Do we, who expect adherence to the principles of our founding, expect too much from our leaders?
President Obama has met resistance to the suggestion of Susan Rice as his new Secretary of State and the Left has countered with claims of racism and gender discrimination, moves that are Obama’s first lines of defense and as predictable as the tides.
Americans should expect a president to offer cabinet positions to people with moral integrity equal to his own; thus we should not be surprised with the Petraeus fiasco and the Fast and Furious felonies of Eric Holder. America realizes Rice lied to the American people on five different networks to protect the image of Obama and his competency. His boasts of neutralizing al-Qaeda following the assassination of Bin Ladin and the assertion that Libya was a noble war in that we enabled the overthrow of a dictator, who was a semi-reliable ally and helped install the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood who is a sworn enemy of the United States and Israel, were possible negative attributes before an election, despite the assurance of having the media in his pocket.
It is politics, and we can accept the fact that Rice is an Obama stooge. She willingly and knowingly participated in a coverup of the Benghazi atrocity, but all of the Obama appointees will lie for the president or they would not have their positions. However, Susan Rice has more troubling issues than lying to America as a part of the Benghazi coverup; she and her husband have oil investments with companies that have been trading with Iran in contradiction to the oil embargoes.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice and her husband own modest stakes in companies that have until recently done business with Iran, prompting new questions from those opposed to her possible nomination as secretary of state.
The companies are global conglomerates. At least some of them have stopped doing business with Iran in order to comply with international sanctions.
“With respect to Iran, Ambassador Rice worked to impose the toughest U.N. sanctions regime ever on Iran for its continued failure to live up to its obligations,” said Rice’s spokeswoman, Erin Pelton. “Iran is more isolated than it has ever been and facing the toughest economic pressure ever mustered.”
Pelton added that Rice “has complied with annual financial disclosure requirements aimed at assessing conflicts of interest related to her service in the U.S. government.”
One of the biggest of the holdings, between $50,000 and $100,000, according to Rice’s disclosure statement for 2011, is Royal Dutch Shell. The international oil giant stopped buying crude oil from Iran early this year as sanctions were tightened to block oil exports by Iran and to stop financial transactions with its central bank.
A company spokesman said officials dealing with Iran could not be reached, but a person familiar with the company, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to discuss the topic, said Royal Dutch Shell owes Iran about $1 billion.
Rice and her husband also own between $15,000 and $50,000 of stock in ENI, the Italian international oil company. ENI has said that it is no longer doing business with Iran, but it has a waiver from sanctions to enable it to collect oil as payment for about $1 billion Iran owes the company from earlier business deals. The company had been purchasing crude oil and developing natural gas fields.
Could the close financial ties with Iran affect her aggressiveness in dealing with Iran? Would her financial dealings with oil in the Middle East influence her opinions on Iran. Is her oil money dirty money like the money from oil earned by Republicans or is it “clean” oil money of the Progressive type.
If someone had impeccable moral integrity, they might be considered above such beyond such considerations, but we must remember, we are dealing with an Obama stooge who feels no remorse for lying to the American public during a time of mourning and humiliation to protect the image of the omnipotent Obama.
Yes, Rice was a Rhodes Scholar and she is extremely wealthy; she and her husband seem to have made a fortune in oil and logging without the ugly stain attached to Republicans with similar portfolios. It is ironic how such minor blemishes like oil, logging, and lying don’t affect Democrats in the public eye or the media.
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Good morning Skook. In answer to your first question, I suppose we must expect too much, and we are sadly outnumbered by those who are satisfied with the path we’re on. It will be interesting to watch, when the liberals that think a great job is getting done in Washington, finally realize bad things don’t just happen to “the other guy”, and we conservatives turn our backs to them while reminding them they got exactly what they wanted.
Susan Rice’s history shows that she is a cold-blooded enabler of murder. Rwanda:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/12/susan_rice_bystander_to_genoci.asp
It’s all about the politics with her. People are just insects to such an individual. She’s actually something of a monster. In this administration she fits right in.
In Libya, forty of our people at the unguarded consulate were abandoned to their fates by this administration, and only saved by two contractors who disobeyed their orders and went over from the CIA annex to rescue them. We ended up losing two people at the consulate, but if not for these men we would have lost twenty times as many. The two rescuers died later that night defending the CIA annex.
