David Brooks, "Hillary Clinton’s Opportunist Solution!": Congrats, David, You're on Hillary's Hit-List

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In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Hillary Clinton’s Opportunist Solution!," David Brooks lambastes Hillary's opportunism. Brooks observes:

• "She’ll say what she needs to say now to become Bernie Sanders in a pantsuit."
• "When she announced her opposition [to the Trans-Pacific Partnership] to Judy Woodruff on the 'PBS NewsHour' she was performing a flip-flop of the sort that leaves gymnasts gaping and applauding."
• "[Hillary's flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership] suggested a whole style of campaigning and method of governing based on the principle of unprincipledness."

Congratulations, David, you're now on Hillary's hit-list - yes, it has been alleged that she keeps the names on a spreadsheet - and although my belief is that the email scandal should have ended her presidential campaign months ago, this could still prove a very dangerous place to be.

I would only add that Hillary is not alone when it comes to governing on the "principle of unprincipledness." Hillary has a soulmate in Vladimir Putin, and a new Washington Post opinion piece entitled "How America can counter Putin’s moves in Syria" by Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates is well worth reading.

A flip side to Brooks's flip-flop allegations? In a Times op-ed entitled "It’s All Benghazi," Paul Krugman writes:

"I often wonder about commentators who write about things like those hearings as if there were some real issue involved, who keep going on about the Clinton email controversy as if all these months of scrutiny had produced any evidence of wrongdoing, as opposed to sloppiness."

All these months of scrutiny have produced no evidence of wrongdoing? Sorry, Paul, but don't you think that before reaching a conclusion, we should wait until Hillary and friends produce all the emails? And maybe - just maybe - we should also wait to hear the results of the FBI investigation?

Meanwhile, as reported in a Washington Free Beacon article entitled "Emails Suggest Clinton Pushed Libyan Business Interests of Off-the-Books Adviser" by Lachlan Markay and Brent Scher:

"A Hillary Clinton confidante and informal adviser used his direct access to the then-secretary of state to promote his business interests in Libya during that country’s 2011 unrest, newly released documents reveal.

According to a letter from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., Okla.), chairman of the House panel investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, Clinton internally raised the possibility of employing American security contractors, one of which Sidney Blumenthal had a direct financial interest in.

In a letter last week to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee, Gowdy also reveals that Blumenthal, who frequently emailed Clinton regarding the security situation in Libya, sent an email to Clinton’s personal address containing the name of a Central Intelligence Agency source in Libya.

'This information, the name of a human source, is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but also human lives,' Gowdy wrote."

Revealing the name of a CIA source to Hillary via a personal email address amounts to mere "sloppiness"? Sorry, Paul, I don't think so. At least not in my neck of the woods.

Maureen Dowd, "Condi’s Lesson": Two Strains of Rice

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Condi’s Lesson" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/dowd-condis-lesson.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), Maureen Dowd notes that Condoleezza Rice has decided not to speak at the Rutgers commencement this year as a consequence of student protests. Making reference to Rice's involvement in the George W. Bush administration's disastrous Second Gulf War, Dowd concludes:

"We’ll never know if she could have stopped W. from ruining his presidency and destroying so many lives when there was no national security stake.

We only know that when you sell your soul, it’s not like a pawnshop. Condi thought she could reclaim it after she was secretary of state and bring W. back to the light of diplomacy and common sense. But, as Russell Baker once noted, she was trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, spinning her wheels in the second term trying to undo the disasters of the first.

What a wonderful lesson she could have taught those graduates about the perils of succeeding at any cost, about how moral shortcuts never lead to the right place."

"The perils of succeeding at any cost"? Well, Dowd could also have said several words about Samantha Power, author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," who currently serves as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, but who has refrained from criticism of American inaction involving genocide in Syria.

And then there is also Susan Rice, who took to the airwaves in order to hawk Obama's false narrative concerning the attack on the Benghazi consulate, i.e. it was all the fault of the Internet video.

Moral shortcuts never lead to the right place? Never say never. Susan Rice was subsequently promoted by Obama to United States National Security Advisor.

Hillary Clinton? Was there ever a soul to sell, or just vacuous self-interest homing in on the White House? Damn Bill's libido, full speed ahead!

Where does any of it lead? I don't know. Meanwhile, however, we are forced to live within our own skins, or, with regard to many aspiring political types, within their own scales.

Condoleezza Rice for President?

Intelligent, eloquent and powerful. Doesn't need a teleprompter as she advocates intervention in Syria.