Clinton Conspiracy Thoughts

I wonder if Obama's thinks Hillary won't be able to survive vetting, or namely, that the vetting would bring up enough juicy stuff on Bill that it might undermine her? This is all idle speculation and a bit stupid as she did seek to become President! However, the Hillary campaign refused to disclose their tax data or any donor information regarding the Clinton Global Initiative.

Clinton & Conceding

I don’t tend to listen to what the pundits have to say, but Jack Cafferty had a pretty good response to Hillary Clinton today. Here is some of what he had to say:

If Obama wants a hint what it will be like if she is the vice president, last night should give him a pretty good idea. Refusing to concede, she chose instead to try to steal the spotlight from him on one of the most historic nights in our history. Barely acknowledging his accomplishment, she went on in her speech at Baruch College like nothing had changed. It was pathetic...At a time when our country should be celebrating a quantum leap forward in healing our racial divisions, Hillary Clinton is ruining the party – a spoiled child who refuses to go when told, “It’s bedtime.”

Hillary

Well...She'll make no decisions tonight she informs us. Classy.

Hillary as VP?

That's Krugman's suggestion. This suggestion puzzles me for a number of reasons. Krugman posits that Hillary's inclusion in the ticket will help Obama recapture jilted Hillary supporters and lower/lower-middle income white voters who Hillary has typically won over. On the former, I don't really think there are that many jilted Hillary supporters. I am guessing her conduct at this point has taken care of that. The few remaining people whose noses are bent out of shape over Hillary's failure to secure the nomination are those who had been promised a gig in a Clinton Administration (which makes me wonder if Krugman had been offered some position, say CEA chair, as he has been in the tank hardcore for Hillary on his blog and op-ed pages).

The real question is whether or not Hillary will be able to bring her blue collar white supporters. I doubt it. I think many of those who are supporting Hillary are not so much supporting Hillary but opposing a Black male. I think for many of those voters a Barack-Hillary ticket would be a diversity freak show. For Obama to appeal to these voters he will need a white male, plain and simple. Ideally this potential VIP would also bring other credentials than his whiteness (this rules out John Edwards), such as foreign policy experience or experience in general.

But the other reason Hillary would be an awful choice is that she more anything the Republicans can do themselves, will engergize the conservative base.

Enough With Hillary's “Gas Tax Holiday” Bullshit

I have had enough with Hillary Clinton’s bullshit rhetoric about some asinine “gas tax holiday” for the summer. Anyone who has the most basic understanding of how supply and demand functions realizes what complete crap this idea is.

Here is a quick run down:

1. During the summer gasoline demand is the highest and gasoline production at the refinery level is at its peak.


2. The current high gas prices work to lower demand by detering consumption, dropping the price of gas by 18 cents per gallon (the current Federal tax level) will lower prices thus encouraging people to buy more and raise demand.


3. Since production is already at capacity the increase in demand will not raise the quantity of gasoline available to consumers and will instead raise prices completely cancelling out any savings to consumers.


4. So now instead of using that 18 cents a gallon to build and maintain things such as roads we will just be sending that 18 cents to oil companies.

Summation – Hillary’s plan is complete bullshit political pandering.

On Sunday Hillary Clinton was asked if her plan was endorsed by any economist. She dodged the question but then responded "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists... this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."

What’s next? Maybe Hillary Clinton wants to start regulating the auto industry and requiring that all new cars receive 300 miles per gallon powered by Care Bear Stares?

But how would this work? Well that’s easy; the collected Care Bears stand together and radiate light from their respective tummy symbols (see above photo). These combine to form a ray of love and good cheer which could be harnessed to power all of our cars of course.

Who cares that those elitist engineers say that it won’t work. Care Bear power is more than capable of handling all of our energy needs, it is just one big elitist conspiracy that is keeping the technology down.

The Screwiest Campaign Season Ever

A year ago, I was telling anyone who would listen that McCain didn't have a shot in hell. He was a favorite of the media and independents, but not exactly beloved by the base and it is the base that you need in order to get nominated. I assumed Giuliani would run a competent campaign. When Fred Thompson entered the race, I assumed, well, that he would in fact enter the race as opposed to running an armchair campaign. Regardless, I assumed that whoever got nominated, would get trounced by the Democratic nominee, whether it be Obama, HRC, or Hubert Humphrey's corpse (I would have no problem voting for HHH's corpse by the way). I thought this because the Democratic base was amped up and the conservative base was completely deflated. Well, it looks like the internecine squabble between HRC and Obama is in fact taking its toll and is turning this election into a legitimate fight... an election that should have been a surefire win.

