Clinton fires back

[Crick]

Democratic debate from Las Vegas, NV Thursday night. Can't wait until they are in Myrtle Beach, SC on Jan. 21, 2008 so I can have front row seats. :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21814191

http://www.newsweek.com/id/70707

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2007/11/15/why-exactly-did-clinton-win-tonight-s-debate.aspx

[Jolie Rouge]

Clinton hits 'boys' in Democratic debate
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 12 minutes ago

LAS VEGAS - Hillary Rodham Clinton showed she knows how to use the roughhouse tactics of the political boys club. Two weeks after a rocky presidential debate performance where she appeared at times both defensive and evasive, the New York senator came into Thursday's Democratic forum poised, confident and ready to rumble.

For the first time, she directly challenged the records of her top rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards. She even chided Edwards, her fiercest critic in this debate and others, for "throwing mud" Republican-style.

Spectators inside the debate hall appeared to echo that criticism, repeatedly booing Edwards and occasionally Obama when they criticized Clinton.

And after days of torturous contortions on whether she supported granting driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, Clinton was able to stand by and watch as Obama was tripped up on the issue this time.

"To the degree she might have been stumbling in the last debate, she regained her footing tonight," Democratic strategist Garry South said. "It was a very impressive performance by Hillary Clinton. She showed she could battle back criticism very well."

It was a night during which many of Clinton's rivals also turned in strong performances. Joe Biden demonstrated his expertise in foreign policy during an exchange over the growing crisis in Pakistan. Chris Dodd displayed his fluency on education issues, parrying a question on merit pay for teachers by saying he supported such pay for teachers in poor rural and urban districts.

But with exactly seven weeks until Iowa holds its leadoff caucuses, the dynamic between Clinton and her top two rivals loomed large. Polls show Clinton, Obama and Edwards locked in a tight three-way race in the state, and a Clinton win would be seen as her glide path to the nomination. Anything less and the nomination is up for grabs.

After months of avoiding any direct confrontation with her rivals, Clinton adopted a more aggressive tone. She took on Obama on his health care plan, arguing it would leave 15 million Americans uninsured. Obama has said he would first focus on bringing down costs.

She also noted that Edwards hadn't supported universal health care when he ran for president in 2004. "I'm glad he is now," she said.

Edwards responded by angrily denying he had "flip flopped" on important issues, as he's repeatedly accused Clinton of doing.

"Anybody who's not willing to change based on what they learn is ignorant, and everybody ought to be willing to do that," he said. "I'm saying there's a difference between that and saying the exact same two contrary things at exactly the same time."

If anything, the former first lady showed she knows how to learn from her mistakes.

After her rough outing in the last debate, Clinton lamented the "all-boys club of presidential politics" while her campaign advisers accused her male rivals of "piling on."

This time, Clinton smoothly deflected questions about whether she had played the gender card.

"It is clear, I think, from women's experiences that from time to time there may be some impediments," she said. "And it has been my goal over the course of my lifetime to be part of this great movement of progress that includes all of us, but has particularly been significant to me as a woman."

To be sure, it wasn't a perfect debate for Clinton.

Obama again cornered her on how she would keep Social Security solvent, a question she has sidestepped repeatedly. And she was forced to defend her Senate vote to take a more aggressive stand against Iran amid questions from a returning Iraq soldier and his mother who said they feared a showdown with Iran was coming next.

"Her weakest issue right now is Iran. It puts her at an enormous disadvantage in these debates," Democratic strategist Bill Carrick said.

But Clinton was able to take advantage of other moments to showcase her toughness on foreign policy.

In an exchange over the situation in Pakistan where Gen. Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said he believed that human rights were more important than U.S. national security.

Clinton flatly disagreed. "The first obligation of the president of the United States is to protect and defend the United States of America," she said.

The strangest moment in the debate — and the most fortuitous for Clinton — came over a discussion of granting licenses to illegal immigrants, a question that has haunted Clinton since the last debate.

Until this week, she said she generally supported governors' efforts to find ways to promote public safety in their states in the absence of federal immigration reform. But Wednesday, she completely reversed herself, announcing she opposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

When CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer pressed the candidates on whether they supported granting licenses, Obama gave a long and convoluted answer. When Clinton was asked, she simply said "no."


EDITOR'S NOTE — Beth Fouhy covers presidential politics for The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press writer Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071116/ap_po/democrats_debate_analysis;_ylt=AmgfCq7SaxjfKeSq9B. fAWys0NUE

[Jolie Rouge]

Did CNN Plant The Audience, Too?

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/11/did-cnn-plant-t.html

Actually, there are suggestions at some prominent Democrat sites that CNN didn't just plant questions, but perhaps in the administration of the debate, they created a situation where Hillary Clinton had a decided advantage. It's mentioned at DailyKos ( http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/16/11735/441 ) but the best information is here http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/elicorp/CxRb Admittedly, it comes from an Obama fan. But if you think about the logistics, it's hard to imagine Hillary wouldn't have a home crowd.


I want to comment on a couple of issues relating to the Debate because I feel it is important to speak out about it. I have had some inside information about how this debate was conducted and I think that CNN and those who organized this debate have a responsiblity to answer for the way it was conducted.

Of particular note, if accurate, is that of 1,000 tickets given to UNLV, only a hundred made it into the hands of students. Both Edwards and Obama do better among younger Democrats. And as for dissemination of tickets by the Nevada Democrats, Jill Derby the Democrat Chair is a moderate with some friends close to Hillary. Does the name Begala ring a bell?


Derby has had numerous supporters. CNN political anaylst, as the Reno Gazette-Journal reported, Paul Begala, who helped engineer Bill Clinton's 1992 win, said he was encouraged by U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to “stump” for Derby.

I'd stop short of calling it a conspiracy, as some Democrats are doing http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/elicorp/CxRb But if it's true that each candidate only had 22 tickets out of 2,000, in a state where Hillary is polling 20+ points ahead of everyone else, if no steps were taken to balance the audience, that might explain why she was cheered, while several others were booed.


There were only 2000 available tickets. 1000 of those tickets were given to the Nevada State Democratic Party, of which I was a member in 2005 and 2006. The other 1000 tickets were given to UNLV. Now here is where it gets interesting. The 1000 tickets given to the NSDP were given to people who were in high ranking positions, of which several of my friends are involved with the NSDP. Those friends were able to go to the Debate at Cox Pavilion. Some of my other friends who are not as involved in the Nevada State Democratic Party were excluded. So you have the State Party who pre-selected who they wanted to go. Many of the people in the NSDP are very sympathetic to Sen. Clinton. It's no secret, its just a fact of the State Party. According to my sources, not only did they pre-select who went to the Debate, they actually based it on the percentage of the various minorities in the state. So 15% of the people had to be Hispanic, 10% had to be African-American, and there were various other groups which were required to be selected by the Nevada State Democratic Party.

So what happened to the UNLV tickets? Didn't they go to students? Not exactly. About 100 or so tickets did go to the students, and they held a lottery which selected certain students for the Debate. The other 900 or so tickets actually went to UNLV staff and professors and their family members. I am not joking, this is what I have been told by a very reliable source in Las Vegas.




Woman who asked Hillary moronic “diamonds/pearls” question:
CNN set me up!
posted at 12:19 pm on November 16, 2007 by Allahpundit

I’m mildly suspicious that her MySpace page says she’s 15 years old when she introduced herself last night as being a UNLV student http://www.myspace.com/maria_luisa_rocks , but maybe she just hasn’t updated the page in awhile. Ambinder claims to have confirmed that she is who she says she is with one of her friends and the MySpace photo does look just like her, so, fine. http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/diamond_v_pearl_student_blasts_1.php

She’s speaking out this morning because her classmates understandably want to know why she’d ask a question that makes them all look developmentally disabled by extension. Don’t blame me, she responds, blame CNN. Would they really sandbag one of their questioners this way? Well … yeah.


“Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN,” Luisa writes. “I was asked to submit questions including “lighthearted/fun” questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.”…

That’s what the media does. See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted. That’s politics; that’s reality. So, if you want to read about real issues important to America–and the whole world, I suggest you pick up a copy of the Economist or the New York Times or some other independent source.

