No Wonder Bill’s Looking a Bit Glum

Hillary Clinton’s nomination campaign isn’t just out of money, it’s in the red to the tune of $20-million. It’s believed at least $11-million of that debt is in the form of money loaned by Clinton to her own campaign.

This suggests Hillary is now entering the “pay as you go phase” where the amount of campaigning she’ll be able to do will be governed by the wad of cash in hand at any given point. There have been rumours in recent weeks of antsy creditors looking for payment on outstanding bills.

Her senior advisor, Howard Wolfson, told Fox News Sunday, “There is no reason for her not to continue this process.” Actually Howard there are about twenty million reasons but, then again, who’s counting?

 

A Feminist Explains Why She Can’t Support Hillary

This is from Stephanie Salter, a columnist at the Terra Haute, Indiana Tribune-Star.

“A friend who teaches in public school here in Indiana was appalled not long ago when an e-mail from a colleague went out to everyone in the school’s cyber-address book.

The subject of the e-mail was Barack Obama and how he is “secretly” a radical Muslim bent on destroying the United States from within. A widely circulated pack of lies — e.g., he took the oath of office holding a Koran — the e-mail boasts that its contents are verifiable on the legitimate myth buster, snopes.com, which is the opposite of true.

At least my teacher friend’s colleague didn’t send out one of the popular e-mails that insist Obama shows all the signs of being the antichrist.

I wish I could say I was kidding, but I can’t. I live in the United States of America — a country in which most people are alleged to be literate — and I am about to participate in a historic presidential primary. But I am starting to wonder if some of my fellow citizens have a grasp on reality, let alone the issues.

A jihadist? The antichrist? Oh, for God’s sake.Before anyone is tempted to play the region card, don’t. Indiana has no exclusive claim to people who are spending time this spring telling one another that Obama is a jihadist and/or the antichrist. Google offers about 2.25 million hits on the latter subject. (Mercifully, renunciations are part of the volume.)

…I’m a 1960s feminist who thought I would never live to see the day a woman would make a viable run at the U.S. presidency. I look at how smart, brave, tough and committed Hillary Clinton is, and I see someone who is more than capable of being commander in chief.

But one of the great things about being a feminist is knowing that liberation means searching your head, heart and gut, then acting freely on what you discover there.

Four weeks ago, I watched Clinton go for the cheap shot and turn Obama’s lengthy, measured observations about frustrated working-class Americans into Bittergate. My head, heart and gut yelled, “Blatant foul!”

Clinton chose, repeatedly, to call Obama’s remarks “elitist” and “out of touch” with ordinary Americans. She emphasized, repeatedly, that his excerpted words were made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco — as though she had never been the focus of such an event — and she encouraged her campaign operatives across the country to keep piling on.

Ignoring all the times her words and deeds have been perverted out of context by her enemies, Clinton chose to play the nasty old game in which victorious ends justify crummy means. Knowing that Americans need more division like we need more conspiracy theories, she chose to further divide.

My head, heart and mind said, “Go to Plan B. Barack Obama is smart, brave, tough, committed and capable of being commander in chief — and he struggles mightily against cheap shots to deal honestly with the complexities and contradictions of his country and its people.”

No waffles, no sexist slurs, no al Qaida, no Satan. Just a rational decision. My idea of the American Dream.”

 

"He’s Not Really Black"

Muncie, Indiana florist Judy Benken says she’ll be voting the way her family has voted for generations – white.

Benken told the Toronto Star that she’ll support Barack Obama, claiming, “He’s not really black – he doesn’t have those pronounced features.”

“Muncie, Ind., is divided by rail tracks. Its more upscale north, including Ball State University, is expected to back Obama; its gritty blue-collar south expected to support Clinton.

The south side is also the remnant of a once-proud industrial sector that barely exists these days, supplanted by the north side’s university and service industry.”

http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/421225

 

The Distrusted Candidate

Maybe Canada should have 12-month long election campaigns. One thing is sure, the more you see of any particular candidate, the less you’re apt to like them.

