Yeah, she’s cute but ignore that and focus on your takeaways. It wasn’t but a few days back that NY NOW went totally, completely off-the-charts bonkers over Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama. They had a press release comparing the political treatment of Hillary to a gang bang, which given the fact that Ted Kennedy is directly involved and Bill Clinton was lurking in the shadows off stage, should have made them heed the blinding IRONY caution light.

That, plus the possibility that their work might have constituted the single most egregious play of the girl card in centuries, potentially setting real feminism back to the Cretaceous.

So here’s one take-a-way: The NOW that stood in monolithic support of Bill Clinton when he had been caught with the intern, a complete betrayal of feminist notions of workplace power relations, is now fractured over supporting the wife that stood by her man through all that. That’s bound to leave some longstanding issues here and there.

Second take-a-way: Barack Obama, bipartisan healer, is a most radical politician. He doesn’t just have the most reliably liberal voting record in the US Senate. His radicalism traces back through his entire political career. According to his new NOW supporter, Obama has a 100% NARAL record, meaning he’s fine with partial birth abortion and no parental restrictions or notifications whatsoever. That’s one of the more monstrous things I’ve ever heard said of a potential Messiah. It’s bound to stick.

Let’s get some disclaimers out of the way: a charge is not proof.

A defector’s word is not necessarily the gold standard.

Someone who prefers capitalism to communism might just want to make a lot of money after a lifetime of want.

Further, the book’s charge is not that he was a bought-and-paid for spy by conscious decision, but rather an unwitting, gullible dupe. A media lefty whose ego could easily be stroked, and who thought he was "among friends" when chatting amiably about American foreign policy decisions and intentions with KGB agents.

Friends who, of course, just thought he was such a super, super smart guy that they would never betray his trust by reporting his words to their Soviet spymaster superiors.

Still.

The Media Blog has the link and the teaser:

How should the media handle sensational allegations that one of the most esteemed members of their profession, former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, was a dupe of the Russian intelligence service? How should they deal with hard evidence that one of their sacred cows, the United Nations, is penetrated by Russian spies?

The answer is that most of them will ignore it.

This is the fate they’re giving to Comrade J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former Washington Post reporter and author Pete Earley.

Comrade J is about a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States because he was disgusted with the Russian/Soviet system and wanted to start a new and better life with his family in America. He identifies former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a current adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service.

Back in 2000, when Talbott was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, he was described as "a key architect of U.S. foreign policy" during the Clinton years. He now heads the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington, D.C. think tank.

But Tretyakov has some impressive credentials of his own. He wasn’t just a low-level official. He is described as the highest ranking Russian intelligence official ever to defect while stationed in the U.S. and handled all Russian intelligence operations against the U.S. He served under cover from 1995-2000 at Russia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations but was secretly working for the FBI for at least three years.

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Legacy? What legacy?

There was general amazement when (the now-muzzled) Bill Clinton did his red-faced, attack-dog, race-baiting performance in South Carolina. Friends, Democrats and longtime media sycophants were variously perplexed, repulsed, enraged, mystified and shocked that this beloved ex-president would so jeopardize his legacy by stooping so low.

What they don’t understand is that for Clinton, there is no legacy. What he was doing on the low road from Iowa to South Carolina was fighting for a legacy — a legacy that he knows history has denied him and that he has but one chance to redeem.

Clinton is a narcissist but also smart and analytic enough to distinguish adulation from achievement. Among Democrats, he is popular for twice giving them the White House, something no Democrat has done since FDR. And the bouquets he receives abroad are simply signs of the respect routinely given ex-presidents, though Clinton earns an extra dollop of fawning, with the accompanying fringe benefits, because he is (a) charming and (b) not George W. Bush.

But Clinton knows this is all written on sand. It is the stuff of celebrity. What gnaws at him is the verdict of history. What clearly enraged him more than anything this primary season was Barack Obama’s statement that "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that … Bill Clinton did not."

The Clintons tried to use this against Obama by charging him with harboring secret Republican sympathies. It was a stupid charge that elicited only scorn. And not just because Obama is no Reaganite, but because Obama’s assessment is so obviously true: Reagan was consequential. Clinton was not.

