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Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

The Hillary Clinton Myth Unravels At Last

Dan Calabrese at the North Star Writers Group sums up Hillary’s experience better than I ever could.

There are people who scheme to protect their own political viability because they have earned the right to. Hillary was not one of these. For her, the viability was for its own sake. So was her candidacy.

What was its rationale? What has she ever accomplished? You can’t cite much in her Senate career, but even if you could, you’d have to acknowledge that she decided she should be president before she ever got there.

The spectacular failure of Hillary’s campaign is not that big a surprise. Puffed up well beyond what she deserved, protected from any serious competition or criticism, how could she possibly be expected to be prepared the first time she had to deal with the real political world?

She resorts to whining, shrill outrage and the release of unflattering pictures of Barack Obama because she has nothing else. The whole Hillary mythology was empty. She’s not smart. She’s not tough. She’s not capable. She’s not even formidable enough to make it as a second-rate county politician, let alone presidential material.

Read the rest HERE.

Clinton: Hire me, please

Hillary Clinton is urging Ohio voters tonight to think of the election more as a hiring decision than a vote, saying the country cannot afford someone unprepared in the White House if crisis strikes.

“We don’t know what will happen,” she said to hundreds of supporters gathered in a gym here near the Ohio-West Virginia border. “That’s why we have to think about this decision more like a hiring choice than a voting choice. You know, you can vote for somebody or against somebody for whatever reason you want.”

The implication is clear: Barack Obama may excite voters, she’s suggesting, but should excitement be the reason you hire someone to be president? It’s a variation of the Obama-as-risk argument that Clinton and her husband have used on and off during the campaign, to evidently little effect.

“I hope you will decide you want to hire me for the toughest job in the world,” she said.

Considering the ineptitude of her campaign, she should consider finding out what a Senator actually does when not preparing for a presidential election. She’ll be stuck in her ‘dead-end’ job for as long as New York can put up with her.

Texas two-step could trip up Clinton

As if things were going bad enough for Hillary’s campaign, a review of the Texas delegate allocation procedures appear to favor Obama.

Bubba says, “If you elect me…”

Make no mistake about it.. Bill Clinton believes he is running for office again..

See his speech here.

Let’s send him back to the golf courses where he can help OJ look for the real killer.

secretly recorded phone conversations with Bubba up for sale

Gennifer Flowers is putting the tapes of her recorded conversations with Bill Clinton during their 12-year affair on the auction block, Vegas Confidential learned Monday.

Flowers, who came forward during Clinton’s 1992 Presidential election campaign with details of the relationship, said she decided to part with the tapes after renewed interest surfaced. She was offered $5 million by a Japanese collector in the 1990s, she said.

Asked about the timing of her announcement coming out as Hillary Clinton continues to slide in her presidential bid, “I don’t need to hurt Hillary. She is doing a fine job of that herself, along with her idiot husband. Karma is an interesting thing. If these two don’t get elected, and they are a team, it will be karma coming back to visit them. It’s about time.”

When President Clinton denied the relationship during his presidential campaign, Flowers called a press conference played what she said were secretly recorded phone conversations.

“These are the tapes I brought forth as proof,” she said.

Flowers, who lives in Las Vegas, sued Hillary Rodham Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, James Carville and other, accusing them of orchestrating a campaign to discredit her. Carville and Stephanopolous claimed Flowers doctored the tapes.

Flowers, 58, said she has kept the tapes “very safe all these years and I just recently received more interest and I said ‘why not?’

“I certainly would enjoy the money for my future security. I don’t have any guarantee what might be coming,” she said.

Flowers is also exploring a new book with “explosive story additions to the Clinton affair,” her publicist Bruce Merrin said in a release. The book “ill contain a special item which must remain a protected secret until the book is published.”

still trying to ‘win’ Michigan

Hillary seems to have the annoying comediene vote wrapped up, but she’s still desperate to get votes from normal people. She can’t even remember which primaries are still pending and which disqualified delegates she needs to ‘requalify’ by changing the rules after the fact.

[Ellen Degeneres asked] Clinton how she could change the momentum in her campaign after 11 straight losses to Democratic rival Barack Obama.

“We’re going to win Ohio and Michigan,” Clinton said, then acknowledged she misspoke. “We’re going to win Ohio and Texas! I already won Michigan.”

Clinton has pinned the future of her candidacy on Ohio and Texas, both of which hold primaries March 4.

The New York senator was the only Democratic contender to leave her name on the ballot in Michigan after the Democratic National Committee sanctioned the state for violating party rules by holding its primary in mid-January.

The DNC stripped the state of all its delegates, rendering the primary outcome meaningless. But Clinton has pushed to have them seated at the party’s national convention in late summer.

Newsweek calls for Hillary to drop out

If Hillary Clinton wanted a graceful exit, she’d drop out now — before the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries—and endorse Barack Obama. This would be terrible for people like me who have been dreaming of a brokered convention for decades. For selfish reasons, I want the story to stay compelling for as long as possible, which means I’m hoping for a battle into June for every last delegate and a bloody floor fight in late August in Denver. But to withdraw this week would be the best thing imaginable for Hillary’s political career. She won’t, of course, and for reasons that help explain why she’s in so much trouble in the first place.

Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn’t. To win, she would have to do more than reverse the tide in Texas and Ohio, where polls show Obama already even or closing fast. She would have to hold off his surge, then establish her own powerful momentum within three or four days. Without a victory of 20 points or more in both states, the delegate math is forbidding. In Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, the Clinton campaign did not even file full delegate slates. That’s how sure they were of putting Obama away on Super Tuesday.

The much-ballyhooed race for superdelegates is now nearly irrelevant. Some will be needed in Denver to put Obama over the top, just as Walter Mondale had to round up a couple dozen in 1984. But these party leaders won’t determine the result. At the Austin, Texas, debate last week, Hillary agreed that the process would “sort itself out” so that the will of the people would not be reversed by superdelegates. Even if you include Michigan (where Obama’s name wasn’t on the ballot) and Florida, Obama has a lead of 925,000 in the popular vote. Closing that gap would require Hillary to win all the remaining contests by crushing margins. Any takers on her chances of doing so in, say, Mississippi and North Carolina, where African-Americans play a big role?

Onward Clinton Soldiers…

There is a widespread feeling among donors and some advisers, though, that a comeback this time may be improbable. Her advisers said internal polls showed a very tough race to win the Texas primary — a contest that no less than Mr. Clinton has said is a “must win.” And while advisers are drawing some hope from Mrs. Clinton’s indefatigable nature, some are burning out.

Morale is low. After 13 months of dawn-to-dark seven-day weeks, the staff is exhausted. Some have taken to going home early — 9 p.m. — turning off their BlackBerrys, and polishing off bottles of wine, several senior staff members said.

Some advisers have been heard yelling at close friends and colleagues. In a much-reported incident, Mr. Penn and the campaign advertising chief, Mandy Grunwald, had a screaming match over strategy recently that prompted another senior aide, Guy Cecil, to leave the room. “I have work to do — you’re acting like kids,” Mr. Cecil said, according to three people in the room.

Others have taken several days off, despite it being crunch time. Some have grown depressed, be it over Mr. Obama’s momentum, the attacks on the campaign’s management from outside critics or their view that the news media has been much rougher on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Obama.

And some of her major fund-raisers have begun playing down their roles, asking reporters to refer to them simply as “donors,” to try to rein in their image as unfailingly loyal to the Clintons.

The 12 Questions Hillary Wouldn’t Answer

Pravda’s pissed.

The Russian newspaper, once eagerly read by the CIA for hints about the USSR’s Communist leadership, sent the junior senator from New York twelve questions.

They never received any answers.

In fact, they still haven’t received a dah or nyet.

The paper was so peeved it published an editorial a several weeks ago taking Hillary Clinton to task for not even responding to their request a few years back for some answers.

Two years ago, the office of Senator Hillary Clinton was contacted with a polite message requesting an interview. A standard anonymous answer followed. Despite repeated contacts during the election campaign, not even a message of recognition was received, contrary to all the other political parties in the USA, including the office of Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney. Here are the questions that Hillary Clinton did not answer:

Even Dick Cheney!

Although the Russian newspaper started sending their queries a few years ago, they must have added to their list since then, as the last couple questions pertain to Barack Obama’s campaign, which wasn’t announced until little over a year ago.

What were the questions that Clinton didn’t even acknowledge?

Pravda published them on February 3 2008 along with a couple snide–some would say accurate–observations.

Here they are:

The Twelve Questions Hillary Clinton won’t Answer

1. Senator Clinton, is it true that you insinuated President Putin does not have a soul?

2. You have said you wish to reform the US healthcare system. Could you please tell us how you plan to do this?

3. Why should you succeed where others have failed?

4. How would you comment on your statement that being a Republican and a Christian are difficult to conciliate?

5. Is it true that you have the support of the Jewish Lobby? If so, how will this influence your foreign policy? Will it continue to be controlled by Israel?

6. What is your message to the average American voter? How would you propose to make his/her life better?

7. What are your plans for Iran? Do you stand for a war?

8. How would you improve America’s standing in the international community?

9. Why did you support the war against Iraq?

10. What are the reasons for your having fallen for the lies which were launched against Saddam Hussein?

11. Why does your Candidate website not have an email for the Press, whereas that of Senator Obama has? Would you agree this is a comment on the professionalism or the arrogance of your campaign?

12. Did you hope to gain an advantage over your opponent by announcing your trip to Florida and your support for the seating of Florida delegates just prior to the Florida primary?

After listing the above questions in their editorial, Pravda then followed them with a few obsevations.

The absense of an answer, on a systematic basis, can mean one or all of a number of things: Senator Clinton cannot answer these questions, does not want to answer these questions because she cannot find a credible enough reply, could not care less about the international press (in which case, what a fine candidate for a US President at a time when the USA needs to build bridges) or worse still, never received the messages in the first place, which would indicate a tremendous and shocking degree of lack of professionalism. If she cannot handle a website, how can she be expected to govern a nation of 300 million people?

The reader can decide for himself the wording or validity of Pravda’s questions, especially those in #5.

However, more than a few Americans would agree with the conclusions they reached.

Pravda then fired a parting shot at Clinton’s presidential campaign by noting that, “Indeed, for some reason Barack Obama’s website has a contact for the Press, whereas Senator Clinton’s has none.”

