Hillary Unfit to Be US President: The "Experience" Myth
Politics Joan Swirsky, Featured Writer
December 6, 2007
In the first of my Hillary-Unfit-To-Be-President series, I first and foremost addressed the New York Senator’s clear and even frightening lack of qualifications to be the leader of our country’s Foreign Policy. Hillary wants to convince the electorate that she comes to her claim of superior preparedness for the highest office in the world by dint of her “experience.” So let’s forever dispense with this absurd and self-aggrandizing myth.
Hillary’s Arkansas “Experience”
Hillary’s first substantive “experience” in the political world was as First Lady of Arkansas, during which time she was a partner in the Rose Law Firm, acting as “rainmaker” to bring companies that dealt with the state into the firm.
According to an article in Counterpunch.org. (“The Seeds of Corruption: Hillary Clinton in Arkansas,” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair), Hillary flunked her first bar exam in Washington, D.C., and “her legal expertise hasn't been cited in any law journals so her expertise is pure speculation.” Moreover, “Bill Clinton controls access to all 2000 boxes [of Hillary’s records from Arkansas] and he won't release the documents until after the 2008 election.”
So much for Hillary’s legal prowess and the “transparency” she pretends to advocate for, which Maureen Dowd of the NY Times explains as her “Nixonian bent for secrecy.” And that is not to omit her current refusal to pressure Clinton Library officials to release the papers that are relevant to her years in the White House.
When then-Governor Clinton selected his wife to reform the state’s education system, Cockburn and St. Clair say, she put forth “an astoundingly regressive proposal since it imposed new costs on the poor in a very poor state…The plan went through, [but] Arkansas' educational ranking remained abysmal.”
But isn’t learning from one’s mistakes part of the process of evolving? For most people it is, but apparently Hillary is not a quick study.
Hillary’s White House “Experience”
During Hillary’s eight-year tenure in the White House, “the one-time Lady Macbeth of Little Rock,” as writer Wes Pruden calls her, spent most of her time dealing with the scandals that followed her from the Natural State, as well as others that she and/or her husband created at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For instance:
▪ The cattle futures scheme
▪ Travelgate
▪ Whitewater
▪ Hillary’s billings as legal counsel to the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and the Castle Grande deal
▪ The missing billing records
▪ The cover-up of Vince Foster’s death
▪ The illegal request by her protégé, Craig Livingstone, for 900 confidential FBI files on Republican opponents (many of whom – surprise! – were audited by the IRS)
▪ A never-ending earthquake of bimbo eruptions
▪ Drum roll here – Monica Lewinsky
Okay, we can credit Hillary for vast experience in quashing scandals and also give her an A+ for whatever the antonym of transparency is, but it’s laughable to count them as “experience” to be President of the United States!
Anymore than the “80, maybe 82 countries” she says she traveled to as a “representative of the United States.” Flying über-first-class on Air Force One, and being bowed and scraped to by people who ingratiated themselves to her in order to gain access to her husband, may have augmented her sense of self-importance, but “experience” to be president?
When Hillary, in her assumption of the co-presidency, occupied an office in the West Wing, she was put in charge of reforming our nation’s healthcare system. But just as she failed in education reform in Arkansas, her socialist vision and lack of transparency about healthcare doomed the plan to failure as well.
But isn’t learning from one’s mistakes part of the process of gaining experience? For most people it is, but apparently Hillary is the exception.
Hillary’s NY Senate “Experience”
As a New Yorker myself, I have followed Hillary’s seven years as senator from the Empire State. While she sits on many prestigious committees – thanks largely to her connection to one Bubba Clinton and his ongoing, strong-arming influence in Democrat politics – the only “experience” I’ve been able to track are her proposals, proclamations, and complaints.
No legislation of any note. No foreign or domestic policy coups. No jobs to the upstate areas, as she promised in her campaign. In short, no there there! In fact, if you stop any New Yorker, as I have quite a few, and say, “Quick question: What has Hillary accomplished as senator?”, even her supporters get that deer-in-the-headlight look and start rambling on about her “support” for children.
But the cold hard facts of her inexperience don’t stop Hillary from pillorying her fast-rising opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. In mid-November, she said of him: "We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president."
For the record, Obama was a state senator from Illinois for seven years before being elected to the U.S. Senate, which means that in terms of elective office, his “experience” is lengthier than Ms. Hillary’s.
Speaking about one of the most important subjects of the 2008 presidential race – the economy – columnist Tony Blankley challenges Hillary to back up her claim of superior experience.
