Hillary articulates Libya position after Obama flubs his speech

After Obama gave his flat, no-affect, over-long TOTUS reading (of a speech probably drafted by the State Dept) last night and failed to convince most of the USA that preventing atrocity in Libya was actually something he cared about, Hillary today in London in less than one minute very clearly states the USA’s goals in Libya while addressing our allies.

“…make it clear to Gaddafi that he must go.”

hat tip JanH at hillaryis44

A Little News and Talk

It’s been a busy few weeks down here with the moose heard. Let’s see what’s been happening since I’ve been so busy. Um, so the middle east has completely changed. Did anyone see that happening.

The UN seeks access to the Libyan injured and dying:

The United Nations is calling on Libya to allow it immediate access to the rebel-held western city of Misrata, following reports of fighting and deaths in the area.

U.N. emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos said Sunday that people “are injured and dying and need help immediately.”  She also called on all sides of the conflict to “ensure that civilians are protected from harm.”

The U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the Red Crescent Society in Benghazi reported that Misrata, 200 kilometers east of Tripoli, is under attack by government forces, and that the Libyan Red Crescent is trying to get ambulances from Tripoli in to collect the dead and injured.

That’s a pretty bad sitiuation. Unlike the other middle eastern countries that have had changes and protests and the like, the Libyan government and military has met theirs with violence and apparently a goal of killing all of their citizens.

Apparently things aren’t really resolved in Egypt either. First the supposed interim government and really military don’t seem much different than before. And now there appears to be more attacking of protesters by “armed civilians” (read military or police out of uniform):

On Sunday, men in plain clothes armed with swords and petrol bombs confronted the pro-democracy activists after soldiers dispersed a Cairo rally they were holding to demand reform of the security services, eyewitnesses say.

“The army started firing in the air to disperse us,” Mohammed Fahmy told Reuters news agency.

“We tried to run away but we were met by 200 thugs in plain clothes carrying sharp weapons.”

Mr Fahmy put the number of protesters at 2,000.

Dismantling the security apparatus has been one of the key demands of the protest movement, the BBC’s Magdi Abdelhadi in Cairo says.

The events of the weekend have been described as the Egyptian storming of the Bastille, he says.

Let’s hope the military and the old politicians behind the scenes don’t do anything rash and let changes happen as they’ve promised. It’s not over and the Egyptians are not out of the woods by any means.

And allegedly because of all this unrest, gas prices are skyrocketing and will soon top $4/gal in the US:

For the first time since fighting in the Middle East sent gasoline prices skyrocketing, President Obama is thinking about tapping the country’s oil reserves.

“We’re looking at the options. The issue of the reserve is one we are considering,” Obama’s Chief of Staff Bill Daley said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But he added: “It is something that only is done and has been done on very rare occasions.”

He is talking about the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s along the Gulf coast and is America’s oil piggy bank. In underground salt domes, 727 million barrels of oil are stored. The oil is there to protect against a sudden cut off of supply.

“It should be tapped when, physically, the market is lacking oil. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near that,” Roger Diwan of PFC Energy told ABC News.

I’m sure that will help the economy is the US loads. Meanwhile the remaining Democrats are standing firm and drawing a line in the sand about the budget. And they really mean it this time. Yea, right:

Assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin drew a line in the sand on Sunday in his party’s budget battle with Republicans, who are pushing deep spending cuts to trim the federal deficit.

Durbin, one of President Barack Obama’s top allies in Congress, said he opposed going beyond the $10.5 billion in domestic, non-defense discretionary spending cuts that Democrats have backed.

Republicans want $61 billion in spending reductions.

“I think we’ve pushed this to the limit,” Durbin told the “Fox News Sunday” television program as Congress and the White House prepared for another week of showdowns that threaten a government shutdown.

“To go any further is to push more kids out of school,” Durbin said. “It stops the investment of infrastructure, which kills good-paying jobs right here in the United States.’

“I’m willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending,” Durbin said.

Any bets as to how long they pretend to be defending the budget. What theater. They want the same as the Republicans, for the moneybags behind them to be happy and to continue to keep them in office. Either way, neither party has our interests at heart.

And finally, Charlie Sheen is running his own internet talk show. Or soon will be. Yea, that’s what I said. If there ever were a sign that the entire US had jumped the shark, that would be it.

This is an open thread. Talk it up. No fighting. Or at least, not without proper boxing gloves.

Look, over there! Shiny object self-destructs!

I think the Charlie Sheen spectacle is just the latest in the media tradition of distracting people from real news, but this quiz in the Guardian is kinda funny. See if you can tell who said which. Since I’ve been zoning out both doodz, I totally flunked the test.

To be fair, Gaddafi is real news, as is the Libyan refugee crisis, and the fact that the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for assassinating Pakistan’s only Christian minister in government.

The Middle-East is in flux, and thank goodness we at least Hillary Clinton heading the State Department. If anyone can steer the USA through this with our interests intact and without another bloody, expensive, useless war, it’s Hillary. If only the boobs in DC would stop undermining her by cutting her budget, or attacking her to win nomination brownie points. Give it up, Ron Paul, you can’t win against Palin anyway, even if you did win the CPAC straw poll.

Tell me what you think the real news of the day is.

In historical reflection, it’s been 25 years since the Philippine People Power Revolution, and here is a thoughtful piece from Al Jazeera on how change is hollow if the culture of corruption persists.

(The new President is “Noynoy” Aquino, son of President Cory Aquino and the guy in checkered shirtsleeves is “Bongbong” Marcos, son of President Ferdinand Marcos. Funny how the nicknames so parallel.)

UPDATE: ralphb has an interesting link in the previous thread, Friends in Embarassing Places, about Gaddafi’s son Saif:

Photographs of his British friends and business partners cluster in a circle around him: Nat Rothschild, scion of the banking family, who gave a party for Saif when he completed his doctorate on “civil society” and “global governance” at the London School of Economics; Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE and one of Tony Blair’s economic envoys to Libya; Lord Peter Mandelson, a former Blair adviser, Cabinet minister, and European commissioner, who now advises “companies hoping to expand markets overseas”; Prince Andrew, who promotes British trade abroad; and, last but not least, Blair himself.

The super-rich are not like you and me; the bonds of wealth and power transcend plebian notions of patriotism and loyalty. In the days when monarchs ruled Europe, they traditionally called monarchs of other countries “cousin” whether they were related or not, because all royalty is closer to each other than they are to the masses. Similarly, the super-rich of America as a whole don’t care about our economy, or our country … they are not tied to it like we non-riche are.

This is an open thread.