For every KO piece of rhetoric, there are a hundred TV shows that put on the same babbling people who talk about Hillary’s experience but can’t name one substantive example and have been told not to try. I loved it when Howie the Wolfie Wolfson was put on the spot and asked to tick off her experience and was 100% flumoxed–he might as well have been a vegetable in that call. He was clinically brain dead when asked what experience she actually has. They don’t want to go there. No Clinton supporter ever goes there because there isn’t any place for them to go.

A few hundred thousand of us are determined to vote for the Democratic nominee who wins the delegate vote period. If they are not the same, some of us will vote for the down ticket people running for the House and Senate who would ride Obama’s coattails much better than they would ride Clinton’s.

And if you don’t think the black vote that would be unprecedentedly greater than ever before in this general if Obama is the nominee will stay home in a way to possibly impact the outcome, turn on black radio. It’s a determination that would happen if Clinton were to steal Michigan and Florida–she can’t but will keep trying into 2010–I now that now or if Clinton were to get the nomination via Super Delegates.

There are two numbers dynamics that would happen if Clinton got the nomination. Republicans would come out in record numbers–astounding record numbers. Blacks who have not turned out previously in an impressive way would stay home in an impressive way. If Obama is the nominee there will be less galvinzation for Republicans to turn out–sure they’ll attack the crap out of him but they would attack the crap out of her and anyone who thinks the SNL paradies are real is beyond educating.

LOL Todd is one of my faves. He confers some reality on this bullshit concept that anyone is “winning Ohio” or that a certain candidate “won Texas” when in fact she loses the delegate vote every day that more of the Texas vote comes in including the next few.

He reminds people that this isn’t the SEC championships or the regionals, despite CNN’s airhead name Ballot Bowl with a team that may be the worst political team on television. You can turn on CNN in October 2007 or March 2008 and you’ll hear the same monotonous, banal aphorisms and questions out of Blitzer and the rest.

You know I’m not arguing about what people call “Obama problems” but people particularly TV media have sure gone out of their way since they can’t find the candidate making any significant gaffes to go after people he has known and what they say and try to fling the mud hoping it will somehow stick.

What we have is an appetite for controversy. People who aren’t that engated about Britney’s latest trip to the 711 who are political junkies now have weeks until the next two debates and the next primary. So they gotta fill space.

So a preacher at Obama’s church who has been making flamboyant comments for years says things like “Goddamn the US” and somehow Obama is supposed to be responsible for those comments.

I’d like to have seen a ban on any religious references period for these comments because I’m a lot more in the Bill Maher camp on religion. But we live in pudding head Britney America, and so if someone wants to suck that stuff up, the media is there to feed it to you.

I’d have rather seen KO drill into Obama on FISA and ask some intelligent questions about FISA being probably screwed badly now when it lands in the Senate in two weeks.

The Clinton campaign can’t do much else and it serves as a distraction to the truth that she has no significant “Commander in Chief experience” over him, that the dufus in the White House now didn’t have any significant Commander in Chief experience and he’s fucked this country up beyond belief (there shouldn’t be rounds and rounds of Congressional bloviating over why everyone in this country should be wiretapped–that’s fairly nuts).

Bill Clinton had no signigicant commander in chief experience from Arkansas, and I haven’t seen any President in recent history that did.

So we get flashes of some preacher in a church Obama went to. He had already distanced himself from the guys positions. If you go to a wedding are you responsible for everything the minister does?

I think it was a superlative special comment. I have 2nd and 3rd thoughts on it every day and I play it B.I.D. I’m thinking of upping it to T.I.D. or prning the order for it–it makes me feel great. There needs to be a lot more scrutiny of Clinton’s experience.

I’m not trying to play “trashtalk the candidates”, but I welcome anyone to show me a substantive list of Bullet Points that detail any “experience advantage” HRC has for a call at any time comparing and contrasting it with Obama. I have not seen it yet. FDL won’t vet her, but they did several Rezko headlines with posts that did not adhere to the legal facts in the case–and I follow the ole Rezko blogs from the Sun Times and the lawyer blogs every few days.

