Jeremayakovka

The Hillary Obamistas Know

Posted today by Atlanta, GA-based Obama backer Lawrence Muhammad on the "Community Blogs" page of Barack Obama's campaign site:
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TOP 10 CLINTON CAMPAIGN FOUL UPS

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1. HILLARY STAFF MEMBER RESIGNS DUE TO FALSE EMAIL ABOUT OBAMA BEING MUSLIM CIRCULATED

2. HILLARY SENIOR CAMPAIGN ADVISOR RESIGNS DUE TO "SLIP" OF REFERENCE TO OBAMA'S YOUTH DRUG USE

3. HILLARY SAYS JOHNSON SHOULD BE MORE CREDITED WITH CIVIL RIGHTS LAW THAN MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

4. BILL CLINTON CALLS OBAMA CAMPAIGN A "FAIRY TALE"

5. HILLARY MAJOR SUPPORTER BOB JOHNSON APOLOGIZES FOR REFERENCE BARACK DRUG USE

6. HILLARY RUNS OUT OF MONEY MUST LOAN CAMPAIGN 5 MILLION DOLLARS

7. HILLARY CAMPAIGN MANAGER QUITS

8. HILLARY DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER QUITS

9. HILLARY LOSES DELEGATE LEAD, POPULAR VOTE AND STATE WINS COUNT

10. HILLARY RUNS NEGATIVE AD AGAINST OBAMA

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As opposed to the Hillary Clintonistas know.

We Don't Want Bill Either

Ms. Rodham Clinton's 2008 election troubles boil down to one word: Bill.

Many voters are already hip to him being her ticket to power. Others are wary of the complications inherent in installing a two-term ex-president in the White House, which could be worse than defying the 22nd Amendment. Their Her election would create a climate where the scope of executive authority could be blurred beyond proper and effective discernment. This would involve not just any ex-president but one who, rara avis, has been tried on two out of four counts of impeachment lodged against him.

Ms. Rodham Clinton frequently insists she's ready to lead "on Day One." Yet when she says that what many voters hear is Day 2923 -- the first day of a third-term of a Clinton (co-)presidency. During another era, when the American people voted for president during an extraordinary wartime election, at most only 46% rejected Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt when they he vied for unprecedented terms.

So far -- counting all the Republican and the Obama and other Democratic votes -- 70% of presidential primary voters are saying, We Don't Want Bill Either. Sound familiar? It should.

(Republican campaign button, 1930s or 1940s; image found in Campaigning for President)

Cash Ex Machina

In a fresh sign of ferment in the Democratic race, campaign officials disclosed that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had loaned her campaign $5 million late last month, at a time when she was struggling to keep up with Sen. Barack Obama's television advertising in Super Tuesday states.
-- posted by David Espo for AP/Yahoo! News

It's not a crime, but it contrasts sharply with the $30+M Obama raised in a historic surge of Internet-driven, post-Edwards etc. January fundraising. As Obama struggles to find a form for his multicultural populism, Ms. Rodham Clinton's $5M edge of yesterday stands to become his $5M wedge-issue of tomorrow.

Hillary: "Security Is Not Foremost On The Agenda"

At around :30 through:

Vota Por Hillary In The Mexifornia Democratic Primary

A glowing (if recycled) portrait of Ms. Rodham Clinton dominates the cover of this month's TV Espanol, a Spanish-language only advertising circular distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Tucked deep inside among the many ads for beauty salons, personal injury lawyers, real estate brokers, and even Oriental massage parlors is a two-page profile of the candidate. Making the cover of TV Espanol is nothing to take lightly -- at 170 pages thick it outweighs every other freebie I've seen, from left-of-center rags to Jehovah's Witness mags. Ms. Rodham Clinton is a true estrella in the Mexifornia firmament.
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(Note: This image is not photoshopped.)

Update: "The Evita Factor"

Show Us -- Not Your Tits, Hillary -- Show Us Your Blood!

(Update 12/31) Sen. Clinton, a candidate for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn't know the first thing about the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth."

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Benazir Bhutto becomes an unwilling (including far from perfect) martyr for representative democracy, and is it just me who thinks Ms. Rodham Clinton is out of tune with the day the Muslim music died?

If she had the right stuff, if she were a great leader waiting for History and not just a politician waiting for opportunity, Ms. Rodham Clinton would be making the Speech Of Her Life about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Muslim jihad, about the sanctity of the democratic process and women's eligibility for politics, about the savagery of the mortal enemies of freedoms we habitually take for granted, and about the shining moral, political, military compass that the United States of America is (or should be) to the entire world. She'd be making the Speech Of Her Life and the whole world would be watching. Instead of frigid heiress to the highest office she'd be an avenging Amazonian androgyne -- Jack Kennedy, Maggie Thatcher, and Athena rolled into one -- if Ms. Rodham Clinton had the right stuff.

But she doesn't, so she's not.

Instead she's calling for "an international, independent investigation" into the assassination. Yes, let's investigate al-Qaeda. That'll teach 'em! The leading Democratic presidential contender is a one-worlder machine pol who once a decade will wow a women's conference in an imperial capital, but ... chug upriver into the heart of History's darkness?

Not on your life -- and not on Benazir Bhutto's death.

In the wake of Bhutto's assassination every hour that passes without a great intervention by the woman being sold to the American electorate as a genius, as a compassionate heart, as a champion of children and the disadvantaged, etc. etc. is another reason why "Hillary" is indeed a brand name, is another reason why she's a cranky, overeducated, cuckolded White Hausfrau and not a majestic statesman.

On behalf of all prospective voters, I gotta say, Show us -- not your tits, Hillary -- show us your blood!

That's what Benazir did.

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Show us what you're made of, old gal. At this arresting moment in world history, we have a right to demand of The Woman Who Would Be Potent POTUS Over Us, What the hell flows through your veins? and What are you willing to do to prove it's for real?

While she's miscalculating an answer, waiting for a cooked up cue during a cardboard Q&A, I'm gonna cue up a little Tina ...

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... then a little T & A.

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Aside: Found at Andy Cooper's weblog, intellectual boytoy Reza Aslan speculates that the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein -- and Ms. Rodham Clinton's initial support for it -- led to Bhutto's assassination. Says who? Says Obama's people, says Aslan.

Related: Brando via Coppolla & Milius via Conrad, "Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared." (scroll down)

Lisa Schriffen @ NRO on the USSR's long shadow over, MSM's "deathwatch" in the subcontinent.

The most pitched and informative takes on Bhutto, Paki politics rounded up by Pamela and Fausta.

Someone In Ann Arbor Is Doing Their Homework

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This is the post they're looking for.
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Diana West Reaches For Her Hillary Archives

In order to keep the heat on Ms. Rodham Clinton:

It's as though Hillary Clinton believes she has no past to reckon with; no broken trust to mend; no reason to acknowledge that, to name one example, amassing hundreds of FBI files of Reagan and Bush (I) officials for political use in the White House is a Bad Thing, even if neither she nor anyone else in the White House was actually indicted for it. And it's as though everyone else agrees.

