Hillary screws the pooch with her assassination remark

SICK. Disgusting. And yet revealing. Hillary Clinton is staying in the race in the event some nut kills Barack Obama.

It could happen, but what definitely has happened is that Clinton has killed her own chances of being vice president. She doesn’t deserve to be elected dog catcher anywhere now.

Her shocking comment to a South Dakota newspaper might qualify as the dumbest thing ever said in American politics.

Hillary campaign hits bottom… reaches for shovel

… not to dig herself in deeper, but hopefully to dig up dirt on Obama.

With Barack Obama having the Democratic presidential nomination all but wrapped up, Hillary Clinton backers are hoping that a devastating revelation about Obama could derail his candidacy — and they’re desperately seeking to find it.

That’s the inside story from veteran newsman Carl Bernstein, who writes in his CNN column:

“The Clinton campaign’s search for damaging information and its hope that such information exists continues, according to knowledgeable sources.”

Top Clinton adviser Harold Ickes warned on the eve of the North Carolina and Indian primaries that Obama could be vulnerable to an “October surprise” by the John McCain campaign, notes Bernstein, whose latest book is “A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

He adds: “Several Clinton associates say there is still a ray of hope among some in her campaign that a ‘catastrophic’ revelation about Obama might make it possible for her to win the presidential nomination.”

But there is also a strong chance that Clinton will try to maneuver her way into the vice presidential slot on the Obama ticket, according to Bernstein, even though Obama “won’t want to take her on the ticket.”

Hillary is becoming psycho stalker-ish

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn, an Obama supporter, compared Clinton to the Glenn Close character in “Fatal Attraction” — a spurned woman turned stalker who was apparently drowned in a bathtub only to jump up one more time to be shot dead.

“Glenn Close should have stayed in that tub, and Sen. Clinton has had a remarkable career and needs to move to the next step, which is helping elect the Democratic nominee,” Cohen said during a local TV interview. He later apologized for his comments.

Sore Loser

A must-see opening skit on SNL mocking Hillary.

The original YouTube link was removed due to copyright infringement. It can still be found HERE, at least for the moment.

She Hasn’t Pumped Her Own Gas In Years

Barack Obama wouldn’t debate Hillary Clinton in a flat bed truck. But there she was today, sitting shotgun in one, driving home the argument that her rival doesn’t share her concern about the average Joe Six-pack when it comes to fuel prices.

When Clinton’s traveling press corps was told late last night that the candidate would be “commuting” to work with a “typical” Hoosier, the questions came rapid-fire. When was the last time Clinton pumped her own gas? When’s the last time she even drove? And, most to the point, what was a stunt like this going to prove?

Read the rest.

hillary, the pork star

Senator Hillary Clinton has requested nearly $2.3 billion in federal earmarks for the next fiscal year. That’s almost three times the largest amount received by a single senator during this current fiscal year. Earmarks are funding requests for those so-called pet projects that lawmakers usually award to their own constituency.

And while Clinton has asked for $750,000 for a Homeland Security grant program and another $125 million for an urban security initiative, it is not clear what exactly those grants would pay for.

hillary voted for the gas tax before she voted against it

Hillary Clinton is calling for a holiday on the 18.4-cent gasoline tax, and she says she’d make up the funding from that (which funds transportation infrastructure) by taxing oil company’s “windfall” profits.

But it’s worth pointing out that Clinton OPPOSED efforts to cut or repeal gas taxes during her 2000 Senate contest against Rick Lazio.

right outta the Clinton fundraising playbook

Hillary’s ties to terrorists

What you don’t know might really hurt you. Read up.

In this week’s debate, Hillary Clinton said all of her “baggage” has been “rummaged through” for years. But important features of her close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters are still opaque to the public view.

Her relationship with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the Board of the New World Foundation, which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a time when the PLO was officially recognized by the US government as a terrorist organization.

In 1996, the First Lady initiated an outreach program to bring Muslim leaders to the White House. But, as terrorism expert Steve Emerson noted in the Wall Street Journal “Curiously, nearly all of the leaders with whom Mrs. Clinton elected to meet came from Islamic fundamentalist organizations. A review of the statements, publications, and conferences of the groups Mrs. Clinton embraced shows unambiguously that they have long advocated or justified violence. By meeting with these groups, the first lady lent them legitimacy as ‘mainstream’ and ‘moderate.’”