You too can enjoy the Special Comment the way I do here:

Keith Olbermann commentary on Hillary Clinton 3/12/2008

Clinton’s foreign experience is more limited than she says

We all know the print and particularly the TV media is limited, but fortunately a lot of well educated people who dig and are a lot more sophisticated than most of the MSM are doing blogs now.

I’ll give you a quick example. Almost every very major newspaper outlet–possibly not McClatchy and a few others less known reflexly talks about FISA with some numb brained intro comment that the Telcoms/Comcoms began it after 911. That’s clearly not factual. It was begun from close to day one when Bush hit the oval and I’ve put up several links countless times as a lot of others have that there is extensive wiretapping and data mining going on. Siobhan Gorman’s Articles and some by the NYT security writers and less frequently the often conservative WaPo dig into data mining and wiretapping, but most media outlets do not. Of course EFF does and they litigate actively and well against it.

NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data

http://www.eff.org/

Not even a tornado is stopping the SEC playoffs when some of the dome roof fell on the floor and the several ton transoms swayed over peoples’ heads. But Georgia and Kentucky won’t be played. It will have to be rescheduled and played next door. I feel bad for all those people who came to follow their teams, but they’ll just party longer.

First of all Clinton or her supporters won’t answer my questions I have for her that are here–Lets Vet Hillary Clinton on these Questions–Get Her to Release this Information because she tap dances when she is asked to release the information as do Howie/Mark/Maggie. They quickly change the subject on these but they will be brought front and center now.

There has yet to be a headline at FDL asking about them/vetting and there never will be just as if you check Jerilyn Merrit’s blog at any time of day or night it is all pro-Hillary all the time and in knock Obama mode. Of course Jerilyn doesn’t like to talk about these 15 questions either and won’t.

BTW have we ever seen Clinton’s Senior Thesis at Wellsley that the White House would not release?

The Wellsley thesis was about the the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky under Professor Schechter is still not released. Why?

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.
Howard Wolfson, the communications director and a senior member of the advertising team, earned nearly $267,000 in January. His total, including the campaign’s debt to him, tops $730,000.
The advertising firm owned by Mandy Grunwald, the longtime media strategist for both Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton, the former president, has collected $2.3 million in fees and expenses, and is still owed another $240,000.

Mrs. Clinton built a top-down fund-raising operation that relied on a core group of donors to write checks early on for the maximum amount, $4,600 for the primary and the general election, which left few of them to go back to when money became tight. Mr. Obama, by contrast, focused on building a network of small donors whose continued ability to give has been essential to his success this winter.

She graduated law school in 1973, 9 years after she was one of the Goldwater Girls. She was a member of the Young Republicans at Wellsley and her pro-McCain comments as of the last three weeks would make the YR’s very proud. I think she’s positioning herself to be McCain’s VP.

I don’t see how anyone can defend her reckless, egregious pro-McCain comments. They were not only false, they were blatantly stupid but that’s Hillary Clinton, and it does reveal how she thinks and what she does when she gets panicked and desperate.

And again when she says Obama isn’t read or doesn’t have experience she is careful never to reveal that she has no experience whatsoever that is superior to Obama’s and I’m happy to take point by point that you raised.

Lesseee:

Watergate among the very best legal staff counsel on the Watergate inquiry:

She was considered by the legal staffs of both parties to have been among the very best legal staff counsel on the Watergate inquiry.

Not exactly, Bmaz. We can drill into all the counsel in Watergate for Senate and House Judiciary and actually she did research. If computers had been around she would have been keypunching Westlaw and/or Lexis Nexis etc. She wasn’t licensed to practice law in D.C. and never has been. She flunked the D.C. bar and never retook it. That’s disappointing. She’s one of the few Yale Law School grads that has, and I don’t know what was going on with her when she was supposed to be studying for the bar. She doesn’t talk about it and few lawyers that support her know it. I don’t really care but you brought up her being “one of the very best counsel at Watergate.” She was a researcher and anyone could have done that research–and I mean just about anyone. Come on. How hard do you think it is to research impeachment law? There aren’t a helluva lot of presidents impeached or precedents but hey she did get a refresher course in Impeachment law when Williams and Connelly and her old friend who is now on the Obama campaign led the team that defended her husband in a Presidential Impeachment case. That’d be Greg Craig. I know the appellate lawyer who was behind the scenes planning much of the defense for Clinton and he’s superb and not too long ago won a Supreme Court case 9-zip.