Titles she mentions in "Don't Close the Book on the Clintons":

Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton's Impeachment
by David Schippers
The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton
by Peter Baker
Friends in High Places Our Journey From Little Rock to Washington, D.C
by Webb Hubbell
State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton
by Jerry Oppenheimer
Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton
by Barbara Olson (d. Sept. 11, 2001)

Whitewash - The Most Important Book Yet About Ms. Rodham Clinton

** Second Update **

The liberal Northeastern media were criminally complicit in enabling [her].... [T]here's definitely something weird and cultish in the sycophantish cathexis onto Hillary of the many nerds, geeks and vengeful viragos who run her campaign.... by Camille Paglia. Plus her short (in fact, critically constructive) piece, "The World's First Drag Queen" (1996)

** Update **

Former Clinton Sec'y of Labor Robert Reich is miffed at Ms. Rodham Clinton's campaign tactics.
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I can't remember a serious question or follow-up question to her from the mainstream media. Of course, she takes no questions from anybody else.
-- Tony Blankley, as quoted in Whitewash

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Gentle Reader, rarely does JMK recommend a book as I recommend Whitewash by Brent Bozell (with Tim Graham). Of the stack I've read about her of late -- and I've read some good ones, by critics and supporters alike -- this one's going to remain on top and propped open as long as Ms. Rodham Clinton is running for any office.

Whitewash is a trim 250-page expose of the mainstream media's fully knowing, all-too-willing role in artificially (and unethically) creating, then sustaining, the public estimation of the woman from Hope New York DC Arkansas Illinois. From Hillarycare to bimbo eruptions, from Whitewater to Hillaryland, this book should make any principled political consumer mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Whitewash is for folks who value truth, humility, and transparency above lies, mendacity, and obfuscation. It's destined to become the Rightosphere's not-so-secret playbook in getting to the truth about her record in order to get it out in time to the voting public. The book deserves to play a similar role among her opponents on the Left as well (of whom the sharper and/or more principled will study up on Whitewash).

From the author's recent interview with Amada Carpenter:

The media are packaging her the way she wants to be packaged. She wants to be a moderate because it advances her presidential aspirations.... When you’ve got an “F” from the National Taxpayers Union, a zero from the National Tax Limitations committee, an eight from Citizens Against Government Waste, a twelve from the American Conservative Union, an “F” from the Gun Owners of America, how are you moderate? When you’ve got a 95 from the ADA, when you’ve got a 100 from the Brady campaign against guns, a 93 from the AFL-CIO, a 100 from the State and County Municipal Employees, that doesn’t make you a moderate!

From his own recent article:

What makes the media’s coverage of Hillary Clinton even more deplorable are the recurring examples of noncoverage. Over and over they have refused to cover Mrs. Clinton’s staggering number of personal, political, and financial scandals, ignored her leftist political agenda, and dramatically downplayed her significant political failures. Plain and simple, they have whitewashed her record to turn her into the formidable presidential candidate we’re all assured she is.

(Mind you, what's so refreshing about this book is that one of the things that first got me excited about politics at all was that women could have great aspirations. I've always welcomed, sometimes enthusiastically, that women can properly and commandingly assert themselves in the public sphere. When I was a teenager I volunteered on Walter Mondale's campaign -- on the strength, mostly, of his choice of Geraldine Ferraro as running mate. Later, when I get involved in third party politics, the attraction had significantly to do with women (and lesbian) candidates, including a candidate for president. So my bona fides are in, as far as I'm concerned.)

If conservatives succeed in sinking her presidential aspirations, it'll be because we've a) done our homework, b) applied the lessons, and c) done a complete end run around the mainstream media. If we don't succeed, then I can already picture the book that would duly be written about us -- Hillarywhipped.

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* * *

Oh! And I was going to have some comments about the other Democratic presidential candidate, Ms. Rodham Clinton, but it turns out that under a Hillary Administration you could be audited by the IRS if you use the word "dyke."
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Hillary Rodham Clinton Nixon

From the abuse and wrongful termination of White House staff to the FBI-enhanced intimidation of opponents, to the unethical solicitation of gifts and outright theft of White House property -- Ms. Rodham Clinton has seemed to me have earned, over the course of a long and mostly unofficial career, the epithet "Nixonian." It's an apercu I modestly toss out there when trying to upend a discussion with her supporters.

Yet according to this article, she possesses some of Nixon's better, or more packageable, traits -- which may help her ride to victory.

This article by Maureen Dowd reminds us of her substellar achievements:

[H]er self-portrait [is] as a former co-president who gets to take credit for everything important Bill Clinton did in the ’90s. But she was not elected or appointed to a position that needed Senate confirmation. And the part of the Clinton administration that worked best — the economy, stupid — was run by Robert Rubin. Hillary did not show good judgment in her areas of influence — the legal fiefdom, health care and running oppo-campaigns against Bill’s galpals.

September 11th Is A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Partisan liberals are gearing up for their "stop Rudy" campaign. I can feel it.

Here are some choppily edited video clips, found at Dana Goldstein's blog (who found it at Talking Points Memo), of Rudy Giuliani's frequent invocations of September 11th during interviews, debates, and campaign appearances. Dana calls this a tick (as in, a nervous tick), whereas I would say it's a tack -- a strategy to remind Americans of his own leadership, certainly, and by extension of the leadership of many other Americans on that awful and awe-inspiring day.

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People who take issue with a leading presidential candidate, one who oversaw the most intense locus of that day's crisis -- oversaw it more directly than either the president or vice president -- should have to answer the following:

"September 11th is a date which will live in infamy."
Do you agree , or disagree, with that statement? (Yes or No.)

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If recalling September 11th really is distasteful to the good folks at TPM, I guess I could placate them by trying to convince Giuliani to invoke some other date. Say ... February 26th? That day in 1993, on the watch of then-President Bill Clinton and then-Mayor David Dinkins (both Democrats), saw the first attempt by Islamic terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center. The savages' spectacular plan included the intended release of cyanide gas into the tower's ventilation systems -- plus the wishful thinking that the tower's collapse would bring down its twin. So one good that conceivably could come out of a ticky-tacky discussion of whether to invoke or to not invoke September 11th would be to connect it back to February 26th.

February 26th turned out, as a matter of luck, not to be catastrophic -- loss of life and property were minimal -- though it was a precursor to September 11th. For Khalil Sheik Mohammed, an uncle and adviser of one of the plotters, went on to become the chief coordinator of the September 11th attacks. The lessons KSM learned from February 26th were: Never send a fanatical homicide bomber to do a fanatical suicide bomber's job and America might send in spooks and prosecutors, but she won't send in the Marines. What was for the civilized world, at the end of the day on February 26th, effectively a reprieve from catastrophic terror should in hindsight have been a clarion call. Whereas for Islamic fanatics it was a casting call.

Something often omitted from remembrances of September 11th is that, like February 26th, only strokes of fate and luck made that day somewhat less catastrophic than it otherwise would have been. The desperate courage and determined outrage of a few dozen passengers successfully (if tragically) diverted United Flight 93, which had been piloted (targeted) at the Capitol or the White House. That many WTC employees hadn't yet arrived to work when the first planes struck (and that many who had also had time to evacuate) drastically reduced the number of human casualties on that day.