Abandoned to preserve a pretty illusion of non-existent progress and competence. Lied about afterwards for the same reason. Rice’s recent behavior is completely consistent with her history back in the Clinton administration. She’s happy to be a tool.
Top of the morning to you Scott. The lead question was a rhetorical question, of course. However, we seem to have lowered our expectations for the Obama Bunch; the political lackey will by definition never measure up if we expecting the reactions of a statesman from people in positions of authority and influence. We accept mediocrity as the highest level of competency, ignorance, hypocrisy, and corruption are accepted. We have lowered our standards in order to be considered politically correct. People in the most infamous Leftist regimes were sent away to Gulags to be reeducated until they were considered to be politically correct. A more appropriate might be whether we fear being politically incorrect for the direction of our statism and the inevitable end result of the journey. Is this the threat that causes our politicians to cower at the thought of calling out Obama and his stooges on their transgressions, are they afraid the racist and misogynist names will brand them as enemies of the state. We seem to forget the villainy used to defame the other Rice during her nomination, but Democrats have a huge media complex to cover for them, so what.
Wm T Sherman
in the sequestration files, they put cuts on DIPLOMATS EMBASSY even more,
is in it terrible, to have witness the 4 death in BENGHASI
and for-see more death of DIPLOMATS where they leave the protection of their EMBASSY, by locals who are underpaid and hate AMERICANS, and run away at the first danger.
bye
@Wm T Sherman: Great link on Rice and her true feelings of fake compassion:
Bees, the attacks in Libya were not from lack of resources to provide security. There were abundant security resources available to the State Department but they were prohibited from service in Behghazi in the months before the final attacks, despite a series of smaller attacks leading up to the September 11 disaster.
Also, beware that one of the Leftist talking points post-Benghazi was that Republicans introduced legislation to cut the State Department’s budget and therefore are responsible for the disaster. Simply not true. For one thing, it’s irrelevant because the Senate hasn’t passed a budget in four years; the government runs on monthly resolutions that help to obfuscate total spending. But mainly, the fact is that State is generously funded but they choose to squander money on things like providing electric cars to embassy staff.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/11/Austrian-Embassy-Kept-Marines-and-Got-More-Budget-for-Chevy-Volts-While-State-Dept-Cut-Libyan-Security
High spending and Marine detachments for safe embassies in Europe, but a shoestring budget and no Marines for a dangerous station in Libya.
@Skook:
Fixed it.
Rice for Secretary of State!
(Hillary needs more time to pursue her Muslim Brotherhood outreach program, ably assisted by Huma Abedin.)
@Wm T Sherman: While taking a shower, I was wondering what the politically correct phrase for tens of thousands of murders and hacked up body parts is now. Is it man-made disaster? We should call in Napolitano to give us the correct term for homicidal maniacs running amuck and causing untold death and destruction.
Lots of Americans who held European energy mutual funds were inadvertantly invested in companies that did business with Iran.
Even other politicians, like John McCain held some of those stocks.
So, that, in itself, should not be the disqualifier.
What Rice did in front of cameras should be the disqualifier.
And, what Rice did in advising Bill Clinton about the genocide of 500,000 people in Rwanda should be the disqualifier.
Obama looked around for his highest-ranked yes-man and chose her.
Bill Clinton called following her advice on Rwanda (vote present) the biggest mistake of his 8 year presidency.
Her race, her sex have nothing to do with it.
Nan G wrote… “Her race, her sex have nothing to do with it.”
Awww geez Nan, we can’t just point out her real actions, can we? Really, everyone knows we conservatives are only bitching because the government is over-run with minorities and females and all of our complaining and gnashing of teeth has nothing to do with what’s really going on…
Yes, Nan, they should be held in blind trusts and the oil companies should be environmentally aware; otherwise it is dirty money from “oil”. Democrats are above things like oil money and sugar in Ketchup. Don’t tell Bloomberg that Heinz uses sugar as a main ingredient of Ketchup. It is the hypocrisy of the whole situation starting with the first Rice nomination. That is the trouble with playing stupid politics, your former actions come around to haunt you in the future.
