Video: Secretary of State Clinton... she really does have a great laugh

If you have bit heard John Bolton's remarks which elicited such hearty laughter from Secretary Clinton, you can view it here.

Great Pick: Dr. Susan Rice will make an AWESOME U.N. Ambassador!

Go Susan! She's a Doctor! Go Doctor! Go Doctor Susan! You got a groove on! Be the Ambassador! To the United Nations!

Yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama formally named Susan Rice as his nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. After the press conference, Rice spoke to The New Republic’s Dayo Olopade, telling her that she wanted “to call up former holders of the position for advice.” There was one former UN ambassador, however, who Rice said she didn’t want to speak to: John Bolton. source: Think Progress

Thanks for not talking to John Bolton, Dr. Susan Rice!

--Your Friend--

PolyD

Here's some of the statements John Bolton has made regarding the United Nations. I'm pretty sure most of them were made before he became George W. Bush's pick to be the Ambassador to the United Nations, go figure.

“The UN is only a tool, not a theology. It is one of several options we have, and it is certainly not invariably the most important one.” [xiii]

“The danger of the ‘multilateral temptation’ is that one will resort to the U.N. reflexively. That reduces America's unilateral or non-U.N. options, and could even erode its sovereignty.” – On why multilateralism is wrong[xiv]

“While treaties may well be politically or even morally binding, they are not legally obligatory. They are just not “law” as we apprehend the term. And what happens to countries when they do not adhere to international law on some matter? Usually nothing. Why, then, do we continue to talk about international “law”? Because the word has a strong emotive appeal.” – On why international law does not exist[xv]

“For 50 years on a bipartisan basis, we have tried to keep the UN out of the Middle East conflict because it is not an honest broker. And now it's been invited in. We can't tell the consequences of that.” – On why it is a mistake to involve the UN in the Middle East[xvi]

“If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference. The United Nations is one of the most inefficient, intergovernmental organizations going. UNESCO is even worse, and others go downhill from there. The fact of the matter is that the international system that has grown up…has been put into a position of hiring ineffective people who do ineffective things, that have no real world impact.” – On the UN[xvii]

“There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interests, and when we can get others to go along. I think it would be a real mistake to count on the U.N. as if it’s some disembodied entity out there that can function.” – On why the UN only exists to serve U.S. needs[xviii]

for source - click here

That John Bolton. What a guy. If there was something that you liked about John Bolton, to see him on video would make you wonder why. I personally hope he gets promoted to having a show on Fox News Channel. That would be the perfect place for him.

John Bolton's Ambassadorship to the United Nations was simply a placeholder for nothingness. American interest would not be represented, the United Nations would not be made better by his appointment, or stronger, or weaker. It was another insult to the global community.

There are some other amazing/disturbing quotes from John Bolton from the above source, if you like nausea.

I think that Dr. Susan Rice will do well as Ambassador solely on the basis of her statement that she will not seek the advice of John Bolton.

I must admit though that I am pretty easy to please.

I don't like getting snarky, but the mere mention of John Bolton snarkifies me.

If John McCain is President, will we really need a United Nations?

Johann Hari: John McCain and his secretive plot to 'kill the UN'

All too often, it is used as a blue punch-bag for any old complaint about the state of the world

Thursday, 21 August 2008

Does John McCain have a "hidden agenda" to "kill the UN"? That's what the man who devised McCain's big set-piece foreign policy proposal says – and he's delighted it is sailing silently through the presidential election campaign towards success.

This story begins with a Republican presidential candidate who, despite the hype, doesn't seem to know much about foreign affairs. McCain recently talked at length about problems on the "Iraq/Pakistan border" – the countries are a thousand miles apart. Asked how to deal with Darfur, he mused about "bringing pressure on the government of Somalia". Uh – it's Sudan, Senator McCain. And he keeps expressing his desire to build up US relations with Czechoslovakia, a country that hasn't existed for 15 years.

But McCain does know one thing: he doesn't like the United Nations. He championed George Bush's appointment of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN – precisely because Bolton scorns the UN as "irrelevant" and "a twilight zone". He even announced "there is no such thing as the United Nations". It was like appointing Marilyn Manson as ambassador to the Vatican. This is part of a long seam of thinking on the American right: they opposed Franklin D Roosevelt's spearheading of the United Nations as a fetter on American power, and have never been properly reconciled to it. Republican congresses have refused to authorise US dues to the UN – so there is now a backlog of $2.8bn (£1.5bn) outstanding.