Running for president in the United States is a terrible grind. Hillary Clinton shows the wear and tear more than the others. They’ll all probably look a lot worse by the time the summer is over.

No candidate’s fortunes have changed as much as Hillary Clinton’s over the past year. Once considered a shoo-in, she’s now pretty much washed up. Her problems, however, extend well beyond the Democratic primaries. A significant majority of the American people find her dishonest and untrustworthy. The Washington Post:

“Clinton is viewed as “honest and trustworthy” by just 39 percent of Americans, according to a new Washington Post – ABC News poll, compared with 52 percent in May 2006. Nearly six in 10 said in the new poll that she is not honest and trustworthy. And now, compared with Obama, Clinton has a deep trust deficit among Democrats, trailing him by 23 points as the more honest, an area on which she once led both Obama and John Edwards.

Among Democrats, 63 percent called her honest, down 18 points from 2006; among independents, her trust level has dropped 13 points, to 37 percent. Republicans held Clinton in low regard on this in the past (23 percent called her honest two years ago), but it is even lower now, at 16 percent. Majorities of men and women now say the phrase does not apply to Clinton; two years ago, narrow majorities of both did.”

Like Obama, Clinton has enough hurdles facing her in this race to the White House. A loss of trust among the electorate may be one hurdle she has no hope of clearing.

 

HILLARY WASN’T LYING! The Real Sniper Incident Revealed!

What makes this clip so good is there stands Hillary amidst an adoring crowd and she’s beaming at them and lying right to their faces. The only thing she didn’t say was, “I did not have sexual relations with that sniper.” It makes you wonder, is this the vaunted “experience” advantage Hillary claims entitles her to the Democratic nomination?

By the way, when that hotline phone rings at 3 a.m., I hope the person who picks it up isn’t under any delusions about being under sniper fire.

 

Hurricane Hillary – the Democrats’ Own Katrina

The best thing that John McCain has going for him is Hillary Clinton. So long as she’s in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination his popularity soars. By the time November has come and gone the toughest opponent McCain may have faced in his march to the White House could be Mike Huckabee.

David Brooks, writing in the International Herald Tribune, says Hillary simply can’t help herself – or the Democrats.

“The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring.

About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this?

Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support?

Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands of times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic.”

 

Hillary Under Fire

Hillary Clinton isn’t having a good time of it lately. After running a pretty effective smear job on her rival, Barack Obama, to the enternal gratitude of Republican John McCain, Hillary has been pulled back into the realm of reality, her own reality, and she’s not liking it.

To use the phrase of the judge at the McCartney divorce hearing about Heather Mills, Hillary has “over-egged the pudding.” That’s a polite way of saying she’s been a bit carried away with her many claims to fame.

To hear her tell it, she was instrumental in helping her husband, the Big Dog, cope with the many crises he faced during his terms as president. Why she must’ve been right there by his side, guiding his hand. Except she wasn’t. It turns out that some 11,000 pages of her record – pried loose by a Republican Freedom of Information proceeding – shows a considerably different picture to that painted by Hillary. Often she was on holiday at critical moments or having a tea social somewhere else.

Now Hillary is up against the “Phantom Sniper.” This little, self-serving figment of Hillary’s imagination came up in relation to her 1996 visit to Bosnia. Just last week Hillary told everyone how she had to brave sniper fire when she arrived at Tuzla airport:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base,” she said in a speech last Monday.

Brave stuff indeed, presidential even – except it didn’t happen. She just made it up. Also along on that junket was the comedian Sinbad who said the greatest crisis they faced was figuring out where to eat.

Caught with her drawers down and unable to claim the dog ate her homework, Hillary did the only thing she could do, she says she “misspoke”:

“I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.”

