http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/31/exclusive-excerpt-from-re_n_209576.html

Of all his transition choices, none was easier to make, or more complex to execute, than Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama had long wanted his former rival on his team, no matter what his friends and aides said about her aggressive campaign…
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This is a lie. I guarantee it.

Wolffe is a propagandist in who appears on MSNBC which is controlled by GE which is controlled by Immelt–one of Obamas puppeteers.

Either Wolffe does not know the real story, and is taking someone else’s word for it. Or more likely he does know and is attempting to bolster the Obama myth as he did so often during the campaign.

By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
Monday, June 1, 2009

This column will show you why President Barack Obama’s two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a solution, but a formula for disaster. It will also suggest two approaches that make sense and might resolve that conflict.

Israel can’t make peace with the Palestinians when they refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, when they are dedicated to the destruction of Israel and to genocide, when their mosques, schools, media and government officials promote hatred and violence directed against Jews and Israel. Anyone who thinks peace under those circumstances is possible isn’t dealing with a full deck and is frankly irrational if not insane. But enough said about the state of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Just remember that foreign policy is being made by Mr. Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and a platoon of anti-Israel Obama advisers.

This whole matter is put in perfect perspective by two articles in Commentary Magazine (June 2009), which I happen to think is one of the best if not the very best magazine in the U.S. The two articles are by Caroline Glick, columnist and senior contributing editor of the Jerusalem Post, and Hillel Halkin, a longtime contributor to Commentary. Ms. Glick’s article, “The Stabilization Plan,” is based on the premise that peace now with unwilling Palestinians is impossible, so the best you can do is to create a strategy to stabilize the situation and lay the foundation for future reconciliation and peace.

Ms. Glick identifies why peace has been so elusive despite endless peace plans: “The root cause of the Palestinian conflict is the same as the root cause of the larger Arab and Islamic world’s conflict with Israel: Simply put, they refuse to accept that Israel has a right to exist. Until they change their minds — the conflict cannot be solved, it can only be managed. It cannot be resolved. It can only be stabilized. Consequently, the stabilization plan does not foresee a solution of the Middle East conflict. Indeed, it argues that the quest for a solution has blinded policymakers to the true nature of the conflict in a manner that has expanded the frequency and likelihood of war and damned the region to a state of chronic instability.” Ms. Glick finds that the obsession with the failed two-state solution has caused Israel and America to ignore the factors that are the key to Middle East politics — the rise of jihadist forces throughout the Islamic world and Iran’s ascendancy as a regional power. Both of these factors have grown more threatening since 1993.

The Glick stabilization plan is based on three pillars: “First, it would neutralize outside radicalizing elements that exacerbate the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Second, it would exact a significant price for the Palestinians for their continued belligerence. And third, it would prevent the Palestinian leadership from using the Palestinians as pawns in their war against Israel. Here are the details on those three pillars of the stabilization plan.

Neutralizing External Factors

Now the most important external factor is Iran using Palestinians as proxies to advance its regional power. As long as Iran can influence the Palestinians, it will exploit the conflict to expand its influence. But if Iran goes nuclear, that will end the hope of peaceful coexistence between Israel and its neighbors. Any Arab state that seeks peace with Israel will be subject to Iranian nuclear blackmail. I would suggest that there should be a military attack on Iran to stop it from going nuclear and curb its influence. Ms. Glick doesn’t offer details on her suggested approach, but this would seem to be obvious as a first step.

She also recommends something be done about the institutions which were created to and have done nothing but exacerbate and perpetuate the Palestinian conflict with Israel. One such institution is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which maintains the refugee status of the descendants of Arabs who left Israel during the 1948-49 War of Independence. As long as this conflict is fired up by UNRWA, there is little hope of peace. It should be noted that Israel settled all the Jewish refugees who fled Arab nations during the War of Independence right away. But Arab nations failed to do so for their “refugees.” They were intent on maintaining the hatred and unrest created by unsettled refugees. They were more interested in perpetuating the conflict than the welfare of these refugees.

Exacting A Price

Now Gazans live under the terror regime of Hamas. Those on the West Bank live under the tyranny of the Fatah terrorist organization. Ms. Glick writes, “Because the two-state paradigm places all the blame for the absence of peace on Israel, and so places all the pressure for behavioral change on Israel, leaders of both Fatah and Hamas have felt free to deny their subjects basic freedoms as they pursue their war against Israel through terror, political warfare, incitement, extortion, and general thuggery — all in the name of the Palestinian people.” This should change. Israel, the U.S. and others involved should start adopting policies to make it clear that Hamas and Fatah cannot continue their belligerent policies toward Israel and their subjugation of their people to making war instead of peace.