Whatever one thinks of the questions that Clinton declined to decline to answer, one has to admit one thing.

They’re tougher questions than anyone in the American MSM has asked the Democrat candidate to date.

Now Pravda knows how many American voters feel.

They’ve been trying to get some of those answers for years.

happy birthday!

This week we celebrate a special birthday! Monica Lewinsky turned 34. Can you believe it? It seems like only yesterday she was crawling around the White House on her hands and knees, and putting everything in her mouth.

They grow up so fast, don’t they?

If Obama Went 0-for-10 . . .

Sigh. To this day, I’m not sure the Clinton campaign understands that no focus-group-tested slogan is going to have the elemental resonance of “Yes, we can” (Obama’s homage to César Chávez) or “Change the world.” Hasn’t anybody on the Clinton team ever read Joseph Campbell on the power of mythic narrative? And while we’re on the subject of message, what genius decided it was a great idea to demonize hope?

But it’s stunning that the battle-tested Clinton machine allowed itself to be outsmarted and outhustled at the arcane science of winning delegates in caucuses. And it’s even more surprising that the campaign has been so careless with its money that it now is resigned to being outspent anywhere and everywhere.

Most striking of all, to me, is that the campaign still can’t settle on what kind of candidate Hillary Clinton should be. Does she now have to go negative, or should she try to hitchhike on the hope express? Does she project steely resolve or reveal human vulnerability? The campaign wants to convince voters that they don’t know who Obama really is — yet also insists on fitting Clinton with a new persona every week.

Where Did All the Money Go?

Did this campaign have a budget? If not, why not? If it did, was it poorly constructed? Or did people running the campaign simply overspend? Anyway you slice it, the money mess throws into serious question her ready-on-day-one executive ability.

Clinton fired her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, who was reportedly afraid to tell her boss the bad news about the squandered money. Lesson one for organizational disaster: A boss whose subordinates are scared to give her bad news. See Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam for what can happen.

Why was Doyle campaign manager in the first place? She had been a scheduleer and had never run a major political campaign. The gossip is that Doyle was the nominal campaign manager, not the real boss. Then why fire her?

Doyle has been replaced by Maggie Williams, a long time politico with a background in public relations and Hillary’s major domo during the Clintons’ White House years. Hers is a good resumé, but it does not include running a political campaign. But she is said to be a Hillary loyalist. In Hillaryland, loyalty and secrecy are prized over competence.

more people have been on the summit of Everest

Remember how Hillary claimed she had been named after Sir Edmund Hillary, even though she was 5 years old by the time Edmund Hillary climbed Mt Everest and became famous? Well, now you can learn the true connection between Hillary Rodham and Mt Everest.

Click here.

Why the Democrats Are Kicking the Clintons to the Curb

The ever eloquent Lorie Byrd, who I’ve been reading for years, has an amazingly concise article as to who Hillary Clinton can blame for her demise.

I believe there is a whole group of Democrats out there who are secretly enjoying being able to vote against a Clinton. They can take out their frustrations with the Clintons and still vote for a Democrat. For the first time in 16 years, Democrats can vote against a Clinton without having to vote for a Republican to do it.

Please read the whole story.

and video killed the radio star

According to Rasmussen, Hillary’s popularity in Texas was declining, then peaked the day of the Wisconsin primary. With 8 straight losses going into that primary, it was well known that Hillary needed that win to restore her mortally wounded campaign. Instead of a revival, her campaign now more closely resembles a wake.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that Wisconsin could very well have been the final nail in the Hillary For President campaign coffin.

Bill puts his ‘campaign skills’ to use

Q. How would Hillary run the country?

A. Straight into bankruptcy.

Clinton Donors Worried by Campaign’s Spending

Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings. Several of them, echoing political analysts, expressed concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s spending priorities amounted to costly errors in judgment that have hamstrung her competitiveness against Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

“We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,” said a prominent New York donor. “So much about her campaign needs to change — but it may be too late.”

The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.

Hillary gets booed again

Clinton also raised Obama’s use in his campaign speeches of words first uttered by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

“If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words,” she said. “…Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”

The debate audience booed.

Meanwhile, Hillary might want to review some of her own plagiarisms before she starts throwing stones.

win or lose, Hillary has her own back, financially

Remember that $5 million loan Hillary made to her campaign? Campaign finance documents filed show that she’s charging her campaign an interest rate of 1.26 percent. Guess who will be repaying her loan plus interest! Hurry up and give Hillary some of your hard earned bucks before her campaign savings and loan closes up.

Vote for Hillary: She can’t get any more unpopular

Interesting strategy memo from the Clinton campaign on why Hillary is best poised to beat Barack Obama in a general election campaign against John McCain.

There were some familiar lines: Obama hasn’t been tested against the Republican attack machine, the excitement over his candidacy won’t last, Hillary is stronger on national security etc.

Then this – Hillary’s already so well known that everybody who is going to dislike her, in fact, already does. Whereas Obama can only become less popular.

Read the rest here.

apparently Chelsea is no Halle Berry

A few weeks ago, 21-year-old Wisconsin superdelegate Jason Rae was taken out to breakfast by Chelsea Clinton in the runup to that state’s Democratic primary.

Two days after the vote, the college junior – who will be the youngest superdelegate at this year’s Democratic National Convention — is undecided no longer: he’s backing Barack Obama.

And who can blame him when his supporters include Halle Berry. “I’ll do whatever he says to do,” actress Halle Berry said to the Philadelphia Daily News. “I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”

It’s a tough choice, and I only hope someday I am forced to decide.

the number one issue for voters today

The Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Bill Clinton screws with voters heads for a change

In a last-ditch effort to gain public support for his doting wife, convicted felon and former president Bill Clinton threw a bone to Texas and Ohio, hoping they’ll bite.

Bill Clinton told supporters at a rally in Galveston Wednesday that the Texas and Ohio primary elections will decide who the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee will be.

“This whole nomination process has come down to Texas and Ohio,” Clinton told a crowd of about 300 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. “If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be. It’s all on you.”

Hopefully, Texas and Ohio voters can tell they’re being jerked around, and will let Clinton know he’s barking up the wrong tree.

Clinton’s Spin Machine: Spun Dry

Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the ninth and tenth straight time last night, with blowouts in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Needless to say, this means nothing. As Clinton strategist Mark Penn explained yesterday, Wisconsin has a lot of independent voters, so it doesn’t really matter. And Hawaii is practically Obama’s home state, so it obviously doesn’t matter. Anyway, as Penn said recently, “winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election.” It’s apparently not even a sign of who can win the Democratic nomination — at least not when the victories are Obama’s.

The Clinton spin machine has been consistent about this. Nebraska, Idaho and Utah didn’t matter because they were deep-red states. South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia didn’t matter because they had large percentages of black voters. Maine and Washington didn’t matter because caucuses aren’t truly representative. Maryland and Virginia didn’t matter because Obama was expected to win there. For a moment, it looked like Missouri might matter when the networks called it for Hillary — her campaign quickly bragged about winning a “closely contested toss-up state” — but the networks were wrong. On the other hand, it looked like Nevada wasn’t going to matter at all because there were polling stations in casinos, but it ended up huge because Hillary won.

It turns out that the only state Obama won that could have mattered was Illinois, his real home state; unfortunately, home-state victories don’t really count, except when they take place in New York. “Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states outside of Illinois?” Penn recently asked.

remember the alamo?

Hillary loses Emily Post’s vote

For the second week in a row, Hillary Clinton lost big to Barack Obama in a set of Tuesday night primaries. And, for the second week in a row, she pretended it never happened.

Speaking in Youngstown, Ohio on Tuesday night after losing to Obama in Wisconsin, Hillary made no mention of the primary – not acknowledging her rival’s victories or the thousands of her own supporters who voted for her in the Badger State.

Her snub followed a similar one the week before in Texas after she lost the ‘Potomac primaries.’
The Clinton campaign, seeming to realize Hillary was being cast as a sore loser, let reporters know that she did phone Obama later Tuesday night to congratulate him on his wins.

But Obama got his payback, taking the stage at his own rally Tuesday night in Houston while Hillary was still speaking. All the U.S. news networks cut away from Hillary and went straight to Obama, robbing her of precious free air time.

dress Hillary for success

Courtesy of Addictinggames.com.

the S.S. Hillary takes on water

As Hillary’s likelihood of winning the democrat nomination flounders, herpledged superdelegates are bailing like rats in a waterlogged oceanliner.

A second New Jersey superdelegate has changed her allegiance from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama and was joined by nine other southern New Jersey politicians today in endorsing the Illinois senator’s bid for the Democratic nomination for president.

In announcing her switch, Sen. Dana Redd (D-Camden), the vice-chairwoman of the State Democratic Committee, said, “It’s time to unite behind a single candidate and that’s Senator Obama. He will have won, by the end of this contest, more popular votes, more primaries, more caucuses, more delegates elected by the people and deserves to be our nominee.”

Redd is the second New Jersey superdelegate to back Obama after previously supporting Clinton. Last week, Democratic National Committeewoman Christine “Roz” Samuels became the first superdelegate to switch from Clinton’s camp to Obama’s.

Joining Redd in endorsing Obama was another New Jersey superdelegate, Democratic National Committeeman Donald Norcross, who previously was uncommitted.

“The performance of Senator Obama in Wisconsin and the Potomac primaries demonstrated that he has broad appeal across the political spectrum – men and women, young and old, white and blue collars, Asian, white, Latino and African-American,” Norcross said. “We need to seize this momentum, attract a new generation of leaders to our party, while rallying behind the candidate who can best unite the country during these uncertain economic times.”

hillary needs a shot…in the head

After 10 straight losses, many pundits are speculating about what Hillary needs to get her campaign back on track. Some say she needs to be more aggressive. Some say she needs to tone down her rhetoric. I say all she needs is a shot in the head.

Now don’t call the Secret Service to report a potential assassination attempt. I’m merely alluding to the plot of “Regarding Henry”, a 1991 movie starring Harrison Ford.

Ford plays Henry Turner, a despicable and ruthless trial lawyer whose life is turned upside down when he is shot in the head during a robbery. He survives the injury with significant brain damage and must re-learn how to speak, walk, and function normally. More importantly, he has also lost most of the memory of his personal life, and must adjust to life with the family that he does not remember. To the surprise of his wife and daughter, Henry becomes a loving and affectionate man.

