THEY FIGURED IT OUT? - AT 7:51 A.M. ET:  Some in the Obama administration are being dragged, kicking and chanting, into the real world.  They seem finally to see that the laying on of the Obama hands will not bring instant peace.  There is shock.  There is spiritual disappointment.  Consider, for example, the case of North Korea, as the Los Angeles Times reports it:

American diplomatic efforts on North Korea are coming under fire within the Obama administration from officials who consider talks futile and instead want to focus on halting the regime's trade in nuclear weapons and missile equipment, U.S. officials said.

The administration's official goal has been to coax the Pyongyang government back into the six-nation disarmament talks that began in 2003.

"We don't have six-party talks," said a senior U.S. official who described internal discussions on condition of anonymity. "We may have no choice but to move to containment."

And this note:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first expressed pessimism in April, when she told a Senate committee that North Korea's return to the talks was "implausible, if not impossible." The talks involve the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.

COMMENT:  The role of Hillary Clinton gets more and more intriguing.  What does she really feel?  How is she playing her considerable deck of cards?  I've long felt, and it's purely a gut reaction, that she will drop hints that increasingly distance herself from the Obama appeasement policies, then jump ship when the jumping gets good.  She could easily have her eye on 2016, when she'd only be 68.  She might even have her eye on 2012, if Obama, weakened in the polls, decides to limit his ministry to one term.  I stress, that is speculation, but very juicy.

In the meantime, our foreign policy continues to deteriorate, led by a president whose connection with the way people actually act and scheme, seems tenuous at best.

July 14, 2009