Clinton thread
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- ********0
"As reported yesterday in the Raleigh News & Observer, African-American households are receiving anonymous robo-calls with misleading information about voting. Facing South has now learned that those calls are very similar to tactics recently used in Virginia and Ohio, suggesting they may be linked to a national voter deception strategy.
In one North Carolina call, the caller falsely states that voters must send in a "voter registration packet" before voting. The State Board of Elections released a transcript of the call (you can also listen to it at the Democracy North Carolina website):
"Hello, this is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you."
Facing South has learned that voters in Virginia received calls with the same message before that state's Feb. 12 primaries -- although, the Virginia State Board of Elections stated they thought it was an attempt at identity theft, not voter disenfranchisement. As WAMU 88.5 reported:
State police and elections officers in Virginia are warning residents about a possible identity theft scam. The state board of elections says at least a dozen people in central and southern Virginia have received automated phone calls this week telling them to expect a voter registration packet in the mail. The residents say they were instructed by the caller to fill out the packets and mail them in. State Board of Elections Secretary Nancy Rodrigues says the state did not make these calls and does not register voters in that manner.
I called the Virginia State Board of Elections, and a spokeswoman told me they did not have transcripts of the calls and did not know whether or not they came from "Lamont Williams." She said they had referred the matter to state police.
Facing South has also learned that, last year, voters in Ohio also received calls with false voter information, using the exact same name of the supposed caller in North Carolina. In November 2007, a voter in Columbus, Ohio wrote in to the Buckeye State Blog with this eerily familiar story:
I just got a weird robo-call that I suspect may be a form of voter
suppression, albeit kinda braindead. From memory, a stentorian voice
reminiscent of James Earl Jones says: "Hello. This is Lamont Williams. In a few days you should be getting a voter registration form in the mail. Please fill it out and return promptly and you will be able to vote. Thank you."Since the election is Tuesday, the message is nonsensical. Also, I can't find any information on this Lamont Williams. The caller ID was blocked ("unknown caller").
As Bob Hall at Democracy North Carolina said in a statement:
This is another in a long line of deceptive practices used in North Carolina and elsewhere that particularly target African-American voters. In our view, this phone message plainly violates North Carolina law. We ask the Attorney General, State Bureau of Investigation, and the State Board of Elections to investigate, expose, and prosecute the sponsors of these calls.
- slater0
Just who in their right mind, apart from cat ladies parrotting the whole "wah wah we gotta get a womyn in thar!" line, would vote for Hillary?!
Truly boggles the mind...
- her flacks make the case that she can beat mccain and that trumps everything else********
- But she can't beat McCain. She will lose the exact same way Kerry & Gore did. She brings nothing new to the table.TheBlueOne
- her flacks make the case that she can beat mccain and that trumps everything else
- flashbender0
really though, given the history of politics in america, are you really going to be surprised when they give Hillary the nom?
She played ball for 12 years and counting - the people pulling the strings "owe" it to her.
- TheBlueOne0
By the way, no mention of the Supreme Court case yesterday upholding the Indiana law that you have to show photo ID at the polling station, eh? That seriously hurts the Democrats chances in November if it's close...and just another small step closer to fascism. Thanks Supremes! First you gave us Bush, than you upheld the Patriot Act, now this...you are the awesomest! "Strict Constitutionalist" my ass. That's code-word for "corporate ass fuckers".
- fucked rather than fucking: 9 Bottoms in search of a Womyn.********
- Hey guess what?, coming right up!********
- den Großen Hard On Collider in Gang bringend!!!********
- fucked rather than fucking: 9 Bottoms in search of a Womyn.
- TheBlueOne0
"Newt Gingrich is on TV presenting pro-Hillary talking points on ABC's 'The View', that are lies, in order to push her candidacy. He just told ABC's audience that Hillary actually has more votes than Obama (which is absolutely untrue, though it is a new lie the Clintons came up with last week), and then suggested that we hold a revote in Michigan at the beginning of August. Yeah, he'd like that, wouldn't he - prolong our civil warn until August. So now Gingrich joins Limbaugh and all the rest of the nutjobs in being a Hillary fan. Tell you anything?"
- flashbender0
@ Mimo - not really a conspiracy, she really wanted to run in '04, but the heads for the democratic party basically said it was not her turn yet and it would be bad for the party if she ran, and that she needed to wait until '08. Which she did.
I just raise that to say - don't be surprised when she gets the nom.