Some of the documents stolen from the National Archives by Sandy Berger, Hillary's national security advisor…are believed to be documents written by others with presidential comments in the margin. Let's have Hillary release all the national economic management documents written by her economic advisors with her comments in the margins. Let's see the option memoranda with her decisions indicated or even her own memoranda addressed to the president on the topic. At the minimum, let's see the memoranda produced by economists from the first lady's staff on the topic.
Blankley continues: “Other than keeping an eye on Bill, let's find out at what else she actually has experience in.”
Hillary’s “Experience” in The Politics of Personal Destruction
In doing everything and anything to create a legacy for herself and her husband, Hillary has the equivalent of 20 Ph.D.s! But it’s not a pretty picture.
“The Clintons have engaged in brute behavior for decades, much of it a matter of record,” says writer and publisher Emmett Tyrrell, who includes both the Mr. and the Mrs. in his indictment, listing the following:
▪ Abusing the presidential pardon power
▪ Being caught taking money from the shadowy Norman Hsu this year and from other dubious Asian figures in the 1990s
▪ Bullying the press, political opponents, prosecutors and the women who caught Bill's eye
▪ Suppressing a recent GQ story about how their bullying continues to this day
▪ Employing private investigators to harass and intimidate political opponents and the women the former president either had affairs with or abused
▪ Using the White House, most notably the Lincoln Bedroom, to reward donors
Tyrrell also writes about Hillary's out-of-control temper and use of foul language, both of which have been widely documented. But that is not as frightening – and potentially damaging to our national security, should Hillary become president – as the ex-president’s earning “more than $43 million in speaker's fees since leaving the White House, including millions from the Red Chinese and the United Arab Emirates.”
What do Bill and Hillary Clinton owe them? And how would that play out in a Hillary White House?
But I digress. During the October 30 debate, in which Hillary’s henchmen and women “planted” questions from the audience, Ms. Experience was unable to answer the simplest question in the world: Do you or do you not believe that illegal aliens should be granted drivers’ licenses?
She not only waffled and hesitated and tripped over her own words, but in writer Amanda Carpenter’s words, she “dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled.” In short, she did everything but answer Yes or No!
“She must be the only New Yorker without an opinion on the plan,” commented Charles Hunt of the N.Y. Post.
Naturally, her debate opponents pounced.
In response, Hillary used one of only two weapons in her repertoire. She triangulated – giving her voting base of perpetual victims the poor-me, I’m-just-a-girl plaint; giving her feminist cronies the I-can-play-in-the-big-boys-club bravado, and giving that great swath of moderate voters the I’m-still-ahead-in-the-polls rationale.
But unlike her husband, who was essentially given a pass after lying to the entire country for nearly a year, Hillary received only increased criticism and plummeting poll numbers.
So she resorted to her other weapon, in which she (and her attack squad) engages in the vendetta tactics she refined in the ‘90s. First, she threatened to release a file of “scandalous information” about Sen. Obama and, according to some reports, spearheaded the recent Giuliani “Hamptons scandal.”
As Clinton expert Dick Morris has explained:
Their favored method of getting out negative material about their foes is to hire private investigators to dig up dirt, which they then release through feeds to friendly journalists…In the '92 presidential campaign, the Clintons openly disclosed their use of private detectives to dig up ammunition on women who had accused the presidential candidate of having affairs with them, disclosing that they paid detective Richard Palladino over $100,000 in campaign funds. But, of late, they avoid such embarrassing disclosures by hiding their detective bills in their legal expenses.
Hillary’s “Experience” With Difficult Guys
No, we won’t go into the husband thing.
After Obama overtook Hillary in the Iowa polls, she told a reporter, with faux glee, “Well, now the fun part starts,” and unleashed a frontal attack, accusing the Illinois senator – in true Clinton-projection mode – of having a "slush fund" and having "at least skirted, if not violated, the (Federal Election Commission) rules and used lobbyist and PAC money to do so."
Then, on November 30, there was the difficult, clearly deranged, guy in New Hampshire who took several hostages in Hillary’s campaign headquarters – with a bomb that turned out to be harmless flares – in order to speak directly to the NY senator (and, of course, to CNN) in order to say that he needed better healthcare benefits.
What remain of her still-fawning media acolytes said her response to this potentially dangerous situation proved her fitness to be president – as she sat hundreds of miles away from the unfolding drama, and made numerous phone calls and dozens of generically “concerned” statements. For instance, she said she experienced “just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."
Isn’t this just what we need in a Commander in Chief? Imagine when even more difficult guys launch nukes from Iran, if nuclear Pakistan is taken over by the bad guys in the Taliban, and if (God forbid) seven suitcase nukes explode simultaneously in our country, will we want a president whose response is “bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger… everything at the same time”?
