Hillary Prepares for 2012

Hillary Clinton apparently is not ready to go quietly into the night. On the contrary, it appears that she is already thinking about 2012. According to a story in the New York Observer online edition, Clinton is asking donors to her 2008 Presidential run to allow her to roll their contributions over into her 2012 Senatorial election fund. According to the Observer,

Hillary Clinton's campaign is sending out letters to donors asking permission to roll a $2,300 contribution to Clinton's 2008 general election coffers to her 2012 senate election fund instead of offering a refund.

Pardon me for being slightly suspicious, but how many of us actually believe that Clinton is really saving up merely for her 2012 Senatorial election? I may be incorrect, but it is much more likely that Hillary is stockpiling for another run at the Presidency. If Obama wins, of course, she will not be able to run in 2012, but if John McCain should manage to win- not an impossibility, by any means- then Hillary will almost certainly run for the PResidency again in 2012. Of course, if Obama loses this time around, it is almost certain that he too will run again in 2012, and if both run again, they will in all probability be facing another bitter grudge match, as both are well-funded and extremely ambitious. So Hillary will need every dollar she can squeeze out of her donors, since she is likely to be the underdog in a rematch with Obama.

However, unfortunately for Hillary, not all of her donors are willing to allow her to hang on to their money until 2012. As the Observer reports of its anonymous source,

This donor, at least, had no intention of signing. "Of course I'm going to get my money back," the donor told me.

So it may be difficult for Hillary to hang on to her cash. And once she loses her war-chest, she will be even more an underdog. Her campaign this time around was not well-run, and she demonstrated many times the political weaknesses that I for one suspected might doom her. She is a very weak candidate, without much real experience (other than being married to a President) and a well-documented habit of mendacity. If Hillary does run again in 2012, she will face an uphill battle, as she iwll no longer be the Establishment candidate.

My own feeling is that Hillary's chances of becoming President probably are gone. 2008 was practically tailor-made for her, and all the signs seem to indicate that this is probably going to be a Democratic year, despite the Democratic Congress' bungling. However, she not even able to grasp the nomination from Barack Obama. And if Obama wins in 2008, she cannot run again until 2016, and she is no longer very young. And unlike Ronald Reagan and John McCain, Hillary has neither a executive experience nor a reputation for bipartisanship. But most of all, she lacks Reagan's communication skills. So her age will be a much bigger stumbling-block than it was for Reagan and remains for McCain. I guess the Clintons may indeed be pinning their hopes on Chelsea at this point

Couric: Hillary Coverage 'Unfair', 'Biased'

Katie Couric will never be recognized for her analytical skills, Nor is she likely to ever go down as a foremost student of history. However, her latest outburst should convince even the most blinded observers of the national media that that institution has lost whatever vestige of objectivity that it pretends to.

According to the website Media Bistro, Couric was honored by he Sewall-belmonth House and Museum. While there, she took the occasion to comment on the press coverage of the recently-ended campaign by Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of the United States. According to Media Bistro,

Some thoughts from Couric at the event:

However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I've ever seen.

Couric went on to say that latent sexism contributed, in part, to Hillary's defeat.

If Couric thinks that the coverage of Senator Clinton was 'the most unfair, biased coverage' she had ever seen, it would seem that she has been blind to the coverage that current President George W. Bush has been receiving for the entirety of his seven-and-a-half years in office so far. If Couric had any knowledge of history, she would know that this is the most hostile Press Corps any president has faced since Richard Nixon. And in Nixon's case, there was some good reason- the man was a crook. However, in Bush's case, there has yet to be offered any rational reason for the Press' amazing hostility and their ferocious hatred of the man. If Couric can only moan about the coverage of Hillary (which was mostly positive until Obama emerged as a legitimate challenger, and still is far more positive than that received by any Republican, including Presidential nominee John McCain), then she displays her own lack of knowledge in the areas of history and context. And this is the person that we are supposed to trust with the duty of accurately and objectively reporting to us the events of the day?

As for Couric's moan about 'latent sexism', the Democratic Party and their willing enablers in the media have long been completely invested in the politics of class, sex and race. If Obama had not happened to be black, it is my firm belief that Clinton would have continued to sail unimpeded to the nomination. However, she had the misfortune to be running against a member of the one group of victim who have a stronger pull than women- blacks. I do not believe that Barack Obama's sex had anything to do with his victory- other than the fact that he is younger than Senator Clinton.

