As the Iowa caucuses approach, the time has come for risk-taking for those who trail, and risk avoidance for those who lead. Hillary Clinton has decided to take the latter approach, even though she has dropped into a dead heat in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Peter Nicholas reports that Hillary has stopped taking questions at campaign appearances:

As she races through Iowa in the days before next week’s caucuses, Hillary Clinton is taking few chances. She tells crowds that it’s their turn to “pick a president,’’ but over the last two days she has not invited them to ask her any questions.

Before the brief Christmas break, the New York senator had been setting aside time after campaign speeches to hear from the audience. Now when she’s done speaking, her theme songs blare from loudspeakers, preventing any kind of public Q&A.

She was no more inviting when a television reporter approached her after a rally on Thursday and asked if she was “moved’’ by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Clinton turned away without answering.

Retail politics, especially in Iowa, always includes accessibility. If all Hillary wanted to do was to broadcast messages, she could buy television ad time. In order to get voters to caucus for a candidate, they have to get inspired to show up and stand their ground with all of their neighbors watching. Stonewalling hardly serves as inspiration.

Read the rest of this entry �

As Bill Clinton crisscrosses America defending his wife’s candidacy, he’s fuel ing speculation about who’d be in charge should Hillary be elected. Sen. Clinton - the incredible shrinking candidate - seems at times almost a bystander at her husband’s campaign, merely playing a somewhat more active role than she did in ‘92.

In our modern era of dynastic politics, the elder members of the dynasties have a duty to step aside to let their less experienced heirs shine. Former President George H.W. Bush, for example, has stayed well out of the limelight to let his son have center stage. Yet Bill Clinton is playing an ever-larger role in his wife’s campaign.

At first, his appearances were novel and politically helpful. But then they came to underscore her weakness. It was as if Dennis Thatcher had stood up for Maggie as she faced down the Argentine junta in the Falklands war. Now, Bill’s oversized presence on the national stage raises an even more profound question: Is he using his wife’s candidacy to seek a third term in office, prohibited him by the 22nd Amendment?

Increasingly, he seems like former Gov. George Wallace - who put his wife Lurleen into the Alabama State House after he was forced from office by term limits. (Or, in a more recent example, like Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, who stepped aside only to have his wife, Christina Fernandez Kirchner, take power.)

In ‘90, Hillary Clinton faced a similar problem when she flirted with the idea of running for governor of Arkansas. Bill, determined to seek the presidency in ‘92, was weighing whether to run for another term as governor or to step down and seek the presidency as a private citizen. Key to his decision was whether Hillary could take his place, both to keep the seat warm for him should he lose the presidential race and to stop any unwanted revelations from surfacing while he was off campaigning.

Read the rest of this entry �

By Patrick Healy

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”

Read the rest of this entry �

A grandfather and his grandson go up in a plane with Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and George W. Bush.
The grandfather is the pilot.
They are going to crash and there are only 4 parachutes not 5.
Bill Gates steps up and says “I’m the richest man in the world, so I need a parachute.”
Everyone agrees so Bill Gates jumps off the plane with one of the parachutes.
President Bush comes up and says, “I’m the President of the United States, so I need a parachute.”
Everyone agrees so President Bush follows Bill Gates.
Hillary Clinton comes up and says, “I’m the smartest woman in the whole world. I need a parachute!”, and before the grandson can object, she jumps of the plane with a parachute.
There is only one parachute left.
The pilot tells his grandson to go since he’s young and hasn’t lived his life.
The grandson hands his grandfather another parachute.
The grandfather, surprised, asked where his grandson got another parachute.
The grandson replies, “You know the smartest woman in the world?

She took my backpack.”

Washington, DC –Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2007 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.”  The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

1.  Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY):  In addition to her long and sordid ethics record, Senator Hillary Clinton took a lot of heat in 2007 – and rightly so – for blocking the release her official White House records.  Many suspect these records contain a treasure trove of information related to her role in a number of serious Clinton-era scandals.  Moreover, in March 2007, Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint against Senator Clinton for filing false financial disclosure forms with the U.S. Senate (again).  And Hillary’s top campaign contributor, Norman Hsu, was exposed as a felon and a fugitive from justice in 2007.  Hsu pleaded guilt to one count of grand theft for defrauding investors as part of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

2.  Rep. John Conyers (D-MI):  Conyers reportedly repeatedly violated the law and House ethics rules, forcing his staff to serve as his personal servants, babysitters, valets and campaign workers while on the government payroll.  While the House Ethics Committee investigated these allegations in 2006, and substantiated a number of the accusations against Conyers, the committee blamed the staff and required additional administrative record-keeping and employee training.  Judicial Watch obtained documentation in 2007 from a former Conyers staffer that sheds new light on the activities and conduct on the part of the Michigan congressman, which appear to be at a minimum inappropriate and likely unlawful.  Judicial Watch called on the Attorney General in 2007 to investigate the matter.

3.  Senator Larry Craig (R-ID):  In one of the most shocking scandals of 2007, Senator Craig was caught by police attempting to solicit sex in a Minneapolis International Airport men’s bathroom during the summer.  Senator Craig reportedly “sent signals” to a police officer in an adjacent stall that he wanted to engage in sexual activity.  When the police officer showed Craig his police identification under the bathroom stall divider and pointed toward the exit, the senator reportedly exclaimed ‘No!’”  When asked to produce identification, Craig presented police his U.S. Senate business card and said, “What do you think of that?”  The power play didn’t work.  Craig was arrested, charged and entered a guilty plea.  Despite enormous pressure from his Republican colleagues to resign from the Senate, Craig refused.