In CNN’s defense, the “diamonds/pearls” debate is increasingly germane to Democratic voters these days.


----

"Diamonds v. Pearls" Student Blasts CNN (Updated With CNN Response)
16 Nov 2007 11:21 am

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance."

Now, Luisa is getting "swamped" with critical e-mails.

So what happened?

Writes Luisa:


"CNN ran out of time and used me to "close" the debate with the pearls/diamonds question. Seconds later this girl comes up to me and says, "you gave our school a bad reputation.' Well, I had to explain to her that every question from the audience was pre-planned and censored. That's what the media does. See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted. That's politics; that's reality. So, if you want to read about real issues important to America--and the whole world, I suggest you pick up a copy of the Economist or the New York Times or some other independent source. If you want me to explain to you how the media works, I am more than happy to do so. But do not judge me or my integrity based on that question."

Rivals to Clinton believe that the debate audience had a pro-Clinton tilt. UNLV was responsible for distributing most of the tickets.

In a separate post, Luisa provides the question she wanted to ask:


Yucca Mountain, NV is the proposed site for the country's nuclear waste repository. Despite scientific evidence that it is a vulnerable site, the federal government continues to push for the plan to move forward. The evidence relied on is unsound and the risks involved in transporting high-level radioactive waste across the country are high. What will you [Sen. Clinton] do to ensure that the best site/s is/are chosen for the storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel?

Sam Feist, the executive producer of the debate, said that the student was asked to choose another question because the candidates had already spent about ten minutes discussing Yucca Mountain.


"When her Yucca mountain question was asked, she was given the opportunity to ask another question, and my understanding is that the [diamond v. pearls] questions was her other question," Feist said. "She probably was disappointed, but we spent a lot of time with a bunch of different candidates on Yucca Mountain, and we were at the end of the debate."

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/diamond_v_pearl_student_blasts_1.php

[Crick]

The fact that in polls, Clinton is favored by 51% of Democrats in Nevada doesn't come into play either. :rollseyes: Love how people refuse to give Clinton her dues when she does well but love to bash her when she stumbles like she had the previous weeks. Hillary was in top form with Biden a close second. Thank goodness that SC has such a strong Republican base and I expect to get tickets to the Democratic Debate when it's held in Myrtle Beach on Jan. 21. ;)

[Jolie Rouge]

Love how people refuse to give Clinton her dues when she does well but love to bash her when she stumbles like she had the previous weeks.

LOL I have been on her case for YEARS ..... so I will assume this refers to the "media" in general and not myself.


A look at the Politics of Planting.

Why did so many of the “undecided voters” who asked questions at last week’s Democrat debate turn out to be either anti-war, labor, race politics or Democrat party activists?

Watch this video on blip : http://blip.tv/file/492516



[i]My favorite by far was the one Obama apparently just intuited was a member of the Culinary Workers’ Union.

Now for the real question.

We have heard that all the questions were pre approved by CNN…

Were they also (as I suspect from Obama’s remark) given to the candidates? Were they allowed to prep for these ?

Those aren’t questions, they were retorical lead-ins intended to allow the candidates to speak about a pre-determined, practiced, memorized talking points.

[Crick]

LOL I have been on her case for YEARS ..... so I will assume this refers to the "media" in general and not myself.


A look at the Politics of Planting.

Why did so many of the “undecided voters” who asked questions at last week’s Democrat debate turn out to be either anti-war, labor, race politics or Democrat party activists?

Watch this video on blip : http://blip.tv/file/492516



[i]My favorite by far was the one Obama apparently just intuited was a member of the Culinary Workers’ Union.

Now for the real question.

We have heard that all the questions were pre approved by CNN…

Were they also (as I suspect from Obama’s remark) given to the candidates? Were they allowed to prep for these ?

Those aren’t questions, they were retorical lead-ins intended to allow the candidates to speak about a pre-determined, practiced, memorized talking points.



If the candidates knew ahead of time what questions would be asked it looks even worse for Obama and Edwards the way they stuttered and couldn't give a straight answer. Clinton and Biden won hands down on the debate. Jolie, I know you are anti-Clinton just as I am anti-Bush.

http://news.yahoo.com/page/election-2008-political-pulse-11202007 Interesting poll by the Associated Press and Yahoo

[Jolie Rouge]

Former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson comes out of the closet she was never fully in

Last month, the Hillary Clinton campaign proudly released this news:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=3833


During Senator Clinton’s recent campaign stop at a high school in Salem, New Hampshire to announce her “Agenda for Working Families,” Clinton received an unexpected endorsement from former ABC News Anchorwoman Carole Simpson.

During the question and answer portion of the event, Simpson stood up and stated that she had something to say to the Senator and what better time than to do it now. “I want to tell you tonight, because I happen to be here with my students, that I endorse you for president of the United States. It’s very freeing now that I’m not a journalist and I can speak my mind. I think you are the woman, and I think this is the time,” she eloquently stated. She added that she had a dream that there would be a woman president in her lifetime.

“I am very honored to have Carole Simpson’s endorsement and it was a wonderful surprise to hear during the event,” said Clinton. “I look forward to Carole’s continued support throughout the campaign season.”

In January 2007, Simpson joined the faculty at Emerson College in Boston. Prior to joining Emerson College, Simpson had a prominent journalism career. Simpson anchored ABC World News Tonight Sunday from 1988-2003, joined ABC News from NBC News in 1982. Prior to joining NBC News in 1974, she was an instructor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Simpson helped anchor ABC’s coverage of events, including the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa, the Tiananmen Square massacre and events surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing. Her reports have appeared on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Good Morning America, 20/20, Nightline and numerous ABC Special Events programs. Simpson moderated the 1992 presidential debate; she was the first woman and first African American to do so.

You can listen to the audio of Simpson’s fawning over Hillary right here:



This, of course, is no surprise to anyone who watched Simpson at ABC News over the years. Funny that she declares herself more liberated now. When she was still at ABC, she openly fawned over Hillary six years ago upon her Senate election without any inhibitions: http://mrc.org/notablequotables/bestof/2001/press_mediabias.asp


“What an exhilarating moment it must have been for [Hillary Clinton] - the first First Lady in history to be elected to public office. There, for all the nay-sayers to see, was the woman who had finally come into her own, free at last to be smart, outspoken, independent, and provocative, all qualities she had been forced as First Lady, to ‘hide under a bushel.’ Still she was voted one of America’s most admired women. Just wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

– “On My Mind” ABCNews.com commentary by ABC anchor Carole Simpson


And Newsbusters remembers Simpson’s nauseating exchange with Bill Clinton in 1999 at a tomato factory: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/10/18/hillary-backing-carole-simpson-just-liberal-abc-news


Most infamously, in a 1999 interview with President Bill Clinton at an Arkansas tomato processing plant, Simpson made the story all about herself and her glory:

“I have to bask in this moment, for a moment, because I am here talking to the most powerful man on the planet, who was a poor boy from Arkansas….I am an African-American woman, grew up working class on the south side of Chicago, and this is a pretty special moment for me to be here talking to you. How does it feel talking to me? That I made it, too, when people said I wouldn’t be able to?”

Clinton: “It’s a great country.”

What is news is that some of her colleagues are actually disturbed by her declaration. Not that Simpson will have to suffer any real consequences for stepping over the line. Via yesterday’s Boston Globe: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/10/18/hillary-backing-carole-simpson-just-liberal-abc-news


It was an unorthodox political endorsement, to be sure. And in throwing her support behind presidential candidate Hillary Clinton with an unprompted, heartfelt speech at a New Hampshire rally last month, Carole Simpson, the longtime ABC news anchor-turned-Emerson College journalism instructor, flung herself into the partisan fires.



While Clinton was quite taken by the unexpected backing, quickly issuing a press release touting it, others have taken offense. Over the past month, news of Simpson’s endorsement has barreled across the blogosphere, seized on by conservatives as proof of liberal media bias. And Emerson students and faculty continue to debate the ethics of a journalism instructor and well-known former reporter making a public show of support for a political candidate.