One of the matters most in need of addressing is the Palestinian Authority’s “systematic indoctrination of its public to wage jihad against Israel and seek the annihilation of the Jewish people.” Another matter that must be addressed is Palestinian laws, which work against peace. For example, the Palestinian land law requires the execution of those who sell land to Israel, and now any Palestinian who assists Israel in its war against terror is subject to execution.

Ending The Use Of Palestinians As Pawns

On Jordan’s King Abdullah II’s recent trip to Washington, he said, “Any Israeli effort to substitute Palestinian development for Palestinian independence cannot bring peace and stability to the region.” This view has had disastrous consequences as it devalues and sneers at Palestinian development. First, money sent to the Palestinian Authority for improving the welfare of the people has been diverted to terrorism. Second, this approach to impoverishing the Palestinians has destroyed the middle class, the group most likely to pressure for peace and freedom.

Ms. Glick summarizes, “The stabilization plan and the policies it engenders cannot solve the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Today, the Palestinian conflict has no solution. What the stabilization plan can do, if wisely followed, is embark Israel and the Palestinians on a path to security, prosperity, and stability, which when you think about it, sounds a little like peace.”

The Federation Plan: An Israeli-Palestinian Federation

In another article in the same issue of Commentary, Hillel Halkin puts forth his ideas for resolving the conflict in an article, “The Federation Plan.” His analysis and solutions are as valuable and compelling as those of Ms. Glick’s. He makes a basic point about peace plans: You can’t beat something with nothing: “Yet when one party to a dispute has no coherent notion of what it wants while the other is perfectly clear about it, things rarely work out to the first party’s benefit. The history of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians since 1967 has been more one of seeking to thwart the strategies of others than of following a strategy of one’s own, with the result that Israel has been progressively pushed into a corner from which there is at present no way out.” Mr. Halkin says there will be no two-state solution, but he feels there has to be a solution. What he proposes is a federation with an Israeli state and a demilitarized Palestinian one. But he has one key provision: “If the two-state solution means expelling the Palestinian state’s Jewish inhabitants, it is a dead letter then, too. And yet why must it mean that? The state of Israel, within its 1967 borders, has over a million Arabs in it. Why should the state of Palestine not have hundreds of thousands of Jews? Why should not both the Jews of Palestine and the Arabs of Israel be allowed to choose which state they prefer to be citizens of.”

Mr. Halkin adds other details to protect Israel’s security and make the federation work. But he feels this is perhaps the only remaining viable option: “A bi-national state that will not work and an Israeli-Palestinian federation that might work are the only two options left.”

Lessons Of The Two-State Solution Dead End

There’s another important lesson in all this. It’s best to let the parties to the conflict negotiate the peace and not try to do it in Washington, D.C., and certainly not doing it there with a band of anti-Israeli types. Another lesson is when a two-state solution has such a long record of failure, perhaps it is time to look for the fundamental reasons for its failure and for alternatives.

One last note: If Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, the international community and the media made as many calls for the Palestinians to stop their terrorism as they make for Israelis to stop their settlements, the Middle East would be closer to peace.

*Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

thebulletin.us/articles/2009/06/01/herb_denenberg/doc4a23b9da003b8332567849.txt

The oratory big media worships consists of reading someone elses words. This is similar to what a news reader does. It is not oratory.

What they admire is his delivery style which is right out of the black church. Evidently, they had not seen it before.

The test of an orator is his ability to speak extemporaneously using his own words. When Obama does that he is prone to gaffs, and verbal crutches.

Again, he is an actor; not an orator. Anyone who contends otherwise does not understand the essential difference.

05-31-09 11:21 PM; huffpost

In an exclusive excerpt from Newsweek Senior White House correspondent Richard Wolffe’s new book, “Renegade: The Making of a President,” Wolffe details the internal debates within the Obama camp over whether to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

Wolffe will discuss his new book on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday morning.

Of all his transition choices, none was easier to make, or more complex to execute, than Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama had long wanted his former rival on his team, no matter what his friends and aides said about her aggressive campaign… His staff opposed the idea for the most part, arguing that Clinton would never be truly loyal. But Obama was willing to leave the primaries behind, including his own strong feelings at the time. “I don’t hold grudges,” he told his aides. “I don’t worry about the past. I’m concerned about what happens now. If she can help me and Bill Clinton isn’t too much of a liability, we should seriously look at this.” …
Obama was under no illusion about the legacy of the long primary season. During one transition meeting, Obama said he wanted to offer Clinton the diplomatic job. “I’m really interested in pursuing this, but I know she has some hard feelings coming out of this campaign.” Emanuel and John Podesta, the former Clinton official who ran the transition, assured Obama that she was over those hard feelings now. Obama smiled and said, “Believe me. She’s not over it yet.”