All this is to acknowledge (and perhaps the Talking Points Memo crowd will find common ground with me here) that Giuliani's leadership should not be permitted to eclipse the near unimaginable bravery and stoicism of the many thousands gone on September 11th. Where we diverge is that I believe Giuliani is within his rights -- moreso, his duties -- to invoke our national memory of it. Actually I welcome the kind and gentle, but firm manner by which he speaks for all of us -- he exhibits a fundamental remembrance and pride, plus the littlest hint of grief and a whiff of defiance. And of grapeshot.

I have to wonder, what would partisan liberals prefer Rudy Giuliani do than revive memories of September 11th? Do they wish that he discuss Ms. Rodham Clinton's unreliable mentions of her daughter Chelsea's whereabouts in lower Manhattan on that morning? If that is the case, there may yet be an occasion for Giuliani to do so.

It's The Power, Stupid

An aging "idealistic" Democrat spills the beans about Clintonian leadership,  whether it pertains to her campaign, his presidency, their party, or our country. (Quoted at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.):

The establishment Dems are made up of baby boomers ... of which I am one.  Like many other things my generation loves, power is utmost.... Make no mistake, this is about control and power.  My generation will likely not give up either without one whale of a fight.  Watch HRC's dismissive demeanor when she puts [Barack Obama] down ... just as a mother might to a wayward, troublesome son.

C'mon Hillary, It's ... Chinatown, Part II

Michelle Malkin cuts to the critical heart of the matter over Ms. Rodham Clinton's Clintonian controversy over corrupt Chinese-American campaign contributions:

The only ones guilty of irresponsible behavior here are the political apologists for Hillary and the media organizations that would rather kowtow to political correctness than follow in the journalistic footsteps of the [New York] Post and the Times. The Clinton campaign is counting on left-wing editors to capitulate under heat from Asian-American groups who want to deflect attention away from suspicious foreign donations.
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Previous: "C'mon Hillary, It's ... Chinatown"

Memo To Conservatives: Avoid Ad Feminam Attacks Against Ms. Rodham Clinton

* Updated (10/23) * HRC's pollster boasts that 1/4 of GOP women will vote for her.
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This past weekend TAPPED blogger Kate Sheppard reacted to something I've sensed from the very outset of Ms. Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign: ad feminam attacks against the former First Lady do nothing to engage the left nor (more importantly) the middle during the long, rhetorical slogfest underway between now and November 4, 2008. Here Sheppard is less than impressed with talkradio personality Mark Levin for having dubbed Ms. Rodham Clinton "Her Thighness."

As matters of principle and strategy, conservatives should not dismiss Sheppard's complaint. Principle, because the candidate needs to be confronted on her record; strategy, because "ideologically moderate white women" just might hold the key to the White House. Indulging a conservative chuckle now could easily lead to hearing the roar of many a woman voter later. For believe it or not, as this poll suggests, Ms. Rodham Clinton could (if only by default) prove "a uniter, not a divider." Then again, if we grant that a woman deserves to be respected for her mind, we should also insist that a woman be disrespected for her mind, if she so deserves....

For my part I prefer more substantive and slyly argumentative epithets to demolish the polished artifice of "Hillary," such as "the junior senator from New York," or "the Shady Lady," or "Madame Macbeth." Or as I once quipped here:

Oh, and I was going to have some comments about that other Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it turns out that under a Rodham Clinton Administration, you could be audited by the IRS if you use the word "dyke."

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Previous:
"Excuse Me? God Has Summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton?"
"Southpaw Hillary Throws A Sucker Punch"
"C'mon Hillary, It's Chinatown"
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Seven Things To Know About The Clintons

Here are the bullet points from Emmet Tyrell's "Seven Things To Know About The Clintons":
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1. Every Clinton scandal of the 1990s had a precedent in the Clinton governorship of the 1980s in Arkansas.

2. For years, the Clintons have bullied the press, political opponents, prosecutors and those women who caught Bill's eye.

3. Rumors of Sen. John McCain's temper have haunted his campaign. Hillary's temper is even more widely documented, by disaffected Secret Service agents, military aides, Arkansas state troopers and others.

4. Hillary is given to what the historian Richard Hofstadter termed "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."

5. The Clintons have, to use the words of President Harry Truman -- who, while president, scrupulously insulated the White House from fundraising and, in retirement, refused speaker's fees -- "commercialized the presidency."

6. Very little of this has escaped the notice of journalists and of Democratic leaders. Yet after every scandal, they forget their public denunciations of the Clintons.

7. The media have been lax in reporting the Clintons' unprecedented record of ethical failings and outright corruption.


When you come across a liberal or undecided voter (especially an ideologically moderate white woman) who is cool to or untrusting of Ms. Rodham Clinton -- and who can't quite put his finger on why -- be sure to forward him "Seven Things To Know About The Clintons." Then let the facts speak for themselves.

If You're Going to San Francisco ... Don't Bring Bill Clinton

Those feeling frisky about marking the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco would do well also to mark, in the very same city, the 35th anniversary of the dog days of a Summer of Criminal Lust. For the purposes of "Hillary Watch," that was the summer of 1972, during which a dog named William Jefferson Clinton (who answers to the name of "Bubba") sexually assaulted and nearly raped a woman in Golden Gate Park.

Since he lunges after Democratic women only, stories like these almost never come to light. Enter Christopher Hitchens. From No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family (1999):

[I]n the third case I know about [alleging rape or attempted rape by the prospective First Gentleman], which is so far unpublished anywhere, the story came to me without my asking, let alone soliciting. I was in San Francisco, and got a call and later a visit from a very well-known Bay Area journalist and editor. He's a veteran radical and was once quite a Clinton fan; we'd argued about the man before. He wanted, he said, to disburden himself of the following information.

He (I can't give his name without identifying her) had once employed a young female assistant. In the early 1970s, Bill Clinton had come out to the Bay Area to see his fiancé [sic] Hillary, who was then working, for some other friends of mine as it happens, as a legal intern in Oakland [for veteran Communist lawyer Robert Treuhaft]. An introduction occurred between young Bill and my friend's aforementioned assistant. He asked her out for lunch; she accepted. He proposed a walk in Golden Gate Park; she accepted that too. He made a lunge at her; she declined the advance and was rammed, very hard indeed, against a tree-trunk before being rolled in the bushes and badly set-upon. She's a tall and strong woman, and got away without submitting. She told my friend the same day, and he'd kept it secret for almost thirty years....