Reagan changed history. At home, he radically altered both the shape and perception of government. Abroad, he changed the entire structure of the international system by bringing down the Soviet empire, giving birth to a unipolar world of unprecedented American dominance.

By comparison, Clinton was a historical parenthesis. He can console himself — with considerable justification — that he simply drew the short straw in the chronological lottery: His time just happened to be the 1990s which, through no fault of his own, was the most inconsequential decade of the 20th century. His was the interval between the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, and the return of history with a vengeance on Sept. 11, 2001.

Clinton’s decade, that holiday from history, was certainly a time of peace and prosperity — but a soporific Golden Age that made no great demands on leadership. What, after all, was his greatest crisis? A farcical sexual dalliance.

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By Jay Ambrose

Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down with The New York Times to outline her economic plans if elected president, and we now know the sad, sordid facts - how confused the senator is and how intent she is on ruinous policies.

We should thank her for her honesty after first reviewing some of her points, such as the notion that business is now insufficiently regulated and that government should be exercising more power in the marketplace.

This supposed deficiency of governmental intervention gets no support from a glance at the Federal Register, which includes tens of thousands of pages of new, old and proposed rules. Nor does it help the thesis to note the cost of implementation, $1.1 trillion annually, according to the Small Business Administration.

All of this may seem as nothing to Clinton, but some fret that these endless, frequently obnoxious and sometimes pointless rules impose thousands of dollars on an average family each year, steal liberty from individuals and inflict mayhem as they goosestep their way across the business landscape.

The Democratic presidential candidate also wants to eliminate President Bush’s tax cuts on households making more than $250,000 on the erroneous ground that the tax code is "out of whack" in giving kisses and hugs to the rich while doing seriously mean things to the middle class, such as stomping on their living standards.

The National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas begs to differ. It points out that federal income taxes just keep getting more progressive even when you measure the effect of Bush tax cuts routinely demonized by Democrats.

Any number of other analyses say the same. The share borne by the rich has been more since those cuts were enacted, not less. The middle class was a prime beneficiary.

Hiking some taxes Bush reduced wouldn’t produce nearly enough revenue for any major need, such as even beginning to fix Medicare, but would deprive the economy of a healthy stimulus. She does intend to effect some middle-class tax credits, and some of her proposals would be fine if accompanied by spending reductions. But the words "reduce spending" are not part of the vocabulary of this politician whose talk of hugely expensive new public-works projects make absolutely no sense, least of all in a time of continued low unemployment.

In the interview, Clinton discussed taking a closer, tougher look at what foreign governments invest in the United States, forgetting that getting back more of the dollars held overseas would be enormously invigorating and productive for our economy.

Displaying maybe the single worst idea of how to deal with the housing slump, our heroine seeks a three-month cessation of foreclosures along with a five-year hold on increases on the interest rates of mortgages lower than the prime rate. A consequence, as the Times article itself suggests, would be higher interest rates for other homeowners in order to reward those guilty of improvident decisions.

The Times story tells us that Hillary Clinton is generally far more skeptical of free trade and free markets than was Bill Clinton as president. The truth is that relatively unhampered trade has produced literally millions of jobs for this nation. It has also driven down prices to far greater benefit for America’s poor than any dozen new governmental programs the senator’s socialistically inclined imagination might come up with.

The evidence is simply insurmountable that the freer a country’s economy, the better off its people are.

Source:  Eagle Tribune

The Hillary Clinton Accountability Project will shortly launch its fundraising drive to raise $500,000 to support the most important citizen’s legal initiative of 2008. The landmark civil fraud suit of Paul v Clinton et al which the California Supreme Court ordered to proceed against the Clintons, Grammys Producer Gary Smith and Clinton agent Jim Levin, will be set for trial and a discovery schedule at a special conference to be held in Los Angeles Superior Court on February 21, 2008.

The first law suit in American history to bring a President and a Senator to court for defrauding the Senator’s largest campaign donor and his public company will be set for trial and discovery at the Case Management Conference before Judge Munoz.  Discovery and depositions of key witnesses, including the Clinton family, Al Gore, Ed Rendell, Terry McAuliffe, Harold Ickes, Howard Wolfson, Kelly Craighead, Barbara Streisand, Brad Pitt, Larry King, Mike Wallace among an array of political and entertainment leaders, will present an inside look at a culture of corruption that will shock the public.

