the Hillary Deathwatch at 9.7%

Hillary stiffs the working people

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

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

Hillary campaign leaves trail of unpaid bills behind her

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

boys are bullies

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

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

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

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

Democrats Get Their Groove On

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

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

At a stop in rural Pennsylvania on Thursday, Bill told the gathering that McCain is a “moderate” who “has given all you can give for this country without dying for it.”

He said McCain is on the right side in opposing the torture of enemy combatants and on the global warming issue, which “just about crosses the bridge for [Republicans].”

Clinton also told the audience that the race should not about the past, but about who is going to do more for the country in the future, ABC News reported. That person, he said, is Hillary.

One week ago Clinton expressed similar sentiments at a gathering in North Carolina, calling McCain a war hero who had demonstrated his love for his country.

Clinton noted that McCain supported campaign finance reform and “he doesn’t think global warming is a myth … so it is not going to be all that easy to beat him.”

Bill is clearly setting up the stage for the inevitable democrat nominee to lose to John McCain. Bill knows that Hillary currently has a snowball’s chance in Hades, and Barack Obama will be McCain’s challenger. Bill also knows that if Obama manages to take the prize from McCain, Hillary will be shut out for 2012. BUT, if McCain wins in November, Hillary can take him on in four years, when he’ll be an even weaker opponent due to four years of media bashing by the democrat hand-holders (known as the MSM).

The reports of Hillary’s campaign death are no longer greatly exaggerated

Kimberley A. Strassel, at the Wall Street Journal, has an excellent summary of why Hillary’s campaign is over.

Hillary Clinton’s been all the news this week, after she “misspoke” about Whitewater, Travelgate, missing files, suspicious pardons, Johnny Chung and cattle futures. Oh wait, after she “misspoke” about Bosnia. Oh wait, same thing.

That’s one way to make sense of the unrelenting, unforgiving, 24/7 news coverage of Mrs. Clinton’s fictional telling of Bosnian sniper fire and the subsequent debunking of her every word. In a nasty primary battle that has already featured racial slurs and Chicago slum lords, missing tax documents, and a “monster,” you might expect this slip-up to have been yet another blip in the media cycle.
[Hillary Clinton]

But that would have been to deny the press, the pundits, Democrats, and even Barack Obama, the catharsis of finally — finally! — getting a chance to confront the Clintons’ questionable mores. Hillary’s and Bill’s scandals have been the elephant in the primary room ever since she first signaled a run. Yet up to now everyone has been too scared, or too loyal, or too weary to touch the ugly past. Her Bosnia misspeak is now serving as proxy for all the truths about the Clintons’ non-truths, allowing even liberals to break free from their Clinton dependence.

And how liberating it is! The video of Mrs. Clinton’s speech about Bosnian sniper fire, twinned with real footage of calmly strolling down the Tuzla tarmac, has been running on one continuous TV loop. Reporters have dug up every last person who accompanied her on the sedate trip to pour a little more salt in the wound. “The Audacity of Hoax,” yelled a blog posting in the liberal Nation magazine, which innocently asked: “What else is she fibbing about?” Bill Burton, Barack Obama’s spokesman, gleefully noted that Mrs. Clinton’s recent attacks on his candidate were designed to deflect attention away from her “made up” Bosnia story. Heavy emphasis on the “made up” part. No need to mention Vince Foster, Red Bone, Marc Rich or Webster Hubbell. All this will do.

Read the rest here.

Hillary hits a new low.. in her approval rating

Hillary Clinton is sporting the lowest personal ratings of the campaign. Moreover, her 37 percent positive rating is the lowest the NBC/WSJ poll has recorded since March 2001, two months after she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.

For Hillary, lying ain’t no big deal

Hillary Clinton got caught in a lie recently, a whopper about being under fire in a so-called combat zone, a well-rehearsed lie she has been telling on the campaign trail for months.

When the truth came out, as it so often does in the microscopic world of politics, she shrugged her shoulders and dismissed it by saying:

I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.

Calling her tall tales of running and ducking for a cover a “mistake” is massive understatement. Her claim about being human leaves an opening that’s ripe for comment but we won’t go there.

Clinton’s campaign for President is built on a mountain of lies. She says she brokered peace in Northern Island. The man who did broker the peace — and who won a Nobel Prize for his honest efforts — says her claims are a crock.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press writes an excellent analysis of Clinton’s vague association with the truth:

During a speech last week on Iraq, Clinton stretched the truth to the breaking point. “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia and … there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the first lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Hogwash. The truth is:

— There was no sniper fire.

— Nobody ducked for cover.

— Bad weather, not security concerns, kept her husband from making the same trip a few months earlier.

Clinton and her aides stood behind the story — which she has told more than once — until video surfaced showing the former first lady, her daughter, Chelsea, and their entourage strolling off the plane and walking calmly across the tarmac.

What makes Clinton’s situation unique — and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging — is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel.

As first lady, she did not attend National Security Council meetings, did not receive the presidential daily briefing on terrorism and other threats and did not have a top level security clearance. Her foreign trips were glorified goodwill tours, a collection of photo opportunities and sightseeing trips.

Yet her lies about being under fire, used as a questionable way to justify her claim of being qualified “from day one” to be commander-in-chief are an insult to every man and woman who served their nation and actually came under fire. Anyone who has been under fire in a combat situation will tell you that it’s not something you forget and it’s certainly not something that you simply “misspeak” about.