Among these radical groups was the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, both groups that support Hamas, who attended a White House reception hosted by Hillary in February, 1996. Emerson says that its leaders “have sanctioned terrorism, published anti-Semitic statements, and repeatedly hosted conferences that were forums for denunciations of Jews and exhortations to wage jihad.”

The American Muslim Alliance was headed in the 90s by Abdulrahman Alamoudi who met with Clinton and Gore in 1995. Emerson notes that “Mrs. Clinton [allowed] the American Muslim Alliance to draw up the Muslim guest list for the first lady’s…White House reception.”

Alamoudi, Emerson says was “the primary defender of Musa Abu Marzug, the Hamas political bureau chief responsible for creating the group’s death squads.” Marzug took “credit” when Hamas brigades sprayed machine gun fire into a crowded Jerusalem mall. But less than three days after Marzug was arrested by the FBI in July of 1995, Alamoudi said that Marzug “had never been involved in terrorism” and called his arrest “an insult to the Muslim community. Emerson reports that he “elicited contributions fro Marzug’s defense fund” and called him a “political prisoner.”

Then, Hillary ran for Senate on her own and suddenly it was payback time. On June 13, 2000, the American Muslim Alliance’s Massachusetts Chapter held a very successful fundraiser for her candidacy. Tahir Ali, the chairman of the chapter, said “we must support all who have [Muslim] interests at heart.”

Perhaps conscious of how controversial the contribution would be, Hillary or someone on her staff, tried to pull a fast one, recording the donation on federal filing forms as being from the “American Museum Alliance.” But alert observers weren’t fooled and Senate candidate Clinton was forced to acknowledge who the real donor was and, four months after getting the money, she returned it.

like her mother, Chelsea Clinton doesn’t constrain herself with truths

For the first time, she is facing the kind of scrutiny that has bedeviled the candidates and their surrogates along the campaign trail.

During a long day of campaigning in Oregon on Saturday, she mentioned at two different stops that during the course of the campaign a 7-year-old and an 11-year-old had separately asked her “with terror in their eyes” what will become of the Social Security system. It’s possible they were precocious, or that their parents put them up to it, but one skeptical blogger wrote afterward that the story was “stunning in its absurdity.”

(When asked for details, such as where and when Clinton met the children, the campaign could not provide them.)

Hillary Rodham Clinton has recently stopped telling the story of a pregnant Ohio woman who lost her baby then died because she lacked health insurance and proper prenatal care. The New York senator had recounted the story as it was told to her, but the account turned out to be oversimplified and wrong on some key details, according to news reports.

Still, Chelsea Clinton continued to tell it, even getting the woman’s age wrong. (She was 35, not “younger than me,” as Chelsea Clinton reported Saturday.)

“There was some talk in the media about whether it was true or whether it was not true,” she said. “Her family has said it’s true in the interim, but what matters to me in the following story is that no one ever doubted that it could be true in our country. So here’s the story we heard . . . .”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said Chelsea Clinton should be held accountable for her stories. This story, she said, was plausible, so the telling of it, with Chelsea’s caveat, was acceptable.

Hillary says one thing.. the money says another

As Chinese authorities have clamped down on unrest in Tibet and jailed dissidents in advance of the 2008 Olympics, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a strong public stance, calling for restraint in Tibet and urging President Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing.

But her recent stern comments on China’s internal crackdown collide with former President Bill Clinton’s fundraising relationship with a Chinese Internet company accused of collaborating with the mainland government’s censorship of the Web. Last month, the firm, Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued “most wanted” posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots.

Alibaba, which took over Yahoo’s China operation in 2005 as part of a billion-dollar deal with the U.S.-based search engine, arranged for the former president to speak to a conference of Internet executives in Hangzhou in September 2005. Instead of taking his standard speaking fees, which have ranged from $100,000 to $400,000, Clinton accepted an unspecified private donation from Alibaba to his international charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation.