Simpson, 65, said she immediately regretted her actions and offered her resignation the next day, which university officials refused to accept. Now Simpson is considering an offer from the Clinton campaign to stump for the candidate, namely before black audiences in the South. She and other university officials have agreed she will not teach political journalism courses if she campaigns for Clinton.

“I know I made a mistake. It was definitely the wrong venue for my first foray into free speech,” Simpson said. “But I’d really like to see her win. After being a reporter for so many years, where you wish you could do more than you can, it would be nice to make a difference.”


So, she won’t teach “political journalism.”

What kind of “journalism,” then, will she teach?

***

Hugh Hewitt:


Wow, what a shocker. An MSMer turns out to root for the lefty. Is anyone really surprised? This is the MSM, and 90% of its senior elites are Democrats masquerading as “objective” analysts. They all deny this while working, but in retirement it turns out they have been card-carrying lefties their whole lives. They tell us it didn’t affect their work, but we laugh and move on.

[Jolie Rouge]

Clinton ad takes on Republican attacks
Tue Nov 20, 4:07 PM ET

CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton is pointing to her Republican critics as a sign of her own political strength in a new television ad that was to begin airing in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

The 30-second spot, titled "Machine" begins with a screen showing brief cuts of anti-Clinton ads from Republican rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney. The clips play under the title "The Republican Attack Machine" and end with shots of McCain and Romney's faces.

"Here they go again — the same old Republican attack machine is back. Why?" an announcer says. "Maybe it's because they know that there's one candidate with the strength and experience to get us out of Iraq," the announcer continues. "The strength to fight, the experience to lead."

The ad airs as Republicans increasingly have been using Clinton as a political foil. Republican Rudy Giuliani joked at her expense Friday in a speech before the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. In a speech in New Hampshire on Sunday, McCain cast himself as the Republican best able to defeat Clinton in a general election.

Romney has run ads in New Hampshire saying Clinton has no experience as an executive and compares her White House years as first lady to that of an intern. McCain has run ads in New Hampshire criticizing Clinton's attempt as New York senator to get $1 million in federal money for a Woodstock museum in Bethel, N.Y., to commemorate the 1969 rock festival.

The Clinton camp is running a different ad in Iowa that features a testimonial from a father whose son received a bone marrow transplant after he said her Senate office intervened and helped. "I trusted this woman to save my son's life. And she did," the father says.

The two ads underscore the different challenges facing Clinton in each state. In Iowa, where she is in a virtual three-way tie with Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards, a recent New York Times poll showed that nearly half of voters believe she has a tendency to say what people want to hear rather than what she believes.

In New Hampshire, where she leads Obama by double digits, voters are more likely to believe she is being sincere, the poll found. By drawing a contrast with Republicans, Clinton's latest ad may also resonate with independent voters who can vote in New Hampshire's primary.

Romney's campaign accused Clinton of engaging in partisanship. "Senator Clinton has shown us time and time again that she is more interested in political posturing than any core principles," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said.

The McCain campaign offered a slightly different take. "It's our sincere hope that Senator Clinton continues using her massive warchest to feature John McCain in her TV advertising," said spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker.

The Republican National Committee also weighed in. "Senator Clinton has spent her entire career blaming her problems on her political opponents," spokesman Danny Diaz said. "The only things that are the 'same' and 'old' are Hillary Clinton's excuses."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_ad;_ylt=AgC_4KKLObTHh9uVfjobtDhAw_IE



Clinton mocks Obama on foreign policy
By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer
32 minutes ago

SHENANDOAH, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama on Tuesday for his contention that living abroad as a child helped give him a better understanding of the foreign policy challenges facing the U.S. "Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face," Clinton said. "I think we need a president with more experience than that, someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to and has confidence in."

Obama's retort: "I was wondering which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq."

Clinton's conclusion: "This campaign is getting kind of heated now. It's getting a little more exciting and intense."

A day earlier, touting his foreign policy credentials, Obama had said his life experience gave him a better feel for international issues than most candidates gain from official trips to other nations.

He noted his father was from Kenya and that he himself spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. "Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact I spent four years overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia," he said Monday.

Clinton has been slapping harder at Obama on the issue of experience — on Monday she said the nation's economy "can't afford on-the-job training" for the next president — as surveys show them in a tight race with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for January's leadoff caucuses in Iowa.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Obama with 30 percent support among likely Democratic caucus-goers, Clinton with 26 percent and Edwards with 22 percent. About half the Clinton supporters who were surveyed said they had never attended a caucus compared with 43 percent of Obama supporters — a finding that could be significant because voters considered the most reliable caucus participants are those who have caucused before.

After learning of her comments Tuesday, Obama responded during a town hall-style meeting in a gym in Conway, N.H. "I mentioned that one of the reasons that I got it right when it came to Iraq was because I lived overseas when I was a child," he said. "It gives me some judgment and perspective around what other people think about America and how they might react or respond when we make some of the decisions that we do."

"Of course, both the Republicans, in their talking points, as well as Senator Clinton said, 'Well, I don't think that what Senator Obama did when he was 10 years old is relevant to our national security.' I didn't say that."

Clinton made her remarks to a crowd in Iowa Tuesday — but from a state away. She had been scheduled to open the second day of a campaign trip through Iowa with a town hall meeting in Shenandoah, but aides said her plane was unable to land because of fog, disappointing more than 400 people gathered to hear her speech. She addressed them by speaker phone — from Omaha, Neb.

She sought to compare her experience — a two-term New York senator after eight years as first lady — with that of Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois. "I offer the experience of being battle-tested in the political wars here at home," said Clinton, arguing that her background not only was superior as a potential president but also made her the most electable Democrat. "For 15 years I've been the object of the Republican attack machine and I'm still here," she said.

She said she would be ready to address the problems facing the country on her first day in the White House. "We have so many issues to deal with," she said. "I've traveled the world on behalf of our country. I've met with countless world leaders and know many of them personally."

Aides said she made more than 70 overseas trips as first lady, was actively involved in policy during her husband's tenure in office and has been closely involved in foreign policy issues during her Senate tenure.

Obama's take on that: "A long resume does not guarantee good judgment."

At his final stop of the day in Laconia, N.H., Obama said "one of my rivals" — he wouldn't say Clinton's name — was ignoring his personal interest in U.S. security. "I accept the challenge of any other candidate when it comes to being concerned about safety. I have a 9-year-old and 6-year-old daughter in a major American city. Don't tell me I don't care about keeping America safe," he said. "We will strike anybody who threatens American lives and American interests. That's not the question. The question is, what other kinds of power can we bring to make us more safe?"

He did, however, utter Clinton's name during a question-and-answer session when talking about her failed effort to overhaul the health care system in the 1990s, when she was first lady.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_obama_11;_ylt=Ajt4Gas58LjzJPSdMmJBQAth24cA

[Jolie Rouge]

Clinton sharpens attack on Obama's experience
By Kay Henderson
1 hour, 38 minutes ago

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton sharpened her attacks on rival Barack Obama's experience on Tuesday, a day after a poll showed her falling slightly behind him in Iowa.

Six weeks before Iowa kicks off the state-by-state battle for the Democratic nomination, Clinton questioned Obama's claim that living in a foreign country as a youth helped shape his world view and contribute to his experience. "Voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face," Clinton said during a campaign stop in Shenandoah, Iowa. "I think we need a president with more experience than that," said Clinton, who has repeatedly touted her own experience as first lady and questioned the readiness of the first-term senator from Illinois for the White House.

Obama has said his four years living in Indonesia as a child contributed to his knowledge of the world and how people live around the globe. Campaigning in New Hampshire, he said experience was no substitute for judgment and criticized Clinton's votes to authorize military action in Iraq in 2003. Remarking that Clinton has said she has met with world leaders, Obama said: "Which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq?"

"There are a couple guys named Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who had two of the longest resumes in Washington and led us into the biggest foreign policy disaster of a generation," Obama said at a campaign stop in Alton, New Hampshire. "So a long resume doesn't guarantee good judgment. A long resume says nothing about your character."