Getting back to the Obama difficult guy – it gets worse and even more bizarre. At an event last weekend in Boston, Sen. Obama said, for the second time, that he was "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President.
Pounce! Hillary’s “oppo-research” squad had found evidence that in kindergarten in Indonesia and, again, in the third grade (in Indonesia), Obama had written essays entitled: “I Want To Be a President.”
“Mrs. Clinton really is attacking Obama for something he wrote in kindergarten,” James Taranto of the Wall St. Journal exclaims. And, I might add, in third grade! Proof positive that this Yale Law School graduate is calling this Harvard Law School graduate a bald-faced liar for something he wrote when he was five and eight years old. You can’t make this stuff up!
“Clinton is going to attack her opponents for lacking honesty and integrity? Good luck with that,” Taranto adds.
Many in the leftwing media the Clintons have managed both to intimidate and control for the past 15 years have suddenly woken up and smelled the coffee! Instead of spinning her many gaffes and changing viewpoints sympathetically, they have done just the opposite, trumpeting Obama’s increasing lead, questioning her dependency on her husband, and calling said husband on what writer Paul Hollrah calls “the mother of all lies” he told to Iowans about being against the Iraq War “from the beginning.”
They’ve also begun to question Hillary’s positions on various issues and the truthfulness of the statistics she spews with seemingly no regard for their accuracy. Her honesty “is more than perception, says journalist, author, and TV commentator Star Parker. “Dishonesty defines Clinton's campaign.”
Among the issues Parker cites – and documents exhaustively – are healthcare and Hillary’s false claim of 47 million Americans being without health insurance; Social Security and Hillary’s false claim that when her husband left office, it was projected to be solvent until the year 2055; and the War in Iraq and Hillary’s false claim that her vote to authorize the war was based on her understanding that it would be preceded by additional diplomacy.
If these lies, lies, and ###### lies prove experience, it is only the experience that comes with the know-how to manipulate the masses and the media.
But as Pruden says: “Money, which maybe can't buy you love, can't always buy an election, either. You still have to get more people to vote for you than anyone else can.”
Joan Swirsky, is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. A New York-based author and journalist, she was formerly a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards...
Full Version: Hillary Unfit to be President:
QUOTE (Zeb @ Mar 14 2008, 02:22 AM) 
Hillary Unfit to Be US President: The "Experience" Myth
Politics Joan Swirsky, Featured Writer
December 6, 2007
In the first of my Hillary-Unfit-To-Be-President series, I first and foremost addressed the New York Senator’s clear and even frightening lack of qualifications to be the leader of our country’s Foreign Policy. Hillary wants to convince the electorate that she comes to her claim of superior preparedness for the highest office in the world by dint of her “experience.” So let’s forever dispense with this absurd and self-aggrandizing myth.
Hillary’s Arkansas “Experience”
Hillary’s first substantive “experience” in the political world was as First Lady of Arkansas, during which time she was a partner in the Rose Law Firm, acting as “rainmaker” to bring companies that dealt with the state into the firm.
According to an article in Counterpunch.org. (“The Seeds of Corruption: Hillary Clinton in Arkansas,” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair), Hillary flunked her first bar exam in Washington, D.C., and “her legal expertise hasn't been cited in any law journals so her expertise is pure speculation.” Moreover, “Bill Clinton controls access to all 2000 boxes [of Hillary’s records from Arkansas] and he won't release the documents until after the 2008 election.”
So much for Hillary’s legal prowess and the “transparency” she pretends to advocate for, which Maureen Dowd of the NY Times explains as her “Nixonian bent for secrecy.” And that is not to omit her current refusal to pressure Clinton Library officials to release the papers that are relevant to her years in the White House.
When then-Governor Clinton selected his wife to reform the state’s education system, Cockburn and St. Clair say, she put forth “an astoundingly regressive proposal since it imposed new costs on the poor in a very poor state…The plan went through, [but] Arkansas' educational ranking remained abysmal.”
But isn’t learning from one’s mistakes part of the process of evolving? For most people it is, but apparently Hillary is not a quick study.
Hillary’s White House “Experience”
During Hillary’s eight-year tenure in the White House, “the one-time Lady Macbeth of Little Rock,” as writer Wes Pruden calls her, spent most of her time dealing with the scandals that followed her from the Natural State, as well as others that she and/or her husband created at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For instance:
▪ The cattle futures scheme
▪ Travelgate
▪ Whitewater
▪ Hillary’s billings as legal counsel to the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and the Castle Grande deal
▪ The missing billing records
▪ The cover-up of Vince Foster’s death
▪ The illegal request by her protégé, Craig Livingstone, for 900 confidential FBI files on Republican opponents (many of whom – surprise! – were audited by the IRS)
▪ A never-ending earthquake of bimbo eruptions
▪ Drum roll here – Monica Lewinsky
Okay, we can credit Hillary for vast experience in quashing scandals and also give her an A+ for whatever the antonym of transparency is, but it’s laughable to count them as “experience” to be President of the United States!