Hillary is the candidate for everyone!

Hillary Portrays Herself as a Pro-Gun Churchgoer

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton managed to co-opt Mr. Obama’s message of hope and optimism, beginning a speech in Valparaiso, Ind., by talking about how positive and “fundamentally optimistic” Americans are.

“We don’t get bogged down and looking back – we’re always looking forward,” she said, as heavy applause nearly drowned out her words. “Whatever obstacle we see, we get over it. Whatever challenge we have, we meet it. We’re the problem-solvers, we’re the innovators, we’re the people who make the better future.”

For the third time since Mr. Obama’s remarks were made public Friday night, Mrs. Clinton criticized him at length, saying his comments seemed “kind of elitist and out of touch.”

“I disagree with Senator Obama’s assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration,” she said.

She described herself as a pro-gun churchgoer, recalling that her father taught her how to shoot a gun when she was a young girl and said that her faith “is the faith of my parents and my grandparents.”

Hillary Appeals For Gun Control Lobbying

Stepping up the Clinton Administration’s campaign against gun violence, Hillary Rodham Clinton used an emotional White House ceremony today to call on Americans to press Congress to ”buck the gun lobby” and pass several gun control measures.

Today’s event, pegged to Mother’s Day, which is Sunday, was held in the formal East Room of the White House and featured three parents of children killed or wounded by gunfire. They included Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed last month in the shooting rampage in Littleton, Colo. His story of waiting for word about his son’s fate brought Mrs. Clinton nearly to tears as she took the podium and gravely addressed an audience of other parents who had lost their children in shootings.

The Senate is to begin debate next week on a number of gun control measures, some of which mirror proposals offered recently by President Clinton. ”The senators need to hear from all of us,” Mrs. Clinton said. She urged voters ”to give them the encouragement to do what they know is right and to remind them that there are many, many millions of American voters and citizens who will stand behind political leaders who are brave enough to buck the gun lobby, wherever that may take us, so that they will vote for the measures that we know will save lives.”

A long long time ago in a galaxy not so far away

Hillary’s history of lying goes back a long way. It was documented in the national media as far back as this 1996 article by William Safire, Essay: Blizzard of Lies

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.

Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

Why the White House concealment? For good reason: The records show Hillary Clinton was lying when she denied actively representing a criminal enterprise known as the Madison S.& L., and indicate she may have conspired with Web Hubbell’s father-in-law to make a sham land deal that cost taxpayers $3 million.

Why the belated release of some of the incriminating evidence? Not because it mysteriously turned up in offices previously searched. Certainly not because Hillary Clinton and her new hang-tough White House counsel want to respond fully to lawful subpoenas.

One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

Therefore, ask not “Why didn’t she just come clean at the beginning?” She had good reasons to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.

No wonder the President is fearful of holding a prime-time press conference. Having been separately deposed by the independent counsel at least twice, the President and First Lady would be well advised to retain separate defense counsel.

Hillary laughs off another question about her ethics

Hillary Clinton used her trademark laugh Thursday to deflect a question about the $800,000 her husband earned in 2005 giving speeches for a Bogota-based group that supports the Colombia free trade agreement — the same trade deal she currently opposes.

Asked by CNN if those earnings represented a conflict of interest given that she has dipped into her family’s pocketbook to pay campaign bills, Clinton threw up her hands and laughed loudly for several seconds.

“How many angels dance on the head of the pin?,” she responded, continuing to giggle. “I have really, uh, nothing to … I mean, how do you answer that?”

The New York senator explained there are different sides to the argument over trade, and re-emphasized her own opposition to the trade deal, assailing the Colombian government’s “outrageous” record of “targeting labor leaders.”

“I am against the Colombia free trade deal,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who talks to me. It doesn’t matter any circumstances. I have been against it. I am against it. I will be against it absent the kind of changes in behavior that I have been calling for from the Colombian government.”

Earlier in the press conference, describing her husband’s advocacy for the trade deal, Clinton said: “Everyone is free to express their opinion.”

Clinton Pay Comes to $30 Per Lie

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s tax returns for the last seven years reveal that since leaving the White House the couple has earned nearly $30 per lie.