It was the second consecutive day that Obama and Clinton have exchanged barbs on the question of experience, and follows the release of a Washington Post-ABC News poll on Monday showing Obama opening a four-point lead over Clinton in Iowa, within the statistical margin of error.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was four points behind Clinton, setting up a tight three-way race in the January 3 contest in Iowa that will open the campaign to pick nominees for the November 4, 2008, general election.

Clinton leads national polls in the Democratic race, but a loss in Iowa could slow her momentum and puncture the air of inevitability her campaign has tried to promote.

The Edwards camp, accused of mudslinging by Clinton during the last debate, criticized her comments about Obama. Spokesman Chris Kofinis said: "When it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another."

The New York senator debuted a new television commercial on Tuesday touting her ability to stand up to Republican attacks.

It opens with shots of anti-Clinton ads from Republican rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney, labeled "The Republican Attack Machine," and end with shots of their faces. "The same old Republican attack machine is back. Why?" an announcer asks. "Maybe it's because they know that there's one candidate with the strength and experience to get us out of Iraq."

Knowing the ropes in Washington meant appeasing special interests that block key issues such as health care reform and new energy policies, Obama said. "I hear candidates say, 'Elect me because I know how to play the game better in Washington.' We don't need somebody who plays the game better. We need somebody to put an end to the game-playing," Obama said.

(Additional reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jason Szep in New Hampshire)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at http:/blogs.reuters.com/trail08/ )

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/ts_nm/usa_politics_democrats_dc_2;_ylt=An4YgUOcumSFYQ7uZ sirvQph24cA

[Jolie Rouge]

THE MEDIA LOVE THE CLINTONS
CAROLE SIMPSON'S HILLARY LOVEFEST
November 26, 2007

HIDE your children! An other journalist is engaging in PDCA - Public Display of Clinton Affection.

Not since 1998 - when women's magazine writer Nina Burleigh told The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that she'd be happy to give President Bill Clinton oral sex to "thank him for keeping abortion legal" - have we seen such open and obsequious Clinton worship as ex-ABC newswoman Carole Simpson gave to Hillary last month.

At a Clinton campaign stop in New Hampshire, Simpson stood up and declared: "I want to tell you tonight, because I happen to be here with my students, that I endorse you for president of the United States. It's very freeing now that I'm not a journalist and I can speak my mind. I think you are the woman, and I think this is the time." The crowd erupted in applause.

Sen. Clinton immediately issued a press release about the "eloquent," unsolicited endorsement and featured the audio clip of Simpson's grandstanding on her campaign Web site.

Geez, Professor Simpson, get a room already.

Yes, Professor Simpson. You see, Simpson felt free to gush because she's "not a journalist" anymore. But, as a faculty member at Emerson College's School of Communications in Boston, she is training the next generation of Serious Media Professionals.

Weeks after joining the Hillary bandwagon, Simpson admitted to The Boston Globe that she "made a mistake." But there will be no repercussions. Despite telling BlackAmericaWeb.com earlier this year that "I still think of myself as a reporter who is now teaching about reporting," Simpson is now "considering an offer from the Clinton campaign to stump for the candidate" in front of black Southern audiences. In exchange, the college asked her not to teach "political journalism courses."

But what journalism lessons wouldn't be political in Simpson's hands? "I anchored for 15 years," Simpson snorted, "and I defy anyone to have determined my political feelings from that." Oh, Professor Simpson, you make this too easy.

At the Hillary campaign event, she basked in her supposed liberation from contraints of a working journalist. But Simpson showed her pro-Clinton, liberal bias while anchoring at ABC for years without any inhibitions.

Here she is engaging in PDCA in a piece for ABCNews.com after Hillary won her Senate seat in 2000:

"What an exhilarating moment it must have been for [Hillary] - the first First Lady in history to be elected to public office. There, for all the nay-sayers to see, was the woman who had finally come into her own, free at last to be smart, outspoken, independent, and provocative, all qualities she had been forced as First Lady, to 'hide under a bushel.' Still she was voted one of America's most admired women. Just wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet."

The title of her love letter: "Long Live Hillary." Not very hard to determine the professor's feelings from that.

Need more? Here's Simpson gushing over Bill Clinton - and herself - in a 1999 interview at an Arkansas tomato factory

"I have to bask in this moment, for a moment, because I am here talking to the most powerful man on the planet, who was a poor boy from Arkansas. . . I am an African-American woman, grew up working class on the south side of Chicago, and this is a pretty special moment for me to be here talking to you. How does it feel talking to me? That I made it, too, when people said I wouldn't be able to?"

Clinton responded: "It's a great country."

The Media Research Center also points out that Simpson also attacked Clarence Thomas in 2000 as the "cruelest" Supreme Court justice "because he has consistently voted against human rights.

And the 1994 GOP sweep in Congress provoked this reaction from her: "I would like to think that the American people care about poor people, about sick people, about homeless people, and about poor children. I am shocked by the new mean-spiritedness."

Few will be shocked by Professor Simpson's coming-out party - or by the Clinton campaign's ready embrace of this self-important liberal activist who has masqueraded as a fair and objective journalist for more than two decades. The only real surprise is that Simpson and her Serious Professional Journalism colleagues bother to keep up the pretense of neutrality and perform their media ethics kabuki theater.

C'mon, media titans: Just "liberate" yourselves from self-delusion, put on the Team Hillary and Team Democrat t-shirts, and be done with it.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11262007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_media_love_the_clintons_933302.htm

[Crick]

What no report about Oprah Winfrey, one of the most powerful celebrities in America fundraising for Obama and endorsing him for President? How about Chuck Norris and Ric Flair stomping for Huckabee (R)? Guess it's only wrong if a celebrity adds their name to the Clintons. :rollseyes:

[Jolie Rouge]

I don't even *know* who Ric Flair is ... Chuck Norris isn't exactly on anyone's "A-list" of Celebs ( neigther is Huckabee ;) ) and Oprah is a talk show host and media mogul .. not a supposedly "objective" journalist and MSM anchor personality.

[Jolie Rouge]

Clinton the organized
As first lady, the senator didn't win every battle. But she was known for showing up thoroughly, perhaps obsessively, prepared.
By Stephen Braun, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2007

WASHINGTON -- She always came prepared. From the first planning sessions for her husband's victorious 1992 presidential run through the final 1994 White House meetings she chaired as the Clinton administration's ill-fated healthcare initiative collapsed, Hillary Rodham Clinton was a force to be reckoned with as a decision-maker.

Her debut on the national stage in the early 1990s was a defining era for Clinton, a period when she emerged as Bill Clinton's most influential campaign strategist and policy advisor. She was forceful and methodical in shaping the Clinton administration's domestic policies and political strategy, and proved to be a disciplined partner to her famously disorganized husband: commanding, opinionated, daunting. "Bill talked about social change, I embodied it," Clinton wrote in "Living History" her autobiography.

Meetings were her milieu. She would arrive toting the crisp yellow legal pads she had carried habitually since her days as a corporate lawyer. Armed with an exhaustively researched grasp of the issues at hand, she would press for still more options while lacerating opposing arguments with surgical precision.

Clinton's all-access pass into the West Wing gave her an intimate education in presidential decision-making that none of her opponents can claim. She observed at close range how big government works, and she learned painfully from her missteps how easily it bogs down.

Yet Clinton has never exercised ultimate executive authority. Unlike some of her campaign rivals, she has no experience in managing massive state budgets or city bureaucracies, a critique pointedly raised by former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The healthcare initiative started out as Clinton's most ambitious experiment in policymaking and ended up as her greatest management failure, trailing criticism that her performance was flawed by hubris, inflexibility and a penchant for secrecy and political combat.

On the campaign trail, Clinton has offered her assurances that the scars left from her healthcare experience came with lessons learned. Her tight-knit New York Senate office, disciplined campaigns and studied effort to win over legislative colleagues are all evidence, her partisans say, of how she would run her own shop differently in the White House.

But her gates-drawn stance raised concerns that shadow her presidential bid today -- that she reacts with a siege mentality under pressure, retreating behind a restrictive wall of presidential and attorney privilege.

"There's no question that her first instinct was to protect herself and the president," said former Clinton chief of staff Leon E. Panetta.