That’d be Judge Ginsberg’s unanimous Opinion in Cleveland v. US 531 U.S. 12 (2000) 182 F.3d 296, reversed and remanded.

Less than a year after she graduated Yale, when she had no prior experience whatsoever practicing law because she went right to a year of postgraduate study that was shortened at the Yale Child study center where she did research and did some work as “staff attorney” for Marian Edelman’s group. The wikipedia is hard to take because it’s been so biased and re-edited countless times by Clinton’s staff. It doesn’t mention any of my questions. Maybe I’ll have to help edit it.

Then she went to work, still not having practiced a nano-second of real law as a research assistant for the Water Gate committee. That’s what she did there. I would hope any law student could do the same thing. She was a research assistant for Bernie Nusbaum and John Doer on House Judy. She wasn’t activiely litigating. I find one of the most interesting aspects of Watergate the leaking directly from the Committee to Nixon’s counsel so that he knew virtually every move they were going to make well in advance. Nixon had several moles on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. One of the most prominent moles was Fred Thompson–not in the race for President, but never fear, Hillary Clinton is now making many of the same statements he would be making if he were still in the hunt.

I’m glad you brought that up. After having several honors in high school and college, one thing you don’t see after her clap-clap point point dance around a stage is the statement “I want you to know I failed the D.C. Bar Exam and I’m proud of it.” But she did in fact. This helped figure in her decision to go to Arkansas with Bill, where she was able to pass the Arkansas Bar exam.

I don’t put stock in passing bar exams particularly as to how a lawyer will perform, but it is a requirement. A lot of lawyers and judges graduate from non-ABA accredited schools and cannot practice outside that particular state. What’s worse is a considerable number of federal appellate judges have never practiced law in a federal courtroom and their actual litigation experience is minimal down to almost none.

Clinton never retook the D.C. Bar exam that she failed, and it was not a requirement for her to do legal research on impeachment.

Record in the Senate:

Actually it’s three years longer than Obama’s and I’ve compared what they both did there many times. She helped to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis–the actual figure is pushing towards a million now and about 5 thousand GIs. I can tell you straight up that many neurosurgeons are alarmed because as I write this they don’t have adequate head protection, and Clinton hasn’t lifted a finger to get it for them. I can assure you her 28 year old daugther has no intention enlisting, and there aren’t a lot of road bombs in front of her boyfriend’s 3.5 million dollar apartment that his family bought.

She voted with Hooker Vitter to block Obama’s Earmarks transparency legislation although now she says she backs it (this week they were in the Senate together in fact and when asked by the press she said she now supports it–she didn’t allude to her role in blocking the legislation previously).

Her campaign never gets down to the particulars of what her quality service in the Senate that is purported to be superior to Obama’s is, and I’ve looked at both of their records. There is one big difference and that’s her boneheaded vote on Iraq.

And let’s get real here. A guy really experienced in Iraq who wrote the new Blackwater book and lived there for years has broken down both the plans chapter and verse. He was on the tube the other night. Neither candidate would draw down troops significantly for years. That puppy is really clusterfucked. And I’ll say it again neither candidate would draw down troops for years. We can get into the particulars if you like.

She has been far more effective in getting stuff done.

I enjoy every comment you make, and I learn from many of them or am prompted to drill into the nuances of a case or a legal issue from them but hey hey hey Bmaz.

What you said there is the common inference. You can’t show me “how” she has been “far more effective in getting stuff done” in the Senate. I mean come on–what does that really really mean? Show me what stuff. She sent her Wolfson and her Penn out to lie two weeks ago saying that Obama had been a slacker with respect to troops in Afghanistan. The media bought it because they’re basically Senate stupid. But in fact, Obama is not on any Foreign Relations Committee that deals with troop activity in Afghanistan. Kerry is the chair of that Committee there and more importantly over at the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hillary Clinton is on no less than 3 Committess that directly oversee Afghanistan. Wolfson didn’t point that out and he’s probably too stupid to know anyway. What he knows is that he and his firm are into Hillary for several million bucks. Wolfson did lie several times but he won’t be prosecuted for an 18 USC § 1001 false statement for lying in conferecnce calls or to the cable media will he? More importantly she hasn’t doen anytihing to distinguish herself on the Senate Armed Forces and she never mentions it for that reason.