- ..and don't be surprised when McCain wins,TheBlueOne
- I hear what you're saying. I was just make a stupid Clinton crack. They're so whiney.Mimio
- I would say the destruction of the democracy, but that has already happened********
- Sadly, McCain is going to win either way.monkeyshine
- not, McCain...Mc Caiiiiiinnnn!!!!!
http://upload.wikime…********
- ********0
- ********0
- ********0
- Drno0
Hilary Clinton is the New Ralph Nader
Despite her clear victory in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary, opinion polls suggest that Hilary Clinton will lose forthcoming primaries in North Carolina and Oregon, effectively crowning Barack Obama the Democratic Party's Presidential nominee. Clinton's solution? Break with the Democrats, and run as an independent candidate, or so EIN News reported her advisors leaking to the press today.
Such a move would be a serious gamble for Clinton, who, in leaving the Democratic Party, may very well destroy any chances a party other than the Republicans would have in winning the next Presidential election. Is Hilary the next Ralph Nader? Quite possibly. Inevitably, Clinton would end up splitting the Democratic vote, and hand the election to Arizona Senator John McCain.
Why the New York Senator would make such a potential move, when conceding the primary to Obama would more likely guarantee the Democrats victory, is something only Clinton could answer. Would it really be worth sacrificing the US to another four years of Republican rule? Absolutely not. Though the Democrats do not represent a serious ideological alternative to the Republicans by any stroke of the imagination, an Obama Presidency would not be nearly as destructive as a Republican one would.
Despite the fact that America suffered a horrible calamity on 9/11 that forced it to go to war in the Mideast, the Bush administration used the opportunity to help the United States effectively commit economic and social suicide. Just look at the credit crisis, the stock market, the devaluation of US currency, the price of petrol, and the three and a half million Americans who have effectively lost their jobs since 2001, not to mention the increasing number of body bags coming back from Iraq.
That's not just your past seven years, but America's next seven ones as well. Hearing of senior politicians like Clinton considering such self-serving moves only serves to affirm such dire predictions. Everything that could get worse most definitely will, and America will only have itself to blame for being such an absolute shipwreck of a country. You have only yourselves to blame for it. Things could have turned out quite differently.
- more like:
"do you hear that giant sucking sound?"********
- more like:
- ********0
"On Monday, I wrote about Hillary Clinton airing an ad decrying the closure of a defense manufacturing factory that her husband, Bill Clinton, helped close by approving the sale of the company to a Chinese state-owned firm. Now, ABC News is running with the story, and uncovers some more ugly details. The Clinton campaign has responded not by fessing up, but by putting out more dishonest deceptions.
From Jake Tapper:
"A memo prepared for [Indiana Senator Evan] Bayh by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service earlier this year stated that the Clinton administration could have objected to the sale under CFIUS, but it did not...In 2000, also during Bill Clinton's presidency, Magnequench purchased from UGIMAG the factory in Valparaiso that manufactured the Neo magnets. President Clinton's administration took no steps to stop the purchases in 2000, either."
The sale was a pretty serious national security issue, not so much because the technology was sensitive, but because the sale means our military has to rely on foreign companies for critical weaponry. Here's Tapper:The two Chinese companies were headed by the husbands of the first and second daughters of then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. One of those daughters was at that time "vice minister of China's State Science and Technology Commission, whose responsibilities included acquiring military technologies by whatever means necessary," according to David Cay Johnston in Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Corporations Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill).
"Complaints about the sale of Magnequench were made to the U.S. government because of the military applications for the magnets," Johnston reports. "Still, the Clinton administration, an ardent proponent of globalization, approved the sale."Around that time, Shingleton says, "there was talk about the national security issue and the loss of jobs because they were leaving. Some of the higher-wage jobs left immediately [in 2000]. I knew personally some people who were managers and who lost their jobs."
Not surprisingly, the Clinton campaign is compounding its deception with more deception as it tries to explain away this latest controversy. McClatchy today quotes Clinton spokesman Jonathan Swain claiming that "In 1995, when this group bought Magnequench, there were assurances made that production would stay in the United States." But as ABC recounts, the Congressional Research Service reports that the state-owned Chinese company that Clinton allowed to purchase Magnequench "promised to keep those Anderson, Ind., jobs in the U.S. only until 2005."
