Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

Ambition For Grace

This election is Hillary’s to win. It has been instructive to watch her evolve these past months. Faced with such ugliness on the other side of the aisle she has presented a nurturing side for political gain. Perhaps not her nature but she is giving it a try.

141231-hillary-clinton-mn-2130_14257f8a4ebbc2bf8806b492060dd415-750x571Grace trumps ambition if she can sell it. Do not get into a sound bite contest with Trump. Let your Wall Street funded Super Pacs get that job done. Ignore him from here on and then take his head off in the Fall debates. Still, selling security, stability, let’s stick with what works? That was Nixon’s downfall in 1960.

Reader Response
By Jamie44 — Nurturing side not part of her nature? Really? The husband she stuck with, the daughter she raised, and the granddaughter she seems to cherish might tend to disagree. Why in the hell does a Presidential candidate need to be “nurturing” anyway or is that a quality we only need in the female of the species?

I’m starting to think all male pundits need to have their material read by a woman before releasing it anywhere in the vicinity of a Hillary supporter. It’s obvious you guys just can’t help yourselves.

HRC to Israel: Got Your Back After All

President Obama’s Iran Deal keeps Hillary Clinton in knots, especially considering that she helped pull the strings she’d now like to unravel. Speaking on Monday to the Israeli lobby AIPAC, which fiercely opposes the agreement, believing it actually empowers Iran, the former Secretary of State briefly mentioned her support for it, but mostly went out of her way to saber rattle, seemingly questioning the effectiveness of the accord she backed, even threatening force against Iran.

Hillary-Clinton-AIPAC“Iran’s continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage — are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever.”

“We face whether we will have the strength and commitment to confront the adversaries that threaten us, especially Iran. For many years, we’ve all been rightly focused on the existential danger of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. After all, this remains an extremist regime that threatens to annihilate Israel. That’s why I led the diplomacy to impose crippling sanctions and force Iran to the negotiating table, and why I ultimately supported the agreement that has put a lid on its nuclear program.”

“We must maintain the legal and diplomatic architecture to turn all the sanctions back on if need. If I’m elected the leaders of Iran will have no doubt that if we see any indication that they are violating their commitment not to seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons, the United States will act to stop it, and that we will do so with force if necessary.”

“Iranian provocations, like the recent ballistic missile tests, are also unacceptable and should be answered firmly and quickly including with more sanctions.” Transcript and Video

  • Slate’s Michele Goldberg: “Speech Was a Symphony of Craven, Delusional Pandering”
  • Jerusalem Post: “Clinton shows AIPAC supporters she knows what troubles them about Obama”
  • VOX World: “Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech: hard-line pro-Israel rhetoric, status quo Obama policies”

Let’s Hear It For Punctiliousness

It is not often the word punctilious appears in our news pages. Leave it up to the New York Times to find a way, in this article on Obama court nominee Merrick Garland:

“He appears to apply Supreme Court precedents with punctilious fidelity even if there is reason to think he would have preferred a different outcome and even where other judges might have found room to maneuver.”

Further, this is a good read on Garland’s record, which — as Times reporter Adam Liptak notes — has led to a “rare distinction in a polarized era. He has sat on a prominent appeals court for almost two decades, participated in thousands of cases, and yet earned praise from across the political spectrum.” Read More

Webster’s: “Punctilious: marked by or concerned about precise accordance with the details of codes or conventions”

It is because of his “fidelity” to precedent, keeping his personal views out of the mix, that we really don’t know what Garland would do once free of that mission on the Supreme Court, where justices set precedent.