Might be time for the "U.S. Office of the President-Elect: Official Thread" thread.
U.S. Presidential Race: Official Thread
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
In what alternate universe is Michelle Malkin attractive ? This thread has clearly hit rock bottom.
my sentiments exactly......what an ugly bitch...
This has got to be the most objectionable article I have read in .... I dont know how long.
Serves me right for even looking at it.
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column.
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co...BB1=0&bcsi_scan_filename=the-night-we-wa.html
Serves me right for even looking at it.
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column.
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.
Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.
Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).
I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff.
And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice. He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship.
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.
They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.
If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.
And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.
I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.
They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co...BB1=0&bcsi_scan_filename=the-night-we-wa.html
what a hack!
he's somewhat right about some of the divides in Washington DC. there are mostly all white neighbourhoods and then there's the rest but even in the other areas there are some white folks living side by side with immigrants and blacks.
the wealthy areas of Washington DC are very nice while the poor side has some of the most blighted areas in the country - but isn't that the case in most major cities around the world?
Obama isn't the second coming of Christ, as some people may think, but it was a huge moment in this country's history. time will tell if he can deliver when he's in office but for now he's delivered hope to millions, not just blacks, but most of the people. and he can hardly do worse than the fecker that's there now.
he's somewhat right about some of the divides in Washington DC. there are mostly all white neighbourhoods and then there's the rest but even in the other areas there are some white folks living side by side with immigrants and blacks.
the wealthy areas of Washington DC are very nice while the poor side has some of the most blighted areas in the country - but isn't that the case in most major cities around the world?
Obama isn't the second coming of Christ, as some people may think, but it was a huge moment in this country's history. time will tell if he can deliver when he's in office but for now he's delivered hope to millions, not just blacks, but most of the people. and he can hardly do worse than the fecker that's there now.
I don't understand why anyone would want to read anything by either of the Hitchen brothers. Pompous twats who presume the stupidity of everyone but themselves. Inlcuding each other
Wow. That article is unbelievably bitter. Who is this guy?
I am quite enjoying the bitterness of these racists.... 
Peter Hitchens, social conservative.
It's just my brother, Pete H. Doesn't post here much anymore, but sometimes I let him use my account.
Hillary is being lined up as Secretary of State according to ABC.
Same old people, same old Washington. ''Yes We Can''.
Same old people, same old Washington. ''Yes We Can''.
Like it'd be any different under McCain. We always knew whether a Dem or Rep won it'd be more or less the same. Obama will change things, hopefully for the better at least. McCain would have followed Bush's ideology which would have been even more of the same than you are with Hillary as Secretary of State.
First African American to become President and you see Hillary (2nd place to Obama in the Democratic primaries) as a reason to bitch about the same old returning. He had to give her a place she had almost half the party behind her.
It isn't even January 20th yet. Give it a rest.
yup....if McCain had won...we would have efficient candidates for each position....like Joe the Plumber....
Democrats going to gain another senate seat from Alaska.....Begich.....will be defeating the felon Stevens....sorry no backdoor way to Washington for Palin....
What is this about then?
Yes, who would have thought the third closest person to the Presidency could be considered qualified to do a job there?
3 senate seats have not been decided yet.
Alaska
Minnesota...my home state
and Georgia
Begich the Democrat is leading after absentee ballots...partially counted...see link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/13/stevens-pollster-race-is_n_143660.html
The Minnesota senate race...Coleman the king of taking kickbacks is leading by 206 votes...this will be a recount...
http://www.startribune.com/politics...77K_0c::D3aDhU 3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU
The Georgia race....this is going to go to a run off election
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/2008/11/ga_sen_chambliss_3.html
If and that is a big IF...the Democrats win all three....they will have 60 seats...Filibuster proof...but that is unlikely....I forecast that the Dems will win at least 1 and have a good chance in Minnesota....but that is the limit...59 at most imo...
3 senate seats have not been decided yet.
Alaska
Minnesota...my home state
and Georgia
Begich the Democrat is leading after absentee ballots...partially counted...see link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/13/stevens-pollster-race-is_n_143660.html
The Minnesota senate race...Coleman the king of taking kickbacks is leading by 206 votes...this will be a recount...
http://www.startribune.com/politics...77K_0c::D3aDhU 3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiU
The Georgia race....this is going to go to a run off election
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/2008/11/ga_sen_chambliss_3.html
If and that is a big IF...the Democrats win all three....they will have 60 seats...Filibuster proof...but that is unlikely....I forecast that the Dems will win at least 1 and have a good chance in Minnesota....but that is the limit...59 at most imo...