This is about as pristine an example of Clintonian deception and parsing as you are going to find. First comes the pander - an ad that conveys that signature Clinton bite-the-bottom-lip, feel-your-pain message of empathy and outrage. Then comes the revelation that the whole thing Clinton supposedly feels bad about was originally brought about by the Clinton administration, which she endlessly touts. And finally there is the lying - pretending that there were "assurances" that what happened wouldn't happen, when in fact those assurances were not what's being claimed.
With both Indiana and North Carolina being among the two worst-hit states by the Clinton-backed NAFTA/PNTR policies that this Magnequench controversy epitomizes, you would think this would make a perfect issue for Barack Obama to start talking about."
- ********0
"The Washington Post published yet another article today showing the negative reactions to Hillary Clinton's plan to suspend the federal gas tax.
A growing chorus -- including a top congressional Democrat -- labeled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's proposal for suspending the federal gasoline tax ineffective and shortsighted yesterday, even as she continued to paint Sen. Barack Obama as insensitive to drivers' woes for not endorsing the plan.
Yesterday, HuffPost's Sam Stein published a comprehensive article about how Clinton has nonexistant expert support for the plan:
Over the past several days, some of the nation's leading economic and political pundits have weighed in critically on the proposal of both Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain to institute a gas tax holiday this summer.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times said on Tuesday that Clinton's idea, while less "evil" than McCain's, was still "pointless" and "disappointing."
- mrdobolina0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/20…
This gas tax holiday they are floating out there is dumb as fuck.
- The win-fall tax on the oil companies isn't though.Mimio
- not aware of that, mimio.mrdobolina
- Both Clinton and Obama have proposed them. Sounds good actually...http://ww...
Mimio - http://www.economist…Mimio
- http://money.cnn.com…Mimio
- ********0
- ********0
Aides to Sen. Hillary Clinton defended on Thursday her support for a gas-tax holiday - a proposal that has been roundly criticized by economic and energy experts and derided among pundits as political pandering.
"Senator Clinton realizes there is a problem for consumers that requires both a short term and long term set of solutions," said Howard Wolfson, her chief spokesperson. "In the short term, she has laid out a plan to suspend the tax and have those resources or revenues paid by oil companies as well. In the long term, she has the boldest and most comprehensive plan that will increase fuel efficiency standards... help lawmakers retool their production facilities."
Wolfson said that Clinton would introduce legislation to alleviate the gas tax burden on consumers over the summer by having a windfall tax on oil company profits pick up the tab. He was non-committal as to whether or not the senator would leave the campaign trail and return to Washington to push the legislation.
Aides to Clinton could not, when asked, point to a single non-political expert who supported such a proposal, saying simply that it is a president's prerogative when to take expert advise.
"We believe the presidency requires leadership," said Wolfson. "There are times that a president will take a position that a broad support of quote-unquote experts agree with. And there are times they will take a position that quote-unquote experts do not agree with."
Pressed whether her decision to buck conventional wisdom -- energy analysts say the savings from the tax holiday would be minor and actually lead to an increase in demand for gas and driving -- contrasted with the notion that she has the greatest expertise on the economy, aides said no.
"The long and the short of it is that people are hurting today, and when you say that it doesn't save much money, our calculation is that for the average driver it would save 70 dollars," said chief strategist Geoff Garin. Internal polling, he added, said that the position was resonating with Indianans.
"We're seeing in our polling that working people appreciate the fact that Senator Clinton understands the incredible economic strain they are facing," Garin said.
Not mentioned on the conference call, but making its way around the Internet on Thursday, was a story from Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign in New York, when she came out in opposition to a gas tax holiday.
It is "a bad deal for New York and a potential bonanza for the oil companies," Clinton said of her Republican opponent Rick Lazio's plan to repeal 4.3 cents of the gas tax.
The campaign, on its website, said there was no contradiction between the two stances, pointing out that in 2000, the money would have been stripped from a highway trust fund, while in 2008, the senator would generate funds taxes on oil companies.
On Wednesday, The Huffington Post attempted to find one expert from any and all ideological persuasion who believed that a gas tax holiday is a wise idea. It proved impossible. However, the idea is likely popular in upcoming primary states like Indiana and Ohio, and other politicians, alongside Clinton, have argued that it is in the government's interest to give all consumers a bit of at-the-pump relief.
- dbloc0
- I have a dream that this person will disappear from the airwaves and our public discourse********
- I have a dream that this person will disappear from the airwaves and our public discourse
- mg330
Somebody should make an lolcat with either of those pictures that says:
CAN I HAS A MEATS?