Anymore than the “80, maybe 82 countries” she says she traveled to as a “representative of the United States.” Flying über-first-class on Air Force One, and being bowed and scraped to by people who ingratiated themselves to her in order to gain access to her husband, may have augmented her sense of self-importance, but “experience” to be president?
When Hillary, in her assumption of the co-presidency, occupied an office in the West Wing, she was put in charge of reforming our nation’s healthcare system. But just as she failed in education reform in Arkansas, her socialist vision and lack of transparency about healthcare doomed the plan to failure as well.
But isn’t learning from one’s mistakes part of the process of gaining experience? For most people it is, but apparently Hillary is the exception.
Hillary’s NY Senate “Experience”
As a New Yorker myself, I have followed Hillary’s seven years as senator from the Empire State. While she sits on many prestigious committees – thanks largely to her connection to one Bubba Clinton and his ongoing, strong-arming influence in Democrat politics – the only “experience” I’ve been able to track are her proposals, proclamations, and complaints.
No legislation of any note. No foreign or domestic policy coups. No jobs to the upstate areas, as she promised in her campaign. In short, no there there! In fact, if you stop any New Yorker, as I have quite a few, and say, “Quick question: What has Hillary accomplished as senator?”, even her supporters get that deer-in-the-headlight look and start rambling on about her “support” for children.
But the cold hard facts of her inexperience don’t stop Hillary from pillorying her fast-rising opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. In mid-November, she said of him: "We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president."
For the record, Obama was a state senator from Illinois for seven years before being elected to the U.S. Senate, which means that in terms of elective office, his “experience” is lengthier than Ms. Hillary’s.
Speaking about one of the most important subjects of the 2008 presidential race – the economy – columnist Tony Blankley challenges Hillary to back up her claim of superior experience.
Some of the documents stolen from the National Archives by Sandy Berger, Hillary's national security advisor…are believed to be documents written by others with presidential comments in the margin. Let's have Hillary release all the national economic management documents written by her economic advisors with her comments in the margins. Let's see the option memoranda with her decisions indicated or even her own memoranda addressed to the president on the topic. At the minimum, let's see the memoranda produced by economists from the first lady's staff on the topic.
Blankley continues: “Other than keeping an eye on Bill, let's find out at what else she actually has experience in.”
Hillary’s “Experience” in The Politics of Personal Destruction
In doing everything and anything to create a legacy for herself and her husband, Hillary has the equivalent of 20 Ph.D.s! But it’s not a pretty picture.
“The Clintons have engaged in brute behavior for decades, much of it a matter of record,” says writer and publisher Emmett Tyrrell, who includes both the Mr. and the Mrs. in his indictment, listing the following:
▪ Abusing the presidential pardon power
▪ Being caught taking money from the shadowy Norman Hsu this year and from other dubious Asian figures in the 1990s
▪ Bullying the press, political opponents, prosecutors and the women who caught Bill's eye
▪ Suppressing a recent GQ story about how their bullying continues to this day
▪ Employing private investigators to harass and intimidate political opponents and the women the former president either had affairs with or abused
▪ Using the White House, most notably the Lincoln Bedroom, to reward donors
Tyrrell also writes about Hillary's out-of-control temper and use of foul language, both of which have been widely documented. But that is not as frightening – and potentially damaging to our national security, should Hillary become president – as the ex-president’s earning “more than $43 million in speaker's fees since leaving the White House, including millions from the Red Chinese and the United Arab Emirates.”
What do Bill and Hillary Clinton owe them? And how would that play out in a Hillary White House?
But I digress. During the October 30 debate, in which Hillary’s henchmen and women “planted” questions from the audience, Ms. Experience was unable to answer the simplest question in the world: Do you or do you not believe that illegal aliens should be granted drivers’ licenses?
She not only waffled and hesitated and tripped over her own words, but in writer Amanda Carpenter’s words, she “dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled.” In short, she did everything but answer Yes or No!
“She must be the only New Yorker without an opinion on the plan,” commented Charles Hunt of the N.Y. Post.
Naturally, her debate opponents pounced.
In response, Hillary used one of only two weapons in her repertoire. She triangulated – giving her voting base of perpetual victims the poor-me, I’m-just-a-girl plaint; giving her feminist cronies the I-can-play-in-the-big-boys-club bravado, and giving that great swath of moderate voters the I’m-still-ahead-in-the-polls rationale.