The history and significance of this lawsuit is featured in the internet phenomenon - documentary Hillary! Uncensored and in the court filings posted on the Hillary Clinton Accountability Project web site.

Because the expenses of discovery and trial preparation will be extraordinary as the efforts to expose wrongdoing by the Clinton hierarchy of the Democratic is fought desperately by the Clinton Washington pit bull legal team, they require the continued support of the tens of thousands of concerned citizens around the nation that have supported it since 2001 and all those Americans who are newly introduced to the biggest political scandal since Watergate.

Paul v Clinton has become and will be the first civil lawsuit to produce sworn testimony and evidence of the systemic corruption that the Clintons have infused into the Democratic Party and all branches of the federal government. Given the necessary resources and legal talent to use the legal tools now available, the illegalities directed by Hillary Clinton to win and keep her Senate seat will be irrefutable!

Contributions to support this case are being accepted online by the Hillary Clinton Accountability Project and questions or feedback may be directed by email to admin@ejaf.us.

Source: PeterPaul.com

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s daily schedules as first lady will be forwarded to former President Clinton by Friday for review, the first of two steps without a fixed time limit before any are released to the public, the National Archives said Wednesday.

Former President Clinton will have 30 days — possibly longer, if he requests an extension — to review the 10,000 pages of his wife’s daily schedules before they will be sent to the White House for its review, said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the National Archives. The Bush administration does not have a time limit to review the documents before they can be released, Cooper said.

Last year, Clinton faced criticism from her fellow Democratic presidential rivals over the number of White House documents from her husband’s administration that have not been made public.

The daily schedules are currently held at Clinton’s library here, which is part of the presidential library system operated by the National Archives.

The stack of schedules "still has two more layers of review to go through," Cooper told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Longtime Clinton adviser Bruce Lindsey will review the documents for Clinton.

Archivists have been sorting through 80 million pages of documents and 20 million e-mails at the library from Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, but few records have come out of the library in response to Freedom of Information requests since it began accepting them in January 2006. The library processes requests based on when they were received.

The daily schedules are the focus of a lawsuit a conservative public interest group has filed against the archives seeking the release of the former first lady’s records, including phone logs and other files. Judicial Watch has also sued in federal court seeking the release of documents related to a White House task force Clinton headed as first lady.

President Clinton put his wife in charge of the task force early in his presidency to propose an overhaul of national health care policy. The effort eventually failed to muster support in Congress.

Cooper said those documents are still being processed by library archivists and did not know when they would be forwarded to Lindsey.

Source: AP

An average of national polls currently shows Hillary Clinton slightly behind John McCain (show data) and Barack Obama slightly ahead (show data). But that isn’t the whole story on the Obama electability advantage. Right leaning voters are far less motivated than the left. (related article) Hillary Clinton would change that.

A newly released DVD, “Hillary – The Movie” provides an insightful look at Clinton as the candidate Republicans are ready for. There were those 8 years as first lady in which everybody got to know her; from scandals, to personality problems, to ineptitude with policy issues. She is a truly polarizing figure, one capable of producing record voter turnout this year – for the other side. Appearing publically after 9/11 in this – her politically adopted state – she was sometimes booed off the stage.

The common wisdom is that one should not underestimate her husband’s political machine. It took her to an early lead in the Democratic primaries. That lead is rapidly slipping away however and perhaps for some of the same reasons she would likely lose in November if the machine manages to hang on long enough to make her the nominee.

The cultivated Clinton image is that of a strong and determined woman. Based on her own words, she is seen as a political extremist – something of a Nazi, a Communist, or a hybrid of both. She’s angry, manipulative, mean-spirited, and hateful. Standing firmly on stage with that “determined” look, waving her hands, and shouting she’ll “take and take” in order to impose her will; one can’t help but think of Hitler at least a little. Her extremism seems punctuated lately by strong support from the NY chapter of N.O.W. whose articles can make one feel that their members may don brown shirts and beat up on anyone who doesn’t support her – because she’s a woman.

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"Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card — and Lose," my new book, comes out Feb. 5, Super Tuesday. Unfortunately for former President Bill Clinton and his wife, no one sent an advance copy.

