Posts Tagged ‘Colin Powell’

Colin Powell, RIP

Monday, October 18th, 2021

Colin Powell, Secretary of State for George W. Bush, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for George H. W. Bush, has died at age 84.

Powell, a consummate Washington insider, was fairly effective in both roles. As Secretary of State, he was much better at managing relations with American allies and various international institutions than (in increasing order of general competence) John Kerry, Madeline Albright, Warren Christopher, Rex Tillerson, Hillary Clinton or Al Haig, but not among the very best of the modern era (George Schultz, James Baker and Mike Pompeo), and was notably better than successor Condoleezza Rice. He kept the Blair government onboard for Operation Iraq Freedom (at considerable political cost to Blair), effectively used the temporary post-9/11 period of international goodwill, maintained the sanctions regime on Iran, and effectively represented a President who was not loved by the “international community.”

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, he effectively managed inter-service relations and empowered General Norman Schwarzkopf to produce the most overwhelmingly impressive military victory by American forces since World War II.

Powell does owe a small measure of blame in that American involvement in Iraq turned out to be a long-running, expensive distraction whose ultimate success was only cemented under the Trump Administration, but that was clearly a bipartisan quagmire, as was the long-running, expensive, disaster in Afghanistan, in which the State Department played a very baleful role.

That he was a squishy Republican who backed Obama in 2008 shouldn’t change the fact that he was fairly adept at at implementing the policies of the Presidential Administrations he worked for, no matter how mistaken some of those policies may appear in hindsight. Powell was almost universally praised for effective and dignified management in successfully filling two different demanding roles.

He once described himself in an interview with the New York Times in 2007 as a “problem-solver.” He offered this analysis of himself: “He was taught as a soldier to solve problems, So he has views, but he’s not an ideologue. He has passion but he’s not a fanatic. He’s first and foremost a problem-solver.”

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, Republicans | 3 Comments »

BidenWatch for June 8, 2020

Monday, June 8th, 2020

I know people have been busy focusing on all the rioting and other Social Justice Warrior insanity, but the inexorable march toward the November general election continues, and first up is Biden passing a big milestone. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • Joe Biden has officially earned enough delegates to clinch the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination.
  • Bloomberg has him at 2,004 pledged delegates, exceeding the threshold of 1,991, plus 372 “super delegates.”
  • So just how is Grandpa Simpson going to adapt to a party where a significant fraction of the young members are rioting and want to abolish police departments? He would like a word with “the youths.”

    Three and a half years later, as American streets fill nightly with young protesters, no one can quite agree on where Joe Biden stands. Is he running ahead of Clinton among the youngest voters owing to their hatred of Trump — and therefore even more securely buckled into the electoral driver’s seat than widely assumed? Or is Biden lagging dangerously behind Clinton’s pace — far enough back that he needs to significantly retool his youth outreach to beat Trump, no matter how unexpectedly strong his position may be among traditionally Republican groups like older voters and suburbanites? And, most urgently, have the recent weeks of unrest simply served to highlight the vast divisions between Biden and Trump — whose unacceptability to younger Americans deepens by the day — or are they instead underscoring a significant disillusionment with all politics, in particular among young black voters, that could spell trouble for the Democrat?

    The confusion is understandable: One CNN analysis of national polling in April showed Biden roughly ten points short of where Clinton was among 18-to-34-year-olds after he was routinely destroyed by Bernie Sanders among this group in the primaries. But the well-respected Harvard Institute of Politics’ poll of 18-to-29-year-olds released a few days later placed Biden right around the 60 percent goal Mook had mentioned, and the former vice-president has consistently led national polls of the entire electorate. Plus, while many Democrats are worried that the protests show young voters ready to make a significant break from voting as a tool of politics as usual, others are convinced they are actually energizing this group to become further involved — usually pointing to the voter-mobilization groups boasting blockbuster registration numbers in recent days.

    This ambiguity has led Democrats to their strategically safest conclusion: They might as well step things up. So in recent weeks, Biden ramped up his digital-outreach hiring and announced the launch of a new, discrete effort within his campaign to marshal resources specifically around organizing young voters. He’s appeared on new kinds of platforms for him, like Megan Rapinoe’s Instagram Live and with Don Cheadle on The Shade Room, while party groups focused on youth turnout, like the Tom Steyer–funded NextGen America, have formally begun orienting more of their programs toward electing him. And, as the protests over the police killing of George Floyd have grown, those close to Biden have been considering calls for him to directly address his involvement with the 1994 crime bill as a way of engaging young black voters about his own growth, and assuaging their concerns. (One Wilmington youth pastor last week urged Biden to do so directly; Stacey Abrams, a potential Biden running mate, soon after told me, “If that is what young people need, then that is what they should have.”)

