A campaign memo by Joe Erwin, former South Carolina Democrat Party chair and current Obama supporter, has come up with the most perfectly apposite one-line summation of the Clintons I have ever seen in print.

To assess the resonance of that opening sentence, let me offer the estimate that I have read the equivalent of three truckloads of articles about the Clintons over the years, pro and con.  Well, mostly con.  Although they are pro con men.  (Con people?)

Yes, it’s true.  After nearly two decades of conservative writers spluttering and sputtering, hyperventilating and gesticulating, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair, seeking the mot juste to encapsulate the smarminess, the tackiness, the sleaziness, the ickiness, the scabby, weasely, hokey corruption that is the Clinton legacy, one Democrat political operative in South Carolina has scooped them all by getting it just right.  Quoth Erwin (what relation to the late Senator Sam?): “There is an old South Carolina saying that goes like this – some people would rather climb a tree to tell a fib than stand on the ground and tell the truth.”

Wow!  Shazzam!  Exactly right.

The thing that has offended decent people most about the Clintons is not so much the act of lying, a sin engaged in to one degree or another by most politicians, but the blithe disregard of truth as a standard for human communication.  They lie not only for political gain, not only for personal gain, but for the sheer pleasure of controlling the version of their reality that is etched into the public consciousness.

None of this means that it would be politically expedient for my agenda were Hillary to lose the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama.  On the contrary, Obama is an immensely likeable young man who strikes me as a more formidable foe for the Republicans than old retread Hillary Clinton.  He brings the sort of freshness to the table that virtually no Republican in national politics can match.  The closest example on the right would be freshman Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal. 

Read the rest of this entry »

I had a feeling we would never get rid of him.  When watching the inaugural ceremonies in 2001, when Bill Clinton lingered, and lingered, and lingered a bit longer, I knew that not only would he not go away, but that the media wouldn’t let him.  This week the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy celebrated its ten year anniversary and the woman who coined the phrase looks poised to return with Bill Clinton to the White House.  Considering how reluctant they were to leave it, it is no surprise they are fighting so hard to return.  What remains to be seen is whether or not the public is ready for Clinton II.

For those who have forgotten, Bill Clinton made the tackiest of departures.

He sucked up the final moments of his presidency by delivering a 1000 word speech using the words “I” or “me” 56 times and instead of a single goodbye, embarked on a full-fledged goodbye tour.  I guess that’s what you do when you are convinced you are a rock star.  Jonah Goldberg writing at the time described the way Clinton “tried to deprive the new president the limelight” by quoting Mayor Daley.  “In the past, they shook hands, the (former) president went to a helicopter, and that was it. This was different. He had a rally at the airport, a rally in New York and a rally at his home. It was really different, really unusual," Daley said. "That’s his style. He wanted two or three more parties."   Goldberg went on to quote Bill Clinton from the airport rally: "You see that sign there, ‘Please Don’t Go’? I left the White House, but I’m still here. We’re not going anywhere."

When Bill Clinton said “we’re not going anywhere” he certainly wasn’t kidding and soon the Clintons might just be returning.  Consider the current campaign as the reunion tour.  The old gang is back together and looking to play for the American people.

In the column quoted above, Jonah Goldberg went into the details of the final days of the Clinton soap opera presidency, including the pardons, the taking of White House belongings, and the deal with the independent counsel admitting he lied in the Lewinsky affair.  Goldberg wrote of the presidential saga being over,  “I have no doubt that Bill will continue to lie and exert his will to power in an effort to remain the center of the universe, but fortunately for me, I don’t have to write about it anymore. I can no longer muster the hate to do it, because he doesn’t matter. He is now just an epigram on a dying feeling.”  Unfortunately, only act one of the saga was over and Bill Clinton does still matter.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday,  January 27, 2008, our nation celebrates an important political anniversary.  Ten years ago Hillary Clinton (then the First Lady) went on television with Matt Lauer and said: 

"This is the great story here for anybody willing to find and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

Thus was born the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Hillary expected serious Americans to believe that the Whitewater convictions (which put a sitting Arkansas governor in prison), the suicide of the Deputy White House Chief Counsel under mysterious circumstances, the unconscionable firing of the White House travel staff, Hillary’s strange acumen in predicting the cattle futures market, an allegation of brutal rape against her husband, the perjury of Bill Clinton in a federal grand jury proceeding, his affair with a White House intern, and the countless other moral debauches of the Clintons were created by some cabal with power greater than the president, the Democratic Party and the huge phalanx of media flacks, fawning Hollywood starlets, militant activists and nihilistic academicians.