Years later, the woman was sitting at her desk when she got a telephone call from Brooke Shearer, who is also Mrs. Strobe Talbot and a veteran of the Clinton kitchen-cabinet. "Bill is thinking of running for office," said Mrs. Shearer. "He wanted to know if that was all right with you." My subject was annoyed, but she had retained her old liberal allegiances. She also -- see how this keeps coming up? [cf. the rape allegation of Juanita Broaddrick (then Juanita Hickey)] -- was thinking of getting engaged and becoming a mother. She replied that she wouldn't stand in the way of a Clinton candidacy. But I have since talked to two further very respectable San Francisco citizens, who have neither met nor heard of my original informant (nor he of them). I know the woman's name; I know that she has married well; I know her maiden name at the time of the assault; I know the high-powered Bay Area foundation where she works on good causes; I have communicated with her by Federal Express and by voicemail. I have excellent witnesses who have heard her say that if the story ever breaks she'll deny it under oath. I don't blame her -- though in our present unshockable moral atmosphere it's very unlikely that reporters, let alone prosecutors, would ever turn over in bed before consigning the whole thing to the memory hole. It is time, as we keep hearing, to put the country behind us and move this forward. (At least, I think I've got that right.) [pp. 114-116]
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Some will say no doubt that I am being too hard on this and other Democratic women who are victims of "the man from Hope," women who then are pressed -- by persuasion, intimidation, or (dare I say?) personal preference -- into service as his enablers. I concede that such critics may have a point, no matter how bitterly ironic. To whom, after all, are these women going to turn in their moment of acute embarrassment, shame, and need? The National Sexual Assault Hotline? For the record, that number is 1-800-656-HOPE.

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I can contribute one point only in Bubba's defense (and a shoddy defense, at that): that he was "under the influence" of George McGovern's insurgent presidential campaign. From Robert Novak's column of April 27, 1972 [read by Tim Russert on Meet The Press, July 15, 2007]:  "The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot," [one U.S. Senator] told [Novak]. "Once middle America—Catholic middle America, in particular—once they find out, he’s dead." Sound familiar?

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Keep hope alive: a free concert commemorating the "Summer of Love," anticipated for this September in Golden Gate Park, has been cancelled (H/T Sanfransanity).

Islamo Fascism Awareness Week - October 22-26

* Update (8/25) * Welcome, Tampa/St. Pete readers and listeners of the Schnitt Show (93.3FM WFLZ and NewsRadio 970 WFLA)!
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This just in from the David Horowitz Freedom Center:

Islamo Fascism Awareness Week: Is your alma mater on our list?

We are now planning what will be the largest campus demonstrations ever staged by conservative students for October 22-26. We are calling the event Islamo Fascism Awareness Week. We already have student coordinators on 150 campuses and we are hoping that the event will touch close to 200 universities and colleges across the country. We are offering these campuses a full menu of activities including panel discussions on the origins and implications of Islamo Fascism; keynote speakers such as former Sen. Rick Santorum, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Spencer, and Nonie Darwish ; and a showing of the uncut version of ABC's milestone docudrama "The Path to 9/11," and other documentaries about the threat of radical Islam, including Obsession and Suicide Killers.

In addition we are working with our student coordinators to organize protests at women's studies departments which have been shamefully silent about the violent oppression of women in the Muslim world, and to stage a memorial for the international victims of jihad. Among the campuses already committed to major activities during Islamo Fascism Awareness Week are Columbia, UC Berkeley, Penn State, Temple, Penn, Emory, UC Irvine and Ohio State. This week has the potential to be a major news event as well as a transforming political experience for our college students.

If you want further information or would like to see your alma mater or a school of special interest added to our list of targets, please email Jeffrey Wienir at jeffrey@horowitzfreedomcenter.org. This is our chance to bring the truth about the war on terrorism to campuses dominated by an unholy alliance between pro jihadists and the hardcore left.

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Q: Is this crowd going to teach you anything useful about Islamo Fascism? 
A: Yes. But useful to whom?

The eyes have it. From right to left: the one-worlder bugging out on making the rounds in her global village;  a one-worlder, global villager in training; the shifty-eyed, terrorist mafioso (who would pass his poisoned blood off to 9/11 survivors); and, as history is proving, the narcissistic rapist who was along for the ride.

Can't you picture "ACT-UP Ramallah"? Say it! Millionaire terrorists get AIDS, too!

Dick Comes Clean About Hillary's Stains

There is no question [Hillary Rodham Clinton] had her eye on public office, as opposed to service, long ago.
-- Dick Morris, campaign manager of Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election

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Some of the most reliable "Hillary watchers" are ex-Clintonistas, perhaps none more than Dick Morris. Read Dick fisk a five-minute Hillary campaign video -- of husband Bill Clinton going to bat for "Madame Macbeth":

Bill says: Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers.

The true facts are:  She flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected Governor.

Read it all.

SWM seeks IMWW in FL, OH, PA for GOP

For all the analysis, talk, and debate, and for all the palm pressing, hand wringing, and hair pulling, next year's presidential election may boil down to one demographic: ideologically moderate white women.

According to poll data analyzed here:

The argument that Clinton could win the Democratic nomination but remain a long shot for winning the White House has rested heavily on two pillars: that Clinton is too polarizing and that Americans are not ready to elect a woman as president. Both those pillars may be crumbling. [emphasis added] While Clinton has long enjoyed an advantage among Democratic women, the latest surveys suggest she is drawing support from other women -- including those who in the past have tilted Republican and earlier in this election cycle were showing no particular enthusiasm for Clinton.

Every presidential victor since 1960 has carried at least two of the following states: Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. If '08 proves another tight election, look to "ideologically moderate white women" in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to hold the cards. (For what it's worth: On Election Day 2004 I took a non-partisan stance by holding a sign in rush-hour traffic that read Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania: The Axis of Democracy.) 

Note: As reader Mara emails, it boils down to "security moms" vs. "soccer moms."

Hillary Generates Buzz

I gotchya "spirited debate" -- right here. H/T Kesher Talk

Excuse Me? "God Has Summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton"?

We're all evangelicals. The question is what we're preaching.
-- Alan Dershowitz, on CNN in June to promote his book
Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence
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Up at Hillary's campaign site is a new video, "African American Men for Hillary." Watch it before her people pull it from YouTube (or scroll down here).

It's exactly what it says it is -- a series of outtakes from a gathering of African American leaders who endorse her for president. It's the usual stuff, chock full of familiar phrases like "leadership," "compassion," "the most important election in our lifetime," etc., etc. It's exactly what it says it is -- almost.

The five-and-a-half minute video begins Let's thank God for our senator and the next president of the United States, Senator Hillary Clinton. A presidential campaign video that leads with "God" makes me a little squeamish and more than a little suspicious. It's not called, after all, "Christian African American Men for Hillary." Don't get me wrong, I believe in religion in the public sphere. But there's a bit of bait-and-switch going on here.

Do other (especially Republican) politicians actually lead off with "God"? Not Mitt Romney, the Mormon candidate, and not George W. Bush, the born again Christian. [Update: Romney "acquits himself fairly well" on the subject.] If a Republican presidential campaign instructed an audience to thank God for their candidate, critics in the MSM and elsewhere would be up in arms, crying "Christian fascism!". We know that Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison enjoys hearing his faithful chant "Allahu Akbar!". Ann Coulter's latest book accuses liberals of belonging to a cult of godlessness; what we see in today's Democratic Party is, more precisely, a cult of selective godfulness.