Short of undergoing intense psychotherapy, a well-placed shot to the head could be the proverbial shot in the arm for Hillary’s campaign.

I’m just sayin’.

after losing Wisconsin, Hillary thanks… the marching band

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has gotten good over the last few weeks at fleeing a primary state she has just lost and trying to turn the page.

This time around, she did not even wait for the results to come in.

Instead, on Tuesday night, Clinton announced that she would give a “major address” in Manhattan on Wednesday morning and delivered what aides described as a “preview” here. It seemed clearly designed to be a pre-emptive strike against the news that Clinton had lost yet another primary race.

“Tonight I want to talk to you about the choice you have in this election and why that choice matters. It is about picking a president who relies not just on words but on work, on hard work, to get America back to work,” Clinton said. “The best words in the world aren’t enough unless you match them with action.”

Clinton, who has lost more than a half-dozen primaries since Feb. 5, once again did not congratulate her rival as his victory in Wisconsin became official. She did not even acknowledge that voting had taken place that day, instead thanking the high school marching band.

Wisconsin isn’t looking good for Hillbilly

The results are pretty early, but that’s not preventing CBS online from predicting a winner…

another day, another lie

Worried that the sun might rise and set without meeting her quotas of lies, Hillary got this one in just as dusk was settling in… whew!

Clinton Fingerprints on Plagiarism Flap

Hillary Rodham Clinton says reporters, not her campaign, uncovered evidence of Democratic rival Barack Obama sharing speech lines with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
She made the claim Tuesday despite the fact her campaign posted video clips on YouTube illustrating similarities in the speeches and has suggested in several instances that the shared lines amount to plagiarism.
THE SPIN: “It’s not us making this charge, it’s the media,” Clinton told Honolulu television station KITV Tuesday. “The media is finally examining my opponent which I think is important. We’re trying to pick a president, someone for the toughest job in the world.”

She added: “I think the media is going to be putting forth whatever facts and information it has for voters to assess on their own.”

In an interview with another Honolulu station, KGMB, Clinton noted that Obama and Patrick share a strategist, David Axelrod, “who is apparently putting words in both of their mouths.”
She added: “I think that’s a serious concern.”

FACT CHECK: Any suggestion that the story had a life of its own, apart from the Clinton campaign, is disingenuous.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said: “Senator Clinton knows full well that her campaign held a conference call with reporters to fan these flames and the fact that she suggested her campaign had nothing to do with it is exactly the kind of evasive tactic voters are rejecting.”

chelsea clinton is a tool

Hillary will even use her own daughter in order to win a few votes.

“We also have to reward work more,” Clinton told a small group of Ohio residents today. “and by that, I mean, I have people in New York working on Wall Street as investment managers, as hedge fund executives. Under the tax code, they can pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes on $50 million dollars, than a teacher, or a nurse, or a truck driver in Parma pays on $50,000. That’s very discouraging to people.”

The former first lady’s daughter, Chelsea Clinton, works for New York-based hedge fund Avenue Capital Group. She previously worked in New York for McKinsey & Company, her first job after graduating with her master’s degree from Oxford University.

Joke of the Day

Clinton issues Obama skeletons warning

Hillary Clinton argues that she’s scandal-proof after all her years in federal politics.

But Republicans, she says, will have a field day with relative newcomer Barack Obama if he becomes the Democratic nominee instead of her.

“We Don’t Need To Have a Beer With the Next President”

During a campaign stop Monday night, Hillary Clinton warned a crowd of several thousand supporters that picking a president should be based more on experience than popularity, pointing out that President George W. Bush is a product of voters choosing based a president based on popularity.

“We need to know as specifically as possible what our next president intends to do. We don’t need a leap of faith, we don’t need to have a beer with the next president, we had that president,” she said.

“I’d be happy to have a beer too we can talk about what we’re going to do to solve our problems.”

Clinton, who stayed on message throughout her remarks focused on the economy, health care and education. But she found moments to take jabs at Barack Obama without naming him saying, “I know that contrasts have been drawn often in this campaign between the soaring rhetoric and the speeches. But I have to say there is a difference between speeches and solutions,” said Clinton drawing loud applause from the crowd.

Clinton also attacked Obama on health care pointing out that she is the only candidate who offers a universal health care plan. Clinton said it is “unconstitutional to discriminate against sick people.”

As she often does at these rallys, Clinton asked the crowd who she should “leave out” of her plan, a subtle dig at Obama whose health care plan, she claims, leaves out 15 million people. At one point, someone in the crowd yelled, “Leave out Obama.”

“I’m not going to leave out anybody. I’m not running for president to put Band-Aids on problems,” she responded.

Clinton’s visit to Madison is her last stop in Wisconsin before voters head to the polls today. Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, who joined her at this event, will be campaigning here today while Sen. Clinton heads to Ohio for campaign events in Cleveland and Youngstown.

Since when does the Constitution mention anything about sick people? But you have to remember that Hillary was referring to her aforementioned (failed) experience.

once again, the Clintons take the low road

“Mine will be the most ethical administration in the history of the republic!” President-Elect Bill Clinton, November 1992

The Clinton campaign has launched a furious spin war in the past few days against Barack Obama, ludicrously accusing Obama of “plagiarism” (even though the original source, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, has endorsed and campaigned for Obama), accusing delegates won in red state caucuses by Obama of being “second-class delegates” and threatening to blow up the party’s rules if the race lasts until the Democratic convention.

It’s too early to know if any of these attacks will stick. More victories tonight by Obama in Wisconsin and Hawaii and the momentum will remain on his side, making Ohio and Texas must-win for Clinton on March 4. Clinton can still rebound from her post-Super Tuesday slide. But if she does, it’s pretty obvious that she’ll capture the nomination by taking the low road.

The Politico’s Ben Smith asked a group of Democratic strategists how Clinton could still win. Their answers were revealing of Clinton’s predicament.

“The best thing she can do is either discredit Obama or raise doubts about him,” said Dan Gerstein, a former top strategist to Joe Lieberman. “I hate to say it, but in certain respects, it’s using the Bush strategy against Kerry against Obama.”

Democracy editor Ken Baer invoked a few similar doomsday scenarios:

1) Obama has a massive gaffe, 2) there is a terrorist attack or other major foreign policy crisis that gets people yearning for a steady hand or 3) there is a revelation of some sort of Obama scandal that gets Democratic voters to take a pause.

This advice begs the question: why can’t Clinton win on her own merits? Why can’t her campaign win caucuses, or highly educated voters, or compete competitively in red states? How have they failed to win a single contest since Super Tuesday? Gallup found that recently Obama has begun eroding Clinton’s advantages among key segments of her base, namely “women, Hispanics, and self-identified Democrats.”

These tracking polls, like all other polls this cycle, tend to be fluid and unreliable. Despite Obama’s string of victories, from a delegate standpoint the race is still very tight. Tonight could go either way. I wouldn’t be surprised if Clinton ends up pulling an upset in Wisconsin. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Obama wins, as expected, and Clinton never recovers. Either way don’t expect her campaign to take the high road from here on out.

did Hillary’s people really say something that insulting?

“Superdelegates are not second-class delegates,” says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. “The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic.”

Idaho’s governor, Cecil Andrus, who has endorsed Barack Obama’s campaign, shipped out word today that Clinton and Joel Ferguson, the offending Michiganer who dissed on Idaho’s delegates, ought to apologize.

“Senator Clinton’s surrogates are telling Democrats in almost half the states in the country that they don’t matter, and that they are second class,” Andrus said in a prepared statement. “Senator Clinton needs to immediately denounce these comments and tell her campaign surrogates to stop taking cheap pot-shots at committed Democrats across the country.”

how far are the Clinton’s willing to go?

Hillary Clinton, who has built her case for the presidency on her superior “ready on Day One” management skills, burned through almost $130 million of campaign money, had to kick in $5 million from her own murky family funds, and is now pressing her chief financial backers to find creative ways to raise more money.

Some of those financial schemes appear to skirt the law — as some backers consider putting money into “independent” entities that can spend unlimited sums but aren’t supposed to coordinate with the campaign — while other ideas are more traditional, like appealing to wealthy donors involved with the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby.

Sen. Clinton’s new scramble for money — as well as her campaign’s declaration that it is prepared to override the will of the elected Democratic delegates if necessary to secure the nomination — raise the question of just how far Bill and Hillary Clinton are willing to go to achieve their presidential restoration.

Read more here.

hillary’s scarlett o’hara act

Why some of us aren’t falling for it.

Feb. 8, 2008–There’s been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that “race trumped gender” among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in political struggles. It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I’m just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary’s Scarlett O’Hara act.

Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice does not resonate. Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband’s power and influence, have been complicit in black women’s oppression. Many African American women are simply refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.

Hillary might lose her home state primary!

Barack Obama’s primary-night results were strikingly under recorded in several congressional districts around the city – in some cases leaving him with zero votes when, in fact, he had pulled in hundreds, the Board of Elections said today.

Unofficial primary results gave Obama no votes in nearly 80 districts, including Harlem’s 94th and other historically black areas – but many of those initial tallies proved to be wildly off the mark, the Board of Elections confirmed.

Truth is, in some districts getting a recount, the senator from Illinois is even close to defeating Hillary Clinton.

Initial results in the 94th District, for example, showed a 141-0 sweep for the New York senator, but Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said today that the ongoing recount had changed the tally to 261-136.

As yet, none of the results has been certified, Vazquez said, adding that the Board of Elections had begun a painstaking ballot-by-ballot canvassing of all voting machines four days after the Feb. 5 election.

“We are doing a recanvass, and we will be counting all paper ballots, including absentee ones,” Vazquez said.

“Some initial tallies had zeros, but it was most likely due to human error. Those were unofficial numbers, and no confirmed results have been released yet.”

In a predominantly black Brooklyn district for which Clinton was given credit for a 118-0 victory on Primary Night, the Board of Elections’ latest figures indicate that she may not even come out the winner – Obama currently has 116 votes to her 118.

those delegates should not count.. unless Hillary needs them

Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign who voted to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates last year, now is arguing against the very penalty he helped pass.

In a conference call Saturday, the longtime Democratic Party member contended the DNC should reconsider its tough sanctions on the two states, which held early contests in violation of party rules. He said millions of voters in Michigan and Florida would be otherwise disenfranchised – before acknowledging moments later that he had favored the sanctions.