But unlike her husband, who was essentially given a pass after lying to the entire country for nearly a year, Hillary received only increased criticism and plummeting poll numbers.
So she resorted to her other weapon, in which she (and her attack squad) engages in the vendetta tactics she refined in the ‘90s. First, she threatened to release a file of “scandalous information” about Sen. Obama and, according to some reports, spearheaded the recent Giuliani “Hamptons scandal.”
As Clinton expert Dick Morris has explained:
Their favored method of getting out negative material about their foes is to hire private investigators to dig up dirt, which they then release through feeds to friendly journalists…In the '92 presidential campaign, the Clintons openly disclosed their use of private detectives to dig up ammunition on women who had accused the presidential candidate of having affairs with them, disclosing that they paid detective Richard Palladino over $100,000 in campaign funds. But, of late, they avoid such embarrassing disclosures by hiding their detective bills in their legal expenses.
Hillary’s “Experience” With Difficult Guys
No, we won’t go into the husband thing.
After Obama overtook Hillary in the Iowa polls, she told a reporter, with faux glee, “Well, now the fun part starts,” and unleashed a frontal attack, accusing the Illinois senator – in true Clinton-projection mode – of having a "slush fund" and having "at least skirted, if not violated, the (Federal Election Commission) rules and used lobbyist and PAC money to do so."
Then, on November 30, there was the difficult, clearly deranged, guy in New Hampshire who took several hostages in Hillary’s campaign headquarters – with a bomb that turned out to be harmless flares – in order to speak directly to the NY senator (and, of course, to CNN) in order to say that he needed better healthcare benefits.
What remain of her still-fawning media acolytes said her response to this potentially dangerous situation proved her fitness to be president – as she sat hundreds of miles away from the unfolding drama, and made numerous phone calls and dozens of generically “concerned” statements. For instance, she said she experienced “just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."
Isn’t this just what we need in a Commander in Chief? Imagine when even more difficult guys launch nukes from Iran, if nuclear Pakistan is taken over by the bad guys in the Taliban, and if (God forbid) seven suitcase nukes explode simultaneously in our country, will we want a president whose response is “bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger… everything at the same time”?
Getting back to the Obama difficult guy – it gets worse and even more bizarre. At an event last weekend in Boston, Sen. Obama said, for the second time, that he was "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President.
Pounce! Hillary’s “oppo-research” squad had found evidence that in kindergarten in Indonesia and, again, in the third grade (in Indonesia), Obama had written essays entitled: “I Want To Be a President.”
“Mrs. Clinton really is attacking Obama for something he wrote in kindergarten,” James Taranto of the Wall St. Journal exclaims. And, I might add, in third grade! Proof positive that this Yale Law School graduate is calling this Harvard Law School graduate a bald-faced liar for something he wrote when he was five and eight years old. You can’t make this stuff up!
“Clinton is going to attack her opponents for lacking honesty and integrity? Good luck with that,” Taranto adds.
Many in the leftwing media the Clintons have managed both to intimidate and control for the past 15 years have suddenly woken up and smelled the coffee! Instead of spinning her many gaffes and changing viewpoints sympathetically, they have done just the opposite, trumpeting Obama’s increasing lead, questioning her dependency on her husband, and calling said husband on what writer Paul Hollrah calls “the mother of all lies” he told to Iowans about being against the Iraq War “from the beginning.”
They’ve also begun to question Hillary’s positions on various issues and the truthfulness of the statistics she spews with seemingly no regard for their accuracy. Her honesty “is more than perception, says journalist, author, and TV commentator Star Parker. “Dishonesty defines Clinton's campaign.”
Among the issues Parker cites – and documents exhaustively – are healthcare and Hillary’s false claim of 47 million Americans being without health insurance; Social Security and Hillary’s false claim that when her husband left office, it was projected to be solvent until the year 2055; and the War in Iraq and Hillary’s false claim that her vote to authorize the war was based on her understanding that it would be preceded by additional diplomacy.
If these lies, lies, and ###### lies prove experience, it is only the experience that comes with the know-how to manipulate the masses and the media.
But as Pruden says: “Money, which maybe can't buy you love, can't always buy an election, either. You still have to get more people to vote for you than anyone else can.”
Joan Swirsky, is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. A New York-based author and journalist, she was formerly a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards...
Politics Joan Swirsky, Featured Writer
December 6, 2007
In the first of my Hillary-Unfit-To-Be-President series, I first and foremost addressed the New York Senator’s clear and even frightening lack of qualifications to be the leader of our country’s Foreign Policy. Hillary wants to convince the electorate that she comes to her claim of superior preparedness for the highest office in the world by dint of her “experience.” So let’s forever dispense with this absurd and self-aggrandizing myth.
