I see that national security adviser Tom Donilon is stepping down. President Obama plans to replace Donilon with UN ambassador Susan Rice, whose appointment as NSA doesn't require Senate approval, but the appointment of her replacement at the UN does -- and her replacement is said to be Samantha Power.
So what will the reaction be among the crazies who set the agenda for Republican officeholders?
It could be rather shrill. Here are some excerpts from an October blog post by Diane West, a right-wing syndicated columnist with some mainstream cred and the author of a new book called American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character:
At her indispensable blog Refugee Resettlement Watch, Ann Corcoran wonders: "Are they keeping Samantha Power under wraps now so she won't be tainted by the Libya scandal washing over Washington? And, why would they do that?"West goes on to quote Corcoran's blog post:
Power, with Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, form the troika of "humanitarian vulcans" that helped drive Obama's Libya intervention, sending Uncle Sam to join the jihad. Rice and Clinton have been thoroughly "Benghazi'ed" since the consulate attack, with more of the same likely in store. Power, however, has not been part of the conversation.... Ann thinks the silence on Power is calculated to save her from Benghazi-gate....
First, who is Samantha Power?(Sunstein is a wingnut Antichrist, as I explain below. --S.M.)
* Power was born in Ireland and is a protege of George Soros. Update: Here is a better link connecting Soros and Power....
* She is married to Cass Sunstein, former "regulatory czar" in the Obama White House and author of a book Glenn Beck highlighted at length entitled "Nudge" and I think its self-evident where he wants to nudge us to!
* Power called Hillary Clinton a "monster" during the 2008 Presidential campaign....(Overheated emphasis as in West's post.)
* In Edward Klein's book, "The Amateur", she was quoted as saying she was sick of doing "rinkey-dink do-gooder stuff" like refugee issues. Here is the quote as reported by Klein:Among Obama's foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, the far-out leftist firebrand, complained that the administration's cautious, first-dono-harm, approach to the Arab Spring had effectively sidelined her in White House Councils. She said she'd been relegated to "doing rinky-dink do-gooder stuff," such as advocating on behalf of beleaguered Christians in Iraq, and no longer had as much access to the President. She was itching to get back in the fray, and she saw an opportunity in Libya.* So, she got herself in the catbird seat on Libya and became the architect for our involvement in Libya! (and what do you know—they produced more refugees!)
And here's Amateur author Edward Klein in a June 2012 Accuracy in Media interview talking about Power:
KLEIN: Samantha Powers is a former Harvard professor who believes, and has written, that the United States is responsible for a lot of bad things in the world, and that we should go and apologize to the rest of the world. She has said so. She thinks that Willy Brandt getting down on his knees in front of the Holocaust Museum, or whatever, in Germany was the way the President should behave -- and we've seen the President doing just that. She is in the National Security Council; she is one of his chief political advisors -- very, very far left, and very anti-Israeli. Until his Israel policy blew up in his face, and he had to back off, Obama was following in Samantha Powers' footsteps.So to sum up: linked to Soros, enabled Obama's "apology tour," enabled the evildoers in Libya, up to her eyeballs in Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! but sneaky enough to avoid consequences, and hates Israel. Oh, and one of her principal haters is self-promoting blowhard and Murdoch media mainstay Edward Klein, who was all over Fox just a couple of days ago on unrelated matters, and will certainly turn up there once or twice or fifty times in the coming days.
I think I hear Ted Cruz already doing vocal exercises, in preparation for the talking filibuster.
And I haven't even gotten to Power's husband, Cass Sunstein, who has been denounced by both Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Beck for suggesting in a 2008 academic paper (and I'll have to admit I'm not exactly on board with this myself) that governments might combat conspiracy theories by sending people to online or real-world forums where such theories are discussed so that those people might refute the arguments. He did not suggest banning conspiracy theories, though, in the manner of an academic, he did list banning as a response a government could theoretically take. For this sort of thing, Beck calls him "the most dangerous man in America," suggesting that he might be responsible -- this was in April 2010 -- for the fact that people were being photographed at tea party rallies with racist signs. Sunsteinian infitration!
There's much, much more -- see this compilation by Oliver Willis. (Sunstein wants to ban hunting! Sunstein is more powerful than the Federal Reserve!) And it's not just Beck:
Fox's Sean Hannity claimed that Sunstein wanted to "force sterilizations," which was untrue.So, yeah, I think we're all going for a ride on the crazy train.
Rush Limbaugh said Sunstein "want[s] to control the Internet," but omitted Sunstein's description of that policy as a "bad idea." ...
Appearing on Beck's show, Fox's Andrew Napolitano said that Sunstein's "potential damage is limitless."
Fox Business host David Asman accused Sunstein of advocating for the "creation of a Ministry of Truth" and said his ideas "add up to fascism."
Clear Channel radio host Jim Quinn described Sunstein as a "Nazi."