The Ace of Spades tells us the reason…

The Clinton campaign has made the case that the Michigan and Florida delegates should be seated at the convention. This would give her a bump of over 200 delegates and put her in a safe lead. Over the weekend, Ted Olson called it “splendid theater” and I enthusiastically agree. Various spin machines are in high gear, making multiple–sometimes contradictory–arguments that the Michigan and Florida delegations should be counted. Here are some of them.

Seat the delegates because to do otherwise violates the principles of democracy.

This is the argument made by the Clinton campaign itself. The idea is that people voted and their vote should be counted even though they voted improperly (and were warned about the rules prior to voting). Somehow, Democracy Itself requires that all the circumstances of the vote be ignored. Set aside the fact that Obama and Edwards followed the rules and took their names off the Michigan ballots. Set aside the fact that none of the candidates campaigned in Florida. Under this theory, the fact that voters recorded votes is enough to overcome basic ideas about fairness and process.

This is similar to the theory proposed by Democrats during the Florida recounts in 2000: ballots which could not be counted during the initial count because of some flaw in the marking of the ballot should be added to the recounts and the “clear intent” of the voter upheld. Everyone is directed to ignore the fact that if the intent of the voter had be clear the first time, the ballots would have been counted regularly. It amounts to changing the rules after the fact, and that’s exactly what Clinton is trying to do now.

Seat the delegates because to do otherwise is racially discriminatory.

A variation on the above spin, this one points out that black and Hispanic people voted in the Michigan and Florida primaries. Argued most recently by the NAACP, the spin is that keeping these delegates from counting at the convention brings to mind the “sordid history of racially discriminatory primaries.” (I guess they’re talking about the Democratic White Primary cases!)

It’s a more, ahem, colorful way of saying that once votes are made, they must be counted, rules be damned.

Seat the delegates because the DNC didn’t apply the rules fairly.

This is the ruleslawyer spin. It’s most common among the Democratic “Netroots” who have largely picked Clinton to win, including Kos, Jerome Armstrong, and others. It goes something like this: any state that made their primary date earlier than February 5th without permission was automatically supposed to lose half their delegates. However, the DNC Rules Committee had discretion to take all of the delegates as sanctions for misbehavior. The DNC Rules Committee chose to exercise that discretion and take all of the delegates from Michigan and Florida, but took none of the delegates from Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina which also had primaries earlier than February 5th. Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina had permission to go earlier, but not as early as they did. Therefore, to be fair, all the delegates should be seated.

Like most ruleslawyers, their intent is not to uphold the rules but cajole some benefit from an exasperated gamemaster decisiontaker. For example, if they really want to uphold the rules then all of the early primary states should have their delegations automatically cut in half, not restored in full. Also, they have to ignore the fact that the DNC Rules Committee was entirely within its authority to sanction Michigan and Florida to deter other states from jumping the gun.

Don’t be fooled. These are Clinton supporters desperately looking for some way to claim that it isn’t the Establishment screwing Obama after he won. They want to “reluctantly” claim that they had no choice, that it’s just how the rules work. Again, ignore the fact that the rules say no such thing and that, of the two, Obama was the only candidate who tried to follow the rules.

obama takes the lead

in Wisconsin poll:
Hillary – 42 percent
Obama – 47 percent

in Texas:
Hillary – 42 percent
Obama – 48 percent

down but not out… yet

Hillary stock is waivering between 28 and 30… let’s see where it is after Tuesday’s primaries.

It takes a liar…

While researching material for this blog, I have become overwhelmed by the high percentage of stories that, with just a little extra research.. literally, a few mouse clicks.. reveal flat out lies by Hillary. Sure, all politicians lie, we say. But at what point do we start to be concerned.. maybe when 30 percent of EVERYTHING that person says can be quickly and clearly disproven?

Take this story, for example… I planned to use the headline for Hillary’s famous “It Takes a Village” book to start this post. It is common knowledge that Hillary borrowed a classic african proverb as her title, but I wanted to learn a little more about it, in the same way that I try to learn a little about every Hillary news article before I link to it. While there was nothing unusual about Hillary’s use of the title, save from the socialist theme it presents, I was lead straight to yet another bold-faced Hillary lie.

Ghostwriter controversy

Clinton has been criticized for not giving credit to a ghostwriter in connection with It Takes a Village. The majority of the book was reportedly written by ghostwriter Barbara Feinman. When the book was first announced in April 1995, The New York Times reported publisher Simon & Schuster as saying “The book will actually be written by Barbara Feinman, a journalism professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Ms. Feinman will conduct a series of interviews with Mrs. Clinton, who will help edit the resulting text.”

Feinman spent seven months on the project and was paid $120,000 for her work. Feinman, however, was not mentioned anywhere in the book. Clinton’s acknowledgment section began: “It takes a village to bring a book into the world, as everyone who has written one knows. Many people have helped me to complete this one, sometimes without even knowing it. They are so numerous that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually, for fear that I might leave one out.” During her promotional tour for the book, Clinton said, “I actually wrote the book … I had to write my own book because I want to stand by every word.” Clinton stated that Feinman assisted in interviews and did some editorial drafting of “connecting paragraphs”, while Clinton herself wrote the final manuscript in longhand.

This led Feinman to complain at the time to Capitol Style magazine over the lack of acknowledgement. In 2001, The Wall Street Journal reported that “New York literary circles are buzzing with vitriol over Sen. Clinton’s refusal, so far, to share credit with any writer who helps on her book.” Later, in a 2002 article for The Writer’s Chronicle, Barbara Feinman Todd (now using her married name) related that the project with Clinton had gone smoothly, producing drafts in a round-robin style. Feinman agrees that Clinton was involved with the project, but also states that, “Like any first lady, Mrs. Clinton had an extremely hectic schedule and writing a book without assistance would have been logistically impossible.” Feinman reiterates that her only objection to the whole process was the lack of any acknowledgement. A 2005 Georgetown University web page bio for Barbara Feinman Todd states that It Takes a Village was one of “several high-profile books” that she has “assisted, as editor, writer and researcher.”

I personally am ambivalent about the argument that ‘it is about time for America to have a female president.’ I couldn’t care less what the gender is of our Commander in Chief. I am much more concerned that the leader of our nation has a firm and consistent record of integrity.

I also feel that a person’s integrity isn’t shown by large gestures, but rather is apparent in the small everyday occurances that often go unnoticed. An example would be of the diner who is polite to the waitstaff during the meal and tips beyond the prescribed minimum after. Giving credit where credit is due, and humbly stepping aside and allowing an underling to accept praise when it is warranted is something we could use more of in our society.

But lying to steal the credit for another person’s work shows nothing but a maladjusted psyche and an overambitious mind. This is not a person I would recommend for any elected office, much less the highest in our land.

Some black superdelegates reassess Clinton support

In a fresh sign of trouble for Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of the former first lady’s congressional black supporters intends to vote for Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, and a second, more prominent lawmaker is openly discussing a possible switch.

how much does a superdelegate cost?

Many of the superdelegates who could well decide the Democratic presidential nominee have already been plied with campaign contributions by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, a new study shows.

“While it would be unseemly for the candidates to hand out thousands of dollars to primary voters, or to the delegates pledged to represent the will of those voters, elected officials serving as superdelegates have received about $890,000 from Obama and Clinton in the form of campaign contributions over the last three years,” the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reported today.

About half the 800 superdelegates — elected officials, party leaders, and others — have committed to either Clinton or Obama, though they can change their minds until the convention.

Obama’s political action committee has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates since 2005, the study found, and of the 81 who had announced their support for Obama, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.

Clinton’s political action committee has distributed about $195,000 to superdelegates, and only 13 of the 109 who had announced for her have received money, totaling about $95,000.

Putin puts Hillary in her place

The former KGB lieutenant colonel appeared to lash out at U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton — a leading Democratic candidate for president — when one reporter quoted her as saying that former KGB officers have no soul:

“At a minimum, a head of state should have a head,” Putin said.

hillary effectively hands obama $500 campaign contribution

A Portsmouth, N.H., landlord says he finally received his check for $500 for a five-day stay by volunteers for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in January.

But the ordeal — which included leaving his warehouse property trashed with campaign signs – left him sore, so he’s donating the cash to Barack Obama’s campaign.

“It was the last straw for Hillary Clinton for me,” Terry Bennett told the Portsmouth Herald.

Bennett’s missing reimbursement wasn’t the only one, the Herald found. An Iowa businessman told the paper he’s owed more than $7,000 by the campaign.

Dear Abby

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and, when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job six years ago, he hasn’t even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and bull**** with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?

Signed: Clueless

————————————————————

Dear Clueless:

Grow up and dump him. Good grief, woman! You don’t need him anymore! You’re a Senator from New York running for President of the United States. So act like one!!!

jumping ship or going down with it?

For years, Bill and Hillary Clinton treated the Democratic National Committee and party activists as extensions of their White House ambitions, pawns in a game of success and survival. She may pay a high price for their selfishness soon.

Top Democrats, including some inside Hillary Clinton’s campaign, say many party leaders — the so-called superdelegates — won’t hesitate to ditch the former New York senator for Barack Obama if her political problems persist. Their loyalty to the first couple is built on shaky ground.

“If (Barack) Obama continues to win …. the whole raison d’etre for her campaign falls apart and we’ll see people running from her campaign like rats on a ship,” said Democratic strategist Jim Duffy, who is not aligned with either campaign.

The rats started looking for clear waters when Obama won Iowa, narrowly lost New Hampshire and trounced Clinton in South Carolina before holding his own in last week’s Super Tuesday contests. He won primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday to extend his consecutive win streak to eight.

Obama has won 23 of 35 contests, earning the majority of delegates awarded on the basis of election results. The remaining 796 delegates are elected officials and party leaders whose votes are not tied to state primaries or caucuses; thus, they are dubbed “superdelegates.”

And they are not all super fans of the Clintons.

Some are labor leaders still angry that Bill Clinton championed the North American Free Trade Agreement as part of his centrist agenda.

Some are social activists who lobbied unsuccessfully to get him to veto welfare reform legislation, a talking point for his 1996 re-election campaign.

Some served in Congress when the Clintons dismissed their advice on health care reform in 1993. Some called her a bully at the time.

Some are DNC members who saw the party committee weakened under the Clintons and watched President Bush use the White House to build up the Republican National Committee.

