The Hope and Change Cabinet: Secretary of State (part 2)

Contender #2: Senator John F. Kerry

Biography

John Forbes Kerry was born in Aurora Colorado in 1943. His father was a U.S. Foreign diplomat and his mother was a daughter of the very well-to-do Forbes family. John spent his early years traveling the world and summering at the Forbes family estate in France. He attended several very prestigious Massachusetts boarding and prep schools, where he rubbed shoulders with such American notables as the John F. and Teddy Kennedy, Richard Pershing (grandson of General Pershing) and future FBI director Robert Mueller.

From 1962 to 1966, Kerry attended Yale University. He graduated with a B.A. in Political Science. He was a member of Skull and Bones. Even at Yale, as the Vietnam War was beginning to heat up, he was beginning to argue against what he called “American Imperialism”, and did so eloquently enough that he won the Ten Eyck prize for oration in 1965. He continued this argument against American foreign policy when he gave his class commencement speech at graduation in 1966.

Kerry began his much-analyzed and much-criticized military service by accepting a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve in August of 1966. He served honorably for 3 ½ years, and achieved the rank of Lieutenant (O-3). He asked for and was granted early resignation so that he could run for Congress. He spent the years from 1970 to 1972 engaged in a number of highly-publicized anti-war activities, perhaps most famously throwing his medals over the fence at the U.S. Capitol and accusing the U.S. of war crimes.

Kerry lost his first bid to become a U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts in 1972. Instead, he became an activist and advocate for a number of civic organizations. Eventually, he went to law school and graduated with a J.D. from Boston College in 1976. After passing the Massachusetts bar exam, he became a prosecutor of some success, trying a rape case and a murder case successfully. He opened his own practice in 1979 which was successful. He left law, however, in 1982 to run for Lieutenant Governor with Gubernatorial candidate Michael Dukakis. They won handily. Two years later, when Paul Tsongas announced his retirement from U.S. Senate, Kerry ran for his seat and won.

Senate Career Highlights:

· Supported and defended Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, against the strong opposition from the Reagan White House. Ortega was accused of strong communist ties, which Kerry denied. Kerry’s interference convinced Congress to vote against funding for Ortega’s enemies, the Contras. The next day, Ortega flew to Moscow to receive a $200 million donation from the USSR.
· Embarrassed by the Ortega incident, Kerry spearheaded the effort to embarrass the Reagan administration; he personally outed NSA operative and Marine Colonel Oliver North in 1988. He was assisted in this effort by Senator Christopher Dodd. North was eventually exonerated on appeal in 1991, but his career and work were ended prematurely by Kerry’s arrogance.
· Stumbled onto corruption in the London bank BCCI while investigating Panamanian president Manuel Noriega
· Spoke at 1996 Democratic National Convention
· Was on Al Gore’s short list for V.P. candidate in 2000
· Ran for President in 2004 – lost.

Positions

Life

Supports abortion on demand during any trimester for any reason

Supports experimentation on human embryos

Opposes the death penalty

Liberty

Supports radical gay agenda, and supports gay marriage

Property

Supports punitive progressive taxation

Bill of Rights
Amendment 1
1. Supports free speech, especially protest and flag-burning
2. Opposes free speech through lobbyists / special interests
Amendment 2
1. Opposes through numerous limits and restrictions (infringements)
Amendment 4
1. Supports through Patriot Act domestic surveillance opposition
Amendment 9
1. Opposes through supporting special rights and protections for alternative lifestyles and minorities
Amendment 10
1. Undermines by supporting large and powerful central government

Qualifications for job

Closeness to President? NO
i. Besides endorsing Obama early (in January 2008), the two don’t really seem to have much to do with each other. Their styles are very different.

Effective communication with diverse audiences? NO
i. Kerry’s elite upbringing and blue-blood show through, and his arrogance is likely to alienate the young and equally arrogant Obama.

