Obama takes Progressive, Rationale Stance

During the YouTube debate there was a question about meeting with the leaders of current rogue nations, as defined by the Bush Administration.

In this biting video, an online editor splices together Obama's and Hillary's answers and the resulting fall out of Clinton referring to the Obama as "naive".

The video shows Clinton as not just a flip-flopper, but a hypocrite.

Either she has defined her own Senatorial statements as "naive", but in agreement with what Obama is not afraid to say.

Or she is in agreement with continuing the Bush administration's foreign policy, and because of her mercurial opinions on the subject, unable to provide leadership in international affairs.

Spend a few minutes and watch it all - you'll be glad you did (or if you support Clinton you'll be disheartened and feeling sold out by another weak-spined Democrat trying to sound tough for all the wrong reasons).


Prognosis Probable: Hillary will continue testing stances, sliding toward whatever stance her primary opponents are gaining ground with, settling into a milquetoast soundbite.

Prognosis Ludicrous: Clinton uses her Senate prerogative to travel to all the "rogue" nations in question. In an effort to attempt a October type surprise, husband Bill attains peace treaties with them all, but the cat slips out of the bag. With the aide of "heightened alerts", being accused of undermining fictitious, administration talks and conspiring with the enemy, Mitt Romney wins in a landslide. The rapture occurs with the conclusion of the Oath of Office.

Prognosis Progressive: Democrats nominate Barack Obama.

Hillary's Mother-F'ng Tour Business

From our friend Greg Palast:

Before his untimely death in a plane crash, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown said,

“I’m not Hillary’s mother-f****** tour guide!”

That wasn’t a nice thing for a member of the President’s cabinet to say about the First Lady, now my Senator, Hillary Clinton.

And it’s probably not polite for me to bring it up now. But if I don’t, surely the Karl Rovarians will - if Senator Mrs. Clinton nails the Presidential nomination.

Bill Clinton used to say that, once he became president, he finally earned more money than his wife. That was a carefully crafted bit of modesty to show Bill as an aw-shucks regular guy versus Richie Rich-kid George Bush.

But Bill’s cute remark raised a question in my mind: How did Hillary get that big ol’ salary? And another question arises: how has she stayed out of prison?

The story’s a little complicated, involving a New Orleans power company, Indonesian billionaires, a New York nuclear plant and plain old influence peddling. But if we follow the money, we’ll get the picture. And it ain’t pretty.

But first, let’s stop at Wal-Mart. Read an official biography of the Senator and you’ll find her six-month stint on a child-protection task force. Yet you won’t find her SIX YEARS on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Corporation. She may have earned a Grammy for “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” But it takes a Governor’s wife to provide cover for Wal-Mart’s profiteering off systematic wage-enslavement of children in its factories in South America.

Sam Walton called Hillary, “My little lady.” Sam paid her an eyebrow raising sum for a director - equal to 60% of her entire not-insubstantial salary as a lawyer. By contrast, Wendy Diaz (her real name), a 13-year-old in Honduras, was paid 25 cents an hour to make shirts for the “little lady’s” label.

Hillary’s rake-in was made possible by Wal-Mart’s 100% union-free operation and out-sourcing of 100% of its manufacturing, some to prison factories in China. Now, you could say that Hillary couldn’t hear the screams of the kiddies in Kamp Wal-Mart in Honduras. After all, she relied on the intelligence provided her by the President (of Wal-Mart).

Fast forward to 1994 and the Brown ‘mother-f’ing tour guide’ business. According to Nolanda Hill, the Commerce Secretary’s long-time business partner and love interest, Brown, who died in 1996, endorsed a Hillary cash-for-access scheme ($10,000 for coffee with the President, $100,000 for a night in the Lincoln bedroom). However, Brown resented the discount rate the First Lady put on US executives joining Brown’s lucrative trade missions. ‘I’m worth more than $50,000 a pop!’ he said.

One company more than happy to pony up for a cash joy-ride with Brown was Entergy International. This electric company, based in Little Rock, became one of the world’s biggest power system operators on the planet under the Clinton regime. Interestingly, Bill Clinton began his political climb by running for Arkansas Attorney General campaigning on a pledge to fight Entergy’s electric price hikes. His pro-consumer plan was defeated in court by Entergy’s law firm - which included one Hillary Rodham.

There were more favors for Entergy. In 1998, I discovered, while working under cover for the Guardian and Observer, that Tony Blair was personally fixing the system to let Entergy to violate British policy on coal plants. Why? I picked up in my secret recordings of Blair’s cronies that calls to take care of Entergy, rules be damned, had come in from the office of ‘the Flotus’ - the First Lady of the United States.