Presidential historian James McGregor Burns, who studied the uneasy dynamics of the Clinton White House, said that even her setbacks amounted to "educational failures" that toughened her for the long run.

"She's been tested over and over again," Burns said. "The question for voters is whether they feel she passed those tests and whether they think she learned from them."

She'd had some practice

Hillary Clinton's emergence as a key advisor in her husband's 1991 presidential run was hardly sudden. She had worked as a field organizer in Texas during George S. McGovern's defeat in 1972 and in Indiana in 1976 as part of Jimmy Carter's winning campaign.

Clinton also had limited management experience -- as a Wal-Mart director and as board chairman at the activist Children's Defense League, where her successor, Donna E. Shalala -- later a Clinton administration Health secretary -- recalled her as a "natural leader. She took on the same kinds of problems that corporate executives deal with."

From the start, Clinton's campaign role was left as amorphous as possible, allowing her to carve out her own domain. "No one raised a question about how her role was defined," recalled lawyer Mickey Kantor, the campaign chairman. "It was assumed. You wanted her involved at the highest level."

Involved she was, and in everything. She used her ties to New York legal circles to raise cash and tap political pros. While staffers took a breather on a bus caravan through Texas, old friend Bill Burton watched as "Hillary sat in the back and took charge of a press release on natural-gas policy." As she peppered her husband's aides with strategy, she was empire-building -- cherry-picking loyalists who would work at the core of her White House staff.

Kantor and other campaign veterans credit her as the driving force behind the rapid-response "war room" operation. Later, she rode herd on the "defense team," a cloistered group of staffers and lawyers who fended off media queries about the couple's financial deals, rumors of Bill's infidelity and his youthful dealings with Arkansas draft officials during the Vietnam War. "She methodically set down the counter-strategy in a disciplined way," said Betsey Wright, who ran the unit from Little Rock, Ark.

Anything related to the Clinton investments was Hillary's turf, Wright told an aide in a May 1992 e-mail now filed in the National Archives: "Hillary asked me to have no inquiries about their personal finances go to anybody without my personal decision."

Clinton was just as fierce in guarding her reputation. During the primaries in April 1992, when Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot suggested that two 1970s-era articles she had written about childhood legal rights might be read as encouraging children to sue their parents, Clinton directed her advisors to fashion a full-throttle defense. Aides lined up support from two dozen policy and medical experts, from Shalala to pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton.

The issue lay ignored for months, until George H.W. Bush's nomination at the GOP convention in Houston. When conservative activist Pat Buchanan growled at her "radical feminism," citing her old writings in a prime-time jeremiad, Clinton unleashed her experts. The furor spiked briefly, then flared out.

Clinton's people look back on the episode as a foreshadowing of the congressional investigations and ideological sniping that plagued her as first lady.

They also regard it a defining moment that "showed her thoroughness," said Melanne Verveer, who worked on the response and later was Hillary Clinton's White House chief of staff. "She's fact-based and pragmatic, and she's good at synthesizing issues quickly."

Once she makes a decision, "she sticks to it," adds Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's campaign manager. "There's no coulda, woulda, shoulda."

Her turf moved west

In the White House, Bill Clinton allowed his wife to define her territory. She quickly took on the healthcare portfolio and prodded support for social programs including the Americorps volunteer program and nationwide immunization for children.

Her aides prospected for a West Wing office, a marked departure from the traditional East Wing exile for presidents' wives. Their search led to a brief spat with Vice President Al Gore's circle over who would roost in a spacious West Wing suite that previously had been the vice president's quarters. "These physical and staff changes were important," Clinton wrote later in her autobiography, "if I was going to be working on Bill's agenda." Her purview, as she saw it, was "issues affecting women, children and families."

As a boss, she inspired equal amounts of devotion and fear. She built an insular White House fiefdom known as Hillaryland, surrounding herself with a tightknit band of loyalists who skillfully advanced her causes, but who were also criticized for isolating her from political realities.

Hillaryland's denizens began to jokingly refer to themselves as "the Stepford Wives." Their unflinching devotion gained them wide berth in the West Wing.

Staffers were expected to work grueling hours and report back any development that involved the first lady. She kept them busy with news clippings that she covered with scrawled questions and filed in a cardboard carton in her office.

Mistakes were tolerated, but Clinton led intense post-mortems to keep her people focused. A well-aimed glare or a roll of the eyes told them all they needed to know. "She'd stare at us and say, 'Who was the cause of this?' And all of us would raise our hands," press assistant Neel Lattimore recalled.

Clinton cemented their loyalty with personal touches. She showed up at the hospital when Solis Doyle's son and daughter were born. She played White House tour guide for Lattimore's parents when he was in China doing advance work for Clinton.

Shirley Sagawa, the first policy aide ever hired by a first lady, was "slightly terrified" when she found herself assigned to a high-profile cubicle just outside Clinton's West Wing office. Clinton reassured her by playing with her toddler while Sagawa was busy lighting fires under Clinton's favored programs.

Clinton acted "like a de facto chief of staff," said James Pfiffner, a professor of public policy at George Mason University. "She would focus debate in meetings while Bill Clinton would go on and on. She's a very tough manager, and I think she would run a very tough ship."

But other experts in presidential power caution that White House decision-making is not easily mastered by osmosis. A Hillary Clinton presidency would start out as a gamble, said presidential historian Forrest McDonald. "There's still a world of difference between making the hard decisions and being an advisor," McDonald said.

( continues )

[Jolie Rouge]

High-wire act flopped

The first lady's management of the initiative to overhaul American healthcare remains her closest approximation of high-wire decision-making.

She ran the meetings in which seminal decisions were made and set an impatient tone for prodding allies in the Democratic-controlled Congress. In memos, aides tallied 95 meetings Clinton held with legislators. They also plotted how to target balky moderate legislators with preelection visits from "field operatives."

Bill Clinton now insists that she has "taken the rap" over the years for the healthcare debacle. The effort's failings "were far more my fault than hers," he told MSNBC recently.

But under her watch, the healthcare task force became a bureaucratic fiefdom. More than 500 officials churned out reports that funneled into a 1,300-page plan. As they prodded the effort forward, Clinton and her top officials also worried that intrusive media and Washington healthcare lobbyists would "overwhelm the process," recalled Christopher Jennings, then her healthcare liaison to Congress.

She appeared sensitive to scrutiny from the start. Just three days after her husband gave her authority over the healthcare plan, she was already considering limits on public access to the plan's records. In a Jan. 28, 1993, memo, deputy counsel Vincent Foster advised the first lady and Ira Magaziner, who devised the complex healthcare process structure, that task-force records might be withheld from release under the Freedom of Information Act if the files remained "in the control of the president."

Her response is not known because many of her healthcare documents have not been released. The Clinton library in Little Rock has released scores of healthcare memos sent to the first lady. But none of her own memos or notes is available, and though some are now scheduled for release early next year, others may remain locked away until after the 2008 election.

Her doggedness was not matched by her coalition-building skills. Chicagoan Dan Rostenkowski, the gruff, powerful former House Ways and Means chairman, felt that congressional committees should lead the way. "None of the people in your think tank can vote," he recalls telling Clinton. "She wasn't persuaded."

She courted skeptical Senate Finance Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but undercut the stroking with threats. At a weekend retreat after the State of the Union address in 1993, she dismissed worries about meeting a 100-day deadline set by her husband for a healthcare bill. Asked what would happen if they were late, she said: "You don't understand. We will demonize those who are blocking this legislation and it will pass."

"She was naive," recalled former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, who was in the audience.

Clinton's management of the healthcare initiative was further shaken by a spate of personal and legal crises: Foster's suicide, the furor over the firing of White House travel aides, and Republican calls for the appointment of a Whitewater special prosecutor. The constant rounds of meetings with lawyers and aides to contend with the pressure sapped her time and patience and began to divert her attention from healthcare.

"What concerned her when she walked into White House meetings in those days was that she might be blindsided by some new development," Panetta recalled. "She felt she had to grab control of things. To a lawyer, the worst thing you can do is walk into a surprise. But not every case called for a lawyer's mind-set. Sometimes it was more a political problem than a legal one."