Hillary at this point has trotted out the race card, played the is Obama a muslim trick, and has essentially stated that McCain is better qualified to be a president than Obama. Democratic voters of the world, this should tell you something about the Clintons. Their concern is not to be able to strengthen the country at home or abroad, or to strengthen the Democratic party, it is to be in power.

RE: Hillary and Rwanda

The article that Xtra posted concerning Hillary Clinton and Rwanda as a whole is an astonishing article which definitely deserves a thorough read, here is part that I feel deserves extra attention:

So, to sum up: the US didn't just fail to intervene in Rwanda. Our government urged the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping forces that were on the ground protecting Rwandans, for no better reason than to keep the Belgians from looking like cowards. It refused to jam the radio station that was passing on instructions for genocide. It blocked further efforts to reinforce the peacekeeping forces there. It also failed to do any of the much smaller things that might have shown that our government was not wholly indifferent to the people of Rwanda who were, at that time, being hacked to death with machetes.

It's worth bearing this background in mind when you hear Hillary Clinton claim that she advocated military intervention in Rwanda. If you don't, you might think: well, it's perfectly comprehensible that she might have argued for military intervention but failed to convince her husband. After all, military intervention in another country is a big deal, not to be undertaken lightly. And it's easy to imagine Hillary Clinton being in favor of it, and her husband reluctantly concluding that it just wasn't something he could do.

It's a lot harder to imagine that while Hillary Clinton was advocating military intervention, she not only failed to convince her husband to send troops, but also failed to convince him, for instance, not to advocate the withdrawal of most of the UN peacekeepers, or that he really ought to order the Pentagon to jam Radio Milles Collines. If she was doing her best behind the scenes, and failed to accomplish even this -- if, despite her best efforts, she couldn't persuade her husband not to advocate withdrawing UN peacekeepers just to provide cover for the Belgians -- then we really need to ask how effective an advocate she really is, especially since no one except her husband, in full campaign mode, seems to remember her efforts at all.

Of course, I think it's a lot more likely that she either didn't advocate action on Rwanda at all, or did so only in passing. If so, this would have to be the definitive example of her attempt to claim responsibility for everything good that happened during her husband's presidency, while disavowing all responsibility for his mistakes. This was, in my opinion, the most shameful moment of the Clinton administration. It ought, by rights, to have a place in Hillary Clinton's "thirty five years of experience working for change." Or perhaps she might claim that she wasn't that interested in foreign policy at the time, or that for whatever reason she just didn't pick up on the genocide in Rwanda until it was too late to act. That would at least be honest.

But if, in fact, Clinton missed the chance to urge her husband to help stop the Rwandan genocide, then she should not pretend that she was, in fact, right there on the side of the angels all along. That's just grotesque.

Hillary Clinton and Possible Illegal Fundraising

As Hillary Clinton attempts again and again to make a connection between Barack Obama and Tony Rezko (Rezko is pictured above with the Clintons), I stumbled upon this video on YouTube (pt. 1 & pt. 2) concerning Hillary Clinton’s involvement with business man Peter Paul and a fundraising gala he held for her in 2000 in which he personally contributed $2 million to the event.

The video and Peter Paul’s civil case against Bill and Hillary Clinton which is currently in front of a California appeals court alleges that Hillary Clinton’s direct involvement in planning this gala would make Paul's substantial contributions a direct donation to her Senate campaign rather than her joint fundraising committee, violating federal statutes that limit "hard money" contributions to a candidate to $2,000 per person. Knowingly accepting or soliciting $25,000 or more in a calendar year is a felony carrying a prison sentence of up to five years.

I don’t have a whole lot of background knowledge about this guy or the Clinton’s involvement with him, but I do find the relationship rather interesting considering how she is currently trying to portray Obama and Rezko.

George W. and Hillary...What's The Difference?

This morning while I was eating my bowl of Kashi Strawberry Fields cereal (an excellent cereal I might add) I was watching Good Morning America and Hillary Clinton was being interviewed about her three wins the previous evening.

After all of the questions about how she celebrated last night and what not was out of the way the commentator asked what was in my eyes an excellent question.