Isn't there an independent that caucuses (sp?) with the democrats?
...well 2 ...Bernie Sanders and turncoat Lieberman....including these 2 the Dems now have 57 seats....that is where the other 3 seats come in....imo the 60 seat filibuster proof majority is a pipe dream....
even 57 seats is more than enough for the Democrats to get through their agenda.....they will always be able to get some Republican senators to vote with them on most issues....
It's best not to have a filibuster anyway.
It's important that all sides, even if they are insane, get to be heard, even if briefly. I don't know in depth details of US politics but I'm sure some Republicans are half decent human beings who deserve to be heard.
if you think about it....the fact you need to get at least 60 votes to block a filibuster is a very high threshold.....as you can see even in this Democratic Tsunami...we are stretching to get to 60...and even if we do so...there is no guarantee all 60 will vote one way.....
but if you look at it in another way...the fact If you can get 60 votes, you can stop a highly partisan minority stopping good legislation is comforting....
so you don't have to worry....all voices will be heard
the Founding Fathers were Truly great minds......
Lieberman will love basking in the glory of the power he could possess
The news Wednesday night was hilarious. After recounting the first 250,000 ballots cast, Begich led by...
3 votes.
She strikes me as a bloody good choice, actually.
Has it been confirmed or is it still rumour?
apparently confirmed that she is under consideration.....I would have preferred Richardson...but Hillary is pretty tough....would be a good choice.
I agree that she would be a decent choice.
I'm more interested in who's going to be Secretary of the Treasury.
I'm more interested in who's going to be Secretary of the Treasury.
Hillary is the perfect choice because:
Even if Obama and the Clintons don't agree on the details of how to govern, Barack Obama would benefit enormously by having them close to see their style within the political circles unfamiliar to Obama.
One consideration that could be a drawback (which I haven't heard from the news, yet) could be Bill Clinton's big mouth and the potential problems he might cause.
A likely tag from the Republicans will be, is that Barack Obama is aligning himself with two politicians famous for finding themselves with 'Foot Insterted in Mouth' problems, in having Joe Biden and Bill Clinton so close to him.
Even if Obama and the Clintons don't agree on the details of how to govern, Barack Obama would benefit enormously by having them close to see their style within the political circles unfamiliar to Obama.
One consideration that could be a drawback (which I haven't heard from the news, yet) could be Bill Clinton's big mouth and the potential problems he might cause.
A likely tag from the Republicans will be, is that Barack Obama is aligning himself with two politicians famous for finding themselves with 'Foot Insterted in Mouth' problems, in having Joe Biden and Bill Clinton so close to him.
Summers? who many claim is brilliant..though he had that gaff...but I think Obama will not be concerned about that...he wants people who will get the business done.
...also heard Timothy Geithner being mentioned...dont know much about him..
Bill Clinton will not be a factor....Hillary wont allow him to screw up her shot at her big chance...and a 2016 run may not be all that out of reach....
What Obama is doing is picking the very best people he can get...with little consideration to 'camps'....And no cronism.....
Summers is indeed brilliant, but in the sense that he can come up with really off the wall ideas that work. Execution might not be his strong suit.
Geithner is an ex governor of the Fed. Might be the better choice.
That's not why I thought she'd be a good choice. I think she'd be good because she is tough, is well briefed, smart, knows all the key players from her time in the White House and has a clear sense of vital US interests, which is what you want in a secretary of state. And I think there could be some creative tension between her and Obama, which would be a good thing.
I thought this said everything you stated:
Even if Obama and the Clintons don't agree on the details of how to govern, Barack Obama would benefit enormously by having them close to see their style within the political circles unfamiliar to Obama.
Only without the gushing appreciation that you have for her.
I still don't trust her because of her unapologetic relationship with the most notorious lobbyist gift givers, as was likely the reason she lost to Obama.
Could Geithner with Summers as his assistant work?
Obama seems like a guy who will go with his hunches....so I am betting it will be summers...
Bill Clinton will not be a factor....Hillary wont allow him to screw up her shot at her big chance...and a 2016 run may not be all that out of reach....
What Obama is doing is picking the very best people he can get...with little consideration to 'camps'....And no cronism.....
Oh Purlease.her love for lobbyist may not be too much of a problem in this department...correct me if I am wrong....
...the thing about Obama I have observed is as much as he seems to be a guy who is 'above it all'....he is very hands on...he picks people who he knows will get his agenda done...but he is very much in control....
...they dont say No Drama Obama for no reason....
he will control Hillary...no worries.
He will have to brush up on his 'Snake Handling' skills for this one.
To be fair, there's at least one backdoor entry she can always rely on to get her to the top.