I was really planning to give Mr. Hope and Change a little leeway and perhaps the benefit of the doubt with his cabinet selections. While I know there is no way the people I would chose would ever be on Obama's radar (or any other Democrats, for that matter), I still understood that with victory come the spoils. That's the way it is and should be.

However, I am beginning to sense something very rotten here. First of all, I am not a fan of Raum Emanuel, even though he is Jewish and his father was a member of the famed Haganah. But I was (though in hindsight now should not have been) surprised with the choice because Emanuel was a Clinton guy. My understanding, from listening to the Chosen one's speeches and rhetoric was that he was bringing in a new era of politics. He was all about "Change We Can Believe In."

Remember?

Ok, so he choose Emanuel. He probably figured it was the least he could do since he bold-faced lied to AIPAC about Jerusalem, and his desire to keep it undivided.

I have to admit, on the other hand, I was surprised by his keeping Robert Gates as his Defense Secretary. Sure he was appointed by George Bush. Sure - according to Obama and all of his supporters - anything and everything about the Bush years must be undone completely. After all, isn't that what "change" is all about? Changing things?

Let's talk the big fish. Hillary Clinton. I mean, HUH? Is this something like "keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer? Does Obama really believe she will acquiescence to Obama's rule? Can he trust her to do what he believes is right, when he's never trusted her before?

Personally, I'm all for it. I mean, while I have no love for the Senator from New York - especially after her famous embrace of Suha Arafat, she has been a rather ardent supporter of the State of Israel while in the Senate. On the other hand, that is a necessity in order to win and be re-elected to the Senate if you live in New York. Now that she will no longer have to worry about her re-election, will she remain a "friend?"

I find that difficult to believe. After all, the State Department has for years been at odds with the White House over just how to deal with Israel. Many State Department officials have spent years working with alliances they have developed in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and time after time have sided with Israel's enemies in times of crisis.

But what concerns me the most - and this plays right into my feelings of how Mrs. Clinton will behave - is the news that Obama has rehired Samantha Power to be on his "transition team." Her role will be to assist the President-Elect in formulating the hiring of officials to work under Hillary.

Aside from the comedy (tragic) of hiring a woman who once called Mrs. Clinton a "monster" to work under the new Secretary of State, there is also the little problem of Ms. Power's ardent anti-Israel bias.

As I've posted before (and will again here), Power has made no apology for the myriad of comments regarding what she would like to see happen to the Jewish state. From The American Thinker (for the video, click here):

Power made her most problematic statement in 2002, in an interview she gave at Berkeley. The interviewer asked her this question:

Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine-Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?

Power gave an astonishing answer:

What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing—or investing, I think, more than sacrificing—billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called “Sharafat” [Sharon-Arafat]. I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.... Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced.

She places Arafat in the same breath as the Prime Minister of a sovereign, free, democratic country, she calls for the massive military intervention on behalf of a people who overwhelmingly support Jihad against Jews worldwide, and promotes an agenda of force against an ally - who not only is fighting for her very survival, but has spent dollars and blood trying desperately to make peace with neighbors who wish for her annihilation.

According to Ms. Power, if it were up to her - and it may very soon will be to an extent - screw Israel and her sovereignty. Forget the fact that rockets are fired into S'dorot daily even after Israel gave the Arabs back the land. Ignore the fact that the United States, Israel, the United Nations and countless other nations have spent BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars to create a viable, peaceful area, only to have ALL the money spent on terror and death.

No, none of that matters. In Samantha Power's little delusion, the root cause of all the world's problems are those shitty little Jews.

Hope and change, indeed. I bet Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan are happy. After all, isn't that what Americans want?