    Here’s the new head of Biden’s youth outreach group:

    Some polling and wishful thinking strategy talk snipped.

    Senior Democrats see that the youngest voters clearly prefer Biden to Trump, but they still need to organize them to actually vote for the man who, according to CNN’s analysis, won only 16 percent of Democratic primary voters under 30. “A lot of Biden’s support [among young voters] is soft support, so he has to shore up youth support, but also make sure to target all the people who say they don’t know and might vote third party,” explained Ben Wessel, the executive director of NextGen, which endorsed Biden in May and has pledged to spend $45 million this year. “What’s really clear is that Trump has a ceiling of about 33 percent with these folks — I don’t think there’s any risk they’re going to go to Trump. [Democrats] just have to make sure they’re going to Biden.” Now, especially amid the protests, senior Democrats have identified this task as a top priority for Biden — many believe he needs to work hardest to reach black and Latino Americans who feel disengaged from politics and not just the ones who supported Sanders in the primary.

    In late May, the Biden team announced steps it would take toward these ends, forming an effort it calls “League 46” to bring the campaign’s various youth-outreach strands under one umbrella hoisted by senior adviser Symone Sanders. The idea is to have a centralized hub for the campaign’s youth organizing and also to mobilize surrogates, including young lawmakers and activists, to expand Biden’s network with youth voters through events like Zoom happy hours. Already, organizers have held a handful of virtual brunches for young battleground-state voters that are focused on specific topics, like policies to support minority-owned small businesses.

    Yeah, there’s nothing young people love more than Zoom happy hours and brunch.

    Still, some of the usual tools for organizing students may be of limited use in the coming months if colleges begin the fall semester virtually. Wessel, whose group has a major presence on swing-state campuses, pointed out that most students would still likely be in the states where they go to school, but at home. That makes messaging to large groups of students at once trickier, and Democrats are making plans to be as present as possible on the virtual versions of those quads and dorms: “There are so many campus-based meme pages where you can spread content dedicated to people usually on those campuses,” he said. He cited the University of Wisconsin at Madison as an example: The “UW-Madison Memes for Milk-Chugging Teens” Facebook group has nearly 28,000 members; the school has around 32,000 undergraduates.

    I could quote more about their digital outreach plans, but it’s right there where political speak, marketing speak, and tech speak collide, and “engagement” is built on abstractions of abstractions of abstractions, without the benefit of hard-dollar results to measure effectivity. “What is the way to do TikTok that is substantive, on brand for him, and allows him to be the version of himself that has, historically, resonated with young people?” Why, is this not hell?

  • “Hey Joe, where do you stand on defunding police?” “A refund for Grease? Never saw it!”
  • Police unions are not fond of the “new” SJW-approved Biden.
  • President Donald Trump sees an opening:

  • “In the last week alone, two prospects who were initially not considered among the top tier [Vice Presidential] contenders have suddenly burst into contention: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Florida Rep. Val Demings.” Guess what they have in common.
  • Colin Powell backs Biden. Needles moved: None.
  • Zing!

  • Evidently BidenMarch is an organization that wants another candidate at the top of the ticket because Biden isn’t woke enough. Will they succeed? Eh, probably not. DNC might still replace Biden as they candidate, but BidenMarch will have jack-all to do with it…
  • Shot and three chasers:

  • I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat—

    

  • Facepalm:

  • Heh:

    Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





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    LinkSwarm for February 23, 2018

    Friday, February 23rd, 2018

    Another week in which I had zero free time! Enjoy a LinkSwarm, and hopefully I’ll have something a little more substantial next week.

