Spain Socialists Brace for Humiliating Defeat

With unemployment over 21%, it's a surprise anyone would vote for Socialism. How many time must it be demonstrated that Socialism doesn't work and has never worked?

The ruling Socialist Party braced itself for stinging losses in regional and municipal elections Sunday amid unprecedented street protests that have caught the imagination of the nation.

The elections are a key test of how much the party's support has crumbled due to soaring unemployment and its handling of the financial crisis, and are seen as a prelude to general elections next year.

More than 34 million people are eligible to vote while in the background a growing protest movement has illustrated the strong disillusionment felt by Spaniards toward both main parties and what they call a political system that favors economic interests over citizens.

"I call for, encourage and appeal for a responsible, big turnout in these May 22 regional and municipal elections in all of Spain," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said as he emerged with his wife from casting his ballot.

Voter turnout by 2 p.m. stood at 35.9 percent, 1.7 percent higher than at the same time in similar elections in 2007, the electoral commission said.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Polls indicate Zapatero's party could suffer the humiliation of losing historic Socialist strongholds.

The financial crisis has forced deep cuts and left Spain burdened with 21.3 percent unemployment, the highest of any nation using the Euro as its currency. The jobless rate among the young stands at 40 percent and a total of 4.9 million people are out of work in Spain, the highest number since 1997.

A large proportion of those in work earn just €1,000 ($1,400) or less per month.

Spain is forecasting limp growth of just 1.3 percent for itself in 2011, but even the Bank of Spain has rated that prediction as optimistic.

Protests have swept across Spain. Let's hope today the Socialists get swept out.

Bay Area IVAW Jerkoffs Celebrate Independence Day By Burning American Flag

A shame none of these assholes caught fire themselves.

IVAW, woooo!

This group of alleged "veterans" is merely a socialist front group.

H/T CollegePolitico.

While Obama Panders to Mexico, Stock Market Tanks

Hey, Obama. While you're busy trashing Arizona and the U.S. in general, the market is dropping like a rock and new unemployment claims jumped.

A weeklong rout in stocks deepened, with U.S. benchmark indexes losing the most in more than a year, as reports cast doubts about the strength of the economic recovery and European leaders struggled to contain the region’s debt crisis. Commodities plunged and Treasuries soared.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index plunged 3.9 percent to 1,071.59 at 4 p.m. in New York, its biggest drop since April 2009. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index lost 2.2 percent and the S&P GSCI Index of commodities tumbled to the lowest since October. The losses accelerated even as the euro rallied as much as 1.5 percent to $1.2598 after earlier flirting with a four-year low. Ten-year Treasury yields sank to the lowest level of the year, down 15 basis points at 3.22 percent. The yen rallied against all 16 major counterparts.

Tomorrow’s expiration of U.S. stock options and progress on a financial-reform bill may have added to volatility after U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly increased to 471,000 last week and the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators posted a surprise drop of 0.1 percent. The slide came a day before the German parliament votes on the country’s share of a $1 trillion bailout to halt a worsening sovereign debt crisis.

“Put your helmets on if you are long risk here,” Nicolas Lenoir, chief market strategist at ICAP Futures LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey, said in a note to clients before markets opened today. “A lot of stops have been triggered when the S&P future crossed 1,100 and anybody still long will probably have to bail out and head for cover.”

The market is discounting for a double dip recession in the U.S. and the possible collapse of the EU in the near future.

And all the while, The One is focused on ignoring the illegal immigration problem, trashing Arizona, punishing banks and pushing his socialist agenda.

I see absolutely nothing coming from Washington at this time that would encourage economic growth. Yet one way out of the growing debt crisis is to have rapid economic growth and dwarf the debt with rising incomes and revenue generation.

However, that is beyond the grasp of your modern socialist.

So get ready for nil economic growth, constant high unemployment and a falling standard of living as long as Obama's current polices are being implemented.