By the end of 1994, the landscape had shifted. Congress had gone Republican. There was a new special prosecutor, and more inquiries to come. Healthcare, she lamented later, had "faded with barely a whimper."

But Clinton endured. She coped by withdrawing from her high-limelight policy role. Her power remained, but she was quieter about showing it, more selective in using it. Her legendary preparation turned to taking stock.

She opened up slightly about what she learned from her rough passages in a February 2001 speech. "I learned some valuable lessons," she told her listeners, "about the political process, the importance of bipartisan cooperation and the wisdom of taking small steps to get a big job done."

Her audience was the U.S. Senate.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-hillarydecisions27nov27,0,3096734.story?coll=la-home-center

There were high-fives all around the Clinton campaign this morning after they picked up their paper and read this article on the front page of the L.A. Times. Marvel at the bootlicking apparent in the first few paragraphs...

Wow. “She always came prepared.” She was “a force to be reckoned with as a decision-maker.” She “emerged as Bill Clinton’s most influential campaign strategist and policy advisor.” She was “forceful and methodical in shaping the Clinton administration’s domestic policies and political strategy, and proved to be a disciplined partner” to Bill. She was “commanding, opinionated, daunting.” She came to meetings “[a]rmed with an exhaustively researched grasp of the issues at hand.” And in argument, she was commonly found “lacerating opposing arguments with surgical precision.”

Surgical precision!

She had an “all-access pass into the West Wing” which “gave her an intimate education in presidential decision-making that none of her opponents can claim.”

This article could hardly be any more sycophantic if Hillary’s own campaign had written it.

Yeah, sure, there are “buts” coming — but they are safely tucked away on the back pages, where most readers will never turn. Here’s what you see if you turn aaaaaallll the way back to page A18:


government works, and she learned painfully from her missteps how easily it bogs down.

Yet Clinton has never exercised ultimate executive authority. Unlike some of her campaign rivals, she has no experience in managing massive state budgets or city bureaucracies, a critique pointedly raised by former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The healthcare initiative started out as Clinton’s most ambitious experiment in policymaking and ended up as her greatest management failure, trailing criticism that her performance was flawed by hubris, inflexibility and a penchant for secrecy and political combat.

Yup, all the negatives are neatly tucked away out of view. Just at the exact moment the negatives begin, the article snips them off the front page, with great precision.

Why, one might even call it . . . surgical precision!

By the way, late, late in the piece — on page 3 of the online version’s 3-page article – the paper notes an interesting issue:


She appeared sensitive to scrutiny from the start. Just three days after her husband gave her authority over the healthcare plan, she was already considering limits on public access to the plan’s records. In a Jan. 28, 1993, memo, deputy counsel Vincent Foster advised the first lady and Ira Magaziner, who devised the complex healthcare process structure, that task-force records might be withheld from release under the Freedom of Information Act if the files remained “in the control of the president.”

Her response is not known because many of her healthcare documents have not been released. The Clinton library in Little Rock has released scores of healthcare memos sent to the first lady. But none of her own memos or notes is available, and though some are now scheduled for release early next year, others may remain locked away until after the 2008 election.

Gee, why would that be?

Oh, well. All they are, are documents that show how she handled the most significant task ever assigned her in the Executive Branch. I don’t know why there would be any kind of demand for documents like those! After all, they’re locked away! I’m sure she has no say in that!

Actually, as the local rag noted earlier this month — and props to them for that — she probably does have some say. If she and her husband pressured the archives to release the documents, they would almost certainly release them.

I think this is a major issue that needs more sunlight. She’s been asked about it in a debate. But there should be more pressure.

Remember when newspapers like the L.A. Times told us we needed to see decades-old Reagan-era memos from Sam Alito and John Roberts — and privilege be damned? Remember the editorials and the constant drumbeat?

I’d like to see a constant drumbeat over this.

Again, this is about the most significant responsibility Hillary was ever given in the Executive Branch. She screwed it up, royally. Let’s find out why.

Make her release the documents.

[Crick]

I don't even *know* who Ric Flair is ... Chuck Norris isn't exactly on anyone's "A-list" of Celebs ( neigther is Huckabee ;) ) and Oprah is a talk show host and media mogul .. not a supposedly "objective" journalist and MSM anchor personality.

Ric Flair is like the 1 zillion time world champion of Pro Wrestling. Been around as long as I have. Don't tell Chuck Norris he isn't an A-List Celebrity. Walker, Texas Ranger is still one of the top rated syndicated shows. Huckabee seems to be coming on fast. Oprah is well Oprah and has her money in everything. Wouldn't call Carol Simpson an A-List Celebrity. My point was why bash a celebrity regardless of their "status" for supporting a candidate they believe in and not others. Just tired of all the bashing of celebrities getting bashed for supporting a certain candidate. IMO they have as much right to support someone as you or I do. If they have the name recognition and money to help the candidate then more power to them.

[Jolie Rouge]

Wouldn't call Carol Simpson an A-List Celebrity. My point was why bash a celebrity regardless of their "status" for supporting a candidate they believe in and not others. Just tired of all the bashing of celebrities getting bashed for supporting a certain candidate. IMO they have as much right to support someone as you or I do. If they have the name recognition and money to help the candidate then more power to them.

I would not and DID NOT call Carol Simpson an "A-List Celebrity". YOU called her a "Celebrity". She *WAS* a journalist and on air main stream media news reporter. A journalist is suposed to be unbiased, objective recorder and reporter of the news - just the facts, if you please without adding your personal viewpoints in the mix. She is now a professor at a Univercity teaching a course on Journalism


Despite telling BlackAmericaWeb.com earlier this year that "I still think of myself as a reporter who is now teaching about reporting,"


"I anchored for 15 years," Simpson snorted, "and I defy anyone to have determined my political feelings from that."

Oh, Professor Simpson, you make this too easy.

At the Hillary campaign event, she basked in her supposed liberation from contraints of a working journalist. But Simpson showed her pro-Clinton, liberal bias while anchoring at ABC for years without any inhibitions.

Here she is engaging in PDCA in a piece for ABCNews.com after Hillary won her Senate seat in 2000:

"What an exhilarating moment it must have been for [Hillary] - the first First Lady in history to be elected to public office. There, for all the nay-sayers to see, was the woman who had finally come into her own, free at last to be smart, outspoken, independent, and provocative, all qualities she had been forced as First Lady, to 'hide under a bushel.' Still she was voted one of America's most admired women. Just wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet."

The title of her love letter: "Long Live Hillary." Not very hard to determine the professor's feelings from that.


Not since 1998 - when women's magazine writer Nina Burleigh told The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that she'd be happy to give President Bill Clinton oral sex to "thank him for keeping abortion legal"


This is objective ???


I have not bashed any "celebrities" for supporting the candidate of their choice ... but reporters and journalists are required to be unbiased observers of the stories they relate ... not to inject themselves into those stories.

( You brought up celebs ... )

[Crick]

I would not and DID NOT call Carol Simpson an "A-List Celebrity". YOU called her a "Celebrity". She *WAS* a journalist and on air main stream media news reporter. A journalist is suposed to be unbiased, objective recorder and reporter of the news - just the facts, if you please without adding your personal viewpoints in the mix. She is now a professor at a Univercity teaching a course on Journalism








This is objective ???


I have not bashed any "celebrities" for supporting the candidate of their choice ... but reporters and journalists are required to be unbiased observers of the stories they relate ... not to inject themselves into those stories.

( You brought up celebs ... )

Fox News??? Bill O'Reilly???? Pat Robertson???? Those are fair and unbiased if ever I heard one. :rolleyes: From the articles you quoted, Simpson was not "on the air delivering news," but was at an event expressing her views and posting on a web site. How soon people forget how they bashed Barbra Streisand and all the other celebrities in 2000 and 2004 for supporting the "Democrats". All American citizens have the right to support whomever they wish just as every person has a right to disagree with them. Guess some people love to forget about the 1st Admendment! As much as I disagree with Bill O'Reilly (Fox News), Michelle Malkin (one of your favorites to quote) and Glenn Beck (CNN), I still believe in their right to free speech and supporting whomever they want.