It gets creepier. In June of 1994, Entergy’s partner in Asia, the Riady family of Indonesia paid recently-resigned Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell a $100,000 consulting fee. Odd that: Hubbell was on his way to prison for the felony crime of inflating his legal bills. Why would Asians pay a lawyer for advice on Asia who was on his way to the pokey?

Maybe it had to do with his partner in crime. I’ve conducted investigations of lawyer over-billing. It is nearly impossible for a senior lawyer to pad billing records unless the junior partner also fraudulently monkeys with time logs to make sure the records don’t give away the game. Who was Hubbell’s “little lady” junior partner? Today we call her Madame Senator.

Hillary’s logs were worth close inspection by authorities, no? But the funny thing about Hillary’s billing records: when requested for disclosure in another suit, they disappeared. First, her law firm’s computers went ka-blooey. Then the paper printouts vanished, but not before, during the 1992 Presidential campaign, they were secretly combed over, line by line, by … Web Hubbell.

Hubbell knew his own logs were phonied, and he understood the consequences of exposure. Ultimately, bloated hours on those records caused him to lose his law license, his Associate Attorney General post and his freedom. He got 21 months in the slammer.

What did Hubbell see and know about Hillary’s logs? Hubbell won’t say, except for a cryptic remark, after seeing her bills, that ‘every lawyer’ fabricates records. Hubbell pleaded guilty, but refused to answer investigators’ questions, a requirement in any plea bargain - so the judge had to sentence him to prison.

Why would Hubbell choose to do time on the chain gang over testifying about the First Lady? His prosecutors did not know at the time of the $100,000 Riady payment, the first of over half a million dollars Hubbell would receive from Clinton friends in the weeks up to his entering jail.

And those Hillary billing records? Hubbell lost them - how convenient. Then they reappeared two years later, just outside Hillary’s office, right after Hubbell announced he would refuse to testify against her.

Maybe the Clintons knew nothing about the big money flowing to prison-bound Hubbell. Knowledge of the payments would suggest they were buying Hubbell’s silence. In 1996, when the LA Times uncovered the payments, Mrs. Clinton’s First Man Bill stone-cold denied he knew anything about it.

Then, in 2000, in a deposition by the Justice Department, the President changed his tune. Investigators confronted the President with this: on June 20, 1994, Hubbell met with Hillary. Two days later, James Riady, the Asian billionaire Entergy partner, met with Hubbell for breakfast. Just a few hours later, Riady returned to the White House, then met again with Hubbell, then made two more treks to the White House. Two days later, a videotape shows the beginning of another meeting in the Oval Office between Clinton and Riady — but oddly, before they talk, the tape goes blank. Two days after that, Hubbell gets his $100,000 through a Riady bank.

Lying to journalists is a venal sin, but lying to the Feds is perjury. In his deposition, the President’s denial transformed into amnesia. He couldn’t remember if Riady mentioned the payment. Then, the President slyly opened the door to the truth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if James told me,” Clinton said. Neither would I.

What did Riady get? The Flotus herself, says Nolanda Hill, forced Brown to accept the appointment of Riady’s bag man, John Huang, as a Commerce Department deputy. According to records of calls the Guardian obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, Huang’s first order of business was to wheedle his way into confidential CIA briefings on Indonesia and China, then call Riady and his Entergy partners.

The same day Riady met the President, documents show he called on a Clinton crony at the top of the department’s Export-Import Bank. “We just came over from the Oval Office,” is a nice way to provide assurance of the ‘political connection’ required for help. These and other Riady team meetings at Commerce are marked ’social’. Yet, shortly thereafter, the department agreed to promote and fund the Riady-Entergy China venture.

Influence is not a victimless crime. Riady and his minions’ visits to the White House (94 times!) included successful requests for the President to meet Indonesian dictator Suharto and to kill negative reports on East Timor and working conditions in Indonesia. Timorese and Indonesians paid for these policy flips with blood.

Has Entergy’s investment in Hillary’s jail-bird partner continued to pay dividends?

Code Pink and New York environmentalists have been pulling out their hair over Senator Clinton’s backing of the operation of the creaky old Indian Point nuclear plant just above - and within irradiating distance of - New York City. The owner of the Indian Point nuke? Hillary’s old buck buddies, Entergy.

Am I saying Hillary would arrange for a payoff to keep witnesses silent, to poison US foreign policy for the profit of corporate cronies, to vote in Washington loaded down with conflicts of interest? I would never say so. Even if the evidence will.