The commentator noted that even with the wins last night Hillary was only able to decrease Obama’s delegate lead by six delegates (prior to last night he had a 112 delegate lead and after last night he had a 106 delegate lead), the commentator went on to ask that if she wasn’t able to close in on his lead if she still deserved to receive the nomination?

She of course avoided the question, but this question got me thinking. In 2000 Democrats were up in arms about the fact that George W. Bush was chosen to be president against the will of the people and was thus an “illegitimate” president.

If Hillary Clinton receives this year’s Democratic nomination without receiving a majority of the popularly elected delegates what is the difference between Bush’s “illegitimate” presidency and Clinton’s “illegitimate” nomination?

Hillary’s Fear Mongering Rips Off 1984 Mondale Ad

Hillary Clinton’s latest TV ad (it’s 3 a.m. and you are all going to die if I’m not president) has been discussed in the news a lot lately. In my opinion this ad is just blatant fear mongering that even Rudy Giuliani could be proud of.

But all fear mongering aside the funniest part is that she ripped off the ad from Walter Mondale’s 1984 advertisement from when he was running for the Democratic nomination against Gary Hart.

Here is the original Mondale ad:

Hillary Clinton & Experience

“Hillary keeps going on and on about her experience as first lady making her qualified to be president. Being married to someone doesn’t make you experienced enough to do their job. I’ve been married to my wife for ten years and if she was up here right now y’all wouldn’t laugh once.”

-Chris Rock

The Hillary Clinton Forum Banned Me

Yesterday I thought it would be fun to post something on The Hillary Clinton online forum to see what the response would be (I had some time to kill at work), so I posted a link to my blog post from yesterday and titled my forum posting “When will Hillary face reality and drop out?”

Apparently the forum is not a fan of dissent (or reality for that matter) because when I went to log in to the forum this morning to check out the response I received this message:

You have been banned for the following reason: No reason was specified.
Date the ban will be lifted: Never

When Will Hillary Give It Up?

I tend not to agree much with Robert Novak, but I must say that his editorial in the Washington Post today is right on.

Eugene Robinson also has a great op-ed piece where he looks at how preposterous it would be if the situation was reversed and Obama lost 10 states in a row and still maintained that he was a viable candidate and vowed to stay in the race.

How Many Wealthy Californians Does It Take To Save A Tanking Clinton Campaign?

I don’t think this is going to help Hillary Clinton, but it is being reported that a group of 100 wealthy Clinton supporters have come together to each donate $100,000 to fund advertisements in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that basically mimic Clinton’s campaign rhetoric towards Obama.

This first ad that is going to begin airing in a day or two has already been released on YouTube.

The Clintons and Progressives

William Greider has an interesting post in the Nation screaming bloody murder about the Clintons and Billary's presidential campaign. I wonder how much tension this campaign will create between the Clintons and the left as they ramp up their campaign against Obama. I think there is a distinct possibility, especially in the event that Clinton gets the nomination, that the Left will go from Clinton nostalgia to resentment.

Clinton's Tearjerker

I have to echo Anti's sentiments. I find difficult to believe that anything the Clintons do on a campaign is spontaneous, genuine, and not poll tested. I think the crying was bait for Obama, except he didn't bite, Edwards did. Anyhow, the desired affect was achieved, women broke overwhelmingly for Hillary, and I think the sense that she was being ganged up on and beaten down as manifested by the tearing up and Edwards' response played a large part.

Hillary Clinton & Crying

A lot of fuss, and rightly so, has been made in the media recently concerning Hillary Clinton and how she managed to turn around the New Hampshire primary last night.

Today I received an email from a group calling on me to sign a petition that will be sent to all of the major media outlets in the country. The petition focuses on the media’s coverage, specifically an op-ed piece by Maureen Dowd in the NYT, of Hillary Clinton’s little teary-eyed spout of emotion last Sunday. Here is a portion of the petition:

Your organization's focus on punditry over journalism is perverting our democratic process. And the misogyny that was unleashed by a feeding frenzy on the video of an exhausted Clinton tearing up at a small New Hampshire roundtable of voters was just the tip of the iceberg. Whether we agree with Clinton on the issues or not, the media's (and indeed your organization's) assault on her candidacy based on gender is unacceptable. So too is biased and uninformed commentary on the minority status of other candidates (Obama's ethnicity and Romney's religion, to name just two).

I will be the first to admit that portions of Dowd’s column are crude and sexist, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that her argument, however crudely presented, is dead on correct.