But I think it is wrong, and kind of blind to reality, to not give her at least some credit for being in the Whitehouse for eight years.

And you’re absolutely correct there. Compare Laura Bush and someone who graduated Yale Law school and practiced law–and Hillary did participate grass roots community activitites when she was young and throughout college and law school. Laura did not. But Barrack did it to a lot greater extent. She went Wellsley straight into Yale law school. Obama went Columbia University and it was a heratio alger story that he got into Columbia on a special program into the hood to work hard for rights for poor people. Then years later he went to Harvard Law School so I’d say he easily matches any of her community involvement.

Obama didn’t flunk any bar exams he took. She did.

Just because she had no formally designated role does not mean she didn’t see most all of what went on and, discuss it with Bill and give her advice.

I watched and saw what went on too. So did a lot of people. And so what? Most wives or girlfriends give advice all the time about everything, and sometimes when you least expect it. But you get to give some back.

Comparing her to Laura Bush is freaking insane

Come on. You know me well enough to know that I don’t compare her to Laura Bush. There are a lot of mushbrained Republican so-called conservatives, a few in my neighborhood who would, but not me. And talking to them about any issue is like talking to a brick wall. So I have learned not to waste the time.

We could go on and on in the vein of her White House experience, but she is now exaggerating the hell hout if it and every other experience where she travelled to a foreign country.

I like Sheryl Crow’s music, and I like Sinbad well enough, but when she traveled to Bosnia with them and strutted on the stage she was not doing substantive foreign policy work nor was she getting substantive foreign policy experience with Crow and Sinbad.

Clinton has always said that he talks to her about everything

Well, probably not what happens on the planes and trips with Ron Burkle.

By the way have you seen a transparent report about the Clinton’s finances with Burkle, and where did her $5 million contribution come from to her campaign and how ’bout the hundreds of millions to the Clinton library–why won’t they release the list? It’s relevant because of deals like the recent $31.5 million contribution from the guy Bill swung the mining deal for but that’s covered in my link above with links to every point I raised.

How many of your clients get presidential pardons while federal fugitives off shore after their wife gives a $400,000 plus contribution to the Clinton library and campaign? Mark Rich sure as hell did. I have a book on him. He wasn’t a nice guy and he did plenty to hurt the US.

And when her Rose law firm records were subpoenaed by the Starr team, she stonewalled them for 18 months. I don’t care what LHP tries to say when she tries hard to put the best face on her candidate. There may be put offs in state civil suits as to finding information–there aren’t a helluva lot of “go fuck yourselves” when the feds want boxes of information that you know damn well you have. Hillary told the Starr people to go fuck themselves because she didn’t want to give them the diningroom full of boxes of material. I’ll give you some Day One. She knew right where those papers were from Day One. She knows right where her income tax filings are for the last 15 years from day one and won’t relese them. She knows right where the gate keeper her old law partner at Rose is who won’t release her papers from the White House including one area where we know whe did work–ealth care from Day One.

See Quale, Dan

I don’t know what Dan Quale has to do with my point though that Hillary doesn’t have the significant experience ratio to be Commander in Chief over Obama that her bullshit commercials and her shills say she has though.

Now I will grant that her “experience” may well not be as vast and as superior as she makes it out to be, it is not; however, to completely discount it and make fun of it like it is a joke is flat wrongheaded.

But Bmaz that is what her campaign has been doing to Obama with the help of SNL and many in the MSM. I want to puke everytime I see another article that cluck clucks about her experience yada yada & yada without ever examining it.

Here’s one that does from McClatchy DC and they’ve been doing a lot of drilling on Hillary’s alleged superior experience lately:

Clinton’s ‘35 years of change’ omits most of her career

Basically the strategy is simple–as old as “the world’s oldest profession” Wolfson’s mantra is that if you say something enough, Britney America will begin to believe it. That’s true. Look at the number of idiots who believe that Sadam helped AQ at 911 WTC.