No, I suspect that the reason Clinton lost had nothing to do with sexism- latent or otherwise. Obama is younger, apparently more attractive to women than Clinton is to men, and a far better orator. And of course, he is racially identified as black. Clinton on the other hand, arouses strong emotions, much of which are negative. She is not seen as trustworthy, and is certainly not going to fire anyone up as Obama does on a regular basis. In the Democratic Party, it is all about winning- regardless of the costs. Obama was seen as a better shot to beat the Republicans and return the White House to it's rightful occupants, thus the Press turned on Clinton to help Obama sew up the nomination as quickly as possible. Had Obama not been in the race, I believe the Press would have been as firmly in Clinton's pocket as they have in the past. And if Katie Couric does not understand that, then she has proved once again how unfit she is to be a news anchor and why the mainstream media is losing subscribers and viewers in droves.

Goodbye Hillary- for now

Well, it appears that after the primaries earlier this week, Hillary Clinton has bowed to the inevitable and is ending her candidacy for the Presidency. According to the story in the Associated Press,

Hillary Rodham Clinton will end on Saturday her historic bid to become the first woman president but Barack Obama said he won't be hurried into a decision on whether to make her his running mate.

Clinton, in an e-mail to supporters, said she "will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise."

The e-mail was a shift in tone by the former first lady, who announced 17 months ago that she was "in it to win it." Many of her supporters now are pushing for her to be included as the vice presidential candidate, in their minds a "dream ticket" that would bring Obama her enthusiastic legions and broaden his appeal to white and working-class voters.

The Democratic Party has long based its strategy on the politics of race, sex and class division. In any other year, it seems certain that Hillary, despite her well-documented weaknesses as a candidate, would have swept to the nomination. However, Barack Obama, just as Bill Clinton did in 1992, took advantage of a relatively small field and the weakness of the front-runners to eke out a narrow victory in the primaries. However, there can be no doubt that neither Hillary nor Obama would have been in this position if it were not for their sex and color respectively. No white male with the thin resumes both of these candidates had would have been considered. However, Barack Obama is now the Democratic Party's candidate for President. Hillary now has to hope that she is offered a spot as the Vice-Presidential candidate.

I do not see Obama offering her the spot, however. Despite her appeal to a large percentage of the Democratic Party, I believe that she was more the anti-Obama candidate for voters who were appalled at Obama's arrogance, naivete, and the positions of some of his long-standing advisors. And the campaign exposed some serious fault-lines within the Democratic Party, between the various 'favored victim' groups, with personal dislikes between the candidates playing a factor as well. There is some real dislike between Hillary and Obama, and it may be too much to ask that they bury those before the general election. Of course, Democrats as a party are all about winning at any cost- they have a long history of being willing to say and do anything in order to get elected.

If Obama does put Hillary on the ticket, that will mostly assuage her supporters within the party. But on the other hand, it will certainly fire up the opposition. Hillary remains an incredibly divisive figure, and her inclusion on the ticket will bring out Republicans and conservatives who might otherwise sit this election out. I wold suspect that Obama will only put her on the ticket if he is forced to by Democratic Party leadership- if left to his own devices, I believe he will choose someone else- someone who is less well-0known and polarizing than Hillary.

And what of Hillary's own ambitions? If Obama wins, she cannot run for President again for eight years. However, if McCain wins, she will almost certainly run again in 2012. However, regardless of whether she runs in 2012 or not, I believe that this was her best chance to win. Unless she is the Vice-President in an Obama Administration, she will probably be facing a Vice-President in 2012. And she has now shown that she is very vulnerable in a national campaign- her stiffness, arrogance and general unlikability, coupled with her claims to experience she simply doesn't possess, make her unlikely to win against a serious opponent. the fact that she could not even beat Obama- and in fact lost to him- makes it unlikely she will win the big one. However, don't ever count the Clintons out. After all, there is always Chelsea...

So can Obama beat John McCain in the general election, with or without Hillary on the ticket? In part, it depends on McCain's campaign and his choice of a running mate. If he chooses wisely and if he runs a strong campaign, he could beat Obama, though ther is no doubt that he is an underdog- especially when one considers taht the antional Press corps will do everything in their power to elect Obama. After their narrow misses in throwing the election to Democrats in 2000 and 2004, the media is desperate to hand this one to Obama. Thus, McCain will be a decided underdog, but he has a resume and experience that Obama cannot hope to match. In addition, while Obama may like to hype his work as a 'community organizer', McCain has real service- he was a prisoner-of-war to the North Vietnamese while serving his country.

But I think ultimately the election will come down to whether or not McCain can pull the independent vote that the Democrats desperately need. I do not believe that McCain can count on the Democrats crossing over- they tend to be far more partisan and vote the party line, as opposed to actually comparing candidates. But if McCain can get the independents, then he has a real shot at beating Obama, despite the fact that this is shaping up to be a Democratic year in politics.

StoneHead Returns

In more ways than one. Despite the continuing demands of my real job, I am back and will do my best to maintain a steady stream of posts. There has been a lot happening over the past few weeks, from the move by Captain Ed Morrissey from Captain's Quarters to Michelle Malkin's Hot Air site, to Senator John McvCain's clinching of the Republican Presidential nomination, to the continuing struggles of the vaunted Clinton Machine.