Some are senators who had to defend Clinton for lying to the country about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Some are allies of former Vice President Al Gore who still believe the Lewinsky scandal cost him the presidency in 2000.

Some are House members (or former House members) who still blame Clinton for Republicans seizing control of the House in 1994.

Some are donors who paid for the Clintons’ campaigns and his presidential library.

Some are folks who owe the Clintons a favor but still feel betrayed or taken for granted. Could that be why Bill Richardson, a former U.N. secretary and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, refused to endorse her even after an angry call from the former president? “What,” Bill Clinton reportedly asked Richardson, “isn’t two Cabinet posts enough?”

And some just want something new. They appreciate the fact that Clinton was a successful president and his wife was an able partner, but they never loved the couple as much as they feared them.

Never count the Clintons out. They are brilliant politicians who defied conventional wisdom countless times in Arkansas and Washington. But time is running out.

Two senior Clinton advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the race candidly, said the campaign feels the New York senator needs to quickly change the dynamic by forcing Obama into a poor debate performance, going negative or encouraging the media to attack Obama. They’re grasping at straws, but the advisers said they can’t see any other way that her campaign will be sustainable after losing 10 in a row.

Clinton strategists are famous for poor-mouthing their own campaign in order to lower expectations, but these advisers have never played such games. They’re legitimate, and legitimately worried.

The fear inside the Clinton camp is that Obama will win Hawaii and Wisconsin next week and head into the March 4 contests for Ohio and Texas with a 10-race winning streak. Her poll numbers will drop in Texas and Ohio, Clinton aides fear, and party leaders will start hankering for an end to the fight.

Clinton should find little comfort in the fact that she has secured 242 superdelegates to Obama’s 160.

“I would make the assumption that the … superdelegates she has now are the Clintons’ loyal base. A superdelegate who is uncommitted today is clearly going to wait and see how this plays out. She’s at her zenith now,” Duffy said. “Whatever political capital or IOUs that exist, she’s already collected.”

Few Democrats want to cross the Clintons when they’re on top. But how many are willing to stand by them when they’re down?

Generally, it’s easy to find the people who stand by the Clintons when they’re under scrutiny. Just be sure to call ahead to confirm the prison’s visiting hours.

And Speaking of Deserters…

An aide to Barack Obama says the man who led former President Clinton’s 1992 bid plans to endorse the Illinois senator.

Obama’s campaign plans a 1 p.m. conference call Wednesday to announce the endorsement by David Wilhelm, who later became chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement would be made public later in the day.

Wilhelm plans to tell reporters that Obama can build a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans needed to win the general election. He also says Obama can bring the change he promises—improving the economy and ending the war in Iraq.

Wilhelm is a superdelegate from Illinois who was previously uncommitted in the race.

who’s your daddy?

Juanita Broaddrick, who now runs a nursing-home business in Arkansas, told the Wall Street Journal that Mr Clinton raped her in the Camelot Hotel in Little Rock in 1978, when he was the state attorney-general.

The newspaper reports that Mr Clinton persuaded Mrs Broaddrick to have coffee with him in her hotel room during a conference of nursing home administrators in 1978. She alleges that he then forced her on to the bed, where he held her down, bit her lips and raped her.

When it was over, Mrs Broaddrick claims, Mr Clinton told her that she should not worry because he was sterile due to a bout of childhood mumps.

Let’s check a calendar. Bill raped a woman in 1978 and said she couldn’t get pregnant because he was sterile. Chelsea Clinton was born February 27, 1980… two years later.

While Bill was raping women in hotel rooms, rumors were spreading that Hillary was having an affair with Webster Hubbell, a law partner at the firm where Hillary worked at that time.

I’m sure Chelsea has figured out by now who her real dad is… isn’t it time everyone else did?

Chelsea Clinton Gives 9-Year-Old Journalist the Brush-Off

Chelsea showed she’s a real Clinton when fourth-grader Sydney Rieckhoff of Cedar Rapids attempted to interview her for the Scholastic News:

Q: Do you think your dad would be a good “first man” in the White House?
A: I’m sorry, I don’t talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you’re cute.

Don’t just stonewall. Do it condescendingly. That’s the Clinton touch.

Nonetheless Sydney’s mom plans to caucus for Shrillary, on the grounds that “it’s time we have a female president.” Good thing it’s too late for Ethel Rosenberg or Lizzie Borden to run — both satisfied Shrillary supporters’ primary criterion.

can you trust her?

An anti-Hillary robocall is riling up the Clinton supporters who have their heads buried up their proverbial sandbox. Click to learn more about the REAL Hillary

Robert Morrow emailed me this evening with the following explanation:

Everything I say in my anti-Hillary phone message, I can back up and document.

1) Hillary’s prison yard vocabulary and cussing fit (because she could not have VP Al Gore’s office) that she had on Inauguration Day, 1993 are well covered in many biographies.

2) Larry Nichols, Clinton insider for 10 years in Arkansas, was in the room in 1978 when Hillary comes running in and says “You will never believe what the &*^% did now, he tried to rape some %$#@ – This was just after Bill’s rape of Juanita Broaddrick.

3) Jack Palladino told Melanie Morgan in 2003 that the only thing he regretted about working for Hillary in the Willey terror campaign was that Hillary did not pay him on time.

Jack Palladino says “The only regret that I have about that whole thing was that Hillary did not pay me in a timely fashion.” [Kathleen Willey, Target, p. 212]

4) James Carville’s comment about Paula Jones being trailor trash is well-known. Bill is a pervert who exposed himself to Paula and told her to “Kiss it.”

5) Hillary tells TIME (in an election year 1996) that she and Bill were talking about ADOPTING a child. Bill, of course, was having hundreds of affairs, Monica being just one. Hillary is a lesbian, bisexual really, who was at one point screwing BOTH of her law partners Vince Foster and Webb Hubbell (Chelsea).

HILLARY TREATS PEOPLE LIKE THEY ARE INVISIBLE

Hello. FBI agent Gary Aldrich says that Hillary on Inauguration Day, 1993 was in an uncontrolled and unbridled fury, yelling and screaming profanities, because she was not allowed to have Vice President Al Gore’s office in the White House. Hillary treats people like they are invisible; can you trust her?

Hillary knew about and helped cover up Bill’s rape of Juanita Broaddrick. Hillary treats women like they are invisible; can you trust her?

Hillary hired Jack Palladino to run a terror campaign on Kathleen Willey to keep her quiet about what Bill had done to her. They nail gunned her car tires and stole or killed her pet cat named Bullseye. Hillary thinks cats are expendable; can you trust her?

After Bill pulled down his britches and EXPOSED himself to Paula Jones, Hillary’s friend James Carville said “Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.” Hillary treats women like they are invisible, can you trust her?

Hillary told TIME Magazine in June, 1996, that she was thinking about adopting a child, despite the fact Bill was having an affair with Monica and Hillary knew he had a whole harem in the White House. Hillary was having her own affairs with Vince Foster, probably Webb Hubbell and even others. Hillary makes up fairy tales about adopting an orphan child, can you trust her?

This message is from Robert Morrow on behalf of everyone who has been violated and abused by Hillary and Bill – treated like they were invisible. Hillary sure does say a lot of things, doesn’t she – but can you trust her?

no thanks!

For the second election night in a row, Hillary Clinton failed to acknowledge or congratulate Barack Obama after he won the day in dominating fashion.

Clinton congratulated Obama and John Edwards after their first and second place finishes in the Iowa caucuses. Obama returned the favor in New Hampshire, saying Clinton “did an outstanding job.” That courtesy continued through the early states.

But as the race has shifted to a delegate chase with dozens of states in play around the country, the notion of congratulating one’s opponent seems, for Clinton, to have fallen by the wayside.

The real Hillary starts to become visible when things don’t go her way.

Hillary is at a loss.. EIGHT straight, actually

Sen. Barack Obama won the Virginia primary Tuesday night and reached out for victories in nearby Maryland and the District of Columbia, determined to erode or even erase Hillary Rodham Clinton’s delegate lead in the Democratic presidential race.

Obama’s triumph made it six straight over Clinton, the former first lady, now struggling to keep up in a race she once commanded.

EDIT: Poll results from Tuesday evening show Barack Obama has won EIGHT straight primaries after taking Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC.

remember when the President used to be someone we admired?

“Hillary Clinton said today that public appearances with her and Bill would be rare. The only thing more rare? Private appearances with her and Bill.” –Jay Leno

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign has issued a statement saying she and Bill will be together this weekend in Selma, Alabama, which will be their first joint appearance together in a month. That’s when you know you have a bad marriage — when you have to put out a press release saying you’ll be together for the weekend. You need cameras to record it, in case people don’t believe you” –Jay Leno

“Presidential candidate Barack Obama … went door to door in Iowa over the weekend to talk about his opposition to the war and gain votes. Hillary Clinton also went door to door — not looking for votes, trying to find her husband.” –Jay Leno

“You all excited about the 2008 presidential election? There’s some interesting potential matchups. For example, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. … On the one hand, you have a pushy New Yorker with a history of marital problems. Or, you have a pushy New Yorker with a history of marital problems.” –David Letterman

“Former President Bill Clinton said that if his wife, Hillary, is elected president, he will do whatever she wants. You know Bill Clinton — when he makes a vow to Hillary, you can take that to the bank.” –Jay Leno

“At the national portrait gallery in Washington, D.C. new portraits were unveiled of former President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. The Smithsonian said that the portraits of Bill and Hillary will not hang in the same room. Boy, talk about art reflecting life.” –Jay Leno

“In a fiery speech this weekend, Hillary Clinton wondered why President Bush can’t find the tallest man in Afghanistan. Probably for the same reason she couldn’t find the fattest intern under the desk.” –Jay Leno

“Well, the big story — Hillary Clinton will be running for president in 2008. You know why I think she’s running? I think she finally wants to see what it’s like to sleep in the president’s bed.” –Jay Leno

“Hillary Clinton said today that she wants legislation to allow all ex-felons to vote. See, this way all the Clinton’s former business partners can vote for her in 2008.” –Jay Leno

slip sliding away

Summed up in the immortal words by Paul Simon, Hillary’s campaign is slipping away from her.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers increasingly believe that, after a series of losses, she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, and she has begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said on Monday.

Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.

They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.

“She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.” Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.

Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, said Monday that they were wavering in the face of Mr. Obama’s momentum after victories in Washington State, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend.