Clinton’s firm represented Wal-Mart and TCBY while she sat on their boards, a cozy practice that corporate governance experts frown upon because of the potential for conflicts of interest.

The potential downside of Obama in a tough race against the Gooper attack machine concerns me more than Clinton

Not me and not hundreds of thousands of us who won’t vote for her if Obama wins the delegates and is not given the nomination. In every poll I can pull up he beats McCain in more states where there aren’t kabuki dance primaries and he beats him head on in the general and he will.

I will support whoever has the most delegates going into Denver period. If that isn’t the candidate, I’ll vote but for the downticket candidates that Obama would have helped more. And I’m so tired of Clinton claiming she won states. This isn’t the SEC playoffs. Almost every state except New Hampshire is narrow and the game is to win delegates and she’s losing, she can’t possibly catchup. There’s enough time for Pennsylvania now and Obama is gaining every day there. The rest of the states will probably be won by Obama although Kentucky, Indiana, and North Carolina may be closer.

Turn on the radio. Turn on black radio. You can probably get it in Arizona but I don’t know. People are not going to vote for Clinton if Obama wins the delegates and she were somehow to be the candidate. Ickes is a long time operative and a smart guy but he’s dead ass wrong here and out of touch.

The person who wins delegates–that’d be Obama is the one that needs to be the candidate.

I personally think Obama should have gone on the attack long ago. I don’t mean the lying bullshit that Clinton has spewed out, but the things she is saying are fucking insane, frankly. He has held his campaign off, but he knows it’s time. You cannot defend her comments about McCain being better than Obama. I’ve never seen that in any campaign, for good reasons.

Her praising McCain at the expense of Obama and lying to do it is egregious,and reprehensible.

I’ve tried to call Hillary Clinton as I see her, and much of it isn’t pretty. “Win at any cost” is including lying every day. There has been huge racial infrastructure implicit in everything Penn and Wolfson have spun lately, and obviously Maggie Williams could care less.

It is a shame that Clinton and her supporters have become so desperate that they begin to hate anyone for Obama, ban them from their blogs when they support Obama or say anything negative about Hillary.

And how hypocritical is this Rezko junk when if you button holed the media they couldn’t tell you the first scintilla about the Rezko or any federal trial/procedure/appeals.

I can name 3 people that the Clinton campaign knew were dirty. and they took the money and they did it for this Presidential campaign and all three of them pled guilty.

And no matter how much LHP keeps bringing up Rezko, there is no evidence or allegation whatsoever that Obama knew he was getting money from “straw men” that were ill gotten gains and she continually repeatedly brings this up citing a “proffer” that does not in fact allege Obama knowingly took tainted money from Rezko/straw contributors or did any favors for Rezko period, and then never backs it up with evidence because she knows there is none or can’t find it. If there were, she’s had months to find it.

I think it is very unfortunate when a lawyer who had year of experience in the SDNY federal corruption unit uses the word Rezko as if it were an expletive trying to fling mud hoping some will stick. The target in Fitz’s assistant’s Rezko trial and work is the governor of Illinois. There is not a scintilla of evidence that Obama influenced any health appointments for Tony Rezko or contributions from him or his straw men. I don’t have time to dig into the governor, but he has millions of dollars of legal help at his fingertips and can take care of himself. The feds seem to like hookers to take down governors and then make a few million dollars posing without clothes in Playboy and Penthouse a few months later as Christen did.

Abdul Rehmnan Jinnah pled guilty in federal court in LA to giving illegal contributions to the Clinton Presidential campaign fund and Barbara Boxer’s campaign fund.. I don’t see his name much at the FDL.

Clinton, Boxer donor pleads guilty February 29, 2008

Southern California businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah pleaded guilty this week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to directing illegal campaign contributions to Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barbara Boxer of California.

Jinnah is scheduled to be sentenced in June. He could face more than a year in prison for reimbursing employees and associates for political donations made in their names.

Jinnah admitted Monday that he used straw donors to contribute at least $53,000 to Clinton’s political action committee, HillPac, and Boxer’s 2004 reelection campaign.

He was indicted in May 2006 but fled the country soon after for his native Pakistan. He returned to face the charges a year later and has been under house arrest.