The truth, of course, is different.  The "vast right wing conspiracy" or VRWC lives on today, and is vast — it includes tens of millions of intelligent Americans who have been systematically marginalized, demonized and defamed in the public debate about America.  It has voices because technology, tenacity and innovation gave it voices, in spite of those who hold most of the levers of power in America.  Rush Limbaugh worked in the trenches of the AM side of radio and was fired from radio jobs until he created his own place of influence.  Anyone who listens to Rush knows that he makes his own mind up, that he panders to no faction, and that he stands up to any critics.  This is hardly the stuff of secret groups plotting the destruction of an amoral politician from Arkansas.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you stop to think about it, it did not take much time at all for the Obama-Clinton contest to become the most overwrought political spectacle since…well, since Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was subpoenaing Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Rose Law firm billing records and all the rancor that followed therefrom. Two months back Senator Barack Obama was the genial, winsome young orator from the Land of Lincoln, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was the smiling front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Somehow her double-digit lead over him vanished and — whammo! Of a sudden, the charges of treachery and personal destruction were flying.

Thitherto Obama was the anti-war candidate, the herald of change, the first black candidate to present a plausible campaign for residency at 1600 Pennsylvania. Almost overnight Boy Clinton was casting doubt on Obama’s anti-war bona fides, his honesty, and the viability of his presidential ambition. He called it a "fairy tale." Hillary, with her famous tin ear, was slighting Martin Luther King Jr. and doubting that Obama’s experience was sufficient for the rigors of the presidency. No one was frank enough to mention her experience, which includes lying under oath, obstructing justice, slandering such collateral damage of the Clinton Saga as Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, and the fair Monica, and finally forget not her cattle futures bonanza. For that matter, no one was frank enough to say that her husband (who in a plea bargain before leaving office admitted to lying under oath, gave up his law license, and paid a $25,000 fine) was unfit to judge Obama’s honesty.

The immediate aftermath of Hillary’s slim victory in New Hampshire was the Clintons v. Starr all over again. The race card went into play and the gender card — all this in a Democratic primary. The only element missing from the Clintons’ overwrought 1990s was Hillary’s discovery of a "vast conspiracy," but there is still time. Wait until the action shifts to California where the paranoid style inspires some of Hollywood’s greatest contemporary masterpieces.

Read the rest of this entry »

When the New York Times, Yahoo News and The Onion run the same story on the same day, you know that something’s afoot. Yes, it would appear that despite the constitutional bar, Bill Clinton is running for the White House again. Americans might say that I have no right to say this - I’m merely a green card holder, not a citizen - but he must be stopped. Why? Because he is one of the most disgusting people ever to rise to high office in the democratic era.

Bill Clinton: sexually predatory congenital liar

It’s astonishing to me that liberals still venerate Clinton. I can only assume that they admire his political success: he was the first representative of his party since FDR to win a second Presidential term. But his record of achievement in those two terms is appallingly slender.

Apart from Welfare Reform, which most Dems opposed anyway, his Presidency was divided pretty much equally between legislative logjam caused by his narcissistic faith in his wife’s pipe dreams and impeachment efforts caused by his vile personal pathologies.

Yes, he happened to preside over a period of economic expansion, but we know by now that politicians have exceptionally limited ability to affect the course of the economy: in terms of the economy he got lucky. Even most of the Dems I know now accept this, so why is he still adored? I have to conclude that it’s because people like winners more than anything else. Clinton’s status is a consequence of the ’son of a bitch’ philosophy: the guy may be a sexually predatory congenital liar, but he’s OUR sexually predatory congenital liar.

And yes he definitely was a sexual predator: there is simply no disputing that that he abused his power for trivial sexual ends. When Clinton started seeing her, Monica Lewinsky was not just nearly thirty years his junior, but an intern for god’s sake. You could easily make the argument that at the time of their affair Clinton was the single most powerful person in the history of humanity. He chose to disgorge this power on a dippy functionary. He didn’t even do that with any style: his means were sordid beyond belief. The details are well known, but even now we’re not yet inured to the power they have to turn the stomach. Some people claim Clinton as a tragic hero. No, Antony and Cleopatra is tragedy: Bill and Monica is pathos and farce, leavened with gonzo porn.

Then of couse there was Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick. No doubt there were others with similar allegations too. The accusation is that Clinton parlayed his power into bad sex with silly girls. Why does any man still admire him? Why don’t all women despise him?