Some said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, might ultimately “go with the flow,” in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the primaries to come.

Perhaps it’s time for Hillary to send Chelsea out to hit on the older superdelegates, too!

Bill pardons terrorists.. Hillary wins an election

Hillary Rodham Clinton, with no personal political experience of her own, becomes senator for New York state. Thanks to Bill Clinton pardoning convicted terrorists.

It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department’s elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.

“He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face,” remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. “We really didn’t even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that’s how badly he was injured.”

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.

On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he “will not rest until justice is done.” Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.

Given all this, why would Bill Clinton, who had ignored the 3,226 clemency petitions that had piled up on his desk over the years, suddenly reach into the stack and pluck out these 16 meritless cases? (The New York Times ran a column with the headline, “Bill’s Little Gift.”)

Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide “listening tour” in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) — along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.

Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners’ delay in refusing to renounce violence “speaks volumes,” she said.

The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn’t actually asked for clemency.

more Clinton obfuscation

Resisting calls from Barack Obama to release her income tax returns, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she would only do so if she secures the Democratic presidential nomination and contended her rival had been less than candid about his relationship with major campaign contributors.

And when Hillary refers to dirty money in politics, she speaks from personal experience.

Chelsea is pimped out to Marquette University boy for votes

Jason Rae, a junior at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was joined for breakfast by Chelsea Clinton. The breakfast was at the student union, and not in bed, however.

This is just politics as usual in Wisconsin. And not even a felony, unlike the Smokes For Votes voter fraud perpetrated by Democrats in Milwaukee during the 2000 presidential election.

the ultimate political pin-up girl

The way Hillary’s campaign is tanking these days, somebody must be making a fortune selling Hillary Clinton voodoo dolls.

the leopard changes her spots

Having won exactly zero of the last four primaries, Hillary believes that when the going gets tough, the tough fire their campaign managers.

Hillary, I’m sure you read this blog regularly, so let me clue you in… it’s not that the voters don’t trust you… well, yeah.. that’s exactly what it is. Nevermind.

your candidate is unique.. just like all the others

Ch-ch-ch-CHANGE

if at first you don’t succeed…

… cry, cry again

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., wipes her eye as she listens to a disabled U.S. veteran in the audience tell his story during a campaign stop at The City of Lewiston Memorial Armory in Lewiston, Maine., Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008

sign of the times

Clinton staff stiffs landlord

Rochester physician Terry Bennett said he rented a city building to people who worked for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — and skipped town without paying the bill.

Making matters worse, Bennett said, the 3,000-square-foot building at 236 Union St. was left trashed. Campaign signs were left lying all over the place, he said.

“It’s a very nice little building, with an 1,800-foot warehouse and the rest can be offices,” Bennett said. “There’s a full kitchen and bath. They used it as a campaign center and dormitory. I expected them to hand the Realtor a check as they left. They did not.”

Hillary sells her own fragrance!

It’s Clintorious!

the real Clinton legacy

Obama mailer explains why republicans are hoping to see Hillary get the nomination.

“8 years of the Clintons, major losses for Democrats across the nation,” reads the mailer, which goes on to list the post-1992 losses suffered by Dems among governors, Senators and members of the House of Representatives.

the media blows another one

In scenes reminiscent of the 2000 election farce in Florida between George W Bush and Al Gore, news agencies and radio stations declared Mrs Clinton the victor and were then forced to retract.

But by then the former First Lady’s campaign in New York had issued a boastful press release emblazoned Hillary’s Big Night. In Kansas City, where her supporters gathered in a pizza restaurant to watch returns, they loudly proclaimed the symbolic importance of their “win”.

In the Waldo pizza restaurant in north Kansas City, her supporters cheered. Danny Rotert, 31, a Clinton volunteer and communications director for the black Kansas City Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, who backed her, said: “She has just edged it. We’re very happy and excited. Missouri is the bellwether state, a microcosm of America.

“We’re the geographic centre of America and the population centre of America. We have the same demographic mix as America as a whole. The reason that we are so successful at calling presidential candidates is because we look like America.”

But the better judge was Senator Claire McCaskill, an Obama supporter whose 2006 election victory was also won with a late surge in votes. “Where Barack Obama is doing so well in Missouri is where the Democrats live,” she said with a smile. “And in St Louis, those returns come in very late.”

By 12.52am, the Associated Press “un-called” the state. Mr Obama won by around 10,000 votes out of 820,000 cast, securing 49 per cent to Mrs Clinton’s 48 per cent.

5 reasons hillary should be worried

1. She lost the delegate derby.

2. She merely tied Obama in the popular vote.

3. She lost more states than Obama.

4. She lost the January cash war.

5. The calendar is her enemy.

Originally written by by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen.

Hillary coughs up $5 million for her campaign

Which reminds us all of Clinton campaign cash from the past…

THE ISSUE: Bill Clinton’s business dealings and his refusal to disclose his charity’s donors.

The Post’s editorial, “Can the Clintons Change?” (Feb. 4) is a serious piece of rhetorical wit.
What is most amusing is that, regardless of how much slime they add to the headlines, there’s a 50/50 chance that this dog-and-pony act could occupy the White House again.

It’s like the OJ Simpson murder trial. Let’s not let the truth get in the way of the facts.

Most troubling is the public’s approval of these two dishonest people. Somehow, this society thinks that lying and cheating are admirable traits.

It’s a sad day in America if this is the best we have to offer. It cheapens the very foundation that makes this nation special.

Wake up, America. Scandals are second nature to the Clintons – and apparently to a large segment of voters.

Theodore Miraldi
The Bronx

****

Bill Clinton’s apparent influence-peddling in Kazakhstan pales in comparison to the mysterious funding sources for his $165 million presidential library.

I am appalled that a man, twice sworn to the presidency and whose wife now seeks that office, refuses to reveal the names of the donors.

These are funds that were solicited from the Oval Office while he was a sitting president. Who does he seek to protect with such secrecy, and why?

We should withhold federal funding for the operation of any library named for any president, Republican or Democrat, if that library has been built with funds from secret sources.

If Bill is going to campaign on Hillary’s behalf, and if she wants to be the candidate of change, Hillary should show some leadership and use her newly found voice to demand full and immediate disclosure.

No wonder voters don’t trust the Clintons: The pervasive scent of “quid pro quo” follows them wherever they go, even to Kazakhstan.

Lisa Barlerin
Manhattan

****

If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, will First Hubby Bill be forced to register as a foreign agent due to the mysterious uranium deal in Kazakhstan and overseas contributions to the Clinton Library and Clinton Foundation?

Bob Tufts
Forest Hills

****

Clinton uses his political muscle to get a millionaire businessman a lucrative mineral deal in Kazakhstan, the guy donates $31 million to the Clinton Foundation and this only looks suspicious?
If Hillary Clinton wins the election, this kind of behavior might continue.

Are these people for real, or do they just pretend to be naive?

Chris Michaels
Morganville, NJ

Obama takes the lead

The results from Super Tuesday’s primaries are still being tallied, but so far the results don’t bode well for the junior senator from New York.

With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830 — “give or take a few,” Tim Russert, the network’s Washington bureau chief, said on the “Today” show.

how quickly they forget

Am I the only one who has a memory that goes back two full years? Apparently nobody in the mainstream media can remember that far back. Take Hillary’s 2006 re-election bid for senate, for example.

A strong majority of New Yorkers want Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to commit to serving a full six-year term if she wins re-election next year, according to a poll released yesterday.

Clinton — who is widely believed to be planning on running for president in 2008 — made that pledge when she first won office in 2000, but she hasn’t done the same for her possible second term in the Senate, which would continue to 2012.

The Quinnipiac University poll found 60 percent of those questioned said Clinton should promise to serve out her full second term, and it revealed a bare majority of voters — 51-41 percent — don’t want her to run for president in 2008.

Even 65 percent of Democrats said she should pledge to serve six years if she’s re-elected.

Here we are, not even two years after that poll, and her constituents are now supporting her in the primary. Maybe they’re just anxious to get her out of their state?

for crying out loud

It was another two-hanky day on the campaign trail yesterday, as Hillary Rodham Clinton teared up at an event targeting female voters on the eve of the Super Tuesday elections.
After she got a warm introduction from an old friend, Clinton’s eyes welled up and glistened under TV camera lights. She paused and gathered her composure.

She didn’t choke up – as she did at a similar event on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, a moment that Clinton now says may have helped her snag a critical victory last month by making her appear human and vulnerable.

But there were enough similarities between the two teary instances that skeptics wondered whether the whole thing was contrived.

“Whenever [Barack] Obama picks up steam, she seems to open up the waterworks,” said one Democratic operative.

dirty politics and dirty money

Just for the record, a quick laundry list of questionable and illegal campaign contributions to the Clintons.

Norman Hsu
$1,100,000 in total contributions to Hillary.
A convicted felon, on the lam since 1992 due to a grand theft conviction. Then, this December, Hsu was indicted for running a pyramid scheme that defrauded investors out of at least $20 million and that made $25,000 a year in fraudulent political donations.

Marc Rich
$70,000 contribution to Hillary, and $450,000 to the Clinton Presidential Library.
Over seventeen years after Marc Rich fled to Switzerland to avoid charges of racketeering, illegal trading, and tax evasion (he owed $48 million), Bill Clinton pardoned Rich during his last moments in the White House. His ex-wife Denise’s generous donations and Friend of Bill status gave the pardon a particularly rotten stench.

Aaron Tonken
Hosted a fund-raiser that took in more than $1 million for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.
In 2003 he pleaded guilty to stealing from charities, including, according to an ABC News report, the Betty Ford clinic. He is currently serving a five-year sentence for mail and wire fraud.

Peter F. Paul
He co-hosted the 2000 fund-raiser with Tonken.
How did Paul underwrite the gala? According to The Washington Post, by improperly borrowing more than $4 million from Merrill Lynch. Shortly after that was discovered, Paul hopped a plane to Brazil and spent years waging a two-front war: fighting extradition and trying to sue Hillary for underreporting the value of the event. In 2003, Paul was extradited to the U.S., and Clinton agreed to pay a $35,000 fine to the Federal Election Commission.

Sant S. Chatwal
He hosted a half-million dollar fund-raiser for Clinton in New York. In 2007, he declared his intentions to raise $5 million for Hillary’s presidential campaign.
As of September 2007, The IRS was pursuing him for $4 million in back taxes, the State of New York for another $5 million, and the FDIC is suing himin connection with a failed bank venture.