Obviously, when you have the reins of the politically correct vehicle it is an advantage, but history is just a page or two behind you.
Wm T Sherman
yes, and also there is the fact that OBAMA BELIEVED THE LIBYAN LEADER WHO ASK for not visible AMERICANS security, while STEVEN THE EMBASSADOR WAS ASKING FOR AMERICAN SECURITY,
SO, strangely like the AFRICAN SLAUGHTER OF THE PEOPLE,
OBAMA CHOOSE TO AGREE WITH THE LIBYAN LEADER INSTEAD OF CHOOSING AN AMERICAN DIPLOMAT MULTIPLE DEMANDS, which end up being kill brutally , along with the also precious SEALS,
which OBAMA is totally responsible, because he had killed one leader terrorist alqaeda just before the attack,
remember they burned OBAMA image and the AMERICAN FLAG, AND REPLACED IT WITH THEIR BLACK FLAGS
WHAT DO WE CALL THAT FOR WHAT IT IS, TREASON
The Sec of State nominee is presented by Obama to the Senate. The Senate approves or rejects the nominee by a simple majority. The incoming Senate will have 53 democrats, 45 republicans, and 2 independents, who lean democrat.
Do the math.
Grace are you a math instructor? Perhaps we need a remedial lesson or maybe we should read the filibuster rules.
Have you read much history?
Maybe with a Senate majority, Republicans should just give up and declare Obama our first Imperial President, because I will guarantee you the regulars on this blog can do your simple math and considerably more. Now do you have something else to astound us with?
Skook: It’s just not the math. It’s also a question of prioritizing issues. Filibuster the vote on a cabinet nominee? If you really want to, but don’t forget the nuclear option may be unleashed. And what’s with all these RINOs yakking on TV about how John Kerry would be an ideal sec of state? Have they forgotten Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry?
That’s the problem: He is appointing people with moral integrity equal to his own.
Let’s pass a law that says all politicians have to list all of their worth, where it came from, and where they have it. I’m tired of the democrats condemning wealthy republicans, and the democrat is wealthier than the republican they are condemning. They condemn anyone who drives an SUV, but I challenge anyone to find a democrat that DOESN’T own an SUV.
They must really hate my four door Ford F-150 pickup. My excuse is that it was a necessity. I bought an ATV, then found out it wouldn’t fit in the trunk of my Toyota Camry. TAKE MEASUREMENTS BEFORE YOU BUY! I had to buy the pickup so it would fit in the bed.
Well, well, well, none of my Conservative friends, other than Smorgasbord, appreciate the hypocrisy of the oil investments of Rice, but the Progressives are fired up over the hypocrisy and the conflict of interest:
I never thought I would appreciate a view held by the Progressive Communists.
@grace nearing:
When Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress for two full years (2009-2011), there were some pieces of legislation favored by the Democrat leadership, e.g. Cap and Trade, that could not be passed because some Democrats feared that it would cost them the next election. A simple majority in the Senate is not the whole story of the fate of Rice’s nomination. If she’s too toxic to their constituents, some Democrat senators could bail out on her. The more widely known the truth about her history becomes, the more toxic she becomes.
There does not have to be a political cost to defeating her nomination – just the opposite.
With the effort spent on obfuscation by the Administration and the compliant media, it is inevitable that conjecture and suspicions abound. Here is an article which lays out a scenario which is as plausible as anything we have been presented by the Administration on the events surrounding Benghazi in two parts: Benghazi explained: Interview with an “Intelligence Insider”
JR, that is a fascinating link. It is the first scenario that makes sense of the whole Middle Policy. Ironic that Obama and his team are so willfully tied to “evil” oil, in stark opposition to their constituency. Is it no wonder he wants to strangle the oil business on public lands in the U.S., and all for the Saudis. He is setting the stage for WWIII by being a stooge for Saudi Arabia if the article is correct and it is hard to dispute.
@Skookum: #20,
As I’m sure you do, I read articles like that one, applying even more scepticism to my filters than usual, and I attempt to allow room for intuition to inform. Many of the elements presented seemed to ring true, others appear peculiar. Today’s news seems to bring further credence to some of Hagman’s narrative.