What two words best explain Al Gore's loss to George W. Bush in 2000?
Answer: Ralph Nader
What two words will explain why we end up with a Republican President again in 2009?
Answer: Hillary Clinton
Yes, I'm on that jag again. And I will stay on it until Democrats either put that gun to their heads and pull the trigger in November 2008, or wise up.
I spent the weekend bombarded with Hillary, who blitzed the major Sunday talk shows. I listened to every word she said and, more importantly, how she framed those words. Which was, as usual, an exercise akin to decoding old speeches by Alan Greenspan.
When I'm elected President we will not have troops in Iraq at levels they are there today, she declared.
Hmmm... let's diagram that sentence. Why did she add at levels they are there today,? You know. I know. Everyone knows why she slipped that in.
Because, she's already triangulating for two years down the road, should she win the Presidency. I guarantee you a year after she's sworn in there will still be over 100,000 US troops in trespassing in Iraq and she'll be talking about the importance of maintaining a permanent presence.
When asked why she didn't keep her promise to get us out of the Iraq war she will remind us that all she promised was that we would not have the number of troops Bush had in Iraq at the time. When she uttered those words Sunday there were 165,000 US troops in Iraq. So, she will crow, she did kept that promise, and she will shamelessly make a virtue out of having 65,000 fewer troops in Iraq then, even though up to 40,000 of those troops would have been removed as purely a military necessity before she even took the oath of office. (Yes, but I didn't replace them, did I? she will chide reporters cheeky enough to press the issue.)
But never mind. Don't lose a wink of sleep over such a prospect,
because she won't get that far. If Hillary becomes the Democrats'
standard bearer in 08, Rudolf Guliani will be your next President. And
you can take that to bank.
I remember back in 2000 watching Democrats flock to another
narcissistic candidate, Ralph Nader. Everyone was tired of politics as
usual, and Al Gore was as usual at it got, at least back then.
So Democrats and Independents in large number gravitated to Nader a
guy who, at the end of the day was little more than Ross Perot in drag.
He couldn't win and he didn't. What could do though was lose the White
House for Democrats, which he did.
And so here we are again. Only this time it's not a fringe candidate
like Nader that endangers all things progressive. This time it's a
heavyweight, a real pro, a seasoned veteran of politics as usual,
Hillary Clinton. A candidate apparently able to garner enough votes in
her own party to win the nomination, but so unpopular among the
population as a whole that she can't possibly win a general election.
Hillary Clinton supporters, what the hell is wrong with you people? Are
you stuck on stupid? Do you miss the As the Clintons Turn soap opera
so much you are willing to lose the the White House again just for the
slimmest chance of getting it back on the air? Maybe you're like Paris
Hilton and Britney Spears groupies emotional captives of the dame of
American drama queens.
Hillary supporters are among the first to denounce the polarization of
American politics of the Bush years. How ironic that is, since Hillary
is herself one of America's most polarizing politicians. In fact, a
Hillary candidacy would be far more polarizing than GW Bush's first run
for the White House. After all, Bush was less known and consequently
had racked up lower negatives when he first ran. For better and worse
the nation knows Hillary, and polls show that 40% of likely voters know
they don't like her.
Come on guys, don't do it. Don't fall for Hillary's phony-baloney,
no-truth in packaging, bull. She's the Anti-Christ of the Democratic
party. She's a Venus Fly Trap for liberal suckers. She's the Eva Peron
of American politics. She's a shill for some of the nation's most
avaricious special interests who have an extra special interest in
your pocketbook.
Hillary is every inch as corrupt as
Tom DeLay ever was. She's just been more artful in getting away with
it. Do you think it's just the strangest of coincidences that every
time a Clinton is running for high office they get caught running with
sleaze bags and criminals?
For Clintons, An Unwelcome Echo
Talk about dιjΰ vu. Pressed by questions about a scandal-tarred
fundraiser, a candidate named Clinton decides to return hundreds of
thousands of dollars. The politician's operation promises to conduct
criminal background checks on big fundraisers in the future. And it
leaks its decisions at night after a busy day in hopes of burying the
news and minimizing the damage.
In 1997, the pol, of course, was Bill Clinton and the tainted money
came from folks such as John Huang, Charlie Trie, Johnny Chung and
Pauline Kanchanalak. A decade later, it's Hillary Rodham Clinton's turn
to write refund checks to deflect attention from a bundler named Norman
Hsu. Few American political families in modern times have proved as
adept at raising money or as practiced at the art of giving it back
if it comes with too much baggage...The Hsu case illustrates the
challenges for Hillary Clinton in defining her past. (Full Story)
Oh, I know what the Hillary people will say... She didn't know. Well, as a retired journalist let me tell you how she could have known had she wanted to. It's called Lexis/Nexis,
a comprehensive online database of all news stories (Nexis) and civil
and criminal legal cases, (Lexis.) One search.. just one search of
Hsu's name on that database would have told Hillary, not only all she
needed to know about Hsu to shun him, but enough to turn his ass into
the authorities in California where he was a fugitive and convicted of
fraud.
Now,
you gotta know that the well-oiled, well-financed Clinton machine has a
fully-paid subscription to Lexis/Nexis. No respectable campaign would
be without one, if for no other reason, to do opposition research. So,
if she didn't know, it was because she didn't want to know.
