Rejecting Pixie Lott's 'Boys And Girls' together policy paradigm, Obama's Cabinet was "Boys against girls" over military intervention in Libya

Pixie Lott - Boys And Girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7y1MdlXclM

Rejecting Ambassador Pixie Lott's 'Boys And Girls' policy paradigm, two reporters at the New York Times and POLITICO's Ben Smith on his blog say that it was actually a case of "Boys against girls" over Libya in the Obama Cabinet.

IF this sort of story had happened under Bush 43, David Brooks would be saying that misplaced sentimentality had weighed-in at the worst possible moment, when clear-headed logic and action was what was necessary.
But it's Obama, so...

POLITICO.com
Boys against girls over Libya?
By Ben Smith
March 20, 2011 pol

There's been quite a bit of chatter today about the notion that a cadre of human-rights-minded women -- Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton -- fought and won an internal debate over Libya. But White House officials and close observers outside government pushed back hard on the idea of a crucial internal split Sunday, arguing that Obama was pressed to action not by the internal dynamic but by the situation on the ground.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0311/Boys_against_girls_over_Libya.html

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New York Times
Obama Takes Hard Line With Libya After Shift by Clinton
By Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Myers
March 18, 2011

WASHINGTON — In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.

Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html

But if it fails, will Susan Power ever be seen again on TV news chat shows while Obama is president? Or will that be blamed on Gen. Mullen?
Hmm-m...

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By the way, since it was NOT mentioned in the South Florida news media -and I looked- in the ramp-up to Obama's Latin America trip, Brazil abstained on the U.N. vote on Libya.
It had a chance to do something of significance-it blinked.
Again.

And this is the country that actually wants to be a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council?
Nej tack!!!

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/19/v-fullstory/2123799/obama-opens-new-chapter-in-relations.html

That my friends is why despite its large size and immense resources, Brazil remains firmly seated at the children's table, not the adult table, until further notice, no matter what the Miami Herald's reporters and columnists churn out by the barrels about their alleged grandness.

That perpetual adolescence plus, well, it's too self-congratulatory nature, and, frankly, being a country that most Americans could really care less about -because it has done so little that most Americans care about or respect, much less, what well-informed Americans care about or respect.
Brazil is a very large Belgium, and Americans care not a whit about Belgium, either.

I will soon tell you in this space about a simple test those self-evident, self-promoting Herald reporters and columnists won't dare do publicly because it would so easily show the absurdity and emptiness of their grand pronouncements about Brazil.
Like so many of their previous overwrought words about the importance of South America to the U.S. in the future, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PixieLottVEVO
http://www.youtube.com/user/pixieofficial
http://www.youtube.com/user/pixielott
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

REMIX


Pixie Lott - Boys And Girls - Remix Version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S_NdMyf9j0

I once knew a girl from Essex...

Charlie Crist's sister, Margaret Wood, will run his independent U.S. Senate campaign

Hmm-m-m... Margaret Wood? Can't honestly say that I've ever heard of her but... I was anything but in news junkie mode yesterday, since I was busy all day due to my nephew Mario graduating from the University of Miami down in Coral Gables, with the afternoon ceremony at the on-campus Bank United Center, which is where the basketball Hurricanes play.

Fortunately for all involved, the building's A/C was blasting on a day that was nice and sunny for photographs afterwards, but also very hot and humid, especially for those of us wearing suits in cars packed with relatives and breaking in some new dress shoes.

Because of the terrific party my sister threw for Mario at her new home in Pembroke Pines for family and friends, I didn't see a single TV news broadcast all day, the first time that's happened in many years when I wasn't traveling. (It was actually disorienting to be honest.)

So when I read this afternoon at the Washington Post's 44 blog, subtitled, Politics and Policy in Obama's Washington, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/ that Florida governor Charlie Crist is entrusting his political future to his sister, Margaret Wood, I must admit, I was a bit dumbstruck.
But then I wondered if I was simply the last person to hear about this.

I used to have the widget for the 44 blog on my blog but it often had technical problems, so I had to toss it overboard, just as I did the Ben Smith blog widget from POLITICO for similar reasons.

But when I read in the post that the news came out of an interview Crist did with the St. Pete Times Editorial Board, I knew that ace political reporter Adam Smith -no relation- would likely be all over the story, and, of course, he was, in their great politics blog, The Buzz, which I've long been a regular reader of.


44 blog of the Washington Post
Crist says his sister will manage his Senate campaign
by Felicia Sonmez

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/05/crist-says-his-sister-will-man.html


The Buzz politics blog of the St. Petersburg Times

Charlie Crist hires a campaign manager
Posted by Adam Smith at 05:06:37 PM on May 13, 2010 http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2010/05/charlie-crist-hires-a-campaign-manager.html

re 1/11/10 Ben Smith in POLITICO: Game over: The Clintons stand alone; Haiti

I've held off on posting this for a few days since
there was so much discussion of the contents
and short-term implications of Game Change
by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
over this past weekend on the network chat
shows, I didn't want to add this to the pile
when you couldn't properly appreciate it.