His decision to offer her the job of secretary of state came surprisingly early. Well before the end of the primaries, when his staff and friends still felt hostile to her, Obama decided that Clinton possessed the qualities to carry his diplomacy to the rest of the world. “We actually thought during the primary, when we were pretty sure we were going to win, that she could end up being a very effective secretary of state,” he told me later. “I felt that she was disciplined, that she was precise, that she was smart as a whip, and that she would present a really strong image to the world…I had that mapped out.”

Recruiting and managing a team of rivals would not be easy, and Clinton came with her own set of issues. Chief among them was her campaign debt, which she wanted eliminated before she took the job of secretary of state. Would the president-elect go out and help her to do so? “I’m not begging her to take this job,” Obama told his senior aides. “If she wants it, I could help. But I’m not willing to go out in these difficult economic times to do a flashy fundraiser in California.” As it happened, plenty of people in the Senate were begging Obama to offer Clinton the job. Obama’s aides believed that many Senate Democrats thought Clinton had extended her presidential campaign far beyond the point where she had lost the election. Her negative advertising wasted Democratic money, threatened to undermine the party’s nominee, and suggested that she was disloyal to the party. They were unwilling to offer the junior New York senator a position ahead of her lowly rank, and she stood little chance of becoming majority leader. “There was a lot of encouragement from inside the Senate to get her into this job,” said one senior Obama aide. “They wanted her out of there.” …

As for controlling the uncontrollable Bill Clinton, Obama’s aides drew up a series of checks on his fundraising for both Clinton Global Initiative and his work on HIV/AIDS across the world. But they really counted on Hillary to be the ultimate safeguard – against both her husband and her own ambition. “It’s in her interests to keep him in line,” warned one senior Obama aide. Others in Obama’s inner circle said the president-elect believed Clinton needed to demonstrate that she was a team player and to shape her own career and legacy. “There are plenty who don’t trust her and think she still harbors something,” said another senior adviser. “It’s still potentially problematic down the road. Barack’s thinking on this is that it’s not in her interests to mess with us. She can’t win that fight internally and she’s smart enough that she won’t want that fight publicly.”

Several weeks into the administration, even Clinton’s internal critics believed the relationship was a success. “They have both worked really hard at it,” said one senior White House official. “There’s a natural affinity and respect that ironically grew out of being opponents. You get to know someone really well after all that.”

huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/31/exclusive-excerpt-from-re_n_209576.html

In his new book on Obama, Newsweek/MSNBC contributor Richard Wolffe claims that many Senate Dems embraced the idea of appointing Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State as a way of getting her out of the Senate.

In a HuffPo excerpt, Wolffe writes:

Obama’s aides believed that many Senate Democrats thought Clinton had extended her presidential campaign far beyond the point where she had lost the election. Her negative advertising wasted Democratic money, threatened to undermine the party’s nominee, and suggested that she was disloyal to the party. They were unwilling to offer the junior New York senator a position ahead of her lowly rank, and she stood little chance of becoming majority leader. “There was a lot of encouragement from inside the Senate to get her into this job,” said one senior Obama aide. “They wanted her out of there.” …

There’s some truth here — Obama’s die-hards in the Senate nursed a grudge and many of the president’s brain trust (especially David Plouffe) have taken eons to get over Clinton’s refusal to quit after her February-March debacle.

It’s certainly true that very few Senators were willing to make any special accommodations for her when she came back in defeat — much less stick her at the front of the line to replace Harry Reid.

But Wolffe may be overstating the case. According to my reporting at the time, some Senate Democrats admired Clinton’s grit and many others thought she’d earned the right to ride out the campaign to the end.

It’s not as flashy a point, but taken as a group, I think their attitude was more indifferent than hostile.

Senators, as a rule, are egocentrists far less less interested in their colleagues’ futures than their own. To them, Clinton was just one of 100 — and they couldn’t have care less about what she did with the rest of her career.

politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0609/Wolffe_Senate_Dems_wanted_Clinton_out.html

May 31st, 2009 at 8:34 pm
From MAryB @ BP

The Unpersuasive Orator

Obama may sound good, but he doesn’t close the sale.

That Bush didn’t succeed is less surprising than Obama’s failure. Bush is a prosaic speaker. Obama is a skilled orator. While Bush didn’t gain ground when he promoted his tax and education policy, at least public support didn’t decrease.
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First, which site is “BP”?

Second, Obama’s reputation as a “master orator” is gaggingly overblown. As much as Bush stammered and said stupid things, Obama stammers and says stupid things too. It’s not a once in a while thing, either. That’s why he’s hooked on the teleprompter.

Bush, for all his idiocy, was able to pull off the “aw-shucks” routine. That too “worked”, for a while. But like all schticks that are inherently devoid of substance (or worse, mask evil), they eventually stop working. Even the inspiring Fuhrer eventually was revealed to be a fraud leading his country to doom.

Obama’s reckoning will come. Too much incompetence to cover up.