“If you break their income down, you see that on average they earned $42,661 a day, or $1,777 an hour, which comes to $29.61 a minute,” said political analyst Pim Peeny. “And, this being the Clintons, that amounts to $29.61 per lie told.”

Clinton Under Fire Over False Story Of Health Care Horror

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

Clintons give $10.2M to their favorite charity.. themselves

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton released tax data Friday showing they earned $109 million over the last eight years, an ascent into the uppermost tier of American taxpayers that seemed unimaginable in 2001, when they left the White House with little money and facing millions in legal bills.

The bulk of their wealth has come from speaking and book-writing, which together account for almost $92 million, including a $15 million advance — larger than previously thought — from Mr. Clinton’s 2004 autobiography, “My Life.” The former president’s vigorous lecture schedule, where his speeches command upwards of $250,000, brought in almost $52 million.

During that time, the Clintons paid $33.8 million in federal taxes and claimed deductions for $10.2 million in charitable contributions. The contributions went to a family foundation run by the Clintons that has given away only about half of the money they put into it, and most of that was last year, after Mrs. Clinton declared her candidacy.

Another Clinton contributor accused of fraud

A Texas oilman who’s accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton’s political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer who was convicted of defrauding Cuba.

There’s no indication that Clinton’s campaign was aware of Lawal’s legal problems when it accepted his help in raising more than $100,000, but a McClatchy Newspapers investigation in the U.S. and Nigeria suggests that her campaign did little to scrutinize the background of one of its top fundraisers.

Hillary Clinton: “I Fought Muhammed Ali for the Heavyweight Championship”

At a campaign stop in Philadelphia, PA, Hillary Clinton furthered her identification with Rocky, recalling how she once stepped into the ring against Muhammed Ali.

Clinton said that she was sent to fight Ali when no one else would. “They used to say in the White House, if the ring were too small, or the venue too unimportant, or the opponent too fast, send Hillary.”

Recounting the championship bout against Ali, Senator Clinton recalled how she “ducked under a flurry of fists, crouched down and sought refuge on the ropes.” Asked about how difficult it was to staunch the bleeding between rounds, cutman Chelsea Clinton said, “none of your business.”

Responding to a question as to who won the heavyweight championship bout, Clinton called Ali “inept and irrelevant.”

“If he’s a heavyweight, he should have stood there and punched. If he dances and jabs, then he’s a lightweight…..and, he’s also a Muslim, so far as I know.”

Clinton, campaigning for the critical Pennsylvania vote, was criticized for not fighting Joe Frazier, the local hero. “I’m dedicated to health care reform,” said Clinton, “so I was not going to fight a guy called smokin’ Joe.” Asked, then, why she hired Mark Penn, who has done work for the tobacco industry, Clinton said, “ask Chelsea.”

if you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until it’s ‘free’

A healthcare reform expert says it’s difficult to figure out how Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s universal healthcare policy could cover millions of Americans for less money.

Former President Bill Clinton boasted recently on the campaign trail that his wife was the only presidential candidate helping to get healthcare costs under control. The Clintons claim that the presidential candidate’s proposed universal plan would cap health insurance premiums at 5 to 10 percent of Americans’ income.

Healthcare reform expert Gracie Marie Turner of the Galen Institute says although adding 47 million more people to the nation’s healthcare system is a laudable goal, the way Senator Clinton (D-New York) is proposing to achieve that objective will not bring down costs.

“The plan that she is proposing would first of all mandate that everyone have health insurance, and she — under pressure from Tim Russert — acknowledged that one of the ways to enforce that may be garnishing people’s wages and really forcing them to pay,” she warns. “But the policy that they would require is a very generous health insurance policy — in some ways, more generous than [the policy] members of Congress receive.”

Turner says the Clintons may be promising they would make sure no one pays more than ten percent of their income in health insurance premiums, but a lot of Americans are scratching their heads as to where that 10 percent would come from in the first place.

The healthcare reform expert also notes that the average price of a family policy offered through the workplace is $12,000 a year. So she argues that to afford that type of coverage under Clinton, one would have to make a yearly wage of $120,000.

it’s official.. Hillary is f*cking Obama

Hillary began her career with lies.. will she end it that way, too?