[Jolie Rouge]

How soon people forget how they bashed Barbra Streisand and all the other celebrities in 2000 and 2004 for supporting the "Democrats".

Is this directed at me or as a general reference ?

I was critical of Streisand being abusive of TPOTUS during her concerts ... which was not a political forum ... otherwise I don't recall commenting too much one way or the other.

There is a difference between "supporting Candidate A" and "attacking canidate B" as far as I am concerned.


[uote]Bill O'Reilly???? Pat Robertson???? Those are fair and unbiased if ever I heard one. [/quote]

I don't quote these sources very often, as I find them abrasive.



As much as I disagree with Bill O'Reilly (Fox News), Michelle Malkin (one of your favorites to quote) and Glenn Beck (CNN), I still believe in their right to free speech and supporting whomever they want.

Which is why we have such entertaining debates !

(smooches)

[Jolie Rouge]

Once she makes a decision, "she sticks to it," adds Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's campaign manager. "There's no coulda, woulda, shoulda."


Clinton replaces campaign manager
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 15 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime aide Maggie Williams on Sunday, engineering a shake-up in a presidential campaign struggling to overcome rival Sen. Barack Obama's financial and political strengths.

The surprise announcement came hours after Obama's sweep of three contests Saturday and shortly before the Illinois senator won caucuses in Maine on Sunday.

Determined to stem the tide, Clinton turned to a longtime confidante to manage her operations while the campaign acknowledged that she made a private visit to North Carolina this week to seek the endorsement of former rival John Edwards. Obama was planning his own meeting Monday with Edwards, who confidants said was torn over which candidate to back.

Campaign aides said Solis Doyle made the decision to leave on her own and was not urged to do so by the former first lady or any other senior member of the team. But it comes as Clinton struggles to catch Obama in fundraising and momentum and faces the prospect of losing every voting contest yet to come in February.

Solis Doyle announced the shift in an e-mail to the staff on Sunday.


"I have been proud to manage this campaign and prouder still to call Hillary my friend for more than 16 years," Solis Doyle wrote. "Maggie is a remarkable person and I am confident that she will do a fabulous job."

Solis Doyle said she will serve as a senior adviser to Clinton and the campaign, and travel with Clinton from time to time.

Williams, who served as Clinton's White House chief of staff, joined the campaign after the New York senator narrowly won the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8. She will begin assuming the duties of campaign manager this week.

"I think this is one of the most important things I could be doing," Williams told The Associated Press. "I don't think you can accept one of these jobs unless you care about the future."

After Clinton's third-place finish in Iowa, Williams and other strategists with ties to Bill Clinton's White House were brought aboard to help hone the political operation and sharpen the candidate's message. According to campaign aides, Solis Doyle, who has two young children, made the decision to step down as campaign manager at the time and agreed to stay on until Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

The staff shake-up caps a week in which Clinton grabbed the bigger prizes on Super Tuesday, winning New York, California and New Jersey, but Obama prevailed in more contests. Obama won the popular vote in 13 states, while Clinton won in eight states and American Samoa.

Both Clinton and Obama have been competitive in fundraising for most of the campaign; each raised more than $100 million last year. In the last few weeks, however, Clinton lagged behind Obama as he raised $32 million in January to her $13.5 million, forcing her to lend her campaign $5 million before Super Tuesday. The campaign said Saturday that it had raised $10 million since the beginning of February.

Obama enjoyed a three-state sweep Saturday night, winning the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Washington state and Nebraska. He has the potential to pad his victories in contests Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, as well as next week in Wisconsin and his native Hawaii.

Clinton is hoping to prevail on March 4 when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont vote.

In a statement, Clinton praised Solis Doyle and said she looked forward to her continued advice in the coming months.

"Patti Solis Doyle has done an extraordinary job in getting us to this point — within reach of the nomination — and I am enormously grateful for her friendship and her outstanding work," Clinton said. "And, as Patti has said, this already has been the longest presidential campaign in history and one that has required enormous sacrifices of everyone and our families.

"I look forward to her continued advice in the months ahead," Clinton added.

"Patti and I have worked with Maggie Williams for more than a decade," Clinton said in the statement. "I am lucky to have Maggie on board and I know she will lead our campaign with great skill towards the nomination."

The daughter of Mexican immigrants who cut her political teeth in Chicago, Solis Doyle served as Clinton's scheduler for eight years in the White House and began overseeing her political operation during her first run for Senate in 2000.

But Solis Doyle's appointment as Clinton's presidential campaign manager last year surprised many operatives including some in Clinton's inner circle, who believed she did not have sufficient political experience to run such an enterprise.

Clinton aides loyal to Solis Doyle say she proved the naysayers wrong, smoothly managing a staff of several hundred and a budget that swelled to well over $100 million while leaving most of the campaign's major strategic decisions to others — particularly Clinton pollster Mark Penn and media adviser Mandy Grunwald. But she also came under criticism for, among other things, failing to anticipate and plan for Obama's fundraising prowess.

Money will be crucial for a drawn-out fight for the party's nomination, an historic struggle between Clinton, who is seeking to become the first female commander in chief, and Obama, who would be the first black president.

The Democratic Party's system of awarding pledged delegates proportionally and the oversized role of superdelegates, the 796 lawmakers, governors and party officials who are not bound by state votes, meant that no candidate had a commanding lead.

According to The Associated Press' latest survey, Clinton had 243 superdelegates and Obama had 156. That edge was responsible for Clinton's overall edge in the pursuit of delegates to secure the party's nomination for president. According to the AP's latest tally, Clinton has 1,125 total delegates and Obama has 1,087. A candidate must get 2,205 delegates to capture the nomination.

The delegate numbers increased the possibility of a protracted fight for the Democratic nomination, perhaps lasting through this summer's national convention in Denver.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_campaign_manager;_ylt=AkBrlvXR0HhXoV5J89yr mvhh24cA


Clinton Campaign Manager Solis Doyle Gets Replaced
Kristin Jensen
Sun Feb 10, 5:59 PM ET

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with another longtime adviser a day after losing three contests for the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama.

Solis Doyle, who has run Clinton's campaign since she entered the race in January 2007, will remain as a senior adviser. In a note to the staff today, Solis Doyle said she was stepping aside as Maggie Williams takes over and cited the strain of the extended fight for the nomination.

``This has already been the longest presidential campaign in the history of our nation, and one that has required enormous sacrifices from all of us and our families,'' Solis Doyle said.

The change doesn't represent any concern about the direction of the campaign, Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said. ``We're doing great,'' he said. ``It's a competitive race.''

Long considered the Democratic front-runner, Clinton, 60, a New York senator, is in a close race with Obama, 46, an Illinois senator. The two have traded victories in states across the country for the last month.

Obama had the edge yesterday, winning Louisiana's Democratic primary with 57 percent of the vote. He also bested Clinton in the Washington and Nebraska caucuses by a 2-1 margin.

Raising Eyebrows?

``Though personnel shifts happen throughout campaigns, the timing of this one -- as Clinton fights for her presidential- campaign life, following a clean Obama sweep by big margins in the weekend contests -- will inevitably raise eyebrows,'' said Rogan Kersh, associate dean of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.

Elleithee said campaign officials are confident about the hunt for delegates, especially in states such as Texas and Ohio that vote on March 4. ``We feel good about the states that are coming up,'' he said.

Williams had been working as a senior adviser to the campaign for several weeks. When Clinton was first lady during the 1990s, Williams served as her White House chief of staff.

``Patti and I have worked with Maggie Williams for more than a decade,'' Clinton said in an e-mailed statement. ``I am lucky to have Maggie on board and I know she will lead our campaign with great skill towards the nomination.''

Solis Doyle ``has done an extraordinary job in getting us to this point,'' Clinton said.

The next big set of primaries takes place on Feb. 12, when voters in Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. go to the polls.

Clinton campaigned in Manassas, Virginia, today and is set to hold an event in Bowie, Maryland, this evening. She canceled an appearance in Roanoke, Virginia, when severe winds prevented her plane from taking off from the Washington area.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080210/pl_bloomberg/ak_mlrmqg4h8_1

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama ties Clinton to past
By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 55 minutes ago


ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday it is difficult for Hillary Rodham Clinton "to break out of the politics of the past," when the country was badly divided and Democrats lost control of Congress while her husband was president.