That is the new "normal" with Obama in the White House.

'She Thinks He is Really a Socialist in Disguise'

Honestly, I don't think he's disguising it very well. Whatever the case, Angelina Jolie may not want to be holding out for any invitations to the White House any time soon.

Angelina Jolie isn't happy with the state of politics today … and that includes President Barack Obama.

"She hates him," a source close to the actress said in the latest issue of Us Weekly magazine. "She's into education and rehabilitation and thinks Obama is all about welfare and handouts. She thinks Obama is really a socialist in disguise."

Despite her displeasure with the leader of the Democrats, the 34-year-old actress is reportedly not a Republican like her father, actor Jon Voight.

Jolie, who has been a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador since 2001, is said to think the President is all "smoke and mirrors."

Voter Fraud In Upstate New York

This isn't just a case of fraudulently registering a bunch of fictitious people to vote to get a bonus from your ACORN boss. This is real voter fraud and it of course involves Democrats, whose win by any means necessary mentality continues to push their rabid Kool-Aid drinking minions to engage these types of acts.

Lambersten's lawyer, David Gruenberg, calls what happened "the worst case of election fraud that I have seen in 32 years of practice" in Troy. "It goes far beyond what I have seen before because it involves fraudulently casting votes for individuals." He says the fraud was carried out by "individuals associated and working with the Democratic candidates ... they are working to get the WFP lines for their candidates in the general election."

This story is unfolding in upstate New York and it involves a group of people submitting absentee ballots for some real citizens. Citizens who did not vote or were denied their right to vote based on an absentee ballot already being on record for them.

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out -- enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats in the general election.

This article is skimpy on details explaining exactly what the importance the Working Families Party is, but in if I am understanding it correctly, it is a sort of third-party which allows candidates from the two other major political parties to campaign under, even though it appears designed primarily to be a surrogate for the Democrats. What the Democrats would do is put their 'A' team candidates on the Democrat ticket and their 'B' team on the Working Families Party. The Republicans are allowed to put candidates on this party also. The Democrat's intent, and if what appears to have happened happened, is they were able to stack the deck with double the number of candidates.

I cannot figure out why, if they already had the deck stacked, they felt the need to further engage actual voter fraud. But I forget, this is Democrats we are talking about, who for so long have gotten by with so much that they no longer see any problem with the way they run elections.

"It's not the person who votes that counts, rather the person who counts the votes" said by somebody smarter then me.

JWF Updates: The Working Families Party is a hard-left socialist group joined at the hip with ACORN. Scroll down in the Fox News link for this.

The Working Families Party has recently gained strength, and controversy, in New York. Republican and Democratic candidates in the Empire State can also run on third party lines, such as the Working Families Party, as well as the Liberal, Conservative, and Independence parties, among others. The extra line means extra votes that could bring victory.

Hillary Clinton garnered 2.7 percent of her total votes from the WFP line when she first ran for Senate in 2000, which increased to 5 percent of her total vote in 2006. In September, Clinton's former campaign manager for her 2000 Senate run, New York City Councilman Bill DeBlasio, who has been endorsed by the WFP, beat two long-established politicians in the Democratic primary. Critics also accuse the Working Families Party of having a long association with the troubled activist group, ACORN. Bertha Lewis, ACORN's CEO, is one of the party's co-founders. The New York Times reported this month that "Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with ACORN in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party's board with Ms. Lewis."

The WFP has also endorsed New York Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was one of only seven Senators who voted against cutting federal housing funds to ACORN in September.

Is it any wonder why the White House is attacking Fox News?

'We Could Run Santa Claus Against Them, and We're Going To Win'

You might remember the Working Families Party, the goon squad that pulled that lame bus tour harassing employees of AIG several weeks ago. Well, to no surprise, they've become very cozy with Democrats and helped them gain control of the New York State Senate.

Now, however, they've become a bit of an albatross. Good luck distancing yourselves from them.