This insertion of "God" into "African American Men for Hillary" is carefully crafted to make good with churchgoing black people. It happens also to be bad as a matter of intellect, bad as a matter of principle, and bad as a matter of faith. To wit, the video rises to a crescendo with a pseudo-sermon not from a man of the cloth, but from multimillionaire trial lawyer Willie Gary (as featured on Oprah and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous):

As I always do I have to just include God in the mix. God has a hand in all of this. No doubt about it. In her running for president, he has a hand in it. In her becoming president, he will have a hand in it. No doubt about it. As I was saying, and I thought about it, God is too wise to make mistakes. And I know that. So we have -- we've made the right choice. There's no question in my mind about that, because he has a hand in it. Oh! But now that the United States of America need a leader that's a mover and a shaker, God has summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton!
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God has summoned Hillary Rodham Clinton?

That's almost enough to make me an atheist.

 (Click here for all "Hillary Watch" posts.)

Intellectual Punk Speaks Up For Subject of Hillary Rodham's Thesis

* Update (08/21) * Michelle Malkin plugs Diana West's The Death of the Grown-Up

Regarding Hillary's thesis Nick Masesso, who wrote the deservedly obscure Walking the Midway In Purgatory (an incoherent, intellectually violent reminiscence of growing up in the 1960s), emails:

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We all started with Saul Alinsky. He and men like Studs Terkle [sic] taught us how to organize. Without them we'd have had no labor movement, no Teamsters and thus no middle class, ergo no america [sic]. Groking Saul doesent [sic] mean anything. There is only what we do.

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There is only what we do is a line Nick borrows from Aristotle on the formation of character, on excellence as habit. Yes, there is only what we do. Here There is only what we do is the amorality of those who have never given up on letting "the 60s" be their excuse for mediocrity perpetrated in the name of "protest" or "art" or "radicalism." For mediocrity can be a habit, moral equivalency can be a habit, evil can be a habit. In Nick's grubby hands the phrase becomes Nothing works so anything goes. It's what he had in mind last September when he equated me waving an American flag with shouting "Allahu akbar." That's neither a reasoning nor a reckoning with history or one's own life. It's a failure to reason and a failure to reckon (which may be my main complaint with the Clintons.)

Does Nick include Hillary Rodham in his pronoun We? Was she, is she, a "sister in struggle"? A struggle against what? and for what? Hillary Rodham was clearly fascinated American radicalism. The story of the rest of her career is the story of how, exactly, she has reasoned and reckoned with her fascination -- in her case, to what extent her manipulation of American radicalism has been her means to political power.

There is always more than There is only what we do.

Excerpts From Hillary's Wellesley Thesis, "THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT... An Analysis of the Alinsky Model"

If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory.
-- Hillary D. Rodham
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* Updates *

Welcome, Free Republic & Pajamas Media readers.
Read Dymphna's "Open Letter to Hillary Rodham": When you were writing your thesis, I was living within walking distance of your dorm....
View or download the entire thesis here. And for pete's sake, people, after you've decided you're going to comment on it, remember the difference between a push broom and a fine-toothed comb. (Use both, but remember the difference.)
  New analyses from Edward Cline and Andrew Waldman.
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If what I have received is a true and accurate copy, then here is one of the most anticipated revelations yet of the 2008 presidential election: Hillary Rodham's 1969 senior thesis at Wellesley College.

Back in 1993, shortly after she acceded to the role of First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband requested that Wellesley guard her thesis from public scrutiny -- a request to which the college administration assented. Since then efforts to gain access to "THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT" have proven less than successful. If what I have received is, however, a true and accurate copy, then public access to the Democratic presidential candidate's initial intellectual formation has finally arrived.
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The nearly 100-page inquiry into the thought and activism of radical leftwing organizer Saul Alinsky can be considered, until proven otherwise, young Ms. Rodham's first complete set of intellectual fingerprints -- her first carbon (her first carbon copy, that is) intellectual footprint. Depending on how capably readers evaluate the 1969 document and trace its influence, "THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT" might prove one of the most authoritative standards by which to  judge Hillary Rodham Clinton's subsequent record -- her professional, political, and even personal record.

* * *

Below are some excerpts, Gentle Reader, so that you may begin to take a better measure of Hillary Rodham Clinton. 

Themes that emerge include:
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* a lifelong dedication to fashioning a new American radicalism by braiding together previous strains of political protest and philosophy in a bid to accumulate power (power -- which Alinsky terms the very essence of life) (pp. 4-7);

* cynically cloaking self-interest beneath an external show of morality, all the while expecting redemption through a radical faith in the eventual manifestation of the goodness of man (p. 10);

* conflation of the rule of American democracy with the realization of egalitarian -- even socialist and revolutionary -- agendas (pp. 10-11);

* a need for rethinking the idea of community* and devising new strategies to achieve democratic equality (p. 65); and

* commitment to the eradication of powerless poverty and the injection of meaning into affluence. [Alinsky's] new aspect, national planning, derives from the necessity of entrusting social change to institutions, specifically the United States Government (p. 73).

*: Communitarian theorist Amitai Etzioni, along with Bill Clinton the subject of that link, is referenced on p.65 of the thesis
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* * *

Related: Fausta's Blog's
"Hillary's Stripes On Parade Again - In the '60s, A Future Candidate Poured Her Heart Out In Letters"

JMK's entire "Hillary Watch" category, including:
"Southpaw Hillary Throws A Sucker Punch" and
"C'mon, Hillary, It's ... Chinatown"

Also, please vote for Jeremayakovka for Best Political Blog. Thanks!

* * *

"Acknowledgements":

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"Table of Contents":

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From "Chapter I" (9 images):

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From "Chapter IV" (2 images):

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From "Chapter V" (3 images):
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# # #

Giuliani In San Francisco And His 12 (13?) Commitments For America

* Update (07/25) : Welcome, Pajamas Media readers. *

* Update: Giuliani and Dennis Prager discuss the Democrats' latest presidential debate *

Yesterday myself and some other "9/11 Neocons" attended Rudy Giuliani's appearance before 150 supporters in San Francisco. The SF Chronicle's coverage, despite the facts related, showed itself again as a rather obfuscating liberal media tool ("Giuliani, in S.F., blasts Democrats as 'defeatists'"; H/T Dave R.). Contrary to what the Chron grudgingly reported, Giuliani's address was genial, relaxed, and substantive. He peppered an at times technocratic talk on energy independence with all-American anecdotes and metaphors, striking a balance between the avuncular and the authoritative.

To start, Giuliani pulled out a card with his "12 Commitments" campaign theme printed on it. Affecting humility, he said that, not being as competent as God, he needed 12 (not 10) principles by which to govern. (He made only one other reference to God -- during his concluding statement about what a gift it is to live in America -- striking a moderate but clear tone on a vital subject.) For anyone who finds contemporary American culture "dysfunctional," this campaign theme recalls the self-reliant 12 steps of popular self-help programs. Simple and strategic.

