hillary, the pork star

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

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

hillary voted for the gas tax before she voted against it

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

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

right outta the Clinton fundraising playbook

Hillary’s ties to terrorists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hillary says one thing.. the money says another

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

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

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

Hillary is the candidate for everyone!

Hillary Portrays Herself as a Pro-Gun Churchgoer

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

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

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

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

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

Hillary Appeals For Gun Control Lobbying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hillary laughs off another question about her ethics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clinton Pay Comes to $30 Per Lie

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

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

Clinton Under Fire Over False Story Of Health Care Horror

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Clinton contributor accused of fraud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bowling for votes

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

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

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

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

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

the Hillary Deathwatch at 9.7%

Hillary Clinton campaign stiffs her high school $3,161

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

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

Hillary Rodham graduated from there in 1965.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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