Neal Boortz summarizes how Hillary was fired from a committee that investigated a president who was indicted for lying under oath. The reason… obstructing justice and potentially committing perjury.

* Hillary Rodham gets a spot on the legal staff of the House Judiciary Committee upon the recommendation of a lawyer pal of Ted Kennedy.

* The man who hires Hillary is Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat.

* The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Richard Nixon with an eye on impeachment.

* A question arises as to whether or not Nixon is legally entitled to counsel during the investigation. If so, his council would be allowed to cross examine witnesses appearing before the panel.

* The concern about having counsel for Nixon cross examine witnesses centered on E. Howard Hunt. Democrats on the committee feared that Nixon’s counsel would elicit information from Hunt that would be very damaging to the Kennedys.

* Zeifman tells Hillary that Nixon is entitled to counsel. He cites documents in the committee’s public file referencing the fact that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas had representation four years earlier while he was being investigated.

* Hillary removes the documents from the committees public file and places them under lock and key in her office where they are not available for media or public scrutiny.

* Hillary then prepares a brief for filing with a federal judge which falsely states that there is no precedent for an official being investigated by the committee to have legal representation during that investigation.

* Nixon resigns before Hillary has a chance to submit the brief in which she makes knowingly false claims.

* Zeifman then fires Hillary. Hillary asks for a letter of recommendation. Zeifman says no. This was only the third time in Zeifman’s 17 years with the committee that he had refused a letter of recommendation.

Zeifman told Dan Calabrese that if Hillary had actually submitted the brief she most likely would have been disbarred.

Why exactly was she fired? In the words of the man who fired her…

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

bowling for votes

Following a speech before hundreds of labor union members, the press was told Hillary Clinton would hold a press conference. The press sat patiently for Clinton to finish shaking hands with supporters in the other room. Within minutes, a somber looking Clinton approached the podium, her equally morose looking staff stood nearby.

“I want to take a moment to say that this has been a very hard fought race. Each of us is drawing enormous support. We clearly need to do something so that our party and the people can make the right decision,” Clinton said. At this point many in the press thought Clinton might drop the bomb that she is calling it quits in the race. But it soon became clear that Clinton was only joking.

“Today I am challenging Senator Obama to a bowl off, a bowling night, right here in Pennsylvania winner take all,” said Clinton as the press chuckled.

“I will even spot him 2 frames. It’s time for his campaign to get out of the gutter and allow all of the pins to be counted. I am prepared to play this game all the way to 10th frame. And when this game is over the America people will know when that phone rings at 3am they will have a president who will be able to bowl on day one so let’s strike a deal and go bowling for delegates. We don’t have a moment to spare, because it’s already April Fools Day, so happy April Fools Day everybody.”

Knowing that a little humor will go a long way, and understanding that she has very little of it to give, Hillary reserves her human side for the darkest hour, when nothing else will tip the scales in her direction. Viva la Hillary!

the Hillary Deathwatch at 9.7%

Hillary Clinton campaign stiffs her high school $3,161

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been in the news several times this election season for being, shall we say, somewhat tardy in paying its bills. New York and Des Moines companies complained to the media. And when a New Hampshire landlord went public with his Clinton debt of $500, other companies cried out. (He eventually got paid his $500 and publicly donated it right away to Barack Obama’s campaign.)

Now, it looks from new Federal Election Commission filings that Clinton’s campaign had $8.7 million in outstanding debt at the end of last month. Ouch! And that included $3,361 owed to Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Ill., for renting the Watson Auditorium and for catering.

Hillary Rodham graduated from there in 1965.

On the eve of Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, Clinton staged a big town hall meeting from the Maine South High School auditorium that was broadcast nationally on the Hallmark Channel, allowing supporters across the country to ask questions live. Maybe you saw it. Millions did.

But campaigns move on. And her alma mater is still awaiting its money.

The FEC form lists only a “Dr. Rose” as the school contact. A switchboard operator at Maine South said no one was available to discuss the debt, and that the only Dr. Rose at the school was Dr. Rose Garlasco, who is assistant principal. Voice-mail messages for her and the Clinton campaign have gone unanswered.