  • “Officials Identify More Rotherham Victims, Number Up to 1,510.”
  • Nancy Pelosi wants you to know that keeping more of your own paycheck is “unpatriotic.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of Pelosi, just how did she triple her net worth during the financial crisis?
  • “President Donald Trump’s immigration hard-liners proved [last] Thursday it is possible to win even when the outcome of a battle is, on paper, a draw.”
  • On a per-capita basis, the United States doesn’t even rank in the top 10 of mass shooting fatalities.
  • “Florida Shooting Survivor Claims CNN Denied His Questions on School Safety, Provided Scripted Questions.” CNN: Potemkin Village media.
  • The experience of Israel proves that the NRA is right on school shootings.
  • “Republicans now sympathize with Israel (as opposed to the Palestinians) by a whopping 52-point margin over Democrats—79 percent to 27 percent—the greatest spread between the two parties in the last 40 years. Republicans have never been more favorably disposed toward Israel, while for Democrats, the opposite holds true.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Remember: When a powerful female liberal Democratic politician sleeps with a married subordinate, it’s different. Because feminism. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Also:

    Within months of taking office, Mayor Megan Barry recommended the adult daughter of the head of her security detail — the man with whom she later admitted to having an affair — be hired for a job in the city’s legal department.

    The daughter got the job.

    The position as an entry-level city attorney was the first newly created job in Nashville’s legal department in two years. It was not part of the existing budget. Barry approved the new job opening. No other candidate was considered.

  • “Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said too many young people do not qualify for military service due in part to obesity and criminal records,” and being too stupid to pass the ASVAB. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Another way in which President Donald Trump is like other recent Republican Presidents: ignoring deficits.
  • Austin experiences a significant uptick in violent crime since 2013.
  • Vox lays off 50 people. I didn’t know they even had 50 people to lay off…
  • Payoffs to college basketball players are widespread.
  • School enrollment at Evergreen State College drops 18.5%. How’s that “All Social Justice Warrior, all the time” format working out for you?
  • Billy Graham, RIP.
  • Boston Dynamics teaches robot to fight back against humans. Joke that follows should be: A.)”, find Sarah Conner,” B.) “What could possibly go wrong?”, or C.) “I for one welcome our new robot overlords!”
  • UK Kentucky Fried Chickens running out of chicken. Verily the endtimes are upon us…

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Jihad | No Comments »

    Tracking 2016 Electoral College Voting

    Monday, December 19th, 2016

    You can track the electoral college voting as it happens today here. So far there have been no faithless electors or other surprises, though one Maine elector has announced he’s voting for Bernie Sanders rather than Hillary Clinton.

    Update: Trump 170, Clinton 83, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as of 12:30 PM CST. No surprises or faithless electors so far.

    Update 2: Trump 251, Clinton 118, no faithless electors in Maine. Evidently the faithless elector’s attempt to cast a vote for Bernie Sanders was ruled out of order and he voted for Clinton instead.

    Also, a Minnesota elector who refused to vote for Clinton was replaced. Likewise another one in Colorado who also refused to vote for Clinton.

    Update 3: Four faithless Washington State electors vote against Hillary Clinton. “Three of the faithless electors voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, with one voting for Faith Spotted Eagle.” Faith Spotted Eagle is evidently one of the Keystone pipeline protest lunatics.

    So far the only person to have lost electoral college votes in 2016 thanks to leftist shenanigans is Hillary Clinton.

    Update 4: Texas 38 electors puts Donald Trump over the top, making him the 45th president of the United States of America. More later…

    Update 5: There were two faithless Texas electors, “one for Paul Ryan and one for John Kasich.”

    Update 6: Correction: One of the faithless Texas electors voted for Ron Paul, not Paul Ryan as earlier reports had it.

    Update 7: One more faithless elector: One elector from Hawaii voted for Bernie Sanders. That puts the final vote at 304 electoral college votes for Trump, 227 for Clinton, three for Colin Powell, one for Ron Paul, one for John Kasich, one for Bernie Sanders, and one for Throat Warbler Mangrove Faith Spotted Eagle.

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    A Big Basket of Presidential Race Updates

    Thursday, September 15th, 2016

    Too much news and not enough time to blog about it, so enjoy a big ol dump of presidential race news:

  • Donald Trump up three in Florida, five in Ohio.
  • Former Secret Service agent says there’s something seriously wrong with Hillary’s health.
  • Jonah Goldberg on what Hillary’s health issue tells us about the media:

    As this pneumonia episode demonstrates, Clinton’s real problem isn’t her health but the entirely valid perception that she’s dishonest, secretive and exploits “the system” — including the support of the mainstream media — for her benefit.

    In 2008, news outlets openly speculated about whether Sen. John McCain was too frail to be president. NBC News ran an Associated Press story under the headline, “1 in 4 chance McCain may not survive 2nd term.”

