In support of Hillary

Everyone seems to be dissing Hillary Clinton for ordering State Department employees to do spy stuff. As best I understand it the rationale is that the state department are not spies and asking them to act as spies endangers their diplomatic status. I would bet the diplomats from most other countries do the same thing, they just don't have it leaked to the press. In many other countries the leaker would have woken up dead one morning.

I never liked the Clintons, never voted for the Clintons. I even voted for Dole for Christ's sake. But in my minor unimportant opinion, Hillary was having the state department do what it should have been doing. Its just that no one should have found out about it. Its what the Clinton's are good at. Finding dirt on the opposition, leverage. Remember the missing FBI files? Now granted Hillary was likely looking for stuff for personal gain as well that could be used to generate generous donations to the Clinton library but at least she was taking the initiative and we don't need a sunday school teacher as secretary of state, we need a shark.

Bow wow

Everyone on the right seems to be going nuts over the Obama bow. Mostly concern seems to be that we are appearing week. Bow or no bow we are weak. Incredibly week. Everyone knows this. We are in debt to China for huge sums of money. I know we bowed to the Japanese emperor not the Chinese. Do you think the Chinese will be jealous? Not sure but I think we owe the Japanese some money also, just not as much. I wonder what the money the Chinese lend to us buys them. Seems to me they have a very strong hand in any negotiation. They can simply (probably not a simple as it seems) stop buying our debt. Or worse, try to call us on it. If we never bow again, does it matter?

Iran, so what?

Iran's elections were rigged. So? Is this news to anyone? The people of Iran know it, we know it. End of story. The conservative punditry seem to be upset that Obama is not paying more lip service to supporting the protesters in Iran. I don't know, maybe he could be more supportive but what more can be done beyond lip service? Okay, so President Obama comes out and says all people everywhere have a right to live in a free democratic society and that the Supreme Leader has no right to silence them. Then what? Are we willing to back that up? With what? Iran is going to have a nuclear weapon soon and I don't see any indicators we have the stomach, will or desire to stop this from happening. Isreal might if only out of self preservation. If we had any sense, we might too. It's put up or shut up and I don't see how standing on the sidelines shaking our fist in the air strengthens our position. I felt the same way last year when President Bush was making a lot of noise about Russia and Georgia. He even put our Navy in close proximity to the Russian Navy. This was a bad idea. We were not going to war against Russia over Georgia and we should not have pretended we would. The best we could do was to chastise and complain and reveal how powerless we really were. Sometimes, maybe silence is a good thing. Does anyone really know what is in the Iranian heart. I thought the Iraqi people wanted democracy but now I am not so sure and I would not claim to know what Iranians really want. Then there is the message that backing an unsuccessful and bloody revolution would send. Maybe an overwhelming majority of Iranians want a Jeffersonian democracy. I would love for that to be the case but I just don't know.