Appropriate face of American foreign policy? NO
Kerry has made only a few calls in his long career in the service of America. He’s gotten 100% of them wrong.
1. Vietnam – supported Communist North Vietnam.
2. Vietnam – accused U.S. of war crimes (like Genghis Khan)
3. Nicaragua – supported Communist Sandinistas.
4. Iran-Contra – outed and discredited true hero Ollie North
5. Iraq – supported, then opposed, then supported (lost track)
6. Iraq – opposed surge, which worked.

Aggressively pursues American interests – NO
i. John Kerry, through ignorance or through design, actually seems to pursue America’s downfall. I have to believe it’s intentional, because if not, he’s the unluckiest S.O.B. of a gambler in history.

Final score?

John Kerry seems like the worst possible choice (even of these three crappy choices listed) for Secretary of State. If they had a cabinet department for clowns, he’d be a shoe-in.

Amen, Sir. Amen.

'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance.

We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.

We have abused power and called it politics.

We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!'

Rev. Billy Graham

Prayer for America

2008

The Hope and Change Cabinet: Secretary of State

The Job:
The Secretary of State is the highest ranking member of the Presidential Cabinet. He/she is the head of diplomatic efforts and official foreign affairs.

Contender #1: Governor Bill Richardson
Biography
Bill Richardson is a 60-year-old Latino and self-described Roman Catholic. He was born in Los Angeles California, but spent his youth in Massachusetts, where he attended Middlesex H.S. in Concord, then Tufts University in Medford, where he earned a B.A. in 1970. He subsequently earned a M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford in 1971.

After college, he immediately went to work for Massachusetts Congressman F. Bradford Morse. He then worked on congressional relations under Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon. He moved to New Mexico for the first time in 1978 to run for Congress as a Democrat in 1980. He lost. He tried again in 1982 and won this time, in a newly-created Congressional district. He served as a U.S. Representative from 1983 to 1997. In 1997, he succeeded Madeline Albright as U.N. Ambassador under then-President Clinton. He served in this post until 1998 when he was named Energy Secretary – a post he occupied until G.W. Bush took over in 2001.

He then returned to New Mexico, and began to work in several academic and corporate positions, until he ran a successful campaign for Governor in 2002, a position in which he remains. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Democratic nominee for President in 2008.

Positions on Life, Liberty, Property

Life

• Supports abortion on demand during any trimester for any reason
• Supports experimentation on human embryos

Liberty

• Supports the radical gay agenda and special protections for alternative lifestyles
• Supported and signed medical marijuana legislation in N.M.
  

Property

• Opposed Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that vastly expanded communities’ rights of imminent domain over private citizen property holders
• Supports punitive progressive and redistributionist taxation policies

Positions on Bill of Rights
Amendment 1:
o Opposes free speech & petition through lobbyists / special interests
o Supports free speech through a free and open internet
Amendment 2:
o Supports right to keep and bear arms
Amendment 4:
o Supports through resistance to Patriot Act domestic surveillance
Amendment 5:
o Supports through resistance to Kelo case
Amendment 9:
o Undermines by supporting special rights and protections for alternative lifestyles and minorities.
Amendment 10:
o Undermines by supporting large and powerful central government

Qualifications for job
1. Closeness to President? YES
Richardson ran against Obama in 2008. After suspending his campaign however, he eventually turned on his long-time friends, the Clintons, to support Obama, a decision for which he was labeled a “traitor” by long-time Clintonista James Carville. The two seem rather close, bonded more completely by this show of faith by Richardson.

2. Effective communication with diverse audiences? YES
Soft-spoken and calm, almost to a fault, Richardson gives the impression of a cool head under pressure.

3. Acceptable face of American foreign policy? YES
No stranger to the world diplomatic stage

4. Aggressively pursues American interests? NO
His two previous most high-profile diplomatic efforts in Sudan and Palestine/Israel were both complete failures.
His one notable success was in diminishing U.S. sovereignty by more completely tying us to ridiculous U.N. mandates for environmental goals.