Responding to two Virginia voters who asked why they should choose him over Clinton, Obama at first praised her as "a capable person" and a "vast improvement" over President Bush. But he quickly pivoted to a forceful argument against the New York senator, saying the public sees her as part of a divisive political era when the government was gridlocked and Republicans prospered.

"I think it's very hard for Senator Clinton to break out of the politics of the past 15 years," Obama said.

"Senator Clinton starts off with 47 percent of the country against her," the Illinois senator told 3,000 people at a high school gym in Alexandria, Va., just outside Washington. "That's a hard place to start."

"Hillary and I both want universal health care," he said. "But unless we can put a working majority together, it doesn't matter what plan is adopted" because Congress will not pass it.

Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia hold Democratic primaries Tuesday.

Obama was buoyant after winning three more state contests Saturday, and Maine on Sunday, telling a crowd of 18,000 in Virginia Beach, Va. Sunday evening that "we have won on the Atlantic Coast, we have won on the Gulf Coast, we have won on the Pacific Coast" and places in between.

Taking audience questions earlier or the first time in several days, he used similar queries from two women to remind voters of the former first lady's ties to an administration and an era that many independents and Republicans remember with distaste. "I have the ability to bring people together," he said. Because of that, he said, "I think I can beat John McCain more effectively," referring to the Arizona senator closing in on the Republican presidential nomination.

One woman told Obama that her 9-year-old son adores him, her husband was out campaigning for Clinton and she was undecided. Obama posed for a photo with the boy as the crowd laughed and cheered. Then he gave a minute-long recitation of why his mother should choose him over Clinton.

Obama said he rejects federal lobbyists' money, unlike Clinton, and has been more forceful in supporting full disclosure of money's role in politics. "Senator Clinton does not have that track record," he said.

He repeated a jibe at Clinton's comment from one of their debates, in which she said she voted for a bankruptcy bill but was glad it never became law. "That kind of talk, I think, it makes people not trust government," Obama said.

He planned events in Baltimore and College Park, Md., on Monday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_on_el_pr/obama;_ylt=AkuhsMgFPrYS05lDreGEeVFh24cA

[Jolie Rouge]

February 12, 2008
The Fix: Henry Leaves Camp Clinton

The Fix's Cillizza reports that dep Clinton camp mgr Mike "Skip Iowa" Henry has resigned.

Henry tendered his resignation 2/11 a.m., but he worked the last two days on a volunteer basis. His departure is not entirely unexpected, as he was brought into the campaign by Patti Solis Doyle, who stepped down 2/10.

Henry, as many remember, was responsible for writing a memo that was leaked last summer suggesting that the Clinton campaign bypass IA. Solis Doyle, meanwhile, was criticized for spending too much money on the Hawkeye State.

Clinton's Deputy Campaign Manager Steps Aside

Mike Henry, deputy campaign manager for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has resigned, according to a source familiar with the decision.

Henry tendered his resignation yesterday morning but worked the last two days on a volunteer basis. His departure is not entirely unexpected, as he was brought into the campaign by Patti Solis Doyle, who stepped down on Sunday.

In an e-mail sent to staff and obtained by The Fix, Henry writes: "As someone who has managed campaigns, I share the unique understanding of the challenges that the campaign will face over the next several weeks. Our campaign needs to move quickly to build a new leadership team, support them and their decisions and make the necessary adjustments to achieve the winning outcome for which we have all worked so hard for over a year now."

Howard Wolfson, communications director for Clinton's campaign, said that Henry had done "an outstanding job for the campaign and his expertise will be missed."

Henry came to the Clinton campaign at the behest of Solis Doyle. He had managed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's vast independent expenditure program in the 2006 cycle -- an election where the party stunned the political establishment by winning back the majority. Henry came to the DSCC from Virginia where he managed Gov. Tim Kaine's (D) successful gubernatorial bid in 2005. The year before he oversaw the Senate primary bid of wealthy businessman Blair Hull in Illinois. Hull was beaten in that contest by a state senator named Barack Obama. Prior to that, Henry was one of the lead advisers to Mark Warner in his 2001 gubernatorial bid.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/02/clinton_deputy_campaign_manage.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Black lawmakers rethink Clinton support
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - In a fresh sign of trouble for Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of the former first lady's congressional black supporters intends to vote for Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, and a second, more prominent lawmaker is openly discussing a possible switch.

Rep. David Scott's defection and Rep. John Lewis' remarks highlight one of the challenges confronting Clinton in a campaign that pits a black man against a woman for a nomination that historically has been the exclusive property of white men. "You've got to represent the wishes of your constituency," Scott said in an interview Wednesday in the Capitol. "My proper position would be to vote the wishes of my constituents." The third-term lawmaker represents a district that gave more than 80 percent of its vote to Obama in the Feb. 5 Georgia primary.

Lewis, whose Atlanta-area district voted 3-to-1 for Obama, said he is not ready to abandon his backing for the former first lady. But several associates said the nationally known civil rights figure has become increasingly torn about his early endorsement of Clinton. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing private conversations.

In an interview, Lewis likened Obama to Robert F. Kennedy in his ability to generate campaign excitement, and left open the possibility he might swing behind the Illinois senator. "It could (happen). There's no question about it. It could happen with a lot of people ... we can count and we see the clock," he said.

Clinton's recent string of eight primary and caucus defeats coincides with an evident shift in momentum in the contest for support from party officials who will attend the convention. The former first lady still holds a sizable lead among the roughly 800 so-called superdelegates, who are chosen outside the primary and caucus system. But Christine Samuels, until this week a Clinton superdelegate from New Jersey, said during the day she is now supporting Obama.

Two other superdelegates, Sophie Masloff of Pennsylvania and Nancy Larson of Minnesota, are uncommitted, having dropped their earlier endorsements of Clinton.

On Wednesday, David Wilhelm, a longtime ally of the Clintons who had been neutral in the presidential race, endorsed Obama.

The comments by Scott and Lewis reflect pressure on Clinton's black supporters, particularly elected officials, not to stand in the way of what is plainly the best chance in history to have an African-American president. "Nobody could see this" in advance, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black in Congress, said of Obama's emergence. He is officially neutral in the race, but expressed his irritation earlier in the year with remarks that Clinton and her husband the former president had made about civil rights history.

One black supporter of Clinton, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, said he remains committed to her. "There's nothing going on right now that would cause me to" change, he said.

He said any suggestion that elected leaders should follow their voters "raises the age old political question. Are we elected to monitor where our constituents are ... or are we to use our best judgment to do what's in the best interests of our constituents."

In an interview, Cleaver offered a glimpse of private conversations.

He said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois had recently asked him "if it comes down to the last day and you're the only superdelegate? ... Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House? "I told him I'd think about it," Cleaver concluded.

Jackson, an Obama supporter, confirmed the conversation, and said the dilemma may pose a career risk for some black politicians. "Many of these guys have offered their support to Mrs. Clinton, but Obama has won their districts. So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position" in the future, he added.

Obama and Clinton are in a competitive race for convention delegates. Overall, he has 1,276 in The Associated Press count, and she has 1,220. It takes 2,025 to clinch the nomination.

But the overall totals mask two distinct trends.

Obama has won 1,112 delegates in primaries and caucuses, and Clinton has won 979 in the same contests in the AP count.

The former first lady leads in the superdelegate chase, 241-164.

Not surprisingly, two sides differ on the proper role of the superdelegates.

"My strong belief is that if we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates, and the most voters in the country, then it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters," Obama said recently.

But Clinton said superdelegates should make up their own minds. She noted pointedly that Massachusetts Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy have both endorsed Obama, yet she won the state handily on Feb. 5.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who is neutral in the race, said she hopes one or the other of the rivals emerges as the clear winner through the primaries and caucuses.

"I don't think it was ever intended that superdelegates would overturn the verdict, the decision of the American people," she said Thursday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_superdelegates;_ylt=AgRvmqvBku32ZOpgBkDbpe .s0NUE