The sexual louse is just as certainly a congenital liar. We had a reminder of this when he claimed last week that he had heard a Barack Obama supporter try to subvert the Nevada caucuses. But we didn’t need such low level evidence, because only two months ago he made the simply outrageous claim that he’d been opposed to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And of course everyone knows that Bill has always stooped to mendacity. His testimony about the Lewinsky affair entwined his sexual inadequacy, addiction to untruth and hunger for power in one TV moment: we already kew that the man who was fellated by an intern and inserted some tobacco paraphernalia into said intern, now claimed that he’d had no sexual relations with that intern. But his elevation to the the pantheon of world historical liars came when he actually sought to redefine the word ‘is’ to purely in order to give himself a bit more time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Judicial Watch released new documents last week from the Clinton Presidential Library regarding Hillary’s botched attempt to stage a government takeover of our nation’s healthcare system in 1993.  Our investigators found them during a trip to the Clinton Library in Little Rock last year.

Here are a few highlights from what we found:

• A June 18, 1993, internal Memorandum entitled, “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by P.S., which makes the startling admission that critics of Hillary’s health care reform plan were correct:  “I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy…Is the public really ready for this?… none of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…” (Click here to read.)
• A “Confidential” May 26, 1993, Memorandum from Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA) to Hillary Clinton entitled, “Health Care Reform Communications,” which criticizes the Task Force as a “secret cabal of Washington policy ‘wonks’” that has engaged in “choking off information” from the public regarding health care reform.  The memorandum suggests that Hillary Clinton “use classic opposition research” to attack those who were excluded by the Clinton Administration from Task Force deliberations and to “expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of lobbyists” in order to deflect criticism.  Senator Rockefeller also suggested news organizations “are anxious and willing to receive guidance [from the Clinton Administration] on how to time and shape their [news] coverage.”  (Click here to read.)
• A February 5, 1993, Draft Memorandum from Alexis Herman and Mike Lux detailing the Office of Public Liaison’s plan for the health care reform campaign.  The memorandum suggests building an “interest group data base” detailing whether or not organizations “support(ed) us in the election.”  The database would also track personal information about interest group leaders, such as their home phone numbers, addresses, “biographies, analysis of credibility in the media, and known relationships with Congresspeople.”  (Click here to read.)

We found these records amongst the approximately 13,000 made publicly available by the Clinton Library, specifically from the White House Health Care Interdepartmental Working Group.  The National Archives admits there are an additional 3,022,030 additional textual records, 2,884 pages of electronic records, 1,021 photographs, 3 videotapes and 3 audiotapes related to the Task Force that are currently being withheld indefinitely from the public.  Given what we found thus far, can you imagine what else is down there in Little Rock?  (On November 2, 2007, we filed a lawsuit to obtain the Task Force records.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Investors Business Daily has a startling story of Clinton shenanigans that are doubly outrageous. Not only did the Clintons facilitate the illicit contribution of over $1 million from an Indonesian coal syndicate, but — in an apparent quid pro quo — Bill Clinton locked the door to the the world’s largest coal field, conveniently located in Utah. The field could have contributed greatly to American’s energy independence.

Hillary Clinton called President Bush’s talks with the Saudis about increasing oil output "pathetic." But it’s not as pathetic as her co-president husband locking up billions of tons of clean coal in exchange for political contributions…

A large part of America’s energy dependence on foreign sources can be traced to Sept. 18, 1996, when President Bill Clinton stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon on the Arizona side and signed an executive proclamation making 1.7 million acres of Utah a new national monument.

…In fact, the declaration of 1.7 million Utah acres as a national monument, [deprived] an energy-starved U.S. up to 62 billion tons of environmentally safe low-sulfur coal worth $1.2 trillion and minable with minimal surface impact, was a political payoff to the family of James Riady.

He’s the son of Lippo Group owner Mochtar Riady. James was found guilty of — and paid a multimillion dollar fine for — funneling more than $1 million in illegal political contributions through Lippo Bank into various American political campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s presidential run in 1992.

Clinton took off the world market the largest known deposit of clean-burning coal. And who owned and controlled the second-largest deposit in the world of this clean coal? The Indonesian Lippo Group of James Riady… The Utah reserve contains a kind of low-sulfur, low-ash and therefore low-polluting coal that can be found in only a couple of places in the world. It burns so cleanly that it meets the requirements of the Clean Air Act without additional technology.

