Hillary Rodham Clinton :slashingtongue

I have always said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the Iranian version of President W. George Bush. Well, he recently made remarks that virtually prove me right; He basically told the United States that we be with the Iranians or the Zionists. Well we suggest Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reply…

President Ahmadinejad has given the ultimatum to President Obama : Choose between us or the Zionists. He went as far as to say that he cannot shake our President’s hand because we support and are friends of Israel.

This is the time to draw the line in the sand. If he wants us to choose, than we can give him a choice in return. Choose between being friends with all, or be friends with none at all. It is a very simple ultimatum for President Ahmadinejad to consider.

President Obama can throw in the names of his political challenger Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Neda Agha-Soltan, an innocent girl that was executed and considered a martyr against the cause of President Ahmadinejad. That is how we can play politics with Iran.

I think the biggest players here would be the Russians. It is Russia that is supplying Iran with the nuclear materials like uranium. Right now, Washington and Jerusalem can pressure the Russians with statement like these. If he can make an ultimatum with us today, he can make an ultimatum with the Russians tomorrow. Clever diplomacy can put the pressure on the Russians who can single-handedly stop Iran.

I suggest that we start drawing our big stick with regards to Iranian-American diplomacy. They think they want to show their stick, lets show them ours. It is definitely bigger and holds more ground. We have the backing of many countries all over the world.

I have always wanted the ties between Iran and America to normalize. For one, Iranians cut more slack when it comes to religion as compared to other states. There are still very strict with their version of Islamic laws. But it is still not as bad as many in the Middle East. We do not see women in burkhas which Bill Maher calls bee suits in Iran, we tend to see women wearing scarves.

A second reason is that Iran is strategically located. Russia to the North, Middle East to the West and South Asia and Afghanistan to its East. I think that stabilizing Iran would make a lot of regions live in peace.

However, we are not playing the bad guys in terms of diplomacy. It is the Iranians under the leadership of President Ahmadinejad. We did not set about new ultimatums or ask them to dump their friends. They did. It is they that want to draw the guns and play the diplomatic version of Russian roulette.

So my suggestion is this, if we have to forgo peace with Iran due to this, lets forgo it. Lets us get our guns ready. It is not us that forgo peace for war, it is the Iranians. We should not forget that they had a great chance under President Obama and they are throwing it away…

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This is the worst example of waste I have ever heard of! Thomson Reuters, the news mega giant and one of the 4 news real agencies in America, did this study and found that the governments waste up to 800 billion this year. Yes it is billion, with a freaking b!

37% of the waste is to have protection against malpractice suits. 22% is just wasted fraud, where are the Feds!? Aren’t they supposed to settle this? Having a rigid paper system alone wastes up to $60 billion a year! Administrative inefficiency and medical mistakes take up 18% and 11% respectively. What are we thinking wasting all this money away!

$800 billion. What was our government and our Presidents doing the last 10 years? Was President Clinton too busy with interns in the Oval Office? Was President Bush just too dumb not to understand how big $800 billion was.

$800 billion, that is close to the cost of the stimulus package, every year. $800 billion, that is higher than the defense budget. $800billion, that is more than what we gave out to corporations via TARP last year. It is bloody insane that this had gone unnoticed!

The best part is that Reuters reports that there is at least $505 billion in wastage every year. So we are wasting at least half a trillion a year! I really though that the President was exaggerating it when he said that we could save half a trillion in Medicare by cutting wastes, but he was proven right!

There is also the perspective of the national debt here. $500 billion may be today’s figure, but I bet that we have wasted $2.5 trillion in the last ten years. If we are to include long term interest, we are going to get the figure to be around $3trillion. And that is at the lowest end of the spectrum.

Do you know what does this mean? It means that all the while health care has all along been the huge component of the national deficit. All the while everybody, including me, had been ignoring these numbers at our own peril! We must wake up to this!

The report also suggests that $1 out of every $3 of our health care bill is a waste. $1 in $3! Can you imagine what would happen if this kind of wastage happens outside government? I sure know that my boss would fire me if I wasted that ratio of office funds!

