Only the Finest Minds

Yes, The One, was pissed. You see, Senator Obama doesn’t think that it is fair to question his word on anything.

So when, after a series of denials, word leaked out that a memo showed he was lying about his advisor meeting with the Canadian government and discussing NAFTA well he was noticeably pissed. Yesterday’s New York Times says that: “Obama Comes Out Punching” (NY TIMES).

Flying from Texas back home to Chicago on Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama delivered the message that he intended to counterpunch forcefully. Mr. Obama took aim on Wednesday at Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she is a seasoned hand in foreign policy. “What exactly is this foreign experience that she’s claiming?” he said. “I know she talks about visiting 80 countries. It is not clear. Was she negotiating treaties or agreements or was she handling crises during this period of time? “My sense is the answer’s no.”

Woooo…. Obama’s new strategy is to say that something isn’t so. That’s getting tough alright. “I, Barack Obama, the Ineffable One, and yes, that’s right I am THE ONE, do hereby affirm that my sense of this is that the answer is NO. So obey my command now and fall into line. That’s tellin them Barry. Where I come from we call that a sissy punch.

Vicious
You hit me with a flower
You do it every hour
Ohh, baby you’re so vicious
    Lou Reed

His campaign aides on Wednesday urged Mrs. Clinton to release her tax returns from 2006, as well as her papers from her years as first lady, which Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, described as “secreted in the Clinton library.” “She’s made the argument that she’s thoroughly vetted, in contrast to me,” Mr. Obama said to reporters aboard his campaign plane. “I think it’s important to examine that argument.”

So the whole Obama strategy going forward is to suggest that there is something nefarious hidden in Hillary’s papers as First Lady. And oh my gosh, she didn’t let the public view her 2006 tax forms so she must be hiding something.

In a News Hour debate on March 5th, Bill Bradley representing the Obama campaign said in response to Jim Lehrer’s question as to whether both candidates were viable:

PBS Newshour

BILL BRADLEY: I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election. I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband’s unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library.
And the reason that is important — you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted; investigations that are squelched; contracts that are awarded; regulations that are delayed. These are important questions. The people deserve to know. And we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected, because we don’t want things to explode in a general election against John McCain.

But what Mr. Bradley fails to mention is that he himself, like so many other strong Obama surrogates, has a dark past that not many are aware of. The least of which is his well deserved nickname: The King of Bundling.

RealChange.org

Bradley talks about the need for campaign finance reform, but in the Senate he actively worked to evade even the current loose limits on donations. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) named him “The King of Bundling” in his last reelection campaign. Bundling is a way to evade campaign limits by having several people connected to each other donate the legal limit; a 6-year old may donate $1,000 to a campaign (the maximum) the same day that her parents each give $1,000, grandma and grandpa give a thousand, and dad’s poker buddies all give $1,000. Or each partner of a law firm can donate $1,000 the same day.

This practice that Bradley perfected is the same process Obama uses to get his campaign contributions from the wives and daughters of Washington lobbyists but not directly from them. It allows him to claim the high road and the “new politics” and all that while wallowing in the time tested methods of dirty politics we all know so well.

The CRP issued a report on bundling in 1990, the last time Bradley ran for political office. Even though the limit for donations by a corporate PAC is $10,000, they found 29 cases where a company donated over $25,000 through bundling. 15 of those — over half — were donations to Bill Bradley, from special interests such as Walt Disney, Time-Warner, and Washington power law firm Skadden Arps. The next time you see favorable publicity about Bradley, remember that Walt Disney owns ABC-TV and Time-Warner owns about half of all media in America.

Bradley also received bundled gifts from 9 different investment banks and brokerage firms. He received nearly a million dollars in total donations from securities and commodities firms overall, and another $183,000 from commercial banks.

Sound familiar? It should. Obama receives LOTS of money from the special interests on Wall Street. And he gladly took campaign contributions from Excelon, a Chicago-based energy giant and nuclear plant operator, whose executives and employees have contributed more than $200,000 to Obama’s campaigns since 2004. So while Senator Obama makes all these claims about his purity in not accepting a dime from Washington lobbyists, he certainly has no problem at all accepting contributions from the executives of industries he is responsible for regulating. Notice how the nuclear regulatory bill that Obama falsely claimed as having passed, was watered down so much using his much heralded plan to work across the aisle that the final legislation was essentially worthless? Not only did it not pass but it was ruled by the Jerry Slominski, senior director of legislative affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute as unnecessary. “We don’t believe this regulation is necessary. The NRC has all the legislation it needs to protect public health and safety.” And thus the legislation died. I wonder whether that $200,000 in campaign contributions had anything to do with the legislation meeting its demise. Or was it the ineffectiveness of Obama’s leadership in working across the aisle that he is so famous for? Or both?