…a large portion of the coal-rich Kaiparowits Plateau within the monument belonged to the children of Utah. When Utah became a state in 1896, …a trust fund was created to collect and hold all the revenues directly for the benefit of schools. [Now], the schools stand to lose as much as $1 billion over the next 50 years. Phyllis Sorensen, head of the Utah chapter of the National Education Association, called Clinton’s action a "felonious assault" and "stealing from the schoolchildren…"

Sarah Foster has additional info as does the Newsmax archives from 2001.

Source: Doug Ross @ Journal

Barack Obama made good on his promise to challenge Mr. and Mrs. Clinton over their statements about his record in the South Carolina Democratic debate Tuesday evening.

Obama also prompted a few nasty retorts from Sen. Clinton at the Myrtle Beach event hosted by CNN and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute in preparation for the Palmetto State primary on January 26.

In a televised interview that aired Monday morning on ABC Obama said he would “directly confront Bill Clinton when he’s not making statements that are factually accurate” and expressed frustration with the way the Clinton campaign was behaving.

A long argument over fiscal responsibility, the war in Iraq, legal work and even Ronald Reagan began in Myrtle Beach when Clinton accused Obama of not “paying” for the programs he would like to enact. Obama leveraged the charge into a larger conversation about they way the Clintons have characterized his record.

“This is one of the things that has happened in the course of this campaign. There are a set of assertions made by Sen. Clinton as well as her husband that are not factually accurate," Obama said.

In recent weeks, Former President Bill Clinton has openly criticized Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war, calling it a “fairy tale” that national media would not press him as hard as they did his wife for voting to fund it in the past. Hillary Clinton also caused controversy when she questioned Obama’s decision to invoke Martin Luther King on the campaign trail

Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Kathleen Willey came to prominence in 1997 as part of the Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton after being subpoenaed to testify in the case. Courted by the White House to remain silent, Willey reluctantly testified about the sexual assault she suffered at the hands of the president – unleashing the brutal and unrelenting Clinton spin machine, determined to ruin her at any and all costs.

By: Kathleen Willey

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the recent headline about Hillary considering the White House a prison. Amazing, isn’t it, how overwhelming and overweening her ambition is? How willing Hillary is to "sacrifice" her freedom on our behalf, as if the presidency wasn’t a position that she has lusted after for years as a way to fulfill all her ambitions, America be damned. This woman’s chutzpah truly knows no bounds.

Even more ironic, of course, is that it was Hillary who condemned people like me to our own forms of prison: prisons of fear. Ever since I dared to "out" Bill Clinton for the sexual predator he is, I got on Hillary’s hit list, and she has tried to imprison me by threatening me, my children, friends and even my pets. Her minions and media lapdogs combed my background, looking for anything they might spin to discredit me. They hired private detectives to harass and terrorize me. They made it difficult for me to earn a living, and I believe they even burglarized my home – my only sanctuary – to steal the manuscript for my book, Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton

Yes, I know something about being "imprisoned," feeling lonely, stressed out and friendless, although I didn’t volunteer for these experiences, believe me. They were thrust upon me, quite literally, by Bill Clinton, the same Bill Clinton for whom Hillary is now trying to find a funny title, since "first lady" clearly won’t do if Hillary manages to achieve her lifelong dream of gaining control over millions of people who’d just as soon be free of her.

Read the rest of this entry »

If history has taught us anything, it is that being a Clinton means it is never your fault. Not surprisingly, Hillary’s presidential campaign continues the Clinton tradition of blaming others for your problems.

Lost in Hillary’s surprise win in New Hampshire was the desperate flailing of Bill and Hillary when they were expecting defeat. They sought to lay the blame for her poor performance on anyone but the candidate herself.

It must infuriate the former first couple to no end that someone like Obama would get in the way of their path to glory. Bill always saw himself as a JFK figure and yet now finds his wife’s opponent taking that mantle. Similarly, Hillary once came to Washington with idealism and big ideas only to have them crushed by her husband’s opponents. Now along comes Obama running on the themes of 1992 while promising to “turn the page.” The disdain her campaign feels toward Obama is palpable.

This emotion came out in the immediate aftermath of her Iowa loss. The first reaction was to belittle Iowa as a small state with no real impact. Sensing this was not a good tactic, Hillary quickly moved on from sour grapes to attempts to contrast her action with her opponents talk. This strategy, however, was often as awkward as her earlier attempts to go negative.

Read the rest of this entry »