- ********0
Let's start with a hypothetical situation: Suppose a small group of people controlled the press, and they wanted to ensure a Republican victory in November. A few weeks ago Obama seemed to be riding a wave of inevitability and positive perception. The Democrats seemed to have settled on a candidate, and he scored well against the Republicans because he was seen as post-racial and post-partisan. If this group were to write a memo to the media, what would it say?
Their game plan would have very specific objectives:
1. Extend the Democratic primary race as long as possible.
2. Remind the public that the seemingly "post-racial" Obama is a black man; make him seem as scary-black as possible.
3. Strengthen Hillary Clinton's image with white working-class voters by making her appear populist, folksy, and one of them. Conversely, characterize Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with "real people."
4. Break down Obama's post-partisan appeal to independents and Republicans by linking him to the divisive left/right politics of the 1960s.Now look back over the media's coverage of the Democratic campaign during the past several weeks. Bingo: Mission accomplished. By giving the primary campaign more of a horse-race feel than it actually has, they've managed to extend it. The Rev. Wright controversy and constant mentions of Louis Farrakhan have made Obama seem more "scary-black." (It should be noted that Clinton has closer political ties to a Farrakhan lover than Obama does. Her PA campaign chair Gov. Ed Rendell said this of him: "His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest... one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience.")
Those images of Hillary doing shots in Pennsylvania were broadcast morning, noon, and night, emphasizing her working-class image. So were images of Obama bowling a gutterball and looking "elitist." And by promoting Obama's alleged "ties" to Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers while downplaying Clinton I's pardon of two fellow Underground members, Obama was made to look more "leftist" than Clinton.
And that's not all, as they say on the late-night ads ...
Now we have the matter of Hillary's difficulty with a coffee machine. This video has gone viral, complete with goofy and irritating music. It shows Sen. Clinton struggling to operate the coffee maker in a gas station. It's become popular among Obama supporters because it shows the allegedly "populist" Hillary's bafflement at operating a device that is familiar to most working Americans. Why is the coffee-machine video so popular among Obama supporters? Because they think it would be airing 24 hours a day if their candidate had made the same mistake.
And it would.
So, is the coffee-machine video getting airplay on the cable news shows? Not really ... well, wait: CNN did run a piece about it, but only to debunk the idea that this means Hillary's out of touch. "These coffee machines ARE finicky sometimes," says reporter Jeanne Moos, "I nearly broke one at the car dealership ..." Yet CNN breathlessly repeated over and over that Obama only scored a 37 while bowling, without reporting that he never finished the game! And there was no Jeanne Moos to say "we all throw gutterballs sometimes."
But, stop already! Isn't this all ridiculous? Isn't it trivial to concern ourselves with whether the next president is able to go bowling or get a cup of coffee from a vending machine? Of course! But the media make us care about these things. They have an enormous ability to influence what we think about, and they've chosen to emphasize the reality-show aspects of this race. Then, having done that, they skew the race in favor of different candidates in a naked display of their ability to influence the outcome. That's the lesson of the bowling incident and the coffee-cup video: One gets exposure and the other doesn't, because the narrative has already been written.
In this particular reality show, they've decided who they want voted off the island next.
So what does this all mean? Is our hypothetical group real? Did instructions come down from on high? The crystal balls are murky. But it's clear that American media outlets are owned by fewer and more powerful interests. And they don't necessarily have to write memos. All they have to do is hire and promote well-intentioned but biased reporters who don't even realize how they're distorting the news. Throw in a couple of cooperative editors, and you've got yourself a "free press" ready to do the bidding of its owners. And most of those owners are Republican.
We know that the right-wing learned how to spin and manipulate the news using outlets like Drudge and Fox. And rather than fight this system, Clinton campaign advisors like Sid Blumenthal decided to exploit it for their own ends. Blumenthal's been circulating the most scurrilous right-wing attacks against Obama to a mix of friends and journalists, and some of his readers have printed them. (Blumenthal's the guy who found the Obama campaign's idealism infuriating; guess we know why now.) And it turns out that Rev. Wright's latest public tirade was orchestrated by ... a Clinton supporter.
But, some Democrats will ask, don't we want people like than running the Democratic campaign? Won't they be more effective at winning? Maybe - but that argument would be more compelling if they weren't losing. If the Clinton campaign wanted to run such a negative campaign, it should have done so from the very beginning. But they were overconfident. By turning ugly now, when they're behind, they're damaging the party. And, ironically, that may be why they're been getting such favorable media treatment lately.