4.  Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA):  As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on military construction, Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts, some of which were ultimately awarded to URS Corporation and Perini, companies then owned by Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum. While the Pentagon ultimately awards military contracts, there is a reason for the review process. The Senate’s subcommittee on Military Construction’s approval carries weight. Sen. Feinstein, therefore, likely had influence over the decision making process.  Senator Feinstein also attempted to undermine ethics reform in 2007, arguing in favor of a perk that allows members of Congress to book multiple airline flights and then cancel them without financial penalty.  Judicial Watch’s investigation into this matter is ongoing. 

Read the rest of this entry �

The NY Sun might as well have asked: Would you like some cheese?

Now that Mayor Bloomberg is getting ready to spend hundreds of millions — maybe even more than a billion — of his own dollars on a presidential run that, if executed properly, would take the electoral votes of New York and California and Florida and Massachusetts out of the Hillary Clinton column and into the Michael Bloomberg column, President Clinton is suddenly coming down with the fantods about the dangers of self-financed political campaigns.

“We are very frustrated because we have a Supreme Court that seems determined to say that the wealthier have more right to free speech than the rest of us,” President Clinton said in Iowa on Sunday, according to Politico, complaining that such spending violates “the spirit of campaign finance reform.”

“…the rest of us.” Bill Clinton has become filthy rich since leaving the presidency. These days he’s always seen in the company of the world’s power elite, people who can write multi-million dollar checks to his library fund. For him to talk about “the rest of us” as though he’s not among the world’s upper crust is, as usual, a shameless lie.

Read the rest of this entry �

Chris Matthews was in full flight on today’s Morning Joe, vividly expressing himself on everything from the historic shockwaves that an Obama Iowa victory would send, to Media Matters’s role as a Hillary front, to the attitude of NewsBusters. But the Hardball host was especially animated in describing the way the Clintons use intimidation to keep people in line.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: In the world, in the universe, the biggest American political story of modern times if Obama wins the Iowa caucuses. It will be all over the world; it will sweep the headlines in every newspaper in the world: friend, foe or neutral. It will be the Third World story of the century, of the last century [Barack’s Time Machine?], the biggest story of modern Third World history, really, if Obama wins the American presidential caucus in Iowa.

Source: News Busters

by Norman Liebmann

Preamble: To paraphrase an old song, old vampires never die, they just run for President. The proliferation of the Clintons and the Bushes raises the question of whether we will have to tent the White House to deal with this infestation. Some bat control experts refer to one method of thinning the recent presidential vampire population as “deathnic cleansing”.

Is Hillary Clinton a vampire? She doesn’t deny it, and that is a standard of proof that has stood up in many courts of the land. Let us say the question frequently asked by the night crawlers that emerge in Washington at sundown is, “Hillary Clinton? Is she still dead?” (One contraindication is that she does not sleep in a coffin for fear that hubby Bill would sneak into her chamber and nail the lid shut.)

Hillary Clinton advertises her age as 60 - give or take a century or two. (She lies about everything else so why not about her age?) At all events, Hillary seems to have achieved what is considered the average life expectancy in Transylvania. Her friends of the feminist/vampire persuasion admit she stays fairly “trendy” for someone who passed away a few thousand years ago, and has made the most of herself considering the raw material the undertaker was given to work with. Or as others put it, “She certainly didn’t let herself go after she died”.

This is sure. If Hillary Clinton wins the coming election you can expect to see the same old vampires hanging upside down from the rafters of the White House to help her celebrate by popping the cork on a magnum of vintage Type O hemoglobin.

The true Clinton legacy has festered. Bubba has decided to complete his plan for turning America into a nation of perverts, recipients and thralls by handing over the keys to liberalism to Hillary. They share the obsession that the most expeditious place to subvert the nation is from the highest seat of power. Both Hillary and Bill’s DNA carry the manic genes for ambition and self-accommodation. Hillary slathers with lust for power. At this point Bill just slathers. Both spend their lives struggling against a sense of their profound nonentity. To paraphrase Lord Acton, Bubba corrupts, Hillary corrupts absolutely. The present global crises are Nature’s Way of telling us that there are just so many Clintons one civilization can endure. The emergence of two Clintons in a single generation demonstrates that karma can be vindictive.

Read the rest of this entry �

Something was bugging me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it hit me. While I was reading about the campaign, the realization came like a thunderbolt: I’m tired of Bill Clinton.

Tired of his half-truths and full lies about where he stood on Iraq. Tired of his bull, as when he says he’d campaign for Hillary "if we weren’t married" and calls her a "world-class genius." Tired of his whining, as when he says the media has been too tough on her and too soft on Barack Obama.

All of this is as real as the lovey-dovey, hug-and-smile photo ops of them in Iowa. It’s theater, staged for maximum political impact. We’re being played again on the two-for-the-price-of-one angle.

But, as always, the game for him is about him. A vote for her is a vote for him. Vanity is a big part of it, with her victory the succession legacy he was denied when Al Gore lost.

All true, but I fear there is more to it now. He wants to be The Man, again. He wants it so much that it’s not clear which President Clinton would be the President. The way he hogs the spotlight, the way he’s trotted out to rescue her when she’s in trouble and the way he sets the talking points mark him as the lead dog in the Clinton pack. Would he also make the decisions in the White House? All of them? Some of them?

One day he uses the phrase "roll of the dice" to warn against Obama, and soon she’s using "roll of the dice" to warn about Obama. The echo chamber happens often enough that if she wins, Hillary could end up being No. 2 in her own administration. Maybe that’s the plan.

That makes me really tired. I suspect I’m not alone.

Read the rest of this entry �