But back to Bradley…. His implication that “you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions?” Well Bradley has something here. Something he is very well aware of. In fact The Center for Public Integrity has a few things to say about Bill Bradley’s point. Only it isn’t what Bill Bradley or Obama wants you to know.

Bill Bradley would have you think he was among the cleanest members of Congress, but he was among the very worst in accepting free trips (junkets) from special interests. From 1996 to mid-1997, the period studied by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, Bill Bradley had the 2nd worst record out of 535 Senators and Congress people, taking 29 different trips including one worth $10,000 to Switzerland. It’s especially striking since Bradley retired at the end of 1996, missing the last third of the period studied.

In a Newsweek article last year on Oct 29, 2007 by Michael Isikoff the truth of all of this nefarious activity is revealed. The article begins typically enough. A Clinton hit piece artist is attempting to gain access to information she knows she won’t be able to gain access to and feigns cover up and contempt.

When author Sally Bedell Smith was researching her new book about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s White House years, she flew to Little Rock to visit the one place she thought could be an invaluable resource: the new William J. Clinton Presidential Library. Smith was hoping to inspect records that could shed light on what role the First Lady played in her husband’s administration. But Smith quickly discovered the frustrations of dealing with a library critics call “Little Rock’s Fort Knox.”

An archivist explained to Smith that the release of materials was tightly controlled by the former president’s longtime confidant Bruce Lindsey. Could she look at memos detailing the advice Hillary gave Bill during debate over welfare reform? Smith asked. No, the archivist said, those memos were “closed” to the public because they dealt with “policy” matters. What about any records that show what advice Bill gave his wife about her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign? Those, too, were closed, the archivist said, because they dealt with “political” matters. “He essentially told me I had no chance of getting anything,” says Smith, whose book, “For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton, the White House Years,” hits the bookstores this week.

You might know who this particular author is. She is a buddy of another Clinton hit piece specialist, Arianna Huffington. In fact Ms. Smith has gone out of her way to distort this story even further at the Huffington Post. And as you can imagine Arianna is there egging her on, if not helping her write it. According to Smith, she was at a party last October where she ran into Terry McAuliffe where he approached her grilling for information about the new book.

Huffington Post

According to Smith, the former democratic National Committee chairmain unexpectedly blurted out: “[Bill Clinton] has read the book, and he told me it is devastating about him.”

A rather unexpected claim from Mr. McAuliffe considering the book had not been released yet and wouldn’t be released for another two months.

“I was trying to prevent my jaw from dropping to the floor, ” Smith told Huffington Post. “Only 20 galleys had been printed and everyone who received a copy had signed a confidentiality agreement… The worry is that it’s only early September, and the Clinton camp now has a lot of time to develop a plan to undermine the book in some way.”

And this is where the story gets very interesting. You see, McAuliffe denied ever saying these things. And even if it was true why would he be asking her about the book? If indeed Bill Clinton had somehow received a copy and read it, why on earth would Terry McAuliffe ask Smith about the book? It just doesn’t make any rational sense. But it sure would be nefarious.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, McAuliffe denied that President Clinton had ever seen or been disappointed with the book. “There had been rumors on this book and the president had heard it was a hit piece on him,” the former DNC chairman recalled. “But she’s crazy. The book wasn’t even out yet.”

But that didn’t stop the Huffington Post, bastion of unbiased unfiltered journalism that it is, from spinning this story a little more. According to them, the day after the encounter (you notice how it does not include the word alleged before the word encounter as if they had somehow independently verified that Ms. Smith’s version of this story was the accurate one) Ms. Smith wrote an email to Random House asking them to look into the matter. Random House wrote back that they could find no evidence of a leaked copy being sent out. And yet this was reported as they confirmed that they investigated a possible leak but could not find a source. In other words, the allegation was shown not to have any validity. But the lack of proof is somehow used in the spin room to imply that one might still exist, if we trust Ms. Smith that is. Yes, Ms. Smith has no bias at all here:

“I know enough about how they operate to know that they’re pretty sophisticated and machine-like and they find hidden ways of going after people where they don’t leave any fingerprints. And it is a trademark technique of Hillary.”

“Hidden ways of going after people where they don’t leave any fingerprints.” Pardon me but I think she is accidentally describing the Obama campaign. All those threatening phone calls. Tavis Smiley death threats and all that. And Obama just smiling and going on about his business of denouncing and distancing himself from it all. Wink wink.