If the media's first job is to cripple or take out Barack Obama, then the Clinton campaign is just a means to that end. Whether Obama yields to Hillary or takes the nomination in a weakened position, the Democrats will have been wounded. And the extended race will have provided months of extra "horse-race" stories for the media.
At that point Blumenthal et al. will find that their usefulness to the media machine has ended and they're yesterday's news. Their tactics won't work any more. Suddenly Clinton will be the target again - and John McCain will be on his way to the Presidency.
Word to Sidney Blumenthal and all the other Rove-emulating Clintonites: You're disposable tools in a bigger game. You guys, of all people, should understand that.
___________
UPDATE: Two alleged statements by Clinton associate Mickey Kantor have been removed from this post. He says he never said the more extreme statement, and there's evidence the video we saw was doctored. So we take him at his word. Another phrase that he used, "these people are sh*t," seemed to refer to Indiana voters but is ambiguous. (Not that ambiguity would stop the press if they were determined to smear a candidate by association, as the Clinton team knows all too well.)
Kantor reportedly asked that the more extreme statement not be repeated, even as a retraction. Fair enough. We've honored that request, and have also removed the other one. We suggest that Clinton and McCain supporters likewise refrain from repeating scurrilous and false remarks about their opponents in the future, even if only to deny that they believe them.
- ********0
"For several weeks, the Clinton campaign has been distributing literature and disseminating incendiary notions -- which figured significantly in Pennsylvania, and are now central to the candidate's message in Indiana and North Carolina -- assailing Barack Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, the radical, violent organization responsible for bombing several government buildings in the early 1970s.
In their debate in Philadelphia, after moderator George Stephanoplous had raised the question of Obama's relationship with Ayers, Hillary Clinton elaborated on the subject, seeking to add to its significance:
SEN. CLINTON: ...I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position. And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is -- you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about.
Whether this is 21st century McCarthyism--as argued by several important commentators not publicly allied with Obama -- among them Stanley Fish in the New York Times (who has written several admiring columns about her candidacy) and Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker -- is a matter readers will have to decide.Whatever name it is called, Hillary Clinton, perhaps better than any contemporary political figure of our time, knows the insidious nature of this kind of guilt by association, for she (like Bill Clinton) has been a victim of it herself over a political lifetime.
Precisely because she knows the destructive power of such assertions and how unfair they can be, she has sought for a quarter-century to hide and minimize her own activities, associations, student fascination, and personal history with the radical Left. Those associations -- logical, explicable, and (her acolytes have always maintained) even character-building in the context of the times -- are far more extensive than any radical past that has come to be known about Barack Obama.
Which raises the question: Is the Clinton campaign's emphasis on the Ayers-Obama connection significantly different or less spurious than the familiar (McCarthyite?) smears against Hillary, particularly those promulgated and disseminated by the forces she labeled "the vast right-wing conspiracy" in the 1990s?
Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has (at least so far as this reporter and biographer has been able to determine) consistently rejected the ideological rigidity of the radical Left and -- especially -- the notion of revolutionary violence as a means of political change in contemporary America, despite claims to the contrary by the VRWC. Like Obama -- and John McCain for that matter -- she has valued her friendships with individuals who figured in the Left-wing and anti-war movements of the 60s and Vietnam era. And like Obama and McCain, she has never wavered from her belief and faith in establishment politics, within the two-party system.
But her past associations -- and her evasions about them -- may tell us much about the formation of Hillary Clinton, both as a product of her youthful time -- the sixties and seventies, when radical student movements and the anti-war movement were a hugely potent force on campus and in American politics generally -- and as a presidential candidate. The facts are fairly simple:
In the 60s, as an undergraduate at Wellesley, she exhibited an academic fascination with the Left and radicalism; rejected more extreme forms of political protest and violence as a student leader (there is no evidence I know that Obama has ever done anything but the same); wrote her senior thesis on the radical Chicago community-organizer Saul Alinsky (whose best-known philosophical mantra was, "Whatever works to get power to the people, use it."); and then, during the 1992 presidential campaign and White House years, insured that the thesis was locked up in the Wellesley archives and unavailable to reporters.
