“President” Hillary Clinton meets “Smile & Wave”

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

‘President Clinton’ goes with the flow

By CLAIRE TREVETT - The New Zealand Herald | 5:30AM - Friday, November 05, 2010


Hillary Clinton and Rose Tahuparae White hongi. — Photo: Mark Mitchell.


Hillary Clinton and Kura Moeahu hongi. — Photo: Mark Mitchell.

FOREWARNED is forearmed, so for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit, there was evidence of briefings on how to cope with a powhiri, how to hongi and what to expect at a Kiwi barbie.

Alas, there was clearly no briefing on Wellington's wind or the Prime Minister's equally unremitting tendency to make bad jokes.

Mrs Clinton discovered the first when she arrived from Papua New Guinea at 5am, weary from the travel, and the wind made sure that in the first photos of her in New Zealand, her hair was standing straight upwards.

Not one to be caught out twice, she had it sorted by the time she arrived outside Parliament at 2pm. She had bling on her ears and black patent wedges on her toes. She clearly also had product on her hair.

She walked through the powhiri, hongi-ed with aplomb, and all the while her hair barely moved.

She discovered the peril of the PM's jokes soon after when the pair held a joint press conference. After a morning in which Parliament had crawled with security, bomb squads and snipers clad in balaclavas, an American reporter asked for a microphone to ask his question.

"Just fire away," the press secretary said.

Mr Key couldn't resist. "Not literally," he said, apparently oblivious that joking about such matters is a federal offence when it comes to the Secretary of State.

Nonetheless, Mrs Clinton was out to charm. While Mr Key stood nodding along, she launched into fulsome praise for New Zealand and — happily for Mr Key — himself. His nodding strengthened when she described the relationship as the "strongest and most productive in 25 years".

He nearly gave himself whiplash when she went on to talk about the "excellent conversations" she had enjoyed with him and the important role he had taken at President Obama's conference on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, where Mr Key's views were "in line with Obama's vision".

So delighted was Mr Key that, as he went to wrap up, he forgot all about Mr Obama and his vision and instead referred to her as "President Clinton". As officials squirmed, Mrs Clinton laughed.



At her official reception, a screen in the Banquet Hall showed images of NZ icons followed by the US translation. There were rubbish bins and trash cans, rugby and grid-iron, sausage on bread and hot dogs, cricket and baseball, the Beehive and Congress, kiwi and bald eagle, pavlova and apple pies, John Key and Barack Obama.

But Mrs Clinton had clearly learned a few things in her first few hours in the country. Earlier in the day, she had referred to her welcome as a "powerry". When she spoke at the reception, she again mentioned the powhiri — this time pronouncing the word correctly. "I've never seen anything quite like it and am delighted to have survived it."

She showed Mr Key she, too, was capable of making a little joke, saying her husband — the real President Clinton — and daughter had urged her to visit after their own time here.

"I know it won't be my last visit. But I can't make too many excuses to come too often or Congress might become a little bit suspicious as to why I'm spending so much time in New Zealand instead of ... well, Afghanistan."

• Click here to download the transcript of the media conference.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10685464

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

All the “Hillary for president” you can possibly handle

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 3:29PM PDT - Friday, October 23, 2015


“Calm under pressure” doesn't quite seem to cover it.

TO all the soldiers in the sad, seething army of perpetually acidic (male) conservatives who openly despise Hillary Clinton and don't care who knows it: Rough news cycle for you, yes? You poor dears.

Indeed, your party's latest, perhaps greatest gratuitous witch-hunt of an attempt to destroy Clinton (again, for the 8th time — or was it the 800th?) not only failed spectacularly, it quite thoroughly backfired, and now the nightmares are back and that weird genital rash still won't go away. Thank goodness you still have Trump, right? Or, you know, perhaps not.

Conversely, if you were already a Hillary supporter, well, your estimation of her has just been fantastically validated, if not amplified, all due to her stellar, galvanizing marathon appearance at the latest Benghazi battering — AKA 11 hours of shamelessly partisan, entertainingly inept, savagely single-minded bile aimed solely at bringing Hillary, once at for all, to Republican heel. Whoops.


Eleven hours of relentless Republican baiting, badgering and mansplaining, and she emerged smiling and stronger than ever.
Role model, what?

That Clinton calmly held her own for the entirety of the rather sickening, epic assault, during which not a single new or damning fact was uncovered, isn't the most impressive part. It's the other thing, how Clinton essentially showed America and the world exactly how she'll respond — with what level of class, calm and intelligence — when she's faced with this exact level of GOP venom and ineptitude nearly every day of her stewardship, should she become president.

In short: She's ready for them. More than ready. Obama-level ready. She can take the “worst” the GOP has to offer — their most calculating buffoons, their nastiest pile-on tactics, their months of savage preparation, their inbred misogyny — and leverage it to her/our advantage, all without even breaking a sweat.

But it's not just the GOP. It's safe to translate that skill, that temperament straight over to how she'll deal with all those other supposedly tough-minded, troublesome, macho world leaders, from Putin to Netanyahu, the U.N. to King Salman. “Reassuring” doesn't begin to cover it. “Totally in control and sort of badass?” That's more like it.