And if you were undecided as to whether or not Ms. Smith was decidedly anti-Hillary, look at this little gem she spoke right after Hillary won New Hampshire. Discussing her turn around and the “emotional” moment Ms. Smith found even more nefarious activity.

Huffington Post

“Just the very notion of that,” Smith said, “shows how ingrained the mistrust is of whatever she says or does. So much of what she has said for so many years has been calculated that it is so tough to judge something like that given her history. It’s tough to accept it at face value… The fact that it is a matter of debate is incredibly revealing.”

“A matter of debate?” Does this remind you of anyone? Sure sounds an awful (emphasis on the awful) lot like Arianna Huffington, that republican hack that became a Democratic hack when her husband’s bisexuality became public and she became rich.

Archives officials say Clinton is within his legal rights. But other Archives records NEWSWEEK reviewed show Clinton’s directives, while similar, also go beyond the restrictions placed by predecessors Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, neither of whom put any controls over the papers of their wives.

And yet Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush are not U.S. Senators. And they weren’t attacked mercilessly day after day. Well yeah, Nancy got hit for stealing silverware and having an astrologer. And poor Barbara was slammed a few times for having that coke headed drunk George W. and for looking like Millard Fillmore. But generally tame stuff. Nothing compared to the non-stop hits Hillary took every day. Can you believe that her political rivals are now demanding to see the written history of how she dealt with those dark days when she was most vulnerable? Of course they are only interested in the history and would never use the information to exploit her. Never. Not in a million years.

“It does sound pretty expansive. You start to wonder what’s not included,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

You start to wonder…. oh that sounds nefarious. Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest! Call in Ken Starr.

But John Carlin, a former Archives chief (and a Clinton appointee) who got the 2002 letter from Clinton, didn’t blame the former president. “Given all that they went through in office,” he says, the restrictions Clinton placed were “not surprising.”

It’s like no one remembers the 90s and the non-stop Republican attack machine. But what am I thinking? The Obama campaign remembers the 90s. You know, that decade they didn’t want to relive. Seems those were Just Words. Words, just words?

On ABC This Week, Top Obama strategist references Whitewater. AXELROD: ” I honestly — with all due respect, I would think that the Clinton campaign would be the last person to be wanting to characterize any real estate transaction as unusual, but anyway, George, I’m sorry.” [ABC This Week, 3/2/08]

If they really want to take that course of action I assure Mr. Axelrod and the Obama campaign that the rank and file Democratic Party will exit the Obama camp in a mass exodus of biblical proportions. Obama and his team have already made it very clear that they are quite willing to regurgitate Right Wing Republican talking points to bloody Hillary up. They like to beat up on women apparently. Because that is exactly why the Republicans beat up on Hillary, because she is a woman and she had the nerve to stand up to them.

At Hillary Hub is the following FACT: After Texas and Ohio, Obama Campaign Mimics Ken Starr

And unbelievably they really are.

Citing a Wall Street Journal editorial the Obama campaign even brings up the long time disproved allegation of insider trading and cattle futures from so many years ago.

WSJ

and_outlooks

1978 and 1979 were the tax years when Mrs. Clinton reported her 10,000% cattle-futures trading profit. Remember Red Bone and Jim Blair, and how she claimed she had made the investment on her own after reading the Wall Street Journal?

And if this isn’t despicable enough for you the op-ed ends with these words:

If the Clintons continue to keep his and her finances under wraps, the public would be wise, given their history, to assume they have something to hide.

Not to be outdone Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe appeared on NPR the day after Hillary’s big night and tore right into her.

NPR

It’s clear that the Clinton campaign is going to run a scorched earth campaign. The truth is Senator Clinton would be a deeply flawed Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton I think is also someone that would hurt down ballot candidates in many states. It’s clear the Clinton campaign is going to run a scorched earth negative campaign. Everything else they’ve tried did not work. She still refuses to release her tax returns. There’s a lot of questions about donors to the library. And so I think for voters that are worried about things that might come out here Senator Clinton has a lot more exposure than we do.

Isn’t it obvious that what Mr. Plouffe is saying (actually saying it twice) is that the Obama’s strategy is the scorched earth campaign? Bringing up all these questions that were answered over a decade ago to raise doubts about Hillary’s integrity rather than challenge her on the issues which they know they can’t win. The Obama campaign has no moral integrity. They are more than willing to regurgitate Right Wing talking points if they think it will cause doubt in the minds and votes of the electorate. They don’t mind tearing down a fine public servant if she is standing in the way of allowing them to deceive the country and elect this hopemonger with undefined plans for our future and a past linked to truly nefarious creatures. Creatures that they hope to avoid having to discuss by keeping the attention on Hillary and what the Republicans said about her.

Well, they can hope!

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Originally posted at MyDD.com.