International Profit Associates
$125,000 speaking fee for Bill. $130,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since 2000.
IPA has faced a string of scandals–most notably, a widely reported sexual harassment suit involving 113 former female employees. Two of them told their stories on a 2005 episode of “Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie
Trie funnelled more than $2.2 million, much of it from foreign corporate donors, to the DNC from 1994-1996 and helped pay $460,000 of the Clintons’ legal bills between 1994-1997.
Trie, who knew Clinton from his days as the owner of the Fu Lin restaurant in Little Rock, moved to Washington in 1994 and began donating to the Clintons and the DNC through various shady channels, including through “straw donors,” typically poor legal immigrants who stand in for foreign businesspeople.

John Huang
He raised $3.4 million for the DNC in 1996. Most of it has since been returned.
An investigation suggested that Huang may have been acting as an “agent of influence” for China (ie, bribery from a communist country during Bill Clinton’s administration).
Though the money he raised was primarily for the DNC, Huang had remarkable access to the president and the West Wing. The Commerce Department even gave him a top-secret security clearance–with a cursory background check far less thorough than normal procedure–when he was still a private citizen.

Getting tired of this? We’re not done yet.

James Riady
Gave more than $700,000 to the Democratic Party between 1991 and 1997. They also paid $100,000 to Clinton friend Webster L. Hubbell, who resigned from his job as associate attorney general after being charged with tax evasion and mail fraud.
Riady, a regular visitor to the Clinton White House, was busted by the Justice Department in 2001 for funneling foreign corporate money into Clinton’s 1992 election effort. (He had to pay out $8.6 million to the DOJ–the largest campaign finance settlement in history.) In 1997, the Thompson-led committee accused Riady of maintaining “a long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency.”

Johnny Chung
He gave $366,000 in personal and corporate donations between 1994 and 1996.
Chung’s contributions to the Democratic Party earned him significant access to the Clinton administration: He made at least 49 visits to the White House between 1994 and 1996. He arranged for five of his Chinese business clients to attend a taping of one of President Clinton’s weekly radio addresses after making a $50,000 donation to the DNC. Furthermore, Chung claimed that part of his donated funds came from sources connected to the Chinese government. (The Chinese government emphatically denies the allegations.)

Roger Tamraz
Donated $300,000 to the Democratic Party in 1995 and 1996.
Tamraz apparently sought to leverage his donations into a face-to-face meeting with President Clinton over the objections of a National Security Council staff member.
Members of the Democratic National Committee, the CIA, and the Clinton administration were all alleged to have gone to bat on Tamraz’s behalf to allow him access to the White House.

And there are more criminal donors who aren’t even sleazy enough to make the Top Ten list.

Jeffrey Epstein: In 2002, the wealthy money-manager and Friend of Bill flew the former president in his private jet to Africa to discuss AIDS policy. He was recently indicted on charges of soliciting prostitution from underage girls. The Smoking Gun has the gruesome details. (Warning: Link is disgusting.)

John K.H. Lee: The South Korean businessman scored a meeting with President Clinton in 1996 after making a $250,000 donation to the DNC. Under U.S. federal election law, foreign companies and individuals are not permitted to make donations, but Lee tried to skirt the restriction by donating via a U.S. subsidiary of his company, which, problematically, didn’t really exist. When it was discovered in September 1996 that the money had originated from Lee’s South Korea-based parent company, the DNC returned the contribution.

Pauline Kanchanalak: Kanchanalak, a business executive and Democratic fund-raiser who met frequently with President Clinton, was sentenced to six months of house arrest in 1996 for funneling $690,000 of foreign contributions to the DNC. She claimed the money came from her in-laws.

Ng Lap Seng: The businessman and owner of Macau’s Fortuna Hotel (per The Washington Post, “known as much for its prostitutes working the lobby as for its floor show of whip-wielding, leather-clad dancers upstairs”) wired more than one million dollars to convicted Clinton donor Charlie Trie between 1994 and 1996 through a company the two co-owned–nearly a quarter of that money ended up in the DNC’s hands. Ng attended DNC events and met with the Clintons at the White House.

Abdul Rehman Jinnah: According to the Los Angeles Times, this Pakistani immigrant raised more than $45,000 for Hillary Clinton’s HillPac, allegedly reimbursing employees who contributed to Democratic causes, including Clinton’s political action committee, which is illegal. He fled to Pakistan after a grand jury indicted him for violations of election law in 2006, and was placed on the FBI “featured fugitives” list. He returned to the U.S. last year.

Ron Burkle: He’s never been accused of any crimes, but Ron Burkle lies at the center of any innuendo about Bill Clinton’s post-presidential life. A much-commented-upon May 2006 New York Times article stated, “Mr. Clinton is rarely without company in public, yet the company he keeps rarely includes his wife. Nights out find him zipping around Los Angeles with his bachelor buddy, Ronald W. Burkle.” The zippy Burkle, friends with Bill since 1992, often flies the former president in his private Boeing 575, described by Clinton as “Ron Air” and “Air Force Two.” Burkle, also reportedly a “longtime friend” of Michael Jackson, has thrown lavish fund-raisers for Hillary at Green Acres, his Hollywood estate. Rumors abound about the supermarket billionaire’s private life. “Page Six” covered Bill’s bachelor buddy unfavorably, writing that he used the jet to entertain young models–and that he was dating Gisele Bundchen. Burkle then made headlines by secretly recording an alleged extortion attempt by a reporter for the gossip column. He has also been accused of using his influence as a Democratic donor to speed a law through the California legislature that would have kept the records of his messy divorce proceedings sealed.

Bill Clinton has been a senior advisor to Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. since early 2002. Clinton is only now trying to untangle himself from the company, a move that will simultaneously free him from questions about Yucaipa’s ties to Dubai, while also netting a reported $20 million payday. One particularly shady deal Clinton’s scheduler helped Yucaipa arrange was its investment in Catholic Church properties at the urging of a young Italian businessman named Raffaello Follieri. As The Wall Street Journal reported last fall, in 2005, Follieri intimated to Clinton aide Douglas Band that Yucaipa could make a killing on the deal–and that his ties to the Vatican would smooth the transaction. Yucaipa plowed as much as $100 million into the venture, and Band was paid a $400,000 “finder’s fee” by Follieri. The Italian then spent Yucaipa’s cash on an apartment in New York, private jets, and gifts for himself and his girlfriend, The Devil Wears Prada star Anne Hathaway. Burkle is currently suing Follieri for misappropriating at least $1.3 million.

Information provided by The New Republic.

in the company of thieves

Richard Nixon is often cited as the political example of arrogance and paranoia. His infamous ‘enemy list’ is the prime example. The same can be said for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Few knowledgable people question whether the Clintons resort to questionable tactics to gain and retain political power. Hiring Craig Livingstone to illegally collect FBI records of political opponents goes even further than Richard Nixon’s ‘enemy list’. And hiring known felons is just par for the course with Bill and Hillary.

There are two kinds of crooks. The first cuts a deal. He tells the government what he knows and forever after is ostracized and hunted by his old partners in crime. The second is “stand-up.” He keeps his mouth shut. After serving his time, he is welcomed back into the fold. He might even get a “bump up” in rank from his grateful bosses.

No, we’re not talking about The Sopranos. What we have in mind is a new episode of a tawdry soap opera that began in the 1990s. Welcome to the case of disgraced former national security adviser Sandy Berger — and what it portends about a potential President Hillary.

Now Berger is back in business at Camp Clinton, advising New York’s junior senator in her bid for the White House. This warrants a review of Berger’s recent history. After his stint as national security adviser, he became Bill Clinton’s liaison to the 9/11 Commission as it investigated intelligence failures (many of which happened on Berger’s watch). Berger was accordingly given access to the national archives, both to prepare his own testimony and to get the former president ready for an interview with the commission.

Berger used his privileged access to steal top-secret national-defense documents. On at least two occasions he stuffed them into his clothing and briefcase, smuggling them out of the archives. He secreted some of these stolen papers under the wheel of a truck at a nearby construction site so that he could return for them later. Other documents he intentionally destroyed. These actions were serious felonies.

What kind of advice is Berger giving Mrs. Clinton, anyway? It can’t be legal advice: Berger forfeited his law license. It’s unlikely he’d be much help on Iran: The Clinton administration didn’t respond to the Khobar Towers bombing (in which19 U.S. Air Force personnel were killed) because Berger and others were convinced that then–Iranian president Mohammed Khatami was going to “reform” the hard-line mullahs. Berger failed on al Qaeda, too: Clinton declined to respond to the terror network’s bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (17 U.S. Navy personnel killed) because, according to Clinton, Berger’s intelligence services couldn’t tell him who did it.

Sandy Berger was a failure as national-security adviser. Then he became a criminal. As Americans contemplate making Hillary their president, they would be wise to consider the company she keeps.

Hillary’s ties to Communism

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s time as a summer associate may come back to haunt her. And not because she stripped down to her undies and took a swan dive into the Hudson.

Rather, it’s because she worked for a bunch of Commies. From a piece by Josh Gerstein in the New York Sun:

In a life marked largely by political caution, one entry on Senator Clinton’s résumé stands out: her clerkship in 1971 at one of America’s most radical law firms, Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.

One partner at the firm, Doris Walker, was a Communist Party member at the time. Another partner, Robert Treuhaft, had left the party in 1958, several years after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and labeled as one of America’s most “dangerously subversive” lawyers. The Oakland-based firm was renowned for taking clients others rejected as too controversial, including Communists, draft resisters, and members of the African-American militant group known as the Black Panthers.

To this day, Mrs. Clinton’s decision to work at the unabashedly left-wing firm is surprising, even shocking, to some of her former colleagues there and to those supporting her bid for the presidency. To the former first lady’s enemies and political opponents, her summer at the Treuhaft firm is yet another indication that radical ideology lurks beneath the patina of moderation she has adopted in public life.

Senator Clinton tends to be tight-lipped about Treuhaft. In her memoir, Living History, she gives her summer stint rather cursory treatment:

I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland, California and he announced that he would like to go with me. I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case.

Why doesn’t Hillary make more of her time at this ultra-liberal law firm, and embrace her past as a radical leftist? Might the Daily Kos krowd warm up to her, if they knew about her time as a fellow traveler?