WRACKED by a wicked hangover after a binge of wild budgeting, Democrats in Albany have opened their eyes to the behemoth lying in their bed and refusing to leave.

It's the Working Families Party -- the left-wing coalition of organized labor and ACORN activists -- which seduced Democrats with its potent field operations and helped bring them to power in the Senate for the first time in generations.

Now, the WFP is demanding a long-term relationship -- to the alarm of Democrats, whose more moderate constituents back home are threatening to split. Democrats worry that the force behind their takeover of the Senate last year is sowing the seeds of their downfall.

Aww, isn't that a shame. Hey, you get in bed with socialists, then don't be surprised when they won't leave in the morning. In fact, they're not just not leaving, they're moving into your house and bringing their extended family (read: ACORN) with them.

Suckers!

Privately, they fear that the backlash against the WFP-orchestrated state budget -- with its 9 percent spending hike and $8 billion in new taxes and fees -- has jeopardized their hold on at least three upstate seats, giving Republicans a dangerous opening.

Returning to their districts in places like Buffalo and Syracuse, lawmakers were met with a surprisingly hostile reception from their local newspapers and Democratic activists.

"They're furious that our response to solving the problem is to raise taxes. They don't think we've cut enough, and they don't think we're doing things differently," says one Democratic lawmaker. "Now there's an arsenal of ammunition that the Republican minority will no doubt use to take back the Senate next year."

With voters pointing fingers at them, Democrats are pointing at the WFP. Says another Democratic lawmaker: "A lot of members were surprised by how much money we spent. There's going to be a backlash against some of the people who were advocating for these kinds of changes."

Republicans, naturally, agree. "We could run Santa Claus against them, and we're going to win. They are totally captive to an ultra-radical agenda," a GOP source told me.

Read the rest.

Linked at Instapundit. Thanks!

Media Outnumber Mob Protesters on AIG Bus Tour

Apparently the Working Families Party (a/k/a/ Socialists) just couldn't scare up enough vigilantes to take part on the bus tour today. Geez, even Al Sharpton can gather up a larger rent-a-mob.

Rather than call this motley band of human debris what they are, the Associated Press calls them "working families" and "activists," although by my definition those who work for AIG also qualify as working families since they have jobs and seemingly most of these protesters don't.

Funny, though, after the Democrats whipped up such hysteria this week all they could get to turn out was 40 lonely protesters and they were outnumbered by the media.

A busload of activists representing working- and middle-class families paid visits Saturday to the lavish homes of American International Group executives to protest the tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded by the struggling insurance company after it received a massive federal bailout.

About 40 protesters — outnumbered by reporters and photographers from as far away as Germany — sought to urge AIG executives who received a portion of the $165 million in bonuses to do more to help families.

"We think $165 million could be used in a more appropriate way to keep people in their homes, create more jobs and health care," said Emeline Bravo-Blackport, a gardener.

Well, there may have been jobs created, but the Democrats are taking all that money, Emeline, or haven't you heard? Oh well, there go those jobs.

She marveled at AIG executive James Haas' colonial house, which has stunning views of a golf course and the Long Island Sound. The Fairfield house is "another part of the world" from her life in nearby Bridgeport, which flirted with bankruptcy in the 1990s and still struggles with foreclosures and unemployment."

"Lord, I wonder what it's like to live in a house that size," she said.

Heck, maybe some day if she worked hard enough she could find out.

Another protester, Claire Jeffery, of Bloomfield, said she's on the verge of foreclosure. She works as a housekeeper; her husband, a truck driver, can't find work.

"I love my home," she said. "I really want people to help us."

Maybe you can swing by Chris Dodd's lavish house and see if he can help you.

Besides Haas' home, protesters on Saturday also visited the Fairfield home of AIG executive Douglas Poling. They were met both times by security guards.

If they came by my house they'd be greeted by water cannons and flamethrowers.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

Update: Turnabout is fair play. Here's a look at some of these agitators.

