Jon Can't Wait Until Ms. Rice Is Off His TV

Jonathan Schwarz at Tiny Revolution:

Here's Ms. Rice, delivering more standard embarrassing crap from the foreign policy crap factory:

[T]he flaws and disappointing actions within the UN are rooted in its potential to serve as an engine for progress....It is why efforts to pass Security Council resolutions on abuses in places from Zimbabwe to Burma occasion such fierce debate, and don't always succeed. It is also why many try to use the UN to willfully and unfairly condemn our ally Israel. When effective and principled UN action is blocked, our frustration naturally grows, but that should only cause us to redouble our efforts to ensure that the United Nations lives up to its founding principles.

As in the past, there will be occasions in the future when deadlocks cannot be broken, and the United States and its partners and allies will nonetheless have to act.

That sounds exactly like Condoleezza Rice. But in fact it's Susan Rice, in her confirmation hearing to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the UN.

As I've said before: I'd long believed that black women named Rice who are willing to be appalling hacks to rise to the top of the foreign policy establishment are a precious national resource. However, I thought we faced serious supply constraints. Clearly I was wrong.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Remember that story about Canada and the Queen's Representative?

Remember this one—"Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday that Canada's governor general has allowed him to suspend Parliament, postponing a no-confidence vote from his opponents that he was likely to lose." Canada's Governor General being the Queen of England's representative in Canada?

This is right up the same alley... mindblowing in its implications. Sure, I've read those theories about how AIPAC runs the US congress. But this is so... blatant.....

Jerusalem Post:

Rice did not end up voting for Resolution 1860, thanks to a phone conversation Olmert held with US President George Bush shortly before the vote, the prime minister told a meeting of local authority heads in Ashkelon as part of a visit to the South.

Upon receiving word that the US was planning to vote in favor of the resolution - viewed by Israel as impractical and failing to address its security concerns - Olmert demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that the president was delivering a lecture in Philadelphia. Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert's call, the premier said.

America could not vote in favor of such a resolution, Olmert told Bush. Soon afterwards, Rice abstained when votes were counted at the UN.

Al Jazeera:

Quote of the day

New York Times:

Phillip Zelikow, Rice co-author and head of 911 Commission, disparaging those who wish to abandon civilized talks with north Korea and revert back to the old, obstructionist strategy with North Korea, the same strategy that saw them explode a nuclear bomb:

“You can’t just make these decisions using the top of your spinal cord, you have to use the whole brain,” said Philip D. Zelikow, the former counselor at the State Department. “What other policy are we going to pursue that we think would be better?”

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

A familiar administration divide:
Vice President Dick Cheney says
Israeli intelligence was credible,
while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
questions whether there was a real threat.

Cheney, the very embodiment of the reptilian brain.