Hillary’s Arkansas “Experience”
Hillary’s first substantive “experience” in the political world was as First Lady of Arkansas, during which time she was a partner in the Rose Law Firm, acting as “rainmaker” to bring companies that dealt with the state into the firm.
According to an article in Counterpunch.org. (“The Seeds of Corruption: Hillary Clinton in Arkansas,” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair), Hillary flunked her first bar exam in Washington, D.C., and “her legal expertise hasn't been cited in any law journals so her expertise is pure speculation.” Moreover, “Bill Clinton controls access to all 2000 boxes [of Hillary’s records from Arkansas] and he won't release the documents until after the 2008 election.”
So much for Hillary’s legal prowess and the “transparency” she pretends to advocate for, which Maureen Dowd of the NY Times explains as her “Nixonian bent for secrecy.” And that is not to omit her current refusal to pressure Clinton Library officials to release the papers that are relevant to her years in the White House.
When then-Governor Clinton selected his wife to reform the state’s education system, Cockburn and St. Clair say, she put forth “an astoundingly regressive proposal since it imposed new costs on the poor in a very poor state…The plan went through, [but] Arkansas' educational ranking remained abysmal.”
But isn’t learning from one’s mistakes part of the process of evolving? For most people it is, but apparently Hillary is not a quick study.
Hillary’s White House “Experience”
During Hillary’s eight-year tenure in the White House, “the one-time Lady Macbeth of Little Rock,” as writer Wes Pruden calls her, spent most of her time dealing with the scandals that followed her from the Natural State, as well as others that she and/or her husband created at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For instance:
▪ The cattle futures scheme
▪ Travelgate
▪ Whitewater
▪ Hillary’s billings as legal counsel to the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and the Castle Grande deal
▪ The missing billing records
▪ The cover-up of Vince Foster’s death
▪ The illegal request by her protégé, Craig Livingstone, for 900 confidential FBI files on Republican opponents (many of whom – surprise! – were audited by the IRS)
▪ A never-ending earthquake of bimbo eruptions
▪ Drum roll here – Monica Lewinsky
Okay, we can credit Hillary for vast experience in quashing scandals and also give her an A+ for whatever the antonym of transparency is, but it’s laughable to count them as “experience” to be President of the United States!
Anymore than the “80, maybe 82 countries” she says she traveled to as a “representative of the United States.” Flying über-first-class on Air Force One, and being bowed and scraped to by people who ingratiated themselves to her in order to gain access to her husband, may have augmented her sense of self-importance, but “experience” to be president?
When Hillary, in her assumption of the co-presidency, occupied an office in the West Wing, she was put in charge of reforming our nation’s healthcare system. But just as she failed in education reform in Arkansas, her socialist vision and lack of transparency about healthcare doomed the plan to failure as well.
But isn’t learning from one’s mistakes part of the process of gaining experience? For most people it is, but apparently Hillary is the exception.
Hillary’s NY Senate “Experience”
As a New Yorker myself, I have followed Hillary’s seven years as senator from the Empire State. While she sits on many prestigious committees – thanks largely to her connection to one Bubba Clinton and his ongoing, strong-arming influence in Democrat politics – the only “experience” I’ve been able to track are her proposals, proclamations, and complaints.
No legislation of any note. No foreign or domestic policy coups. No jobs to the upstate areas, as she promised in her campaign. In short, no there there! In fact, if you stop any New Yorker, as I have quite a few, and say, “Quick question: What has Hillary accomplished as senator?”, even her supporters get that deer-in-the-headlight look and start rambling on about her “support” for children.
But the cold hard facts of her inexperience don’t stop Hillary from pillorying her fast-rising opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. In mid-November, she said of him: "We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president."
For the record, Obama was a state senator from Illinois for seven years before being elected to the U.S. Senate, which means that in terms of elective office, his “experience” is lengthier than Ms. Hillary’s.
Speaking about one of the most important subjects of the 2008 presidential race – the economy – columnist Tony Blankley challenges Hillary to back up her claim of superior experience.
Some of the documents stolen from the National Archives by Sandy Berger, Hillary's national security advisor…are believed to be documents written by others with presidential comments in the margin. Let's have Hillary release all the national economic management documents written by her economic advisors with her comments in the margins. Let's see the option memoranda with her decisions indicated or even her own memoranda addressed to the president on the topic. At the minimum, let's see the memoranda produced by economists from the first lady's staff on the topic.
Blankley continues: “Other than keeping an eye on Bill, let's find out at what else she actually has experience in.”