Yes, Mrs. Clinton, you do say a lot of things – a lot about your Democratic rival, Mr. Obama, and a lot about yourself. Maybe if you focused on saying less – maybe by just sticking to things that are true – you would do yourself a lot of good.

A weekend poll found that 60% of American voters said that McCain and Obama were believable. 57% said that Clinton was not believable. This is a candidate with a serious credibility problem and it’s all of her own making.

 

Hillary Likes Unions – Now That She Needs Their Support

But she wasn’t interested in union rights when she sat on the board of directors of WalMart, no not one bit.

In six years on the board, Clinton sat mute as the mega-retailer carried on a relentless war against labour unions trying to get a foot in the door.

ABC News got its hands on tapes of WalMart board meetings and, nope, nothing from Hillary there. Then there’s the tape of her appearance before a shareholders’ meeting where she said, “I’m always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else.”

Clinton now says she no longer shares WalMart’s values and believes unions have been essential to America’s success. Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Democratic organization has ruled out another primary to allocate the state’s delegates. Apparently they could fine neither the money nor the consensus of both candidates.

Newsweek reports that the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal has diminished Bill Clinton’s political capital, leaving people asking, “Can the Big Dog stay on the porch for eight years?”

Obama is conquering YouTube with his 30-minute “A More Perfect Union” speech. In took but 19-hours for it to receive 1,000,000 hits, obliterating the popularity of Clinton’s 3 AM ad and McCain’s top ad of Bill Clinton endorsing his political skills.

 

For You Hillary Fans Who Just Don’t Get It

Yeah, I admit I’ve been a bit hard on Hillary but she deserves every bit she gets. I’ve written about her cardinal sin of undermining Obama to the benefit of McCain but it’s obvious, from your vitriolic rebukes, that went over your heads. Okay, here it is again, this time from Gary Hart writing for the Huffington Post:

“It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party’s nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.

By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party’s nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.

Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.”

There, is that plain enough for you? Do you get it now? She’s a political monster, not just an animal. What matters above all to Hillary Clinton isn’t the Democratic Party and it isn’t America, it’s Hillary Clinton. If she comes to power, hers is an attitude that her country, and others, will pay for again and again.

Oh, before I go, here’s Maureen Dowd’s latest take on Clinton/Obama from the New York Times:

“Hillary successfully recast herself in Ohio as a beer-drinking former waitress. Only after last week’s reversals did the Obama camp raise a louder ruckus about her tax returns. Obviously, Ms. Night Shift does not want to reveal the details of the fortune that Bill Clinton has made, sometimes through dubious associations.

It has taken Obama a year to start seriously rebutting Hillary’s risible claim that she has far more national security experience than he does. Having a first lady tea in Belfast is not equivalent to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Obama sounded whiny after his losses, chastising reporters on his plane for asking him hard questions about Goolsbee and Antonin Rezko. Privately, his people conceded that he hadn’t been as fierce about winning as Hillary, once more playing rope-a-dope.

He’s now learned what Hillary learned in Iowa: You can’t cruise to victory on a coronation strategy.

If he thinks Hillary has cut him down to size lately, he’d better imagine what his life would be like as the Clintons’ vice president. “

 

Hillary Clinton Flip-Flop Mashup

I’ve been pretty thoroughly scolded for saying the obvious about Hillary Clinton.

She’s hypocritical, self-aggrandizing and a master of dirtball politics.

But don’t take it from me, let Hillary explain. She can do it so much better than I:

http://www.trendpimp.com/media/2875/Hillary_Clinton_Flip_Flop_Mashup.html

And if you want more, just Google Hillary and “flip flop” to see her (r)evolving opinions on everything from Iraq to immigration to change and whatever else pops up that she thinks she needs to bail out on or claim as her own. I guess that’s her “experience” coming through.

By the way, anybody know where to find Hillary’s tax returns or her papers from the Clinton library? Somebody seems to have buried those damned things. Wonder why that would be?