To accept Clinton’s ludicrous claims that she “misspoke” means accepting the fact that she misspoke at least three times during the campaign. Each time, she added more embellishment to the story. When challenged with the facts, her first claim was that she was “sleep deprived” and because of lack of sleep she wasn’t in full control of her memory or faculties.

This from the woman who wants us to believe that she will be the best person to answer that ringing phone at 3 in the morning.

Are destructive Clintons plotting a McCain win?

Pat Murphy asks a question that I’ve been pondering, as well.

Perhaps it’s not so baffling that the House of Clinton is eager to demonize Barack Obama as too inexperienced to be president, and that it slyly stokes suspicions about his patriotism and allegiance to the United States, belittles his uplifting speeches as hot air and continues the ugly, destructive fight for the Democratic nomination against steepening odds.

Indisputably, the Clinton machine is providing grist for Republican John McCain to use against Obama if he’s the Democratic presidential nominee—certified charges from no less than Democrats Hillary and Bill that Obama’s too inexperienced, lacking sufficient patriotism, a man of ready talk but no solutions.

Could this be the final Clinton strategy as her chances appear bleaker every day—helping McCain win the White House so Hilary could run for president in 2012? (McCain would be too old for a second term.)

This notion would be considered unthinkable, almost the delusions of a psychotic. Would any Democrat dare purposely sabotage another Democrat to pave the way for a Republican president?

The Clintons, mind you, are not ordinary or rational Democrats. The Clintons are megalomaniacal in their hunger for power. What has long been suspected has been confirmed by a few Clinton staffers bitter about Obama’s rise in popularity—they believe Hillary is “entitled” to be president. The nation owes her. The nation cannot survive without her.

Two facts support the notion of a self-destructive last stand by Hillary and Bill.

First, their tactics haven’t increased her lead over Obama or won any superdelegate support. She’s lost 60 superdelegates in the past month, according to Politico.com.

Second, Obama was leading McCain in double digits—and now McCain is leading and approved by 67 percent of Americans, since the Clintons unleashed their wreck-and-ruin tactics.

Experts in these matters calculate Hillary Clinton has a 10 percent or less chance of the nomination. That percentage is bound to shrivel as the self-destruction continues. Her claim of visiting Bosnia under sniper fire as proof of her “experience” has been exposed as fiction. Her believability is bound to suffer, increasing doubts about her character to be commander-in-chief.

Whatever else the Clinton legacy, their most outstanding feature is a proclivity for shaming themselves and their nation.

Bill did it with his cheap peccadillo with Monica Lewinsky in an anteroom just outside the Oval Office and his lies thereafter.

Now Hillary, overcome by peevishness, would destroy her party’s chances for the presidency by sabotaging her Democratic rival to aid the fortunes of a Republican. She seems indifferent to the personal cost of being banished to the political graveyard.

catfight!

Two columnists at the Boston Globe seem to have very different opinions about what is fair media coverage of a woman running for President.

Caryl Rivers explains how any uncomplimentary media coverage is inherently sexist.

The media coverage of the Clinton campaign will be, for years to come, a textbook case of how the coverage of female candidates differs from that of males. Women have to walk a very thin line when they run for high office. On the one hand, they have to appear tough, nothing at all like a sniveling female, and when they do talk tough, they are called “shrill.”

The media loved Hillary when she put her hand on Obama’s and said it was a privilege to be on the same podium; they hated her when she slammed him for giving out what she called misleading information on her healthcare plan. (After googling “shrill” and “Hillary” after that encounter, I stopped at 20 pages.)

At the same time, the news media have gone into a deep swoon over Barack. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz said, “Look, I haven’t seen a politician get this kind of walk-on-water coverage since Colin Powell a dozen years ago flirted with making a run for the White House. I mean, it is amazing.”

I guess the moral there is that the media can’t give Obama any sort of preference.. after all, he’s a man! (Notice how Caryl dodges the race issue, tho.. after all, he’s black!)

Then there is the Elinor Lipman, also at the Boston Globe. She seems to think that Hillary might not be the perfect candidate.. even though she’s a woman.. but because her personality throws up huge red flags.

Questioning a woman’s tone and delivery evokes charges of sexism, of biased preoccupations with niceness – as if no one ever complained about the Bob Dole snarl or the Dick Cheney sneer. How many times do we have to hear that when women get forceful, they are called shrill and angry, while bellicose males are lauded as strong and presidential? We get it. No one has questioned Senator Clinton’s toughness, or her readiness to be commander in chief. I hope “hectoring” isn’t a word that is more feminine than masculine, because I would like to employ it now.

My e-mailing friends took great and irretrievable offense when Senator Clinton rapped on our candidate’s knuckles with “So shame on you, Barack Obama!” for campaign mailers criticizing her healthcare plan. Paired up with her Providence soliloquy (“The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing. Then everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!”), she crossed some line in our maternal hearts. “Hillary off the deep end?” two friends wrote in near-simultaneous e-mails. “Off her meds?” wrote another. I wondered if these double rhetorical whammies might be a paler version of Howard Dean’s unintentional valedictory in Iowa in 2004.

Hillary’s crisis management experience

It was, in this reporter's opinion, the most interesting moment in today's Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.

Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.

Take a listen ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

maybe Iowans aren’t as stupid as Hillary thinks

See the video HERE.

One comment… it’s the DEMOCRAT party. Not the Democratic party.