Benghazi committee chairman Trey “Flop Sweat” Gowdy, the latest to try — and epically fail — to bring Hillary to heel.
See you in the footnotes of history, kid.

But there's an even larger upshot: No more lukewarm liberal support. No more tepid fence-sitting for the large chunk of Democrats who've long been wary of Clinton, who've complained that, despite her obvious smarts and tenacity, she's far from an ideal progressive candidate, for all the reasons you already know: too hawkish, too front-loaded with political baggage, too friendly with Wall Street, and so on.

Well, enough of that. If you weren't much impressed by her before, it's downright impossible not to be, now. Yes, Bernie is engaging, too. But Hillary just took it all to the next level — the truly presidential one.

But don't just take it from me. Donations to Hillary's campaign just surged to record highs, immediately after Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy's sweaty gavel closed the sham hearings. Her poll numbers are way up. Ten million skeptics have been instantly converted. The GOP is, naturally, equally furious and dumbfounded, all over again.



It's as though everyone suddenly got the same memo, all at once: Here's your undeniable proof, doubters. Here's the clearest snapshot yet of what we can expect from a Hillary presidency, of how she'll handle the right’s sexism, their outright hatred of both the Clinton name and the idea of a female American president, not to mention how she'll deal with Congress, with world leaders, with her gnarled past and our even more gnarled future.

Which is to say: With class, with calm intelligence, with a bemused, wary understanding of the cruelest workings of the DC's inbred political machinery.

She's still far from perfect — hell, she's a big part of that machinery herself — but once you throw in some Zen meditation and a little yoga, the truth becomes even more undeniable: This is the most powerful, badass, superhero grandma we could possibly ask for. Doubt her at your peril.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/10/23/all-the-president-hillary-you-can-possibly-handle

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

Republicans need deliverance from Trey Gowdy's Benghazi committee

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Monday, October 26, 2015



FANS OF the 1972 film “Deliverance” will be happy to know the weird-looking, banjo-playing, hillbilly kid from the movie has grown up and found work as chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

Actually, that's a fib and a bit of an insult to the kid. No one with any sense would want to be compared with the committee's distinctive-looking real chairman, South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy — at least not after the national embarrassment he oversaw on Thursday. For an excruciating 11 hours, Gowdy and the other Republicans on the panel took a trek into the wild as they tried to trip up former-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on issues, real and imagined, connected to the deaths of four Americans during the 2012 terror attack on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya.

Gowdy and his crew went into the showdown with Clinton fully aware that their “investigation” is now widely perceived as a partisan witch hunt, thanks to slips of the tongue among their fellow caucus members, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. Their credibility has taken a hit, as well, because the GOP committee members have shown a suspicious lack of interest in any aspect of the incident that is unrelated to the Democratic presidential front-runner. Gowdy has vehemently denied any intent to savage Clinton and insisted she would be treated just like any other witness. Nevertheless, Republicans on the committee simply could not resist making their true motivations quite clear.

Start with the fact that no other witnesses have been expected to sit for 11 hours of barbed questions. Perhaps the length of the interrogation was driven by the desire to keep the circus going into TV prime time. When the clock indicated their audience might be at maximum, the Republicans suddenly launched a volley of queries about Clinton's email.

Hour after hour, GOP committee members grandstanded, bullied and repeated questions that Clinton has answered repeatedly in other forums. Committee Democrats jumped to her defense and pointed out instances in which Gowdy and company had mangled facts or distorted information to suit their story line. At several points, verbal fisticuffs broke out between the two sides while the witness sat quietly.

It was an impressive display of patience and self-control on Clinton's part. She maintained her cool demeanor through the entire marathon. Only at one point did she briefly betray what she really thought of her amateurish interrogators. That was in the ninth hour when Republican Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama asked Clinton if she were alone after going home on the night of the Benghazi attack.

“I was alone,” Clinton said.

“The whole night?” Roby asked.

“Well, yes, the whole night,” Clinton responded. Then she burst out laughing, clearly finding the question a bit goofy.

“I don't know why that's funny,” Roby lectured. “Did you have any in-person briefings? I don't find it funny at all.”

“I'm sorry,” Clinton replied. “A little note of levity at 7:15. Note it for the record.”

Actually, the entire hearing was laughable, though no Republicans seemed to be amused when it was all over. Gowdy admitted to reporters that nothing new was learned by the inquest. A number of House Republicans not on the committee were openly displeased. Operatives for the campaigns of GOP presidential aspirants talked about how they wanted the committee to just go away.

The only person smiling at the end of the day was Hillary Clinton, who had shown her mettle and likely endeared herself even more to Democratic primary voters. Trey Gowdy, meanwhile, gave no indication that he is ready to give up, even though his party may now be looking for deliverance from his wild goose chase.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-deliverance-from-gowdy-20151023-story.html

[reality]

Yes...I'm sure John Key will be happy to have a close working relationship with Hillary, just as he has had with Obama...in his next term

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Yep....righties are stupid, brain-dead boofheads alright.

Click on the cartoon for proof of righties' stupidity.