    People remember these things. When Clinton faltered on Sunday, she not only humiliated her most loyal servants, who were kept in the dark by a campaign terrified of playing it straight with voters and the media, she also made countless people say, “Looks like Drudge was right again.”

  • Reporting on Hillary’s collapse means that I never had a chance to talk about her “basket of deplorables” comment, where she went full Social Justice Warrior and said that one-quarter of America is “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.”
  • “50 Disgusting Hillary Facts Legacy Media are Hiding From You.”
  • More Guccifer 2.0 docs. Haven’t really looked at those yet either.
  • Oh, and Colin Powell’s email also got hacked, leading to the least surprising political revelation ever: Hillary Clinton still hates Obama. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Also, CBS News “run by Obama advisor Ben Rhodes’ brother, censors Powell’s accusation that Clinton is still ‘d***king bimbos,’ after editing Bill’s Monday admission that his wife ‘frequently’ suffers from fainting spells.”
  • A random Slashdot comment nails it:

    The most racist thing out there, is the whole DNC platform that expects black people to continue to vote DNC candidates, without so much as even pandering, simply by tossing out the race card over every little thing.

    It is obvious that crying Racism is the ONLY thing left the Democrats have with respect to Hillary’s campaign. And that is, by itself racist. And the black community is starting to wake up to the pure racism of low expectations that the DNC has of them.

    Can’t have voter ID laws, because the DNC says Black people can’t figure out how to get a free voter ID. But that isn’t racist.

    Can’t have single day voting, because DNC says Black People can’t figure out how to fill out an absentee ballot or get to the polls on time. But that isn’t racist.

    IF you simply look at the excuses being made on behalf of black people, they are all telling black people that they are incapable of doing normal activities, simply because … they are black.And I find that extremely distasteful and as fucking racist as anything.

    Black people aren’t as stupid, lazy, incapable as the DNC is making them out to be. But I am a racist for pointing out how stupid the DNC position is for these people.

  • How two trolls suckered the media into believing that a random frog meme was a racist symbol.
  • And hats off to whichever 4Channer did this one:

    Plus a bonus meme for your time:

    joker-pepe

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »

    This Week in Clinton Corruption

    Thursday, August 25th, 2016

    Every week brings new evidence of Hillary Clinton’s corruption and proof she lied about her insecure, homebrew email server. So naturally the media is focused on something some athlete may or may not have done in Rio.

    Now on to this week’s Clinton Corruption:

  • Surprise, surprise, surprise! More State Department emails Hillary Clinton failed to turn over. The subject? Special favors for Clinton Foundation donors:

    (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.

    The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

    The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”

    Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.

  • “Of the 154 non-government officials who met or had phone calls scheduled with Clinton when she worked the top spot at the State Department, approximately 85 either donated directly to the foundation or “pledged commitments to its international programs,” the AP reported, citing State Department calendars. Those 85 donors contributed a combined total of $156 million to Clinton-owned entities.” Also: “‘The 154 did not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives. Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity,’ the AP analysis noted, ‘but they were not included in AP’s calculations because such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties.'” And just how hard do you think Hillary negotiated for U.S. interests as opposed to her own?
  • “Huma Abedin was working as ASSISTANT EDITOR at her mother’s radical Muslim journal when it blamed America for 9/11.” (Capital letters in original.) Man, there just seems to be no end to the number of jobs Huma Abedin can work (and get paid for) at the same time! (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Abedin was so concerned about data security, she left classified information in her car.
  • “This is not just traditional pay-to-play; this is now foreign money, giving foreign oligarchs access to our political leaders, through a mechanism like the Clinton Foundation.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Will Hillary be required to testify about why she set up her email server under oath? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Bono asks Clinton Foundation for help hooking up the International Space Station for U2 concerts.
  • Colin Powell confirms Clinton is lying about her email server: “‘Her people have been trying to pin it on me,’ Powell, who was secretary of State under President George W. Bush, told People at an event in the Hamptons this weekend. ‘The truth is she was using [her email setup] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • FBI report that suggests that Hillary Clinton drove Vince Foster to suicide is now strangely missing from the national archives.
  • Did Google start censoring auto-complete phrases related to Hillary Clinton’s health after a New York Times reporter asked them to?
  • Speaking of which, why were employees at Hillary Clinton’s State Department asking for information on Provigil, a drug often prescribed for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients?
  • Delete it! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

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