Listen, this blog is not going to get turned into the loopy insane free for all for the petty bullshit sniping between the Clinton and Obama camps, at least not with my assistance or consent anyway…it will add little, and detract greatly, from what we do here.

Proud member of your ‘Amen choir’ on these points.
Yeah, I prefer one candidate, but so what?

I can do plenty of sniping about the wingnuts, and toxic creepiness like the stuff Coulter oozes. And there’s plenty of opportunity to Trash Talk about sports.

But this blog has been a tremendous resource for me, and I suspect for others. EW has been extremely tolerant, but the amount of accumulated knowledge here is remarkable.

Tactically, people may want to pile on over specific candidates.
Strategically, that’s a poor use of the brains and energy that come here, IMHO.

Eye on the prize, people: Cheney, Bush, AbuGonzo, Kyle Sampson, et al in orange jumpsuits. Behind bars.

Well, FWIW, I think that Christy and Jane are amazing. And they’re also generally tolerant with comments. The ‘vibe’ they’ve built in terms of community is stunning, and their commenters are impressive.

These days, I simply can’t keep up with FDL — I can’t keep up here, either, but it’s still more manageable than FDL these days.
And for a laugh, it’s one simple click to TBogg, who often has me laughing out loud.

The blogs have shown that there **is** an audience for well researched, well documented content — who’d have have thought that thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Americans would actually take the time to read Plame documents, or read FISA? Or dive through docs about the USAGs? Three years ago, people would have scoffed! But the ability to get good explanations about what certain legal terms mean (which LHP is great at explaining), or which court/judge has the case makes it all quite interesting.

It’s all good.

Bmaz,re: your vote in AZ primary

I am jetlagged from a trip to a very very very far country (one which will remain nameless, but it makes one pine for our electoral process, mt. rushmore sized warts and all) so I may be misremembering, but I thought you were kept from voting by your DMV problems. Either I am wrong or something got fixed. In either case, happy you got to vote.

It was pretty straight forward. Obama was asked about the minister of his church who has been making fiery statements just like the recent ones before Obama got out of high school.

We both see a lot of media, wince at their legal coverage which is much less sohpisticated than their medical coverage I can guarantee you. There are very few media outlets that have until now scrutinized HRC’s claim to be so damn experienced and more experienced than Obama until the last few days. I don’t remember many Presidents experienced before they hit the White House really in areas that had direct extrapolation to their duties in the White House. The media has given HRC a huge pass. When that insipid 3AM commercial broke, I just roared. I thought it was a parody of Clinton by Clinton. The media just accepted her claim to superior “experience” stupidly at face value. She’s been in the Senate 7 years; Obama 4 years. Before that she was a political wife.

The excellent Robert A. Caro books like Master of the Senate do make me think LBJ used his experience learned in the Senate cajoling/blackmailing/intimidating people effectively sometimes.

The day she announced and started the experience shuffle and mantra, my dog perked up and said “WTF experience did she have?” I agree.

Clinton’s foreign experience is exponentially (my word here) more limited than she says

She is claiming she crafted everything from SCHIP 10 years ago to being instrumental in the Ireland peace agreement but principles say that is crap. She did not have access to secuirty clearance requiring documents while in the WH, and as far as I can tell was the President’s wife.

She will not release her taxes although she could (Senate reporting means nothing bedause it says nothing). She won’t release the 1.6 million documents detailing her activities in the White House although her old law partner is the gate keeper for them. These things are important and appropriate to see, and a whole helluva lot more important to me than what some screaming reverend in some church has said in the heat of his pulpit rhetoric.

I don’t understand what the hell religion is doing in this campaign for a government office anyway. I could give a flying whatever if these people are Christians, Jews, Muslims or if they worship on the alter of the Waffle House. The media has a lot of space to fill and a lot of airheads to fill them.

Have you seen the cover of the New Yorker? Too funny.

I’m worried about Obama referring to the pastor as “like an uncle”. That’s going to be rough, I’m afraid.

Yes. Everybody’s got a crazy uncle (or in my case, Aunt Marion!) so it’s probably a brilliant move by his staff and Obama himself. I just hope this is all of it.