The emphasis of Giuliani's talk was not to "blast" Democrats but to set in motion an incremental overhaul of American energy policy that does not toe the "global warming" political line and is integrated with a larger strategy to defeat totalitarian Muslims. He referred to a "tag team" of presidents, from Eisenhower through Nixon, who determined to and then delivered on their promise to put an American on the moon. He spoke in detail about the untapped possibilities of ethanol, coal, nuclear, and wind & solar energies, introducing terms like "carbon sequestration" and professing his readiness to extend federal subsidies to businesses that develop these resources. And Giuliani insisted that there can be no success without benchmarks, examples of which he suggested. This is the kind of constructive (not destructive) criticism for which during the '04 campaign I turned to the Democrats and came away largely disappointed.

Striving for Kennedyesque vision and Trumanesque humility, the ex-Democrat Giuliani appealed, first to Republicans, and -- if the MSM would permit it -- to voters of both parties to significantly alter the economic and environmental direction of the country. Just don't count on the Chron if you want to learn about this.
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Republicans are going to have to work very hard for recognition of their leadership on where environmental rubber meets the road to crushing Islamic totalitarianism. Earlier this month I attended a talk by Clint Wilder, co-author of The Clean Tech Revolution (as of today ranked #1661 on Amazon). During the Q&A I asked him to identify, in terms of his thesis, which presidential contenders were worth watching. John Edwards was the only name he put forward (without offering specifics). When phrasing my question I introduced that Newt Gingrich had a book due out soon, A Contract With The Earth. If Mr. Wilder had any knowledge of this, however, he sat on it. My guess is that this influential author is behind the curve on Republican environmental initiatives.

Another notable moment was when Giuliani insisted on the importance of calling Islamic terrorists "Islamic terrorists" -- and on calling out the Democratic contenders for ignoring our gravest reality. For this the hero of 9/11 is now being targeted, as Pamela blogs, by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. (Note the heated comments in Pamela's post, btw.) For my part, I was preparing to press Giuliani to make a similar "commitment" to set "benchmarks" regarding citizenship for immigrants -- in particular, Muslim immigrants -- but unfortunately the Q&A time ran out and my question remained unasked. This is a question that has to be put to the entire GOP field -- not just to Giuliani -- again and again until they start coming up with answers.

Certain Giuliani supporters, enthused to see Their Guy in person, prefaced their questions with, "When you're president..." or "President Giuliani...." Yet when shopping around for a presidential candidate we shouldn't look for one to come up with all the right answers, nor falsely praise one who might seem to do so. This temptation is real and ever-present. Instead what we should do is insist that our presidential candidates ask the right questions. Asking some of the right questions is what Giuliani has set out, at this still early stage of the campaign season, to do.

* * *

From time to time my "9/11 Neocon" comrades and I checked over our shoulders in case any camouflaged Code Pinkos might pop up and pull any stunts. Turns out we weren't far off the mark: that day they were bare-breastedly besieging Hillary's brand new local headquarters.

Afterwards some of us went out for eats at The Sabra Grill, San Francisco's premier (probably only) glatt kosher downtown restaurant. Because we'd been spared the Code Pinko prank, our appetites fortunately were in good form.

Boo Frickin' Hoo, Liz

* Updated *

(7/4) Brent Bozell: "Elizabeth Edwards Favors 'Rage'"
(7/1) "Edwards Eye For The Straight Guy"
(6/28) The AP  does the Edwards' and DNC's dirty work, gets fisked (see below)
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This is news?

Yesterday Elizabeth Edwards publicly appealed to Ann Coulter to stop couching political criticism of her and her family in the form of personal attacks. She appealed as the mother and the wife that she is, although not as the lawyer and seasoned national campaigner that she is -- and as the First Lady that she would like very much to become.

Contending that Coulter's criticisms diminish the level of political debate, Edwards attempted to single out one of the most -- perhaps the most -- widely-read and influential political satirist of our generation for being better at what she does than just about everyone else in the business. As usually happens when she's on the MSM's hot seat, Ann's ripostes were downplayed or ignored.
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Let's get a few things straight, Liz:

* Ann's a satirist -- she does what she does with humor, hyperbole, and invective. That's her job, her duty, her calling, her raison d'ecrire.

* Ann's not running for office, doesn't hold office, has never held office. She has no real, enforceable political power -- not the kind of power that you and your husband are seeking and have already (during his term as Senator) enjoyed. Your style and your ruses should be of more concern to the public than Ann's, starting with your soft Southern voice whose posed politeness positions itself as if beyond reproach. I didn't describe your face in a previous post as "equal parts Mona Lisa and Joseph Stalin" for nothing.

* The faggot "rehab" joke from last March, the one referencing your husband, was a deft comic intervention having to do with the (ab)use of language and with shabby moral standards that permit a self-incriminating gay-hater (actor Isaiah Washington) to skirt the consequences of his actions by trying to pin the blame on "alcoholism." (Mark Foley did something similar when his sins went public. Both stink for it.) But a conservative who draws attention to the general state of our political culture can't count on receiving even-handed treatment alongside a liberal who appeals for sympathy when it's suggested he shares traits with one or another "identity group" -- can she?

* Since you don't like the attacks Ann directs at you and your family, Liz, you're demanding she perform her punditry as if strict laws against libel existed here in the U.S. the way they do, say, in Great Britain. Those laws don't exist here, not because our political culture presumes we will conduct ourselves with the restraints they impose. Those laws don't exist here so that we are free to act without their restraints. I venture that if American libel laws so permitted, you'd leap at the chance to try Ann in court. But you can't try her in court, so you're attempting to try her in the court of public opinion.

* Earlier this year when career leftwing pundit Molly Ivins died -- Molly Ivins, who had pilloried the president in two bestsellers, Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked -- Molly Ivins, who succumbed to breast cancer, which you've been diagnosed with -- Bush made sure to praise her quick wit and her commitment to her political beliefs, to the point where they would be missed (!). The target of Ivins's calls for impeachment said that he respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. Liz, if you and your husband think you have what it takes to be presidential, take a cue from someone who has experience at it.
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Previous:
"'Ann of Arc' and 'International Ann Coulter Day'"
"Elizabeth Edwards Awareness Month"

Related:
Josef K's 8-minute video deploring John Edwards's epithet "bumper sticker" to describe the war on terror.

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* Update *

The MSM is as boring as it is annoying.

The AP's Nedra Pickler gets a byline for reporting Coulter's suggestion that she wished [Edwards] would be "killed in a terrorist assassination plot." and that this supposed incivility is directly boosting contributions to the Edwards campaign.

The AP glosses over the fact that Ann did not express a specific desire of hers that Edwards be assassinated. While referring to specific, demonstrated desires by those who so loathe the Bush Administration that its officials be assassinated, she implied clearly that should she demonstrate such a desire towards a Democrat she would, in terms of precedent, be doing nothing out of place or egregious. She did so to make a sarcastic point that surpasses the limits of what our current political culture permits (or does not permit) her (or anyone) to say when criticizing John Edwards, but which it permits in criticsms of Dick Cheney and of the president.

