Last night, I posted that CNN Pipeline was broadcasting a camera aimed at President Ford's closed coffin in a California church. I also mentioned that there were a surprising number of people coming for the viewing in the middle of the night, plus though I didn't say it outright, I kind of felt sorry for the soldiers standing at attention.

The following screencaps were snapped at around 3:15 AM (Eastern), as he lay in state under the Capital Rotunda. It's the weekend and the middle of the night, so I can't really fault CNN for bringing me these images. Ordinarily at night, Pipes 2 and 3 are either blank, or they're showing a shot of the White House from perhaps the Washington Monument, or they're carrying some poor reporter recording the same story over and over, except each time with a different station's close. (Sasha Foo - Fox 25 News, etc)

From a camera in the Rotunda;



From a camera at ground-level (Please note, there is a young lady in a jean jacket who had wandered in and was snapping a couple of photos. You can just make her out between the formation and the big white statue)



FYI: Pipe 1 is always CNN International for most of the night, while Pipe 4 usually has a weather thing going in the off hours.
ETA (For the Record): Sasha Foo was the overnight anchor on CNN (Headline) in the early 80s. She is burned into my memory.

John Edwards announced his candidacy for President on Thursday and after doing so in New Orleans, he went to Iowa for a town meeting and a session with reporters, plus he met with a handful of bloggers for a few minutes. During the blogger portion of the program, he was asked for his perspective from being on the "Council of Foreign Relations" and co-authoring a report about Russia with Jack Kemp, whether he thought the Russians would be helpful in our negotiations with Iran.

The following is a transcript of his response;

That's a hard question. I don't... so far, they've not been very helpful. I think actually what's happened with Russia is that they've moved away in their relationship with America and the West, largely because they've moved away from democracy.

Putin has sort of taken over, has centralized the government, got a iron hand on the country now and the result is that it's harder for us to get them to do things, they need to do. They don't pay a lot of attention to us; They pay a little more attention to us and the Europeans and the Japanese, when we act together, but Russia plays a critical role, particularly with trying to deal Iran and the UN Security Council.

Now, there's not a lot new in his quote. The media has given some tacit coverage to the deteriorating relationship with Russia and I've even noted a couple of circumstances on the pages of my journal.

Instead, what struck me as I was watching the video with the bloggers; When Condoleezza Rice was first named National Security Adviser, she was heralded from the mountaintops as an academic with past government service, who was an expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union. Obviously, expert or not, she has apparently fallen down on that job because though we generally leave each other alone, I don't think anyone would describe the US and Russia as having particularly good relations.

Her failures in the Mideast have also been pretty well documented, both as National Security Adviser and as Secretary of State.

There's been nothing to contradict that she was warned before September 11th; She purposefully marginalized Richard Clarke and there really wasn't any risk of a mushroom cloud originating in Iraq. More recently, she's done nothing to try and bring the Palestinians and the Israelis together; She allowed Israel to bomb the hell out of Lebanon, including many civilian targets and any discussion of foreign policy must come back to the quagmire in Iraq. Plus, of course, there's also the situation with North Korea.

Which leads me to the inevitable question;
Ms Rice may be brilliant on paper, but can anyone, anywhere, point to a single achievement?

(x-posted)

I'm not necessarily endorsing the candidacy of John Edwards. For the most part, I'm probably going to remain fairly neutral until the field is more full. But, since he was the starting point of my last post and because one of his phrases is starting to get some play, plus I'm kind of intrigued by his "National Day of Action" on January 27th; I'm doing as he asks and I'm sharing the following video.