"Jesse Jackson," said Bill Clinton, "won South Carolina twice, in ‘84 and ‘88. And he ran a good campaign, and Sen. Obama’s run a good campaign here." Clinton gave this response in South Carolina to a reporter’s question about why it took two Clintons to beat Barack Obama. Clinton’s response had nothing whatsoever to do with the question.

So why did Clinton say it?

Obama, unlike Jackson, actually got elected to something — in his case, the United States Senate, from the state of Illinois. Obama, unlike Jackson, won the Democratic caucus in the mostly white Iowa, and finished a strong second in the mostly white state of New Hampshire. Obama is nobody’s Jesse Jackson, and Bill Clinton knows it.

By invoking Jesse Jackson’s name, Clinton attempted to portray Obama as the "black candidate." Clinton knows that the race-driven Jackson polarizes people. By branding Obama as Jackson-esque, Clinton hoped to peel away Obama’s support from white voters and thus — pardon the expression — ghettoize Obama’s candidacy.

Sen. Hillary Clinton even agreed that her husband crossed the line, and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., a long-serving member of Congress, publicly called on Bill to "chill." Comically, even the Rev. Al Sharpton complained about Bill Clinton’s behavior — although Sharpton did not complain about any specific statement. What could Sharpton say? After all, Clinton attempted to alienate whites by invoking the race-hustling Jackson, and by extension Sharpton, too.

Before the primary, an MSNBC poll showed Obama getting only 10 percent of South Carolina’s white vote. But Obama captured 24 percent, with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards getting 36 percent and 39 percent of the white vote, respectively. Edwards got more of the "white vote" than did Clinton!

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By Selwyn Duke
Since I think the Clintons would probably sell their souls and firstborn for another White House tenure, the idea they would play the race card raises no eyebrow here.  They are political creatures first, everything else second and statesmen last.  For this to elude one, he must have his head planted firmly in a particularly dense grade of sand. 

Man of letters Christopher Hitchens understands this; while by no means a member of the "Vast Right-wing Conspiracy," he writes eloquently about the Clintons’ long history of racial "thuggery and opportunism."  Even more significant are the pronouncements of Dick Morris, Bill’s erstwhile propaganda minister.  His thesis is that Hillary wanted the black vote in South Carolina to coalesce for Obama so that she’d lose the state big, and she wanted this electoral shift to be visible and much ballyhooed in the media.  Witnessing this, the white vote in other states would then circle the wagons around her, and, with their numerical superiority, the nomination would be hers. 
Or so the theory goes.
Although Morris’ political prognostications leave much to be desired (he specializes in stating as fact predictions that never come to pass), I believe he understands the Clintons’ character almost as well as anyone.  This is a man who knew them intimately enough to, as he relates the story, be physically tackled by an enraged Bill in the Arkansas governor’s mansion and then told by Hillary, "He only does this to people he loves."  So if he swears the Clintons were playing the race card, I take it seriously.
What I am doubtful of is that it would work. 
This strategy rests on the assumption that whites feel such a sense of racial patriotism — or such fear of black political power — that any candidate seen as a guarantor of black interests will send them running into the arms of the best great white hope.  This is the liberal view of the world.
It’s also not reality.
I ask you, how many whites do you know who fit that profile?  Sure, there are bigots in every group, but my experience with fellow whites tells me they’re the exception, not the rule.  In fact, when I think of all the people I have ever known, I remember precious few who I believe would have voted based on racial considerations.  Even more to the point, a groundswell of black support isn’t necessary to alienate such individuals from a black candidate.  His skin color is more than enough.
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ABC News’ Eloise Harper Reports: Senator Hillary Clinton, in an interview with ABC News’ Cynthia McFadden for ABC News’ Nightline, was asked about President Clinton’s controversial comments about race and Senator Obama  in the past weeks. Clinton apologized for her husband.

“I think whatever he said which was certainly never intended to cause any kind of offense to anyone,” Clinton said, “if it did give offenses then I take responsibility and I’m sorry about that.”

“Can you control him?” asked McFadden.

“Oh of course,” Clinton replied.

Of course she can.

She always has before, hasn’t she?

Source: Sweetness and Light