates on all taxpayers, including everyone who makes less than $250,000. The Murray Democrats are the ones holding the middle-class rates hostage to a GOP vote to raise taxes on the affluent.

Mrs. Murray was more honest in explaining her political calculations. “If the Bush tax cuts expire, every proposal [in 2013] will be a tax cut proposal, and the [GOP’s anti-tax increase] pledge will no longer keep Republicans boxed in and unable to compromise,” she said.

“If middle-class families start seeing more money coming out of their paychecks next year—are Republicans really going to stand up and fight for new tax cuts for the rich? Are they going to continue opposing the Democrats’ middle-class tax cut once the slate has been wiped clean? I think they know this would be an untenable political position.”

So there you are. Democrats are delighted to let a giant tax increase whack the economy in January because then Republicans won’t be able to stop it and will also find it impossible to cut taxes again on anyone whom Democrats define as “the wealthy.”

Mrs. Murray may think she’s putting Republicans on the political spot, but her real hostage is the already weak economy. Growth in the first quarter was a mere 1.9%, and economists have steadily downgraded their expectations for the second. As the tax cliff approaches, the policy uncertainty is already causing businesses to hold off on hiring and investment. Even the Keynesians at the Congressional Budget Office say that if all of the Bush tax rates expire, growth will fall close to recession territory.

Perhaps Senator Murray and her fellow Democrats really don’t think tax increases will hurt all that much, and it’s clear she’s clueless about the way expectations influence economic decisions. But at least voters now know that Democrats are willing to toy with recession to win an election.

Which begs the question when the MSM, who only last year described Republicans making “holding the country hostage”, will paint Dimocrats with the same brush.

On the Lighter Side….

And here’s one of our all-time favorites:

Finally, we’ll call it a day with the “Fast and Furious” segment, courtesy of the RCMP and a certain cyclist with no fear of death:

Canadian cops chase 186 mph speeder

 

Reports the Lamborghini driver claimed he was speeding to escape a fire-breathing, atomic mutant left over from WWII…

….remain unsubstantiated.  Godzilla, Rodan and King Ghidora….

….declined to comment.

Magoo