At Yale law school she embraced some leftist causes she perhaps wishes she hadn't today (the Black Panthers' claim that they couldn't get a fair trial, more about which later); worked in the most important radical law firm of the day -- Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, in Oakland, which represented the Communist Party and defended the Panthers in their murder trials; and became associate editor of an alternative law review at Yale which ran stories and pictures depicting policemen as pigs and murderers.
In her 2003 "memoir," Living History, Hillary mentions not a word about her role in the Panther trial in New Haven--during which she directed Yale law students monitoring the proceedings for evidence of government misconduct in its prosecution of the Panthers accused of murder. "It meant going in and out of the Black Panther headquarters to obtain documentation and other information," a classmate told Donnie Radcliff of the Washington Post, quoted in Hillary Rodham Clinton: A First Lady For Our Time. "Hillary's job was to organize shifts for her classmates and make certain no proceeding went unmonitored...[for] civil rights abuses..."
As for her summer at the law firm, Hillary's one-sentence mention of it in Living History gives the impression that Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein might as well been handling postal rate increases, rather than defending the Panthers, members of the communist party, and accepting cases that mainstream lawfirms were afraid to take -- particularly civil liberties cases -- in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. "I told Bill about my summer plans to clerk at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland California, and he soon said he would like to go to California with me."
That is the total verbiage expended on so formative an experience, and the lasting -- but distant friendship -- she maintained for the next twenty-some years with Bob Treuhaft and his wife, the muckraking journalist (and, like her husband) former communist party member Jessica Mitford.
"The reason she came to us," Treuhaft told me [the quotation is in my biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman In Charge] "the only reason I could think of, because none of us knew her, was because we were a so-called "Movement law firm at the time. There was no reason except politics for a girl from Yale" to intern at the firm. "She certainly... was in sympathy with all the Left causes, and there was a sharp dividing line at the time. We still weren't very far out of the McCarthy era."
And might not still be, to judge from the 2008 presidential campaign.
In the 1980s, Jessica Mitford visited the Clintons at the governor's mansion in Little Rock. She and Treuhaft had left the communist party in 1958, years after the revelation of Stalin's murderous crimes, but -- Jessica Mitford wrote in her memoir, A Fine Old Conflict, she quit "not primarily over some issue of high principle, but because it had become dull....boring. Rather like London's debutante circuit."
When Jessica Mitford died in 1996, Hillary Clinton wrote Bob Treuhaft a lovely condolence letter from the White House, characteristically filled with the kind of heart-felt personal touches that the senator's friends have always remarked upon.
Which, of course, no more raises the question "Is Hillary Clinton a Stalinist?," or a communist sympathizer, than "Is Barack Obama a Weatherman?" or a weatherman sympathizer, because of his association with Bill Ayers.
Aside from the candidate herself, her prime-most abettor in pushing the Bill Ayers-Weatherman-Obama line is, inevitably, Sidney Blumenthal, who has also been distributing many other questionable allegations about Obama he has plucked from and disseminated to, at times, of all places--organs of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
As in the Clinton White House, where he was the archivist of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy's plots, Blumenthal is no independent operator. He maintains an ongoing personal and strategic dialogue with his patrons, Hillary and Bill Clinton.
- -
One of Hillary Clinton's most winning attributes -- and Bill Clinton's too -- has always been their understanding of the complexity of American politics, and the danger of ideological demagoguery (witness their fight against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and excesses). The resort by Hillary and her campaign to guilt-by-association--of which the Bill Ayers allegations are but one example: see Louis Farrakhan, or a comparatively-obscure African-American writer and perhaps -- communist party member named Frank Marshal Dixon, whom Obama knew in high school in Hawaii -- is, even for some of her most steadfast advocates, particularly dismaying. Like Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, among others who have abandoned the Clintons, many old Clinton hands had hoped, judging from Hillary's triumphant and collegial senate years, that she -- and Bill -- had left behind such tactics when the Clinton Presidency ended in 2001 and the Right-wing threat to the Clintons' tenure in the White House had abated.
"The sad irony," noted Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, "is that these are the same [guilt-by-association] attacks used against her husband in the elections of the 1990s. The GOP tried to destroy Bill Clinton for his relationships (much closer than Obama's tangential connections) with Arkansas crooks, sleazy fund-raisers and unsavory women. But 'The Man From Hope,' while seen as less honest than Bush or Bob Dole, bet that issues and uplift were more important to voters than his character. He won...."
- -
"Shame on you, Barack Obama," said Hillary Clinton in Ohio, asserting that the Obama campaign had misrepresented her health-care plan.
Shame indeed."