Expressed desires to assassinate have become so common in our political culture that the MSM  -- those paid professionals who set, or should set, our political culture's tone -- routinely ignore them as unworthy of scrutiny or censure. Assassination desires against this Bush Administration have been extolled as cinema and as rap music and have been attempted at least twice by real terrorists, as well as by the one who tried to have an ex-president (this president's father) assassinated. No doubt they will be expressed by those who would like to see the next and/or soon-to-be former President of the United States assassinated, regardless of his (or her) political party.

While drawing sensational attention to herself, Ann was also calling substantive attention to our political culture. It's one that has allowed the expression of such -- not just criminal but evil -- desires to become acceptable. Regardless of the direction in which her invective was aimed, she was giving active expression to the passive frustration people of all political stripes feel at an American political culture which has forsaken its obligation to identify and insist upon such standards -- standards which should hold for all of the people all of the time.

It's unfortunate that liberals can't get (let alone enjoy) the humor in Ann's recent defense of herself and her work. Even President Bush from time to time laughs at himself in front of liberals, including when he's sitting at the same table as his most dogged critics. There just seems to be no point in sharing humor with liberals. As Christopher Hitchens has said, if you have to explain why it's funny, then it's no longer a joke.

After throwing their remote controls at their TV sets and after electronically donating to the Edwards campaign, liberals should thank Ann for her dedication (no matter how ironically, provocatively, and even negatively expressed) to fairness, intelligence, and morality in American politics -- specifically in American political commentary and even more specifically in the MSM.

If the Edwards campaign is so lagging in fundraising that it has to rely on compromised reporting about Ann Coulter for cash influxes, how tired and exhausted must it be? Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! They shoot silky ponies -- I mean, horses -- don't they?

Were Orwell alive today, would he shake Ann Coulter's hand? Of course not! He'd be too busy applauding her.

Oh! And I was going to have some comments about that other Democratic presidential candidate,  Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it turns out that were she to become president you might expect to be audited by the IRS if you use the word "dyke."

French Idol, Round 2 - Ségo's Dangerous Socialist Rhetoric

This is not a military war only, it is even more a spiritual, intellectual, and political debate.
-- Bat Ye'or, author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis
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This Sunday's French presidential election runoff between socialist Ségolène Royal and center-right Nicolas Sarkozy offers an opportunity to consider more closely the final candidates' stated principles in an election that will have ramifications not just for France but for all of Europe and the entire liberal West. Regardless of outgoing President Jacques Chirac's Just say NON! policy on American and Israeli military interventions against the Baath Party of Iraq, Hezbollah, potentially Iran, and most recently even the Taliban, France can no longer ignore its place on the frontline of Islam's jihad. Saturday's runoff  is the république's referendum on just what political will it's going to muster (or not muster) in order to confront (or not confront) its failed immigration and integration policies and, as a consequence, demographic threats to its viability as a free Western nation. So with the American presidential campaign already shaping up as a referendum on the Bush Doctrine, France once more has the opportunity to offer the world some enlightenment.

Socialist Party standard-bearer Ségolène Royal invites special scrutiny. A colonial colonel's daughter who inherited a strict Catholic upbringing, she has bucked traditional family structures while pursuing an ascendant public career on the Left. Should she manage to capture the presidency (Sarkozy has long been the front-runner, though not by much), she would upset not just electoral expectations, but long-held calculations about how, exactly, a woman might carry 20th Century "progressivism" into the 21st Century. Beginning Sunday morning, Down with Maggie and Angela! Up with Ségo and Hillary! could become the rallying cry for a post-60s Left that would have come full circle by finally conquering the center. (The presidential victories of Bill Clinton, the first major-power head of state to have come of age during the 60s, were each delivered by a plurality.) Comparisons with Democratic presidential front-runner Rodham Clinton -- the Goldwater Girl turned Saul Alinksy student, Watergate lawyer, and longtime marital ally of this generation's most scandalous adulterer -- are not just inevitable but irresistible. Everything is possible! insists one French socialist pol (also a woman), in a not so mild reprise of May '68. But is it?

Given these stakes, what can and should be resisted is Ségo's 21st Century socialism. Since she circulates in a French political culture which has long accommodated socialist and even explicitly communist platforms, it should come as no surprise that this former protegée of François Mitterand sets hers forth unapologetically, even elegantly. A Ségo victory would only sweeten the temptation to go down a socialist path, one from which even some Democrats, seeing nothing but strange, Big Brother-like fruit in the prospect of a Rodham Clinton presidency, already recoil.

Yesterday I found a YouTube video of a portion of a telling speech Ségo delivered back in February in which she outlined her future vision while making tall claims for France's socialist legacy. When I next have some time, I will comb through it, connect more dots, and report back....

Southpaw Hillary Throws A Sucker Punch

Yesterday Hillary Clinton revived the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" accusation, citing interference with voting efforts in New Hampshire in 2002 whose Republican perpetrators have been tried in court and convicted. The first question I have to ask is not Who? or When? or Where? or How? (I think I know Why?) but Does she really think we're going to be suckered by that one?

The crime was Election Day phone-jamming which (while constituting real wrongdoing) is a petty tactic to be rated a conspiracy, let alone a "vast" one. Whether there is more or less to this New Hampshire story, I do not know. A partisan broadside about voting improprieties issued by a Democratic presidential candidate, however, is at best just that -- a partisan broadside. People on all sides play to win at all costs. Just please perish the thought of a Democratic power-broker having the moral or historical standing to sling accusations of a vast conspiracy.

Case in point: Lyndon Johnson "won" election to the Senate in 1948 only because, after he'd been knocked off the ballot in several Texas counties, he called in high-powered attorney Abe Fortas to argue for his reinstatement. Dishonest Abe got LBJ back on the ballot and, when it was over, into the Senate. This is the same Abe Fortas whom LBJ would, in 1965, appoint to the United States Supreme Court. Fortas, whose general view of judging was to find legal authority to support the conclusion to which he was predisposed (i.e., where opinions are matters of ideology and not law), served only four years until he was forced to resign in disgrace. Details here.

Case in point: Jack Kennedy "won" the 1960 presidential election only because Democratic Mayor Richard Daley delivered Chicago on a silver platter. As Slate's David Greenberg summed up Republican assent to the declared outcome in "Was Nixon Robbed?", Fearing that to question the results would harm the country, Nixon checked his pride and declined to mount a challenge. (Change "fearing" to "understanding" and change "checked his pride" to "put patriotism above partisanship" and this sentence would be truthful.)

Case in point: A century of voter intimidation, fraud, and domestic terrorism throughout the Dixiecrat South designed either a) to prevent black Americans from voting or b) to guarantee that they would vote for the "right" white ticket. With the possible exception of the Ku Klux Klan itself (many of whose members were Democratic pols anyway), more than any other organization in American history you can point to the Democratic Party's "vast conspiracy" for making black Americans the strategic target, beginning in the 1920s, of Communist Party organizing drives, and, in the 1960s, rendering the South the seedground of the Black Power movement. "Disenfranchisement" is the euphemism for this brand of terrorism, a terrorism which bears at least a little similarity to the struggles rife in Iraqi civil society today. (Click here for Stokely Carmichael's 1966 speech on behalf of Black Power and declaring his intention to run for president in 1968.) No wonder liberals anguish over whether to the finish the job of stamping out terrorism over there: they have too many bad memories of their failure to stamp it out over here!

