Rising from the Ashes of the Bushes

More than hilarity with Hillary

I must have been way behind the curve when I heard Hillary Clinton campaign with Barack Obama early this morning.

Something the presidential campaign seems to offers us a number of perspectives expressed in fetching words that one cannot ignore the import of what is being said.

Little did I know, when Hillary Clinton said, “America will rise again from the Ashes of the Bushes” [1], she had said this a few times before [2], and it gets to the heart of the matter.

In the cases of Bush 41 [3] and Bush 43 [4], their tenure might well be recorded in history as that of poor stewardship – of the economy, of opportunity and of American prospects. They have made a bonfire of every fabric of what exudes American supremacy, status and independence.

They may well go down in history as instigators of change, not so much because they advocated change, but because they created the circumstances in which the people could no more abide the continuation of their policies, the time for radical change had come.

The Republican approach

What I found most striking about Hillary Clinton’s speech was that she moved beyond the context of making John McCain a personification of George W. Bush and simply used the more effective blanket coverage of Republican policies.

John McCain might well have the fine defence of saying that he is not George W, Bush but it would be apostasy to declare that he is not Republican.

As I have hoped, a few more people are voicing an opinion about John McCain’s judgement [5] in selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate and there have been no more a damning assessment of the lady than from General Colin Powell [6] to suggest that she is not ready to be President because that is what a Vice President is supposed to be.

The voice of reason gets aired

The voice of reason seems to be getting louder and clearer to hear within the cacophony of negativity and distractions that pervade every organ of interaction and communication.

It is comforting to hear that Senator Obama is by no means a terrorist, that being a Muslim does not make you a un-American or unpatriotic, that taxes should be reviewed and the issue of redistribution as propounded by some is disingenuous and if Obama were a socialist, one wonders what would be said of the $700 billion government bailout of private enterprise banks.

Reason should and must prevail, this starts from the top at the White House and this allows me to end this piece with Hillary Clinton’s words again – sending the Republicans back to Washington to clean up the economic mess was like “sending a bull to clean up the china closet” [2] – that does not need any further explanation.

Sources

[1] Hillary Clinton: US will 'rise from the ashes of Bush' if Obama is elected - US Election, World news - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

[2] Hillary: America Will Rise Again "From The Ashes Of The Bushes" – Huffington Post

[3] George H. W. Bush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] George W. Bush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Im-Palin-g McCain's picket [akin.blog-city.com]

[6] Powell endorses Obama for president - Meet the Press, online at MSNBC- msnbc.com

Presidential prerogative, pride and persuasion

Pardon me, forgive them

Whilst I do not in anyway condone the way in which an active secret agent was exposed to discredit her husband, I think the case that was built up against Lewis "Scooter" Libby was chasing after the wrong things.

He was charged and convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice as a peripheral issue to the case of who really revealed that Valerie Plame was an agent.

However, I am amazed at the prerogative of the President who regardless of what the courts have decided can exercise the power to commute, forgive or pardon the convicted with the judiciary having no recourse to appeal that decision. Clemency is an amazing demonstration of humanity and mercy.

The United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2 states - ... and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Interestingly, this is a power that the President has not exercised with too much political patronage 76 pardons and 4 commutations, none however for murders or heinous crimes, which is understandable.

So, Lewis "Scooter" Libby had the jail portion of his sentence removed by presidential reprieve and though the probation and fines remain, the President has not ruled out a complete pardon - Lewis simply has to continue to be a good boy to obtain grace and find mercy which is in the gift of the President.

With such power can come serious abuse, but I think Presidents have been quite disciplined with the use of this instrument even though there has been controversy about this half-pardon and the Clinton pardoning of Marc Rich - it is still the President's prerogative - take it or leave it.

My son, the President

Then President Putin went visiting George W. Bush and isn't it a pleasure to have an ex-President seeing his son become President; we might call that Presidential pride. George W. Bush has put his father George H. W. Bush to work on a number of projects as the Indian Ocean Tsunami fund with Bill Clinton. My heart warmed when he had his father greet and receive Vladimir Putin for their informal summit at the blue-blooded family retreat of Kennebunkport - Our dear Dubya is no red-necked Texan cowboy with a ranch, he was born with a gold spoon in his mouth and he wore silver slippers around the house.

The Olympic Linguist

However, President Putin had a stop-over in Guatemala where he pushed the case for Sochi the Black Sea resort in Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics in impeccable English and French charming IOC members and jetting off before the vote of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). For months, I had been wondering about the adverts for Sochi and then suddenly there were adverts for PyeongChang, South Korea - it took a while for me to realise we were being subliminally programmed for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Strangely, I never knew Salzburg, Austria was in the race till they were eliminated yesterday.

Sadly, for PyeongChang, they are now second-time losers for the hosting of the Winter Olympics - strategy back to drawing board, I could not help but notice that within minutes of the announcement the PyeongChang advert was played again by BBC World - what cruel irony - I seemed to subconsciously have name-recognition for Sochi, that is how effective their campaign was, whilst I thought PyeongChang was in China - Go figure.

In the end, it was Presidential appeal that put this in the bag for Sochi and good luck to them before the environmentalists get all excited and destroy the games as their clamour destroyed the livelihoods of the Inuit in seal-hunting without consideration for alternative means of income.

Those rotten single-issue advocates who never consider the consequences of their actions apart from achieving their selfish narrow interests in the guise of saving our planet - even the planet needs people who can live their lives without townies imposing ideal values on traditional folk.

I digressed - this was about the presidential prerogative for pardons, presidential influence and appeal through persuasion and not to forget the presidential pride of seeing ones offspring do well.