Hillary’s “35 years of change”

To hear Hillary Clinton talk, she’s spent her entire career putting her Yale Law School degree to work for the common good.

She routinely tells voters that she’s “been working to bring positive change to people’s lives for 35 years.” She told a voter in New Hampshire: “I’ve spent so much of my life in the nonprofit sector.” Speaking in South Carolina, Bill Clinton said his wife “could have taken a job with a firm … Instead she went to work with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund.”

The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless do-gooder. The whole story is more complicated — and less flattering.

Clinton worked at the Children’s Defense Fund for less than a year, and that’s the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she’s ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career — 15 of those 35 years — at one of Arkansas’ most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards.

The full truth doesn’t fit into the carefully crafted narrative the campaign has developed about Clinton, said Sally Bedell Smith, the author of “For Love of Politics,” a study of the Clintons’ partnership.

“She wants to be seen as someone who has devoted her life to public service,” Smith said. “I suppose if you say it enough, maybe you can get people to believe it.”

Clinton’s firm represented Wal-Mart and TCBY while she sat on their boards, a cozy practice that corporate governance experts frown upon because of the potential for conflicts of interest.

Politicians naturally want to stick to their chosen narratives, but other aspects of Clinton’s relationship with the Rose Law Firm could remind voters of the more controversial side of the Clinton legacy.

There was her work on behalf of Madison Guaranty, a failed savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater investigation — the billing records of which were mysteriously found in a White House storage room years after investigators first asked for them. And there’s Webster Hubbell, a Rose partner, Clinton pal and high-ranking Justice Department official who was convicted of fraud charges related to his work at the firm.

the first black president

BC News’ Rick Klein and Sunlen Miller Report: Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison — who famously declared Bill Clinton to be the nation’s “first black president” in a 1998 essay — today endorsed Barack Obama for president, via letter from Morrison to the Illinois senator.

In it she writes, “this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.”

Morrison writes of her admiration for Hillary Clinton but says she “cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration”.

“Nor do I care very much for your race[s],” Morrison continues to Obama, “I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me ‘proud.’ “

“In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.

“Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

“There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time,” she concludes.

In an October 1998 essay in The New Yorker, Morrison wrote: “Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

Morrison’s endorsement letter to Obama comes as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., also announces his support for Obama on Monday, at a rally in Washington.

Hillary plans to garnish your wages

Let’s suppose you have a job. Not hard to imagine for most of us. Let’s also suppose that your employer offers healthcare insurance. You look over your options… choose Plan A with a monthly premium of $262 and a certain deductible… or maybe Plan B with a lower premium and a higher deductible. Maybe neither of the plans are as good as the family plan offered by your spouse’s company. You choose to opt out and be covered elsewhere. Or maybe you decide that you don’t need insurance at this point and prefer to let that $3144 go into your direct deposit. That’s your choice.

Until Hillary is elected.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC’s “This Week,” she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.”

Hillary’s plan is to make health care a government operated and controlled function. Your hospital or clinic will soon operate exactly the same as your local DMV office. Think about it.

MoveOn.org moved on with Obama

Today Barack Obama earned the endorsement of MoveOn, one of the largest grassroots membership organizations in the United States, after clobbering Hillary Clinton by 40 percent in Internet balloting. Obama led the final tally 70.4% to 29.6%, clearing the supermajority required for the endorsement. MoveOn, which has never endorsed a presidential candidate before, boasts that it has 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states. The group has over half a million members in California alone – roughly one out of ten primary voters in Tuesday’s largest state.
“We’ve learned that the key to achieving change in Washington without compromising core values is having a galvanized electorate to back you up,” said Executive Director Eli Pariser, “and Barack Obama has our members ‘fired up and ready to go’ on that front.”

Obama welcomed the endorsement on Friday. “In just a few years, the members of MoveOn have once again demonstrated that real change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. From their principled opposition to the Iraq war – a war I also opposed from the start – to their strong support for a number of progressive causes, MoveOn shows what Americans can achieve when we come together in a grassroots movement for change,” he said in a statement. “I thank them for their support and look forward to working with their members in the weeks and months ahead,” he added.

Organizers said they would “immediately” begin mobilizing on behalf of Obama, leading turnout programs and phone-banking members of MoveOn in targeted states. The group made seven million “GOTV” calls for Democrats in the mid-term elections, and it has an extensive voter file database.

The decisive victory shows that Obama is consolidating support from the netroots in the wake of John Edwards’ withdrawal. Obama also won the Edwards vote in Thursday’s Daily Kos reader poll. He bounced 35 points to reach an all-time high of 71 percent, while Clinton held steady at 11 percent. If Super Tuesday is a tie and both campaigns brace for a protracted delegate hunt, Obama could draw fundraising, volunteers and advocacy from a united front of MoveOn, netroots activists and bloggers.

The loss of support from this organization could prove to be the chink in Clinton’s armor. If Edwards’s delegates move into Obama’s column, and all future MoveOn resources are allocated to him, watch for real tears in Clinton’s coffee.

hillary’s final vote

While walking down the street one day a US senator from New York is tragically hit by a truck and dies. Her soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we’re not sure what to do with you.”

“No problem, just let me in,” says the woman.

“Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we’ll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.”

“Really, I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,” says the senator.

“I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”

And with that, St. Peter escorts her to the elevator and she goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and she finds herself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all her friends and other democrats who had worked with her.

Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet her, hug her, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.

They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne.

Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling anecdotes involving the senator. They are having such a good time that before she realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives her a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises…

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.

“Now it’s time to visit heaven.”

So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before she realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

“Well, then, you’ve spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.”

The senator reflects for a minute, then she answers: “Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.”

So St. Peter escorts her to the elevator and she goes down, down, down to hell. The doors of the elevator open and she’s in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.

She sees all her friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.

The devil comes over to her and puts his arm around her shoulder. “I don’t understand,” stammers the senator. “Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?”

The devil looks at her, smiles and says, “Yesterday we were campaigning… Today you voted.”

live tv waits for no man.. or hillary

Memo to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: You can’t be late for live television.

Clinton was tardy Saturday to a satellite feed from Tucson for a live broadcast of an MTV candidate forum — forcing the surprised hosts to fill nearly 15 minutes with chatter and interviews with the studio audience.

Clinton, the fourth candidate to appear, started her segment with an apology to MTV’s young viewers, members of a demographic group that has been a large part of Obama’s constituency.

“We had a lot of problems to get here,” she said.

This reminds me of when I personally attended a Bill Clinton rally in 1996. It was held in a public park that was fenced in for crowd control. But in order to give everyone access, there was no limit to the attendees, which created a literal standing room only situation. It also happened to be held on Labor Day, with a temperature of around 90 degrees.

Bill’s flight arrived right on time, but he appeared at the podium three hours late. In the meantime, I watched at least 4 people in the crowd collapse and had to be carried out of the park by parademics, raised over the heads of the other attendees who were packed in so tight that they couldn’t move out of the way.

hillary polls highest for being the ‘lowest’

A new poll shows that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is considered the candidate most likely to “do anything — including something unethical — to win,” and most likely to embarrass the United States.

Hillary unplugged

Here’s an interesting post about Hillary’s view (or maybe ‘use’ is a better description) of religion

I don’t know Hillary Clinton personally, but I, for some reason, don’t get the feeling that she’s a particularly spiritual person. I would think that if she ever had a sizable problem, she would go straight to her cell phone and call a cadre of lawyers, political advisers and PR experts to immediately embark on “damage control” as opposed to falling on her knees in prayer.

Perhaps, she utters Sydney Blumenthal’s name when she needs “divine” inspiration.

Or maybe, she used to… BEFORE his January 7th arrest. Always remember: you can’t spell “I’m drunk”…without the letters “D-U-I”.

As far as religious affiliations are concerned, Hillary Clinton’s bio indicates she’s a Methodist.

OK…fine. I’ll buy that.

Again, I don’t know the woman Hillary Clinton is, but I don’t like the politician she has become. I think ALL politicians are glad handers, they’ll say whatever they have to to advance their agenda, but in my opinion, Hillary has carefully honed deflection, transference and rationalization to a fine art.

Still, I wonder about the woman. I wonder what she’s like when the camera isn’t on her, when she’s alone, in private–away from her constituency, the pundits and the pollsters.

Having done some research on Hillary, I think I can shed some light on the woman Hillary really is when the cameras are turned away.

Where is Socks now?

Hillary thanks Bill’s rape victim for her support

Hillary’s regard for the people assigned to protect her

Hillary and Bill.. and his other women

Hillary the gracious hostess

hillary might get Gore’d

Obama is now close enough to a big win that Gore’s endorsement could easily put him over the top. Gore is beloved among Democratic primary voters. His staunch denials have been unusually effective in tamping down speculation that he’ll endorse, so an announcement would be earthshaking and guaranteed to dominate the airwaves until the February 5 primaries. Take Tennessee, Gore’s home state, which could wind up making the difference. Democratic polling there is somewhat sparse, especially that done after John Edwards’s withdrawal. But Tennessee looks to be a state in which Clinton currently holds a lead—that is, unless a certain favorite son were to endorse her opponent.

Gore has already seen one presidency (his own) slip away over a handful of votes. He must have pondered how it would feel to play kingmaker and shore up someone else’s path to the White House.

A well-connected Tennesseean told me two things today that got me thinking about this. The first is that Obama and Gore have been speaking regularly, about every two weeks or so. The second is that, despite this, and despite Tennessee’s primary on Tuesday, Obama has not visited the state since June. It may be simply that he does not plan on competing there. Or it may be that he’s been waiting for a special occasion.

hillary is losing it

Stop the presses! The very latest polling data from California indicate a sharp trend for Obama and against Hillary. Preliminary indications in other states are that the trend is very widespread and not just concentrated on the west coast.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen’s three day tracking survey, conducted on January 28-30, shows Hillary with a bare and dwindling 3 point lead over Obama in California. He has Hillary at 43%, Obama at 40%, and Edwards (two of the three days were before he dropped out) at 9%. This data compares with a 20 point plus Hillary margin in most polls in California just a few weeks ago.

it’s the economy, stupid

Words of wisdom from our convicted felon ex-president.. let’s all give up our incomes so we can fight global warming. (And let me point out that the weather in my town is currently 5 degrees (about 20 degrees below normal).

Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?