Where in the world are the other so called news agencies in America reporting this? Where is FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, HLN, PBS and so on. Isn’t this the top news? What can be bigger than this? Hillary Clinton, Balloon Boy hoax, ACORN (guess which channel still runs that nonsense?) or the LA Dodger’s divorce? Why don’t they report this at all?

It is time that we hang place politicians feet by the fire! Having entire bodies of Congress ignoring this is next to treason to me! It really appalls and offends me! That being said, we should give credit where it is due and we would like to thank our President for bringing this up.

Please visit http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59P0L320091026?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0 for further reading

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Clinton’s fury?

Many claim that there would be a Clinton vs Obama 2. I would not go that far, but Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is clearly venting her frustration at the length of the vetting process of nominees appointed by President Obama. She feels that President Obama is not pushing them fast enough through Congress.

First, lets put ourselves in Secretary Clinton’s shoes. Who would not be angry when six months through the Presidency, you have got to tell other countries that a lot of the nominations like the Surgeon General of America or the head of USAID positions are not filled up? Especially so when there are other democracies that can do it within weeks or even days.

However, as I said in a few articles ago, the United States has one of the best systems of government in the world, or even the best one, because of all the check and balances in place. One of the best things about the American form of governance is that every nominee that is nominated by an elected President goes through 2 separate chambers of government that are all elected by the people. In this way, there is assurance that the President does not have too much power in his hands.

In some cases, the Republicans requested some time. E.g. They requested that they be given 3 months for the nomination of Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. This is on the grounds that when President Bush was around, he gave Democrats that amount of time for vetting his nominee. I believe that that is a very fair.

Also, in this era, there is a good amount of openness when it comes to non-classified information. We can easily follow what Congress is doing with CSPAN or in sites such as www.thomas.loc.gov or www.opencongress.org. The very notion that an American can see and know what is going on, is a sign of a very great country that United States is to me.

I think that on this case, Secretary Hillary Clinton is very wrong on this issue. I also wonder what kind of President she would have made, if she is already impatient and bothered with decisions that has nothing to do with her appointment. In my opinion, I think she would have been an iron lady, someone that is of similar mold as the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the late Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.

President Obama should be careful though of not tick off Secretary Clinton. He still needs her to win another term. Make her more mad and he would pay the price, as I do not think he is able to sideline her politically.

That being said, I hope that President Obama does not take Secretary Clinton’s advice at all. I think that that would be a big mistake and a stepping on of democracy in America.

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Hillary vs Obama 2?

This is coming up in many rival sites that are suggesting that there is another Hillary vs Barack fight that is brewing. The comments are worse, asking Secretary Clinton to quit immediately! But how true is this charge?

The official story is that Secretary Clinton had a fall and cannot go out often enough. I do not know if she smashed her elbow as some suggest, but the fact is that when a 62-year old lady fall down, it takes time for her bones to heal. So even if Secretary Clinton and President Obama are really fighting, I think she should take a rest after that fall.

I think that this is just right wing propaganda. Are there rough feelings between them? Sure there are. But this is not something that would cause them to be on different paths. Look, President Obama is the President. He is the one that would set the agenda that Secretary Clinton is to carry out. We all know that President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton have different views.

When it comes to policy, I think President Obama was just right in dealing with Iran, too harsh on Honduras and should be tougher on North Korea. Those are my views. But do you think that I would be pulling my hair out, jumping all about if I were the Secretary of State? No. I would do what my boss asks me to. If it crosses my line, I quit!

Unless President Obama’s numbers take a hit, I do not think Secretary Clinton would take that big a gamble. It would be political suicide to walk out of a successful Presidency and drift into political wilderness. I also do not think that President Obama would want her to go as that might anger a lot of her supporters. He won the election in 2008 by getting a lot of her voters to vote for him.

In terms of agendas, I think that they are professional and grown-up enough to work together. They are not immature kids or rookie politicians. They got to where they are today by being good in politics. No poor politician would end up becoming a President or a Secretary. (I know liberals are screaming the name of President Bush, but remember, he beat you guys twice in a row; that is because he was a better politician than Senator Kerry or VP Gore).

At the end of the day, President Obama needs Secretary Clinton and Secretary Clinton needs President Obama. They need each other to succeed and further their political agenda. That is something that neither can run away from.

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