Hillary’s reaction to WTC bombing… go to a photoshoot and attend a play

Hillary loves to talk about her ‘experience’ in the Oval Office. Well, here are a couple examples from some very noteworthy days during the Clinton administration.

When the World Trade Center was attacked in February 1993, President Bill Clinton flew to New York to be briefed on the attack and the response by city, state and federal authorities. According to newly released White House calendars of Hillary Clinton’’s time as first lady, she remained in Washington to attend a photo shoot with Parade magazine and a performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Seven years later, in October 2000, the Clintons were enjoying a quiet weekend at their new home in Chappaqua, N.Y., when word came that the Cole, a U.S. destroyer, had been attacked in a Yemen port. Bill Clinton rushed back to the White House to deal with the crisis. Hillary Clinton returned to the campaign trail in her run for the Senate.

Hillary’s health care plan isn’t paying for her own employees

The self-professed champion for ‘universal health care’ hasn’t been paying the health care bills for her own employees.

Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out.

Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda.

The campaign provides health insurance to all its employees, their spouses, partners and children — and that wasn’t interrupted by any lag in payments to insurance providers, said Jay Carson, a Clinton campaign spokesman.

He said the campaign this month paid off all outstanding bills to Aetna Healthcare and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. Those payments will be reflected on a report the campaign will file this month with the Federal Election Commission, which Carson said will show “zero debt owed to both vendors.”

“Sometimes invoices are not paid immediately because we need additional information for our records, or to verify expenses,” Carson said in a statement e-mailed to Politico. “Sometimes invoices arrive at the very end of the month at the cutoff of the reporting period, which means that we are required to report them as a debt on the current FEC report, even where they are paid in regular course during the next month.”

But the unpaid bills to Aetna were at least two months old, according to FEC filings.

They show the campaign ended last year owing Aetna more than $213,000 for “employee benefits.”

During the first two months of the year, the campaign did not pay down any of that debt. In fact, it accrued another $16,000 in unpaid bills last month, and it finished the month owing Aetna $229,000.

Top 10 Myths Keeping Hillary In The Race

Chip Collis gives an excellent analysis…

I have noted a number of myths amongst the comments here as to why Hillary should stay in the race. Here are ten enduring, kudzu-like myths, with the debunking they sorely need.

Myth: This race is tied.

No, actually, it’s not. Obama has the lead in number of states won, in pledged delegates and in overall delegates. Nothing will happen in the remaining primaries to substantially change that. As to the one thing Hillary does lead in, superdelegates, her quickly shrinking margin is among DNC personnel only. When you look at the elected superdelegates, Congressman, Senators and Governors (i.e. people who actually work with both Obama and Clinton) Obama leads there, too.

Myth: Okay, the popular vote is tied.

There are people who claim that because of the 3% separation, that Obama’s lead in the popular vote is a “statistical tie.” This is a myth because, when you can actually count things, there’s no need of statistics and no such thing as a margin of error. The popular vote is not an estimate based on a sampling, like a poll. Like the general election, there are winners and losers and, so far, Obama is the winner.

Myth: Fine, but what if we count electoral votes? NOW Hillary is ahead!

Not so much. The proportions of electoral votes to population versus delegates to population are pretty comparable. So if you allocated electors proportionally in the same manner that you allocate delegates, Obama is still ahead. If you allocate them on a winner-take-all basis, then that would be the same as allocating the delegates on a winner-take-all basis, so why bring electors into it?

Myth: But if we did do it like the Electoral College, that proves Hillary is more electable than Obama, because of states like California.

This is perhaps the saddest little myth of all. It’s ridiculous to suggest that Obama will lose New York and California to McCain because Clinton won them in the primaries. No, come November, those states will join with Obama’s Illinois to provide 40% of the electors necessary for him to win.

Myth: Very well, then, Mr. Smarty-Math. But if we counted Michigan and Florida, THEN Hillary would be winning!

Nooo, she wouldn’t. The margin would depend on how you allocate the delegates, but Obama would still be ahead. And he’d still be about 100,000 ahead in the popular vote, too, despite not even being on the ballot in Michigan. However, it would enhance Hillary’s chances of catching up in the remaining races.

