Not until the last stage of the Democratic primaries did I consider Hillary Clinton to be a strong woman.  Previously, she always seemed someone who had ridden her husband’s coattails to success.  Could anyone else so charismatically challenged have leapfrogged over so many politicians who had already won elective office to her party’s nod for the Senate seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s retirement in 2000?

And yet, watching her fight for her party’s presidential nomination eight years later when the media, which had so promoted her in the past and which had regularly run interference for her, had written her off and encouraged her to quit, I saw a new woman emerge, feisty, determined, tenacious.

If she brings those qualities to the State Department, she could succeed where the incumbent Secretary has failed.  Much as I admire Condoleezza Rice, clearly one of the most intelligent women in America, she has yielded to her department’s permanent bureaucracy all too often these past four years.

I just don’t see Mrs. Clinton giving in to those arrogant apparatchiks.  Indeed, I see her standing up to them should they try to thwart her initiatives as she stood up to the media (and the man who tapped her for the State Depament) in the final months of the primary campaign.

Let’s just hope those initiatives reflect her rhetoric in that stage of the campaign.  Commentary‘s Abe Greenwald seems to think they will, complimenting perhaps the “bold Bush policy” with “better PR.”

While our nation had many good Secretaries of State (and at least three great ones, Acheson, Dulles and Shultz) during the Cold War, for the passed two decades, we’ve had only mediocrities and incompetents.  But, HIllary lacks one thing which made otherwise qualified individuals mediocre at State, she is her own person, or at least, has been, since the media abandoned her last spring (or maybe even earlier).

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Last night, while doing my cardio, I was “treated” to forty-five minutes (the length of my workout) of insight into the Bush-hating mindset. One of the television monitors featured MSNBC. Neither Chris Matthews nor Keith Olbermann could offer any insight into Bush’s Farewell Address. Instead, they offered insight into their own obsession with the man.

They were upset that he failed in his speech to grovel and apologize for his supposedly failed Administration. When aren’t they upset with something the president has said or done?

Given how perennially upset they are with George W. Bush, his team and his defenders, one wonders, along with Gateway Pundit, “What will MSNBC do without President Bush?” He has become a target on which they have long projected their own inner demons.

Olbermann brought along a professional stooge to help make his case. He invited former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan on the show to comment on the president’s farewell address.  Having nothing better to do, he accepted.  Well McClellan didn’t offer much analysis, just ofered some left-wing talking points about how Bush failed to be candid with the American people and didn’t admit his mistakes.

He didn’t address the substance of Bush’s message, merely commented on what wasn’t there. He knew how to please his left-wing host.  Basically, he just repeated Obemann’s points, but with different words.  Well, he did call W a decent guy, words which never pass that angry announcer’s lips.

Look, Scott may not have been a very competent spokesman for a president under constant attack from the news media, but he’s not stupid. He knows that conservatives weren’t pleased with his performance as White House Press Secretary. He was forever in a “defensive crouch,” failing to properly promote Administration policies and discredit dishonest attacks, and take issue with antagonistic arguments.

Eager for him to leave the Administration, conservatives would not be honoring him at their conclaves or featuring him on their television and radio programs.

But, the left-wing media forever maligning McClellan’s former boss would give a place of honor to an Administration turncoat. He knew what it would take to gain their favor: bash Bush and his team.

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Last week, when browsing at Borders with a friend who had voted for Obama pointed to a table laden with books by or about the president-elect. He asked a question that had also occurred to me: had I ever seen such attention given to an incoming Administration.

Even when I visited Washington, D.C. just before Bill Clinton’s first inaugural in 1993, I didn’t see as much memorabilia for the then-incoming president as I have seen this year in the Hollywood area. A nearby 7-11 advertises T-shirts with the mug of the president-elect and the date of his inaugural. Scan a newsstand and it seems more magazines today have cover stories about Obama than did about George W. Bush in 2001, Clinton in 1993, George H.W. in 1989 or even the Gipper in the last such transformational inaugural (at least we’re told this is such a swearing-in) in 1981.

I wonder if cities in “flyover” country are seeing such promotion of the Obama inaugural. Or maybe that establishments here are just playing to folks in the entertainment industry overly enthusiastic about this particular president-elect.

As my friends on the East Coast and in the Upper Midwest have been suffering under record cold temperatures, we here in Los Angeles have been experiencing a heatwave.

That made me wonder if the hot weather in cities where many in the media and would-be opinion-makers reside effects their narrative on global warming.  Whenever noting how general weather trends contradict the supposed “evidence” of global warming, GatewayPundit posts (e.g., here) a map showing that while temperatures are below normal in much of the country, they are increasing in some areas, notably the Washington-Boston corridor in the East and Los Angeles and much of central California in the West.

So does the global warming narrative of the MSM and leading liberals reflecting their insularity?  That evidence, like opinions, from “flyover” regions, is irrelevant.

I mean, if it’s warming where the “élites” live, then it must be warming all over.

Perhaps the recent cold spell on the eastern seaboard may cause them to change their mind.

Today marks the 101st anniversary of the birth of Ethel Merman, one of the great Broadway stars of the last century, perhaps the only woman who never had a flop.  Alas, that we missed her centennial last year.

As I read this great lady’s biography, I learned with delight that she had her debut (at age five) singing at the Astoria Republican Club.  I knew there was a reason I always liked the diva with the iron lungs.  It wasn’t just that she reminded me of my great aunts and adoptive grandmother.  Ethel appears to have been a Republican.

So this is one diva we gay Republicans love without being embarrassed by her politics.

Indeed, she sang for Ronald Reagan as, I believe, he was about to take office.  So, what better way for a gay Republican blog to honor this diva than to provide a clip of her singing for the Gipper.

She was right.  He was swell.  He was great.

And so was she.  Thanks to youtube, you can see this diva with all her class, sass and brass without leaving your home or waiting for the next TCM retrospective of her limited film work.