Wisconsin Governor Tommy Tompson Is In

Democratic Fundraising Numbers Roll In

He thought about it in 2000, and it leaked out last week, but the main stream media found and reported it; the "boy from Elroy", former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, is in the hunt for the Republican Presidential nomination.

His announcement came with what might be one of the best Iraq solutions offered from the 2008 Presidential field.

Thompson will be holding events this Wednesday, April 4 in Wisconsin and Iowa:

Milwaukee Event
Time: 9 a.m. CDT
Location: Messmer High School - Tommy G. Thompson Athletic Center
742 W. Capitol Drive, Milwaukee, WI

Iowa Event
Time: 12 p.m. CDT
Location: 7 Flags Event Center
2100 NW 100th Street, Clive, Iowa

Could he pull it off? Consider these points:

• His announcement on yesterday's "This Week" on ABC trumped any story regarding fund-raising totals by other Republican nominees.
• Thompson is incredibly strong at retail politics and Wisconsin borders Iowa (Thompson grew up less than 100 miles away) which will provide an influx of volunteers and play to mid-west allegiances - two huge advantages in the first caucus of the 2008 election.
  
• The endless accounts of how dissatisfied conservatives are with their field of Republican candidates. Playing to this is Thompson's talking point that he is "the only reliable conservative." The Des Moines Register quoted it back here and two weeks later here.
  
• As a White House cabinet member from 2001-2005, he was secretary of Health and Human Services back when Bush was still popular enough to barely get reelected.
• Before joining the Bush administration, he was the nation's longest-serving governor and will hand the perennial battle-ground state of Wisconsin's electoral votes to the Republican for the first time since Reagan
  
• He has a proven track record of new ideas and change including the overhaul of Wisconsin's welfare system, some of which filtered up into the Clinton welfare redo (both with their detractors). Its what David Broder called Thompson's need to "fight the status quo" at the end of Broder's column regarding Thompson's departure from HHS.
  
• He heads a health-care think tank, a major issue that the Democrats own on the national stage.
  

With the best idea about Iraq to date, Thompson said he would demand that the Iraqi government vote as to whether it wanted the U.S. to remain in the country. If the answer were yes, "it immediately gives a degree of legitimacy." If the answer were no, "we would get out, absolutely. It's a duly elected government." Quells the idea of cutting and running when the "sovereign" nation asks you to leave. This would also endure the Iraqi government to its people, being able to do something, especially as insurgents seem to make things worse. The blog Average Joe has more quotes from Thompson.

Democrats should unilaterally take up this stratagem. It'll kill Thompson's primary dreams, but as a way to honorably (not cut-and-run) get the troops out of Iraq and end the occupation, it's an idea that is win-win.

Thompson's biggest drawbacks are the limited pool of financial and political power from his home state of Wisconsin, and at HHS the flu vaccine shortage in the fall of 2004 and the anthrax scare which has yet to be solved.

Today of course the Democratic numbers trumped all things political with Barack Obama continuing to shine. USA Today placed Hilary Clinton's faux $36 million raised in its front page side bar (above the fold). The real number was $25 million from 50,000 contributors. Obama '08 pulled in $22 million from over 83,000 people.

That is impressive for two intertwining reasons. First is the weight of Rodham Clinton's insider contacts. Former DNC Chair and major fundraiser Terry McCauligh is her campaign chair, President Bill Clinton is an obvious asset and her cash crazy US Senate races have all combined to produce what should be the most productive fundraising call list ever. Ever.

Add to that the idea that Rodham Clinton has been running for years, and odds are that she had numerous verbal commitments that only required to be contacted. A cornucopia of low hanging fruit, in fundraising vernacular, who were willing to give $2300 for both the primary and general elections. This is the case, considering the estimated $500 per contributor for Clinton versus an estimated $265 per contributor for Obama.

As the less experienced candidate, especially against the insider heavy Clinton campaign, Obama's numbers are simply astounding. A clear advantage in donors puts Obama in drivers seat when you consider that the low-dollar donors will also be volunteers. As for the experience question, see the t-shirt graphic to the right and remember that Pedro won.

In the end, however, both dollars and volunteers have been poorly used (we're looking at you Joe Trippi and Howard Dean). Before now, the highest off-year, first-quarter total was $13.5 million reported in 1995 by Republican Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. That didn't help him secure the Republican nomination which was won by Viagra spokesman Sen. Bob Dole.

Rounding out the Democratic contenders are John Edwards, who raised more than $14 million — twice his first-quarter total in 2003 and also beating Gramm's old record — from more than 37,000 donors. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson raised more than $6 million.

All first-quarter reports are due April 15 at the Federal Election Commission.