Thanks also to Hot Air and Moe Lane for the links.

Confirmed: Obama Was Member of Radical Socialist 'New Party'

This won't make a dent with the Kool-Aid drinkers and in fact will probably just boost the empty suit's street cred with the hard left. But since the Democrats and their surrogates want to persist on dredging up the Sarah Palin/AIP nonstory, well, then we can play their game.

In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. The admittedly Socialist Organization experienced a moderate rise in numbers between 1995 and 1999. By 1999, however, the Socialist 'New Party' was essentially defunct after losing a supreme court challenge that ruled the organizations "fusion" reform platform as unconstitutional.

The Obama folks are good at scrubbing damaging web pages from their site and intimidating people in order to try and prevent damaging information from being aired, but they apparently weren't able to completely cleanse the web of links to this radical Chicago outfit.

New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.

Priot to that they noted Obama here.

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).

Curious also is Obama's strong suit, according to this item, which happens to be voter registration. Hmm, some ACORN links, anyone?

Barack Obama, victor in the 13th State Senate District, encouraged NPers to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration.

So we now know Obama belonged to an openly Socialist party. Now, will he claim this defunct organization was lying by claiming him as a member?

H/T Nick Rizzuto.

DBKP has more. Gateway Pundit has another source on this as well.

Update: I see this has made it up the blog foodchain.

Good. Like I said earlier, it'll be ignored, but it's better to start piecing together Obama's radical ties a bit more so we can say we told them so later.

And we will.

German Socialists Seeking Their Own Obama

I'll make them a deal. They can have the original.

Can Germany's Social Democrats find a Barack Obama of their own to revive their party?

At a recent rally in Nuremberg, Hubertus Heil, the deputy leader in the struggling SPD, tried to inject a bit of the charisma and can-do spirit of the Democratic presidential candidate by asking delegates to chant: "Yes, we can".

It didn't go down well.

After a moment of mumbled 'Yes, Vee Kahn", the English chants fizzled out. But since that rally in late May, German media and dispirited members of the centre-left SPD, which has slumped to post-war lows in opinion polls, have been asking: "Where's our Obama?"

Some on the left think Berlin's popular Mayor Klaus Wowereit might be the best hope to give the SPD a lift in the way Obama's historic candidacy has helped boost the U.S. Democrats.

I have to laugh when they call Marxists centre-left. Anyway, what does it tell you when a Communist party is seeking their own Obama?

Moonbats and Economics

Extra! Extra! Socialists and moonbats (I know, redundant) discover the economic reality that you get more of what you pay for.

EU rethinks biofuels guidelines

Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production.

So, as food products are forced into fuel production, thus raising demand, prices escalated, thus encouraging supply. As a result, more forest has apparently been cleared to produce the needed output.

But that is seen has harming the poor (no mention yet of the impact on women and minorities, but I'm sure that is coming) or the environment. What is a perplexed moonbat policymaker to do?

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment.

"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," Mr Dimas told the BBC.

So, let me get this straight. Maybe, just maybe, drilling and refining of crude oil is the better way to go?

Friends don't let friends operate on socialism.

Agree With al-Goracle Or STFU

CSSD: Klaus should not present climate view at UN
Prague, Sept 13 (CTK) - Czech opposition Social Democrats (CSSD) leader Jiri Paroubek has sent an open letter to President Vaclav Klaus calling on him not to present his personal opinions on global warming on the United Nations soil, the CSSD told CTK.

Klaus is going to debunk the myth of global warming in his speech at a U.N. conference on September 24.

Paroubek wrote he feared that Klaus's opinions might be perceived as the Czech Republic's official stance.

Klaus is known as a fierce challenger of both the human factor in and the widely forecast effects of global warming. He opposes the views advocated by people like Al Gore, arguing that the "hysteria" surrounding the warming issue threatens freedom and democracy.

One of his slogans is that freedom, not climate is endangered.