Myth: Ah HA! So Dean is keeping them out just to help Obama! And Obama is keeping them out.

That’s two myths, but I’ll treat it like one. The only people who can come up with a solution to this problem are the states themselves, to be presented to the Rules and Regulations Committee of the DNC for ratification. It was Rules and Regs, not Howard Dean, who ruled that Florida and Michigan were breaking the rules when they presented their original primary plans. If the two states cannot come up with a plan to reselect delegates, they can try to seat whatever delegates were chosen in the discounted primaries by appealing to the Democratic Convention’s Credentialing Committee, which includes many members from Rules and Bylaws.

Myth: If they don’t get seated until the convention but a nominee is selected before these poor people get counted then these states are disenfranchised.

There are two ways to debunk this myth: semantically and practically. The first is based on the word “disenfranchised:” these people have not been deprived of their right to vote. Through the actions of their states, their votes don’t impact the outcome. Now, you may say that that is specious semantics (Myth: I do say that!) but practically speaking, this is the usual effect of the nominating process, anyway. All of the Republican primaries since McCain clinched the nomination have been meaningless, but those voters are not disenfranchised.

Florida and Michigan tried to become more relevant in the process by breaking the rules. They risked becoming irrelevant instead.

Myth: Well, I say they are disenfranchised, and Hillary Clinton is their champion.

Only when it suits her. Last fall, when the decision was first made to flush 100% of Michigan and Florida delegates, Clinton firmly ratified it. That was because the typical punishment of only 50% representation also kept the candidates from raising money in those states. Figuring that she would wrap up the nomination handily anyway, the clear front-runner agreed with all the other candidates - including Obama - to completely “disenfranchise” those two states.

Myth: Well, never mind 2007. She’s doing more now to bring them in.

Not really. Recent stories in the St. Petersburg Times political blog said that 1) the Obama camp has reached out to the Florida Democratic party about a compromise and that 2) the Clinton camp will discuss nothing else but re-votes, which are legally, practically and politically dead.

Myth: Whatever! Hillary can still win! I know she can! She and her 37% positive rating will sweep through the remaining primaries and Michigan and Florida, winning 70% of everything and superdelegates will flock to her banner and Barack Obama will personally nominate her at the Convention and John McCain will give up and George Bush will even quit early so she can take over and… and… and… can I have a glass of water?

Yes, and you should lie down, too.

Clinton Pushes Housing Market Fixes As Campaign Manager Sits on Board of Bankrupt Lender

Hillary Clinton spends considerable time on the campaign trail bemoaning unscrupulous lenders who have left millions of Americans scrambling to keep their homes but all the while her campaign manager, Margaret “Maggie” Williams, has sat on the board of one of the nation’s once-largest and now-bankrupt sub-prime mortgage lenders.

Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told FOXNews.com late Sunday that Williams, a longtime Clinton ally, didn’t join Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign as a volunteer until after Delta Financial Corporation — for which Williams is a director — went bankrupt in December 2007.

That’s more than seven years after Williams joined New York-based Delta Financial in 2000. She became a director one month after a federal settlement was reached with the lender over discriminatory lending practices. More recently, Delta has been accused by consumer advocates of pursuing predatory practices throughout the housing boom and bust.

As of September 2007, Williams owned 12,500 shares of Delta’s common stock, and by 2007 had earned at least $175,000 for her board obligations, according to company filings available in the Securities & Exchange Commission online database.

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Intently focused on the nation’s housing crisis in recent appearances, Clinton has been clear that sub-prime mortgage lenders, particularly in poor, working class urban neighborhoods shoulder much of the blame for the credit crunch.

…

But as it turns out, Clinton’s top aide is on the board of what had been — until its bankruptcy — the ninth-leading sub-prime lender in the nation, handling almost $800 million worth of sub-prime lending in the third quarter of 2007 alone, according to National Mortgage News.

Hillary the next governor of New York?

Terrified that their bloody primary campaign will doom them in the November presidential elections in the US, some Democrats are floating a consolation prize for Hillary Clinton - Governor of New York State, according to a media report.