The Hope and Change Cabinet: Introduction

It’s been said that you can know someone by the company they keep. Since our new President-elect has chosen not to reveal much about himself over the past 21 months of campaigning, we’ve had no alternative but to use this old axiom to try and define him. In that process, names like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and Louis Farrakhan kept popping up.

In the interest of moving forward, though, let’s just pretend that didn’t happen. Let’s just look forward to our new President’s administration. Over the next few weeks will follow what I hope will be a series of investigations into the people that are being mentioned for the main cabinet posts. Maybe by seeing what they’re all about, we’ll get a clue to the character of the Enigma in Chief.

Congratulations are in order.

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Barack Hussein Obama
President-elect of the United States

Don't fret, my friends. Long after this slimy Chicago marxist is gone, we will, God-willing, still be here. Still "bitter". Still "clinging" to guns, "clinging" to religion, and "clinging" to our antipathy to people who aren't like us (i.e. Commie terrorist apologists who think that the nearly 50% of us in this country who voted against him are simply ignorant rubes who stand in the way of his rightful ascendancy). Who knows? If we are strong, we may still even cling to that old, tattered wisp of the Constitution that remains after all his attempts to discredit and destroy it.

This fight is not over. It is now joined. Until and unless we are denied our God-given right to "petition Government for a redress of grievances", this blog and hundreds of others like it will continue to expose, continue to criticize, and continue to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign...and domestic". We will subject him and his socialist ideals and radical colleagues to twice the scrutiny we have endured during these last few dark years. One difference - we will actually tell the truth about what he says and stands for. And the set of ideas that make us unique and special will survive. Somewhere in the world, Liberty will survive. May God ordain that it will be here on this land.

Welcome to hell, Barry. You earned it.

*BREAKING NEWS*

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

- Barack Hussein Obama

Berlin, 2008

In a shocking development, reported by scientists in Australia, then confirmed by their colleagues across the globe, beleaguered Earth herself seems to be readying itself for the ascendancy of Senator Barack Hussein Obama to the position of President of the United States of America.

Since 0500 GMT yesterday, the oceans have dropped an average of 14.5 inches worldwide. An advisor close to the Obama campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that this was indeed the moment that the final poll results were in, and the Senator's win appeared finally to be inevitable.

"We kept trying to tell people", he said. "Maybe they will finally hear Mother Gaia's voice crying out now".

An Unprecedented Change:

Dr. Sydney Perthman, a climatologist and geologist working with the Australia Survey Project, spoke about the shocking findings. He and a team of researchers have been in the Australian outback since 2004, monitoring satellite images of Australia's coastline and comparing them with on-the-ground data and GPS locations.
"It was bizarre...shipwrecks have been popping up for the last couple of days at low tide. I don't know how to explain it." Dr. Perthman was reluctant to confirm whether he thought that Senator Obama's rise to power and prior promises about its effects on climate had anything to do with what he's been seeing. "It's a bit early for that sort of speculation", he said.

Change that brings Hope:

The ocean levels aren't the only thing changing. After recognizing the clear parallels between the dropping oceanic levels and improvements in Obama's chances, a series of other Obama prophecies have been examined. It appears that sick people, who have been without any care since mid-January of 2000, are now being seen by doctors again. Doctor groups are overjoyed. Adam Freidman, MD, assistant to the President of the American Medical Association, said "We've been sitting around for 8 years - just hoping and praying for something to do. Doctors had almost lost all touch with reality. Our art was dying. Then yesterday, like a flick of a switch, sick people. Lots and lots of sick people. All getting care. I don't know where they've been. I guess just riding out the last eight years in sick misery. Thank God it's better. This is truly a hopeful change!".

It doesn't stop there. In a stunning reversal to the lay-offs and corporate greed that have been the hallmark of recent months, the largest 10 companies in the U.S. announced that they would be offering 6- to 7-figure salaried V.P. positions to hundreds of currently jobless people. The time of the announcement sent shivers up the spine of the new VP for management at Pfizer corporation, Mark Groves, sitting on his old park bench covered with a newspaper - "This is just unf******believable, man. Truly, bro".