Hillary’s “Experience” in The Politics of Personal Destruction
In doing everything and anything to create a legacy for herself and her husband, Hillary has the equivalent of 20 Ph.D.s! But it’s not a pretty picture.
“The Clintons have engaged in brute behavior for decades, much of it a matter of record,” says writer and publisher Emmett Tyrrell, who includes both the Mr. and the Mrs. in his indictment, listing the following:
▪ Abusing the presidential pardon power
▪ Being caught taking money from the shadowy Norman Hsu this year and from other dubious Asian figures in the 1990s
▪ Bullying the press, political opponents, prosecutors and the women who caught Bill's eye
▪ Suppressing a recent GQ story about how their bullying continues to this day
▪ Employing private investigators to harass and intimidate political opponents and the women the former president either had affairs with or abused
▪ Using the White House, most notably the Lincoln Bedroom, to reward donors
Tyrrell also writes about Hillary's out-of-control temper and use of foul language, both of which have been widely documented. But that is not as frightening – and potentially damaging to our national security, should Hillary become president – as the ex-president’s earning “more than $43 million in speaker's fees since leaving the White House, including millions from the Red Chinese and the United Arab Emirates.”
What do Bill and Hillary Clinton owe them? And how would that play out in a Hillary White House?
But I digress. During the October 30 debate, in which Hillary’s henchmen and women “planted” questions from the audience, Ms. Experience was unable to answer the simplest question in the world: Do you or do you not believe that illegal aliens should be granted drivers’ licenses?
She not only waffled and hesitated and tripped over her own words, but in writer Amanda Carpenter’s words, she “dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled.” In short, she did everything but answer Yes or No!
“She must be the only New Yorker without an opinion on the plan,” commented Charles Hunt of the N.Y. Post.
Naturally, her debate opponents pounced.
In response, Hillary used one of only two weapons in her repertoire. She triangulated – giving her voting base of perpetual victims the poor-me, I’m-just-a-girl plaint; giving her feminist cronies the I-can-play-in-the-big-boys-club bravado, and giving that great swath of moderate voters the I’m-still-ahead-in-the-polls rationale.
But unlike her husband, who was essentially given a pass after lying to the entire country for nearly a year, Hillary received only increased criticism and plummeting poll numbers.
So she resorted to her other weapon, in which she (and her attack squad) engages in the vendetta tactics she refined in the ‘90s. First, she threatened to release a file of “scandalous information” about Sen. Obama and, according to some reports, spearheaded the recent Giuliani “Hamptons scandal.”
As Clinton expert Dick Morris has explained:
Their favored method of getting out negative material about their foes is to hire private investigators to dig up dirt, which they then release through feeds to friendly journalists…In the '92 presidential campaign, the Clintons openly disclosed their use of private detectives to dig up ammunition on women who had accused the presidential candidate of having affairs with them, disclosing that they paid detective Richard Palladino over $100,000 in campaign funds. But, of late, they avoid such embarrassing disclosures by hiding their detective bills in their legal expenses.
Hillary’s “Experience” With Difficult Guys
No, we won’t go into the husband thing.
After Obama overtook Hillary in the Iowa polls, she told a reporter, with faux glee, “Well, now the fun part starts,” and unleashed a frontal attack, accusing the Illinois senator – in true Clinton-projection mode – of having a "slush fund" and having "at least skirted, if not violated, the (Federal Election Commission) rules and used lobbyist and PAC money to do so."
Then, on November 30, there was the difficult, clearly deranged, guy in New Hampshire who took several hostages in Hillary’s campaign headquarters – with a bomb that turned out to be harmless flares – in order to speak directly to the NY senator (and, of course, to CNN) in order to say that he needed better healthcare benefits.
What remain of her still-fawning media acolytes said her response to this potentially dangerous situation proved her fitness to be president – as she sat hundreds of miles away from the unfolding drama, and made numerous phone calls and dozens of generically “concerned” statements. For instance, she said she experienced “just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."
Isn’t this just what we need in a Commander in Chief? Imagine when even more difficult guys launch nukes from Iran, if nuclear Pakistan is taken over by the bad guys in the Taliban, and if (God forbid) seven suitcase nukes explode simultaneously in our country, will we want a president whose response is “bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger… everything at the same time”?
Getting back to the Obama difficult guy – it gets worse and even more bizarre. At an event last weekend in Boston, Sen. Obama said, for the second time, that he was "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President.
Pounce! Hillary’s “oppo-research” squad had found evidence that in kindergarten in Indonesia and, again, in the third grade (in Indonesia), Obama had written essays entitled: “I Want To Be a President.”