Earlier this year, he published "Blue, Not Green Planet," a book summarizing his opinions challenging some scenarios of the planet's further development with regard to global warming.

Paroubek wrote that Klaus should realise he is the president of all citizens, not only those who share his opinions.

"You [Klaus] have no mandate to present there [at the U.N. conference] your personal opinions on the given issue," Paroubek wrote.

Heh. Nothin' like having a progressive Socialist with their panties in a knot.

Paroubek also stressed that an overwhelming majority of experts agree that climatic changes occur.

Klaus has already been criticised for his intention to present his opinions in the U.N. by Environment Minister Martin Bursik.

Bursik (Greens) said Klaus's initiative might endanger the Czech Republic's plan to become an elected member of the U.N. Security Council at the turn of 2007/2008.

In actuality, what might endanger the Czech's chances to become an elected member of the Security Council, is that Klaus is not an anti-Semite.

via The Prague Monitor

Czech President Vaclav Klaus at the CATO Institute
March 9, 2007

transcript

Euro-Socialists: We'd Rather Die Than Accept American Help

Proving once again socialism is a mental disorder.

Central Europe Socialists reject U.S. missile shield

Central European Social Democrat parties rejected on Thursday a U.S. plan to build part of its missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying it threatened to bring about a new arms race.

Top Socialists from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia said after talks in Prague that any such system must not be built unilaterally or bilaterally.

"We are concerned about the decision to deploy the system and are at one with the large majority of our populations in rejecting it," the parties said in a joint statement, which was signed among others by Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, Germany's SPD chief Kurt Beck, and Polish Socialist leader Wojciech Olejniczak.

They called on the European Union, the NATO alliance and the NATO-Russia council to consult on missile defense.

Beck said the statement was also a message to conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom the Socialists jointly rule.

"We agreed we are against any new arms build-up in Europe," Beck said.

The ruling Hungarian Socialists attended the meeting but refused to join in.

"The Hungarian Socialist Party believes that if Europe is exposed to a terrorist threat we have to defend ourselves," said Imre Szekeres, deputy party chief and the country's defense minister.

I'm sure the terrorists are quaking in fear of the Hungarian Socialists.

This odd mindset of leaving yourself vulnerable because you fear an arms race is something I can't quite grasp.

If you protect yourself, that should lessen the fear of an attack, since your enemies will build arms regardless of what you do.

No wonder Socialism has crept toward the dustbin of history. The shame is there are still enough idiots practicing it.

Socialists Trounced

President Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right camp was on course to win a landslide victory in Parliament Sunday after the first round of France's legislative elections, cementing his power to implement reforms in Europe's third-largest economy.

The Union for a Popular Movement obtained 41.3 percent of the vote, according to preliminary estimations by the CSA polling institute, a score that is expected to give the party between 360 and 470 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly after the second round of voting June 17, three pollsters said.

The main opposition camp, the Socialist Party, received an estimated 27.2 percent, putting it on course for 60 to 170 seats, pollsters said, reinforcing the sense of disarray that has reigned on the left ever since Ségolène Royal lost to Sarkozy in last month's presidential race.

Sarkozy's party, which has set itself the unofficial goal of winning 400 seats, has been widely expected to obtain a comfortable majority, but the preliminary results Sunday exceeded even optimistic forecasts.

It is the first time since 1978 that an outgoing parliamentary majority is re-elected, a result favored by a recent change to synchronize the presidential and parliamentary terms. But with the Gaullist camp set to expand its dominance in Parliament from the current 359 seats, commentators said the result was also a sign that French voters trusted Sarkozy to jolt their country out of a collective sense of decline.

Amazing what tax cuts and a sense of law and order can do.

Even in France.

Socialists Face Wipe-out In French election

Reeling from Segolene Royal's defeat in the presidential race, France's Socialist Party (PS) faces the prospect of a humiliating wipe-out in this weekend's legislative elections which look set to deliver a huge majority for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Can you smell the Citroen and Peugot bonfires, yet?