Even
the people Hillary surrounds herself with are not what they seem. They
are as politics as usual and Washington as usual, as it gets. They are
after the power, and they'll say anything, promise anything like
ending the war in Iraq to get it.
Since
I know most Hillary Moonies won't go off and do their own independent
research I will end by pasting in a piece from Salon Magazine that
illustrates what I just said. (Article trimmed for length.)
Former Clinton officials lobby for amnesty for FISA lawbreaking
The bipartisan appendages of the Beltway system work to provide amnesty for both private and governmental lawbreakers.
"It is hard to count the number of high Clinton officials who, like
Gorelick, have spent the last six years getting rich selling their
contacts and influence by working on behalf of lobbying and other
clients to pursue legislation directly at odds with the political
beliefs they pretended to have and will, once they are back in power,
pretend again to have."
Sep. 22, 2007: Following up on Jim Risen's NYT article this week
reporting that Congressional Democrats appeared likely to agree to some
form of retroactive immunity for telecom companies which illegally
enabled the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping on
Americans (thus compelling dismissal most of the remaining lawsuits
challenging the illegality of the eavesdropping), Newsweek's Michael
Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reported the same thing:
Congressional staffers said this week that some version of the proposal
is likely to pass in part because of a high-pressure lobbying
campaign warning of dire consequences if the lawsuits proceed.
The Newsweek article sheds further light onto the reasons for its likely passage:
The nation's biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with
the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get
Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits
against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community's
warrantless surveillance programs.
The campaign which involves some of Washington's most prominent
lobbying and law firms has taken on new urgency in recent weeks
because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised
to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.
Among those coordinating the industry's effort are two well-connected
capital players who both worked for President George H.W. Bush: Verizon
general counsel William Barr, who served as attorney general under 41,
and AT&T senior executive vice president James Cicconi, who was the
elder Bush's deputy chief of staff.
Working with them are a battery of major D.C. lobbyists and lawyers who
are providing "strategic advice" to the companies on the issue,
according to sources familiar with the campaign who asked not to be
identified talking about it. Among the players, these sources said:
powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (and)
former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick (whose law firm also
represents Verizon) ...While Gorelick claimed she is not specifically
lobbying, she "confirmed that she is providing 'strategic advice'" to
Verizon for obtaining immunity. But all of these firms and individuals
are working in unison on behalf of telecoms, using the influence they
acquired and the contacts they developed while working in government to
pressure lawmakers to give their clients what they want:
It is not, obviously, a revelation, but this practice of government
officials leaving and then being paid to use their contacts to shape
legislation on behalf of corporate clients is the sleaziest practice
there is in Washington. Can't Jamie Gorelick find a way to earn a
living without engaging in the lowest form of legalized
influence-peddling on behalf of law-breaking telecoms which now want a
bill which would almost certainly, in effect if not explicitly, also
bar any accountability for Bush officials who broke the law when
eavesdropping on Americans? (And it is worth remembering here that
Qwest, unlike Gorelick's client, followed the law and refused to comply
with the administration's demands to allow spying on its customers
without warrants, even in the face of threats that they would lose
government contracts).
It is hard to count the number of high Clinton officials who, like
Gorelick, have spent the last six years getting rich selling their
contacts and influence by working on behalf of lobbying and other
clients to pursue legislation directly at odds with the political
beliefs they pretended to have and will, once they are back in power,
pretend again to have. Gorelick, needless to say, is an enthusiastic
contributor to the Hillary Clinton campaign (as well as to Joe
Lieberman's). She'll undoubtedly be a leading candidate for Attorney
General in the next Clinton administration (perhaps serving along with
Clinton supporter and "foreign policy expert" Michael O'Hanlon).
Telecom lobbyist Donilon is also a maxed-out Clinton contributor.
It is hard to overstate how much of a priority FISA immunity is for the
Bush White House, and for obvious reasons. Ironically, they were
actually proposing the same sweeping retroactive immunity language back
in September of 2006 when the Republicans controlled both houses of
Congress, but they could not get the Congress to pass FISA legislation.
With the Democrats in control of Congress, and Democratic Beltway
influence-peddlers like Gorelick working with them, their chances of
obtaining such legislation are now plainly enhanced, and according to
both Risen and Isikoff/Hosenball, they are likely to obtain some form
of retroactive immunity now that Democrats control Congress. There are
reasons good reasons why the current Congress is more popular among
Republicans than Democrats.
Yup, Iraq is one of the few things I respect Hillary for. Unlike the dumb masses she remembers the 90's were full of Saddam's deceptions and trickery. She remembers he emboldened sanction violators and removed inspectors in 1998. Furthermore, after Saddam screwed around in the UN Security Council for months, in late 2002, before allowing inspectors back in with unfettered inspections access, Hillary realized nothing indicated Saddam was going to be cooperative, or the UN was going to become effective.
The icing on the cake was the UN Oil for Food corruption, because it indicated Saddam was NOT CONTAINED. Saddam had a plan to reconstitute his programs (Kay and Duelfer Reports), was in the middle of that plan and some would've let him realize that plan.
For Hillary's resolve on Iraq I respect her. For her willingness to subject the individual to society I do not respect her.
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September 25, 2007
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