Yet McCain cannot oppose the UN outright – because the American people support it so passionately. Contrary to the yokel-myth, a typical opinion poll – by Global Public Opinion – just found that 64 per cent of Americans think the UN is doing a good job, compared to just 28 per cent who support George Bush. Some 72 per cent of Americans want the UN to play a bigger role.

So McCain has decided to build up an innocuous-sounding alternative called a "League of Democracies". It would be an alliance of countries the US labels democratic that can be used to legitimise US military actions. Charles Krauthammer, the conservative journalist who invented the plan, says: "What I like about it is, it's got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it's about listening and joining with allies... except the idea here, which McCain can't say but I can, is to essentially kill the UN. Nobody's going to walk out of the UN. There's a lot of emotional attachment to it in the US. How do you kill it? You create a parallel institution." Gradually – over decades – McCain hopes it would make the UN wither away.

Any response needs to start by admitting the UN has serious imperfections. Its structure is absurdly antiquated, with the permanent members of the Security Council frozen as the winners of the Second World War. The Human Rights Commission became an obscenity, offering places to Sudan and Saudi Arabia. There have been some horrible scandals in the past decade: UN peacekeepers who commit sexual abuse still aren't properly investigated, and some of them cut corrupt deals with the murderous Congolese militias they were supposed to stop. Even Kofi Annan's son Kojo has been involved in some dubious dealings.

Those of us who support the UN should be more outraged by these failures than anyone else. But the US government has also committed horrible abuses and been riddled with corruption – and nobody suggests the solution is to abolish it. No: it is to make it live up to its greatest ideals.

In addition to these real flaws, the UN is too often used as a bright blue punch-bag for any old complaint about the state of the world. For example, the UN is routinely blamed for not intervening in Burma, or Zimbabwe, or Georgia – but the UN has no army of its own; it is only as good as its members. Blaming the UN for these failures is like blaming Wembley Stadium when your football team loses a match.

The UN's positive achievements are almost never mentioned. It was the UN vaccination programme that abolished smallpox – an agonising disease that killed hundreds of millions of people – from the human condition. It was the UN that talked Kennedy and Khrushchev back from the brink when they were poised to incinerate the Earth. read more here

Peon Spotlight: A Poem by Karen

I received an e-mail from one of my new 'listserv' bests buds, Karen, who wrote this today.

OBAMA

Moses led

the Israelites AWAY from the rulership of an oppressive Pharaoh

Moses showed

the Israelites that if they stood as one, they could achieve their dreams of freedom and prosperity

Moses freed

people whose labor made their rulers rich while they remained poor and hungry

Moses was called

an "outsider", he was viewed as "foreign", yet he was their greatest hope

To the Israelites,

Moses' promise of freedom sounded lofty - until they watched sea part

John McCain tells us

Barack Obama symbolizes Moses

That's reason enough for me to vote Obama.

Peon Opinionater: Op-ED NYT Running While Black by Bob Herbert

Op-Ed Columnist

Running While Black

By BOB HERBERT

Published: August 2, 2008

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at. read more here

Astounded Peon: 'Liberal Media Bias' in the current election cycle, AND in favor of whom?

LOS ANGLES TIMES

ON THE MEDIA

In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias

Cable talking heads accuse broadcast networks of liberal bias -- but a think tank finds that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John McCain in recent weeks.

By JAMES RAINEY, ON THE MEDIA

July 27, 2008

Haters of the mainstream media reheated a bit of conventional wisdom last week.

Barack Obama, they said, was getting a free ride from those insufferable liberals.

Such pronouncements, sorry to say, tend to be wrong since they describe a monolithic media that no longer exists. Information today cascades from countless outlets and channels, from the Huffington Post to Politico.com to CBS News and beyond.

But now there's additional evidence that casts doubt on the bias claims aimed -- with particular venom -- at three broadcast networks. read more here

Call a Peon Medic: The McCain campaign needs a "revival"! Hallelujah! Amen!

Obama forces flip-flops to paralyze McCain

July, 2008, 22:14


With a deft series of domestic political moves followed by vigorous international maneuvers, Barack Obama triggered a diplomatic revolution and forced flip-flops on one of his main rivals for the presidency -- incumbent President George W. Bush -- that have paralyzed the campaign of Senator John McCain.


For many months, Obama called for a timetable for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and direct negotiations with the governments of the Axis of Evil and other nations with which the US government has disagreements. read more here