A month after Sarkozy's victory, France returns to the polls Sunday for the multi-candidate round of a two-stage election to choose the 577 members of the National Assembly, the lower chamber of parliament. The second round takes place on June 17.

Already in a minority in the Assembly, the PS appears bound for another five years in opposition -- with the latest opinion poll showing that it can expect no more than 29 percent of the first round vote compared to 41.5 percent for Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

Anyone seen Karl Rove?

The only question is likely to be the size of the party's defeat. In the worst case scenario it will lose many of its existing 149 members and sink to depths last plumbed in 1993, when in a dramatic electoral collapse it returned just 67 law-makers.

As French historian and intellectual Max Gallo said, "Sarkozy's victory [was] that of reality over utopia."Even with their members leaving the fold, the Left still doesn't get it.

The Joys of Progressivism

A prominent French Socialist is not very optimistic about the future.

A leading French Socialist on Monday expressed hope that the party will not suffer too heavy a defeat in the coming parliamentary elections that could kill off any chance for renewal.

Former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn made the candid admission during a campaign swing through the Lyon region ahead of the June 10-17 elections.

"It would be reasonable to think that the left is not going to win a majority in the National Assembly," said Strauss-Kahn, who lost the Socialist nomination for the presidential vote to Segolene Royal.

Calling on the party to engage in serious soul-searching about its future and its policies, Strauss-Kahn said "we must not suffer too heavy a defeat in the legislative elections for this debate to be carried out calmly."

Heh.

Hate the Amnesty Bill Yet?

You will now.

The new immigration bill will allow hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Muslims to come into the United States over the next decade. Many of them have been indoctrinated all their lives to hate the United States, but that's not on the immigration qualifications. Nobody asks newcomers "have you been taught to hate the United States?" But that is exactly how France and Britain created their domestic terrorist threat: By importing hundreds of thousands of unassimilated people under the guise of multicultural love and peace. Almost all vote for the Left.

Socialists are the same all over. They don't believe in the nation-state, and sincerely try to bring about a more perfect world in which nations would not exist. They therefore knock holes in the bottom of our little lifeboat, in the belief that they're doing us all a big favor. They're nice saboteurs.

When the French Left imported millions of Muslims, with Gaullist help, they were trying to import Socialist voters who would then be rewarded with welfare benefits. Today we have nightly riots in the French burbs, with thousands of cars being torched by celebrating Muslim teenagers living on welfare. When the British Left decided to important two million Pakistanis straight from the badlands of Peshawar, they knew what they were doing. The cover story was "multiculturalism" but the reality was subversion. In their minds, the new European Union was going to be the model for an international order, just like the Soviet Union used to be. It's exactly the same mindset.

Read it all.

This bill has to die quickly or we're going to regret it. I can see the Democrats eagerly voting for it, since it will instantly create millions of new voters for them.

Any Republican voting for this is signing a suicide pact.

The Pantsuit: I'm No Ségolène

Apparently, the socialist Royal was too moderate for Mrs. Clinton.

Surely had Royal won, she'd be mouthing something else.

There was a time when advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) looked abroad for proof that women can get elected to a top leadership role in the modern world: Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister; Angela Merkel, the German chancellor; and Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile.

But as presidential candidate Ségolène Royal was defeated by a conservative man who had been France's chief law enforcement officer, the Clinton campaign was quick to dismiss comparisons between their candidate and her Socialist counterpart across the Atlantic. "Other than the fact that they are both women, they don't have much in common," said Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director.

Sure they do. They're both socialists and The Pantsuit is also going down to defeat.

At least Royal is easier on the eyes.

Unlike Royal, who emphasized her charm and femininity rather than her strength on foreign policy, Clinton has proven her national security bona fides, her advisers said.

I'll give them that at least. Mrs. Clinton has all the charm of an anvil.