The travails of New York Governor David Paterson have opened up a new potential career path for Clinton, ‘Newsweek’ says quoting unidentified well-informed Democratic Party insiders.

They want Clinton, a New York Senator, to consider the option if she concludes after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary that she cannot overtake Barack Obama for the party’s presidential nomination.

Hillary Clinton, while fully committed to continuing her presidential campaign, was said to be open to discussing the idea, while her husband and former president Bill Clinton rejected it out of hand, the magazine says in its upcoming issue.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Hillary in a role where she is actually accountable for her decisions? The fact that Bill automatically opposed the idea is very telling.

Hillary stiffs the working people

There is something seriously ironic about a woman that will tell a bunch of rich people at a 2004 San Francisco fundraiser that she is going to “take things away from you on behalf of the common good”, referring to taking from the rich to give to the working class, and then proceed to stiff that same working class when she owes them monies for services rendered.

The Hillary Clinton campaign has avoided paying hundreds of bills and vendors and service providers are warning people to get paid up front before rendering any services to the Clinton campaign or they may not get paid at all.

Hillary campaign leaves trail of unpaid bills behind her

Hillary Clinton’s determination to remain in the presidential race may spell bad news for small businesses in the states that have yet to vote.

Staff have left a trail of unpaid bills and trashed offices across America in the past three months, raising fresh doubts about the viability of her run for the Democratic nomination. A property manager who let rooms to the campaign last summer in Clinton, Iowa, said that he found rubbish, rotting food, holes drilled in the walls and permanent stains on the carpet. He did not receive unpaid rent until last month — but kept the $500 deposit to cover clean-up expenses.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, landlord Terry Bennett went to the media to complain about late payment from Clinton campaign tenants who, he said, “left enough trash for a small army” — but no rent. When he eventually got his cheque, he donated it to Barack Obama.

Ohio event management companies owed money by Mrs Clinton were quoted yesterday warning others to ask for money up front. Jim Phillips, the owner of Show Tyme Exhibits, said that he needed a $607 invoice settled. “I’m a small guy,” he said. “I could use that.”

The delayed payments may reflect her straitened circumstances after the most expensive battle for the Democratic nomination in history, in which she has recently been heavily outspent on advertising by Mr Obama.

Bill Clinton, in a weekend e-mail to supporters, underlined the urgent need for money before the end of March. “Our opponents and the media will scrutinise our fundraising reports and look for any sign of weakness,” he said.

Although February was her best month yet in fundraising, documents filed last week with the Federal Elections Commission show that at the end of that month Mrs Clinton’s total of $38 million in the bank was mostly money that can be spent only if she wins the nomination.

The Politico.com website reported that if she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills and not loaned her campaign $5 million, she would have had less than $2 million available for this month. Mr Obama would still have had $31 million cash-in-hand even if he had paid off the $625,000 owed to creditors.

Mrs Clinton’s biggest debts are to her pollsters, strategists and advertising consultants. She also has hundreds of outstanding bills for catering, security, printing and hiring venues. By the end of February, her campaign had not, for instance, reimbursed the Hy-Vee chain for making thousands of sandwiches on the night of the Iowa caucuses.

boys are bullies

Faced with a growing chorus to abandon the uphill battle against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton is falling back on what she sees as her trump card - her gender.

At other perilous junctures like the eve of the New Hampshire primary and the eve of Super Tuesday, the former First Lady highlighted her femininity during televised tearful moments. Now she is portraying the calls for her to quit as male chauvinism.

In comments leaked to the New York Times, Mrs Clinton is said to have told aides that she would not be “bullied out” of the White House race and in a conversation with two allies compared her plight to “big boys” trying to bully a woman.

Of course, this in no way impunes Hillary’s ability to act as Commander in Chief. As long as any international leaders aren’t bullies, too!

Democrats Get Their Groove On

Bill appears to praise McCain, actually lays groundwork for Hillary’s Second Chance

For the second time in a week, Bill Clinton offered high praise for Republican presidential nominee John McCain — the candidate who could end up squaring off against Clinton’s wife Hillary.

At a stop in rural Pennsylvania on Thursday, Bill told the gather