It isn't his disdain for the organization where he's applying for a job, it isn't his lack of diplomacy in previous jobs... it's his look! (*grin*)

An amusing article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54802-2005Apr14.html)

John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, desperately needs a haircut. It does not have to be a $600 Sally Hershberger cut. Bolton simply needs the basics. Tidy the curling, unruly locks at the nape of his neck, tame the volume at the crown, reel in the wings flapping above his ears, and broker a compromise between his sand-colored mop and his snow-colored mustache.

He needs to do this, not because he should be minding the recommendations of men's fashion magazines or grooming experts but because when he settled in before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week to answer questions about his record, his philosophy and his intentions at the U.N., he looked as though he did not even have enough respect for the proceedings to bother combing his hair -- or, for that matter, straightening his tie, or wearing a shirt that did not put his neck in a chokehold. Bolton was one wrinkled suit away from being an insolent mess.

These are not flaws or imperfections of nature. This is not a cruel attempt to hold an everyday man to the standards of an airbrushed model or a nipped and tucked actor. This is a matter of personal style.

...

I don't like the fact that he ripped off Ottis Redding to win a Grammy and, is a no tallent ass clown.

Uhhh.... Wrong Bolton :elfgrin:

And now, back to our originally scheduled programing:

FYI, he doesn't give a rip about how his hair looks. If that's the worst they can toss at him then he's a lock for the job and I say all the better. The UN is the single largest corrupt organization on this planet and is in dire need of reform.

He's just the person needed for the job of cleaning out the Stygian stables.

He's just the person needed for the job of cleaning out the Stygian stables.


I believe you meant the Augean Stables.

Unless, of course, you were making a super-obscure reference to Pistol's identical confusion of the labors of Heracles with Hell in Henry the IVth. If so, you will receive a standing ovation....:)

I'm 'enry VIII I am, I'm 'enry VIII, I am I am. I'm gettin married to the widow next door, she's been married seven times before, an ev'ry one's been an 'enry, 'enry! Never been a Willy or a Sam, no ma'am!

Off your medication again, eh?

Figured if we were going on about obscure Henry references...

Yeah, Bolton is another fine Bush nominee...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1691-2005Apr19.html?referrer=email

...

The developments, which some aides called stunning, complicate matters for Bolton's backers. "The dynamic has changed," said Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.), who before yesterday's session had said he was reluctantly inclined to vote for Bolton. "A lot of reservations surfaced today. It's a new day."

When the committee's meeting began at 3:15 p.m. in a cramped Capitol meeting room, Democrats and Republicans alike predicted that members would send Bolton's nomination to the full Senate on a straight party-line vote of 10 to 8. But Democrats, led by Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) and Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), spent nearly an hour attacking Bolton's record. They said he repeatedly tried to dismiss subordinates who had challenged him and later misled the committee about his efforts.
...
Biden said committee aides recently heard from a person who corroborated a woman's claim -- raised after Bolton testified last week -- that Bolton, then working as a private lawyer, had chased her through a Moscow hotel in 1994, thrown things at her and falsely claimed to U.S. aid officials that she had misused funds and might go to jail. Melody Townsel of Dallas said in a letter to the committee that Bolton "put me through hell" when he represented a firm that was at odds with her client in a USAID project in Kyrgyzstan. Biden taunted GOP members pressing for a vote yesterday on Bolton's nomination, saying, "I guess you don't want to hear about that."

Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said members had enough information to vote and suggested Democrats were stalling in hopes of thwarting Bolton. "I wasn't born yesterday," he said.

But Voinovich, who had sat silently through 75 minutes of debate, suddenly announced: "I've heard enough today that gives me some real concern about Mr. Bolton." The former Ohio governor, who has opposed the White House on such issues as deep tax cuts, urged the panel to "take a little bit more time."

He sounds a little to the right of Darth Vader and slightly more insane.

I would kindly insist you cease disparaging Darth Vader with any comparisons to the Bush administration or its nominees.

Lol, yes, it was supposed to be the Augean Stables. Razzies all around for that one... My research skills were suspect as clearly defined tasks for Herc can be found here : Herc's 12 step program (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html)

FWIW Panamah, hearsay evidence is not admissible, ever hear of Juanita Broderick, aka Jane Doe #5? Argumentably she had more 'evidence' and corroborating witnesses.

Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee is the Republican equivalent of Sen. Barbara Boxer, he's a RINO and has about as much intelect as your garden variety invertabrate. Sen. Voinovich otoh needs a 2x4 to strap to his back or a spinal transplant.

This isn't a court of law, Glidelph, it's a confirmation hearing. It also isn't unsubstantiated hearsay, aka gossip. It looks like the allegations are getting backed up.

Apparently there's enough bizarre conduct here that it is making some people a little (or a lot) nervous. And apparently there are a few Republicans out there willing to weigh the evidence for themselves rather than just kiss the collective ass of the republican party.

I wish more politicians would represent themselves, and their constituents, and I wish the parties would stop bullying the politicians into going along with the herd. Maybe we'd have a government that represented those of us in the center rather than the fringes.

Politics would be much better without party politics. Perhaps the 21st century will give us a way to make it happen.