Please don’t get me wrong I am all for personal emotion and compassion in politics. I think that if our politicians were more emotionally connected to the people that are actually effected by the decisions they make, instead of being connected to special interests and the accumulation of even greater power, that our country and our governmental policy would be in a much better state. I completely and whole-heartedly support honest outpourings of emotion in politics, and I think every politician could use a whole lot more emotional attachment to the issues.

I would even have felt some empathy for Hillary Clinton and her outpouring of emotion if I for one second thought it was remotely genuine, but the fact is I don’t.

At best the only genuine outpouring of emotion that was demonstrated in this small New Hampshire café last Sunday was simply a self-realizing act on the part of Hillary Clinton that her dreams of power may soon be over. Add to this a good amount of self-pity and you have all the ingredients you need for a good tearjerker accompanied with some coffee and a crowd of people.

At worst it was a calculated act on the part of the very skilled Clinton political machine.

Where was this emotion when she enabled the president to carry out an unjust and illegal war in Iraq that thus far has resulted in the deaths of 3,921 American service men and women, as well as the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians?

Where was this emotion as she vehemently defended this decision on the campaign trail?

Where was this emotion as she spouted her hawkish rhetoric towards Iran, which may lead to even greater death, destruction and heartache in the Middle East?

Where was this emotion during the summer of 2006 as she vehemently supported Israel’s right to perform whatever atrocities they wished on the Lebanese people, including the utilization of cluster munitions on women and children?

Hillary Clinton is a politician who strives on making politically calculated and convenient decisions, even when those decisions relate to such important issues as War & Peace and Life & Death. So I am sorry Hillary that I don’t buy for one minute that your little emotional breakdown was related to anything besides your own political self-interest.

By the way Hillary, since your little tearjerker on Sunday nine more U.S. service personal have died in YOUR Iraq war. Maybe next time you will show a little emotion and cry about that, just make sure that it takes place at a politically convenient time while the cameras are rolling.

Do Democrats Want To Lose the 2008 Presidential Election?

As it is the day before the Iowa caucuses and the “official” start of the 2008 presidential campaign I thought I would ask a simple question, do Democrats want to lose the 2008 election? If Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire coronate Hillary to be the Democratic nominee for president then I will be convinced that they do.

As Xtra pointed out earlier it seems like, at least until this past month, that Democrats are planning to settle for Hillary Clinton even though she isn’t the most ideal candidate. From my conversations with Clinton supporters the rational for backing Clinton comes down to two main reasons:

1. She is the candidate with the greatest chance of winning the general election.


2. Unlike in 2000 (the whole Democrats are still blaming Nader thing) all progressives need to unite around a candidate and Hillary is as good as any to achieve that unity.

Now, policy differences between candidates aside, let me explain why putting Hillary on the Democratic ticket is the worst idea Democrats could possible have for trying to win the general election.

Let’s take a look at the Republican side. To quote Xtra, “this election cycle I think just about anybody with a -D besides their name will win. Most of the Republican candidates have major problems with the base, the base is clearly disengaged at this point, and the Republican Party is not exactly popular right now.” With that said there is, however, one sure fire way to promptly and quickly get the Republican base fully engaged in this election, give them a chance to vote against Hillary.

Whether it is fair or not Hillary Clinton is one of the most polarizing figures in American politics, as far as polarization goes she is the ying to George Bush’s yang. People either love Hillary or despise her. So I really wish someone would explain to me the logic of potentially nominating a candidate who doesn’t do much in regards to engaging the Democratic base, but will cause massive voter turn out for the Republican base, it just makes no sense to me.

Furthermore, who has been the most loyal voting base for the Democratic Party since the 1960s? African-Americans, on average Democrats receive about 90% of the total African-American vote. Instead of selecting a candidate, like Hillary, who has the potential to cause a historic voter turn out for her opponents, it would seem to make much more sense to select a Democratic candidate who at least has the potential to do the opposite and galvanize a massive turn out for African-American voters.

But alas I don’t have the greatest amount of confidence in Democratic voters to strategically consider all of the options, instead they will bring up how Nader lost the election for them in 2000 and if we don’t all unite around a sub-par candidate that it will happen again, completely losing sight of the fact that Democratic caucusers and primary voters have the chance to select a candidate that can both unite the Democratic Party and end eight years of polarizing politics.