I personally know that at least a handful of you
have actually started reading it, but Ben Smith's
overview below is the best I've seen so far
because he sees past the individual anecdotes
towards the larger un-mentioned story,
the fall of the House of Clinton.
After you've read it, I think you'll agree.

Last year I was running Ben's POLITICO
widget on my blog, along with their 44 widget
for Obama stories, so people could easily
access his entertaining and informative pieces,
but I seemed to run into constant technical
problems with those widgets, so I reluctantly
pulled them down.

Thursday 2:00 p.m.
By the way, it's just my opinion, but 46 hours
after the earthquake in Haiti, I find it completely
unbelievable that the the U.S. military and our
erstwhile Allies in the region seem NOT to have
established a working unit to coordinate logistics
and air traffic control at the Port-au-Prince
airport, the way we quickly did at the Baghdad
airport
after our invasion, which I supported.

I know the latter had many months of planning
overall, but on the other hand, I think it's fair
to remind you that this time, we know that
nobody will be shooting at us, right?

Sufficient number of trucks to move planes
stuck on the airport out of the way and placed
on the perimeter so they don't pose a safety
hazard, gas re-supply trucks to handle refueling,
mobile air traffic control units, modules,
helicopter techs, etc.

While I haven't seen these stories myself,
I have already heard from friends who know
about these things that UPS and FedEx
would like to use some of their planes to bring
supplies, starting initially from their hubs of
Memphis and Louisville down there, and
then return quickly, perhaps to Miami
and Hollywood-Ft. Lauderdale to keep
shuttling back-and-forth, and maybe
even deploy some of their logistics
professionals down there.

Why?

So we DON'T see the absurd sight of:
a.) people passing supplies hand-to-hand
instead of using conveyor belts or fork lifts, or
b.) well-meaning charity groups dropping boxes
of supplies into huge crowds of desperate people,
with the entirely predictable chaos.

But UNTIL the airport is completely cleared
and secured, they can't, and therefore nothing
of significance is going to happen.

At 2:10 p.m., I've yet to see a shot of the airport
under control.

Popular South Florida blogger and activist
Chaz Stevens from Deerfield Beach, a veritable
one-man tidal wave of information and enthusiasm
and a sharp-eyed watchdog for public transparency
and accountability from state and local government
at his blog, Acts of Sedition,
http://www.actsofsedition.com/ wrote
in earlier that I may be wrong.

Actually, you are wrong I believe. Two Coast
Guard Cutters (one by the name of Forward)
are off the coast of Haiti providing air traffic control.

Chaz is no doubt right, but I was referring to the
airport itself, per se, though perhaps I was not so
clear when I sent this out as an email a few minutes
ago.

My sense of things is that some of the reporters
there are going out of their way not to criticize
the chaotic recovery efforts thus far, but once
that dam has been breached, it won't stop.

Then it's Obama's tar-baby, whether that's
fair or not.
With the MLK holiday on Monday and even
more Americans home watching the awful scenes
unfold before them on TV, right before his
State of the Union speech, our response
to this tragedy, such as it is, will be firmly
placed around his neck.
Just saying...

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POLITICO
Game over: The Clintons stand alone
By: Ben Smith
January 11, 2010 06:05 PM EST

A new book is out with a highly critical but unsourced portrait of Hillary Clinton. This familiar occurrence — it’s happened too many times to count over the years — has usually been greeted with an equally familiar response: A fast and furious counterattack from the Clinton inner circle.

What’s notable about the highly publicized release of “Game Change,” however, is the virtual silence from the Clinton camp. The lack of public outrage seems to mark the sputtering end of what was once known as the Clinton political machine and underlines a fact that onetime Clinton loyalists acknowledge: The book’s primary sources about the former candidate and current secretary of state are her own former staffers and intimates.

Read the rest of the story at:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31345.html#ixzz0cQXHlJSP

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See also:
The Atlantic Online
Marc Ambinder's excellent blog, which I get everyday
"The Juiciest Revelations In "Game Change"
January 8 2010
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/01/the_juiciest_revelations_in_game_change.php


Los Angeles Times
BOOK REVIEW 'Game Change' by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
The political journalists provide juicy insider tidbits about the 2008 presidential candidates, their spouses and other players, but it's hard to see the enlightenment behind the entertainment
By Tim Rutten
January 13, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-rutten13-2010jan13,0,4331192.story


An excerpt of the book that ran in
New York magazine last Saturday

Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster
A candidate whose aides were prepared to block him from becoming president. A wife whose virtuous image was a mirage. A mistress with a video camera. In an excerpt from the new book Game Change—their sweeping account of the 2008 campaign—the authors reveal that, inside the Edwards triangle, nothing was too crazy to be true.

Read the excerpt at:
http://nymag.com/news/politics/63045/