Stories are also coming out of the Brazilian rainforest as missionaries and environmentalists reach communication. They report that the rain forests, previously thought lost to irresponsible agricultural expansion, have experienced what has been described by some as a "Jack and the Beanstalk" kind of overnight growth. "The earth is actually starting to heal itself", said one ecologist with National Geographic Society's permanent facility in the region, "thank God America made the right choice."

Hope that brings change:

An unorthodox theory has been proposed by Dr. Charles Swootz, a professor of applied psychology at MIT. "It is at least possible that Obama has actually been correct in saying what had previously been thought a simple rhetorical flourish. We have been researching the possibility that positive thoughts effect the environment. Perhaps with this election process, the American people have actually begun to change their environment - through hope".

A muslim cleric, Louis Farakhan, disagrees. "The Earth simply is receiving its Mahdi - it's messiah. This was all foretold. The oceans and trees are celebrating with all humanity, the arrival of The One. Oh, and just wait until Inauguration Day - the crippled will walk, the blind will see...Oh. And whitey will be destroyed."

Regardless of the cause, this turnaround is truly phenomenal. We await more information.

The Fix is In. Those of You Who Love Liberty - Brace Yourselves

I shall not openly admit that this is over. Though it appears that things look bad. The Enemies of the Constitution have apparently gained the opportunity to "remake" our 232-year-old Republic into something that our forefathers would not have recognized. "How?", you ask? Through a successful combination of

(1) 50 years of race-baiting,

(2) 40 years of class-warfare-baiting,

(3) a government complicit in a fraudulent election a la A.C.O.R.N., and

(4) a public, largely so media-obsessed that they presented no resistance to the smooth operation of the empty eggshell of a campaign run by a self-described Marxist, class partisan, and terrorist symptathizer.

No, I shall not openly retreat. As a former Marine, I prefer to "attack in a different direction" (Col. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, Korea, 1951). I also swore an oath to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic". Because I take that very seriously, and because I sincerely believe that Barack Hussein Obama and the rest of his socialist atheist democrat colleagues are a threat to our Constitutution, I will try and prepare you all for what an Obama Administration can and very well may do to (and despite) our beloved Constitution.

Incidentally, here's a much better and more comprehensive treatment of Obama's record on the Constitution than I could ever produce.

Chris of Rights blog (excellent reading, incidentally)

_____________________________________

If the campaign and his past votes, statements, and actions are any indication, we can expect

1. An administration that squelches free speech (especially free speech that is disagreeable to him - that's "hate speech", by the way, punishable by law).
2. We should prepare, once again, to defend our right to bear arms - quite literally to the death, if necessary. May God forbid.
3. We should prepare for a further erosion of our civil liberties and civil rights...unless, of course, we are one of the "Special Americans" identified as fertile ground for unquestioning Democrat votes - homosexuals, minorities, atheists, and communists.
4. We should brace for a massive expansion of the central government and
5. We should prepare to see a massive increase in the amount of money we must give them to spend on their pet causes that undermine our economic and physical security.

Those of us who continue to believe in the ideals upon which this country was founded must make a decision, now. What will we do to best serve our nation and our families? Wait for the mid-term elections and hope for a 1994-style Gingrichesque backlash? Go survivalist and await the nearly inevitable decline of our society when Reed, Pelosi, Frank, Schumer, and Obama can not resist the temptation to raise taxes? Secede?

I don't know what to do or what to advocate. But I do know this. I will continue to teach my son about the country as it should have been. He needs to know what was great about our Republic before we gave it away to the worst kind of American - one who wants to make us mediocre like everybody else. And I will remain ever-vigilant, hoping to see some sign of life - like the first tender green shoot to spring up in the wasteland following a volcanic eruption or something - the undeniable evidence that Freedom and Liberty are growing in a new land. Then I will go there and help, and teach my children to help. And we will try not to repeat the mistakes that have led to this tragic loss of Liberty. Maybe we'll get it right next time.