“Mrs. Clinton really is attacking Obama for something he wrote in kindergarten,” James Taranto of the Wall St. Journal exclaims. And, I might add, in third grade! Proof positive that this Yale Law School graduate is calling this Harvard Law School graduate a bald-faced liar for something he wrote when he was five and eight years old. You can’t make this stuff up!
“Clinton is going to attack her opponents for lacking honesty and integrity? Good luck with that,” Taranto adds.
Many in the leftwing media the Clintons have managed both to intimidate and control for the past 15 years have suddenly woken up and smelled the coffee! Instead of spinning her many gaffes and changing viewpoints sympathetically, they have done just the opposite, trumpeting Obama’s increasing lead, questioning her dependency on her husband, and calling said husband on what writer Paul Hollrah calls “the mother of all lies” he told to Iowans about being against the Iraq War “from the beginning.”
They’ve also begun to question Hillary’s positions on various issues and the truthfulness of the statistics she spews with seemingly no regard for their accuracy. Her honesty “is more than perception, says journalist, author, and TV commentator Star Parker. “Dishonesty defines Clinton's campaign.”
Among the issues Parker cites – and documents exhaustively – are healthcare and Hillary’s false claim of 47 million Americans being without health insurance; Social Security and Hillary’s false claim that when her husband left office, it was projected to be solvent until the year 2055; and the War in Iraq and Hillary’s false claim that her vote to authorize the war was based on her understanding that it would be preceded by additional diplomacy.
If these lies, lies, and ###### lies prove experience, it is only the experience that comes with the know-how to manipulate the masses and the media.
But as Pruden says: “Money, which maybe can't buy you love, can't always buy an election, either. You still have to get more people to vote for you than anyone else can.”
Joan Swirsky, is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. A New York-based author and journalist, she was formerly a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards...
Obama: Peace in Kosovo to be secured
Potential democratic candidate for the USA president Barack Obama wrote in his letter to Mirjana Samardzija, president of the Serbian Unity Congress, that after proclamation of independence all people in Kosovo should be allowed to live in a peaceful, tolerant and prosperous society in which religious monuments and objects as well as the rights of the minorities are completely protected.
‘Serbia and its people have suffered a lot during the last two decades and Serbs deserve more prosperous and peaceful future’, Obama wrote. He supports ‘the final goal of the complete integration of Serbia with the democratic West, including membership in the Euro-Atlantic institutions such as the EU’.
( Putin Does Not)
‘I support and shall help in every possible way development of the dialog between all sides in Kosovo because I believe that peace and stability can be reached only by solutions acceptable for all sides’, Obama says. He pointed out that ‘even in the absence of the mutual agreement, the rights of the minorities and protection of historic and religious objects are topics that should not be negotiated about’.
The Congress of Serbian Unity announced yesterday that Obama wrote in his letter that the peace in Kosovo could be ‘really secured’ only with solutions acceptable for both sides. He pointed out that he would continue supporting the Dayton Accord, but the Erdut Agreement as well.
‘I shall clearly point out that I expect that all sides in that agreement, including the Croatian one, respect their obligations’, Obama said.
( Both Serbia and Putin Oppose both the Dayton Accord and the Erdut Agreement particularly as they relate and are relevant to Kosovo remaining a part of Serbia and not an Independent state as they have declared)
h
ttp://www.blic.co.yu/_comments.php?id=1690&mode=view
Posted Comments:
Toni | Subota, 8 Mart 2008. 18:16h
He seems to have a one sided view when it comes to Kosova issue but this will not matter that much as he will change when he gets at the top because we are waiting there for him.
Sergei | Utorak, 4 Mart 2008. 21:21h
Wow! This almost sounds like Putin's view. Maybe I'll vote for Obama after all.
Swe | Utorak, 4 Mart 2008. 16:50h
Obama made very important points in this statement, including the impossibility to independence for Kosovo if Serbia does not accept it and the fact that a solution have to be accepted by all parts involved (even other countries in Balkans). Maybe U.S will change direction on the Kosovo issue if Obama wins.
Obviously these posters did not incorporate Obama usual vagary in world smith-ism, which appears to say one thing to one party and wholly another to others.
I.E. Obama is not saying he is, or, is not of like mind with Putin or Serbia as it relates to Kosovo’s Independence, quite the opposite, if, and I emphasize, in his usual vagueness, IF, his last paragraphs can be accepted as revealing what his real view is in the vagueness of the “Audacity of Change" word smith-isms he is famous for.
That is All!!
US-traitor........ Last time I checked article is about the delusions Hillary is having in terms of Experience. I realize you're out there in left field but how you got to Kosovo is puzzling 
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.