Perhaps this might help:

The Bolton Mugging (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006586)

A snippet if you don't want to register:
Look closely at Mr. Bolton's accusers, and you can see through the agendas. There is former State Department career official Carl Ford, who claims Mr. Bolton rudely disagreed with his policy positions. There is also Latin America-specialist Fulton Armstrong, whom Mr. Bolton allegedly tried to have fired. Never mind that Mr. Bolton was not the only senior State Department official to complain about Mr. Armstrong. Or that Mr. Armstrong's forgiving assessments of Cuba's Fidel Castro were influenced by the work of Ana Belen Montes, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst convicted in 2002 of spying for Cuba. This is the testimony of career analysts who disagree with Bush Administration policy and want to show that any official who disagrees with the bureaucracy will have his own career ruined in Senate confirmation.

Well, I'm sure we could spam one another with op-ed pieces for and against Bolton. Here's my salvo:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51669-2005Apr13.html
...I have until now withheld my first -- and only -- impression of John Bolton, probably destined to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: He's nuts.

I recognize that, as a diagnosis, the word leaves something to be desired. But it is nevertheless the impression I took away back in June 2003 when Bolton went to Cernobbio, Italy, to talk to the Council for the United States and Italy. Afterward he took questions. Some of them were about weapons of mass destruction, which, you may remember, the Bush administration had claimed would be found in abundance in Iraq but which by then had not materialized.
_____Today's Op-Eds_____
• The Appeal of A Court Fight (Post, April 21, 2005)
• Have a Nice Day, or Else (Post, April 21, 2005)
• Power Plays in Asia (Post, April 21, 2005)
• A Pope for Better or Perhaps Worse (Post, April 21, 2005)


The literal facts did not in the least give Bolton pause. Weapons of mass destruction would be found, he insisted. Where? When? How come they had not yet been discovered? The questions were insistent, but they were coming, please remember, from Italians, whose government was one of the few in the world to actively support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Bolton bristled. I have never seen such a performance by an American diplomat. He was dismissive. He was angry. He clearly thought the questioners had no right, no standing, no justification and no earthly reason to question the United States of America. The Bush administration had said that Iraq was lousy with WMD and Iraq therefore was lousy with WMD. Just you wait.

This kind of ferocious certainty is commendable in pit bulls and other fighting animals, but it is something of a problem in a diplomat. We now have been told, though, that Bolton's Italian aria was not unique and that the anger I sensed in the man has been felt by others. (I went over to speak to him afterward, but he was such a mass of scowling anger that I beat a retreat.) Others have testified to how he berated subordinates and how, to quote Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), he "needs anger management." From what I saw, a bucket of cold water should always be kept at hand.

The rap against Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador is that he has maximum contempt for that organization. He once went so far as to flatly declare that "there is no United Nations," just an international community that occasionally "can be led by the only real power left in the world -- and that's the United States." He has expressed these sorts of feelings numerous times over the years -- so much so that it is not clear whether he has been rewarded with this appointment or punished with it. Whatever President Bush's motive, the fact remains that he has not sent the United Nations an ambassador so much as a poke in the eye. Still, no U.N. ambassador makes policy; he merely implements it. Bolton, no matter what his views, can do only limited damage.

But there are things that the United States will want done at the United Nations -- and Bolton is the wrong guy to get them done. After all, once an ambassador is instructed as to a policy or personnel issue, it is up to him or her to implement it. That means constructing the argument, persuading opponents, flattering friends. It means, in short, diplomacy.

After Bolton's appearance in Italy almost two years ago, I wrote a column expressing my dismay. I did not, however, know for sure if what I had seen was typical of him -- although others said it was. Now, though, it is clear that he is often as he was that day -- abrasive, insolent and so insufferably self-righteous that he cannot allow the possibility of his being wrong.

Why the Bush administration would want such a person at the United Nations is beyond me. As always, the administration is entitled to great leeway when it comes to presidential appointments. If it wants a neocon, fine. If it wants a hard-liner, fine. If it wants a U.N.-trasher, it can have that, too. But it should not have someone who will be ineffectual in implementing its own policies -- who, if he is himself, will alienate other delegates and further isolate the United States.

This is what Bolton did one glorious spring day on the shores of bella Lake Como. What he will do on the shores of the non-bella East River on a cold, gray day in New York will be far, far worse. Bolton's is not a bad appointment. It's a downright disaster.

Politics would be much better without party politics.

When I first read that, I was Right On!

I thought it said

Politics would be much better without political parties.

Powell Playing Quiet Role in Bolton Battle
GOP Senators Sought Views on Nominee

By Jim VandeHei and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A01

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell is emerging as a behind-the-scenes player in the battle over John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations, privately telling at least two key Republican lawmakers that Bolton is a smart but very problematic government official, according to Republican sources.

Powell spoke in recent days with Sens. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), two of three GOP senators on the Foreign Relations Committee who have raised concerns about Bolton's confirmation, the sources said. Powell did not advise the senators to oppose Bolton, but offered a frank assessment of the nominee as a man who was challenging to work with on personnel and policy matters, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The rest of the article... (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7420-2005Apr21.html)

Feh, I wouln't quible about spamming articles, it's pointless really because I'm not going to change your point of view and you aren't going to change mine.
Plus, it's bandwidth I didn't pay for that I'm wasting so I wouln't do it.

The bottom line is that the feckless politicians who let appointee's twist in the wind will find that in the long run people will run for the tall grass when approached to serve in appointed positions.

The bottom line is that the feckless politicians who let appointee's twist in the wind will find that in the long run people will run for the tall grass when approached to serve in appointed positions.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? I mean, who in their right mind would want to go into politics anyway? The only conclusion I can draw is that anyone who actually wants to serve in government is insane and shouldn't be allowed to do it. The only solution is to find the people who least want to do it and appoint them.