As an aside, here's a blistering piece of political commentary from great American political cartoonist Thomas Nast:
"The Democratic Hell-Broth," along with W. A. Croffut's poem, truly excoriated the Democratic Party, and was featured in Harper's Weekly pre-election issue of October 31, 1868. ("C.S.A." stands for "Confederate States of America.") Gosh, Nast and Croffut make Ann Coulter seem like Miss Manners! Well -- almost.

Will improprieties and even crimes continue to crop up during the American electoral process? From time to time, sure. But they are by no means the handiwork of a "vast, right-wing conspiracy," nor exclusively of the Republican Party. If anything, they are a hallmark of the Democratic Party.

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Southpaw Hillary Throws A Sucker Punch is cross-posted at Jeremayakovka at Townhall

C'mon Hillary, It's ... Chinatown

A few days ago Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign committed a blunder in San Francisco by refusing journalists from the Chinese-American outlets Sing Tao, World Journal, and China Press admittal to her fundraiser at the posh Sheraton Palace Hotel. A dropped ball and a technicality led to the insulting standoff, for the campaign had failed to send out appropriate press advisories and then the reporters arrived mere minutes after the time specified for press admittance.

Why do they call us foreigners, even [when] we have a local address on our business card? asked World Journal's Portia Li, who was frustrated, upon arriving five minutes late, at being required to produce identification at the door before still being turned away. Let the conversation begin, Hillary proclaimed last month in her campaign's lauch vlog. Not quite, it seems.

The San Francisco Chronicle wasted no time in reporting the story, as well as the local CBS affiliate, liberal-busting blogger Michelle Malkin, and the ethnic media site New America Media. In an editorial last Sunday World Journal went so far as to demand a formal apology from Hillary's campaign.

* * *

While this appears to be a case of logistical carelessness rather than racist recklessness -- a New York Times reporter was similarly turned away from the Sheraton Palace fundraiser, and Hillary's representatives did publicly apologize for the incident -- it's a bad foot for Hillary to get started on in her California campaign.

California has always been a financial breadbasket for political fundraising, and especially Democratic fundraising. Now that California's presidential primary has been moved up to February 8, 2008, however, every candidate's stop in the state is undeniably a campaign stop as well. No candidate can commit snafus like the one that occurred last week and count on coming out on top on primary day. This is true of Hillary even more than of her opponents. Since California is home to some of the fringiest, most extreme and most absurd elements of the Democratic Party, a centrist like her has very little wiggle room to work within while strategizing to capture her party's primary. With several states moving their primaries up to February 8, that's a day on which both parties' eventual nominees may effectively be decided. Hillary will be counting on the Chinese-, other Asian-American, and other ethnic communities for their solid support between now and next February, while the several ethnic communities will, for their part, be counting on having free access to Hillary and to all the candidates.

* * *

Just for the record, Bill Clinton is remembered with exceptional fondness in much of San Francisco's Chinatown. For a decade he has literally been an icon at the historic Eastern Bakery at 720 Grant Street. Eastern is the very first Chinese bakery established in San Francisco's Chinatown, a fact of which its owners are very proud -- just as they are very proud of the former president's personal visit there. According to 101 Cookbooks:
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The walls are highlighted with poster-size portraits of Bill Clinton. They looove Bubba at the Eastern Bakery. There are little notes all over the Presidential posters that share with you all the details of his visit. We learn President Clinton tasted a genuine lotus paste mooncake, and that he visited the bakery nearly ten years ago. Other note-worthy text: "He shook hands with everybody inside our bakery. All of us, our customers and employees were thrilled, and it was just like a short but big, exciting and memorable party!!!" [emphases added]
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Hillary's going to have to work harder and smarter in order to not squander the legacy her husband left in Chinatown (a legacy which should be hers for the taking). Don't be surprised if during a future campaign stop in San Francisco she spends less time dining at the swank Sheraton Palace and more time doing damage control at the Eastern Bakery eatery.

Nader Surge?

Dick Morris speculates that if Hillary wraps up the Democratic nomination, a Ralph Nader candidacy could follow:

Hillary has rejected setting a timetable, saying that it undermines our mission and encourages the enemy to hang in there, and says she will vote against cutting off funds for our troops while they are in harm’s way. If she continues with these positions, she will become the right of the Democratic 2008 field....

[If Hillary] appeases the left enough to win the nomination, she may run smack into Ralph Nader as a professed, overt, and absolutely committed anti-war candidate. In a race of Rudy Giuliani vs. Hillary Clinton vs. Ralph Nader, a dedicated opponent of the war has only one possible vote: Nader.

The ranks of antiwar voters could swell Nader’s performance far above the dismal 1 percent he got in 2004 and even above the 3 percent he won in 2000. It is not inconceivable that Nader could pass 5-7 percent of the vote or go even higher if he is the only antiwar candidate in the field. [emphasis added]

Reuters: "Nader Leaves '08 Door Open, Slams Hillary"

Madame Macbeth

From "The Vaulting Ambition of America's Lady Macbeth":

As you consider her career this past 15 years or so in the public spotlight, it is impossible not to be struck, and even impressed, by the sheer ruthless, unapologetic, unshameable way in which she has pursued this ambition, and confirmed that there is literally nothing she will not do, say, think or feel to achieve it. Here, finally, is someone who has taken the black arts of the politician’s trade, the dissembling, the trimming, the pandering, all the way to their logical conclusion.

She is Not Amused

Thatcher made it on her own, which Hillary did not.
-- from "I Am Woman, Hear Me Bore"

See Hillary Run

* Updated *

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"Let's talk, let's chat, let's start a dialogue...."
-- from Hillary's "I'm In" video

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First thoughts about her '08 campaign:

* The camera pans right slightly to include the framed photo of Bill and Chelsea; holds; then pans back. Not the sharpest camera work.

* What's with the red-black-white-green color scheme? Americans are accustomed, especially in presidential candidates, to a combination of red-white-blue. I understand: her handlers are trying to do Laura Ashley overlaid upon Maggie Thatcher. But the result is not out of this world. It is out of Africa. Or Palestine.

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* Update (01/23) *

Obi's Sister also noticed that from these colors Hillary runs:

And she even forgot (?) to include a flag in the background of her “annoucement” video. No flag? What’s up with that? Surely it’s not any anti-American sentiment, is it? Sean Hannity had an interesting comment this afternoon on my drive home.... [He] said the leaves on the trees outside the window in the video didn’t match the current season. It could have been filmed in a studio with a stock window scene.... Or it was filmed in the fall, which would make her an out-and-out liar. In the fall, her positions were very different. But that’s never bothered her before.

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Related: "Elizabeth Edwards Awareness Month"