First, let me congratulate Ed Morrissey on his move to Hot Air. As of January 29, 2008, he had closed Captain's Quarters, though his posts will remain online as archives for those who are interested. Captain Ed has been a model for my own modest blogging efforts, and I am sure that he will continue to provide scintillating commentary and analysis on current events from his new perch. I will miss the daily exercise of checking Captain's Quarters, but at least with his move to Hot Air, I have one less bookmark to keep up!

I would also like to extend my congratualtions to Senator McCain for clinching the Republican Presidential nomination. According to the Associated Press, not only has McCain has secured more than the requisite 1191 delegates to clinch the nomination in last night's contests, but his remaining serious rival (no, I don't count Ron Paul), former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has withdrawn from the race. Writes the AP,

John McCain clinched the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, an extraordinary comeback for a candidate whose White House hopes were dashed eight years ago and whose second bid was left for dead eight months ago.
"The most important race begins," he said in an Associated Press interview.
According to the AP count, the four-term Arizona senator surpassed the requisite 1,191 GOP delegates as voters in Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island and Texas put him over the threshold. The triumph came one month after his Super Tuesday coast-to-coast victories gave him an insurmountable lead in the delegate hunt and forced his chief rival, Mitt Romney, to drop out of the race.

I find the AP's report interesting insofar as they don't seem to feel the need to admit that their own reporting was one of the primary causes why McCain was 'left for dead eight months ago'. Interesting how there is no mention of just who left McCain's candidacy for dead. However, as I wrote earlier, while I endorsed former massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (shortly before his Super Tuesday defeat that led to his withdrawal), I believe that Senator McCain is a worthy candidate and an honorable man. I am proud to support Senator McCain and I strongly urge any readers of this blog to consider doing so as well.

Meanwhile, Senator Hillary Clinton's Texas/Ohio firewall has apparently held- at least to the extent of allowing her to stay in the race for the Democratic nomination. However, she trails Illinois Senator Barack Obama by just over one hundred delegates with twelve contests and 611 delegates left to be pledged. According to ABC News, neither Obama nor Clinton are likely to be able to secure the nomination prior to the convention, which means the Democratic superdelegates will end up deciding who is the nominee. Writes ABC News,

ABC News' current delegate estimate has Obama at 1,555.

That means he would need to win 77% of all the remaining pledged delegates to hit the magic number of 2,024 to secure the nomination. That is highly unlikely due to the proportional delegate allocation rules in the Democratic Party.

Clinton would need to win 94% of all the remaining pledged delegates to hit the magic number of 2,024. (ABC News currently has her at 1449.)

So, clearly they both are going to be relying on superdelegates to secure the nomination.

This exposes both the structural problem with the Democratic Party- allowing too many party bigwigs to decide nominations, and the issues the Democrats have with identity politics. Since you have two of the Democrats' favored victims classes- a woman and a black man- running for the nomination, the traditional Democratic politics of destruction are going to be used internally for the first time. This is why running on identity politics is a bad idea and why Republicans need to really emphasize that it is who you are, not what you are, that really should matter.

Ultimately, I believe that Barack Obama will be the nominee, unless the Clinton machine uses the superdelegates and the courts to overturn the primary voters' decisions. Since this is the Clintons we are discussing, that is a definite possibility- we already know that if the decision comes down to the convention, the Clintons will use all arguments necessary to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates, despite the Democratic Party's stated refusal. However, the Democratic race will be fun to watch- especially for Republicans who listened to pundits crown Hillary a year ago and tell us that the Republicans would have a bruising, lengthy primary. that the exact opposite has occurred despite the best efforts of the media should tell you all you need to know about the pundits' accuracy- and the preferences of the national media.

Hillary's Iron Fist Shows

Hillary Clinton has been trying to cast herself as the 'mommy' for these United States. However, even when she is trying her best to assume a persona of the loving mommy, she cannot entirely hide her statist, big-government motives. Further proof, if any were needed, that Hillary is at heart a socialist Big Sister was provided by the New York Times this morning. According to the Times, Hillary is proposing to enforce her universal health-care ideas by garnishing the paychecks of any workers who choose not to participate. The Times writes,

Mrs. Clinton, who did not answer Senator Barack Obama’s question on the topic in a debate last Thursday, was pressed repeatedly to do so Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on the ABC program “This Week.” When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked a third time whether she would garnish people’s wages, Mrs. Clinton responded, “George, we will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it’s that or it’s some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments.”

Although the Times use of actual analysis (though very little) in revealing Clinton's intent was a small shock, it should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Clinton's career. From the very first, she is an unabashed big-government promoter, who believe that the government can do better at making individuals' decisions than those individuals themselves. Clinton tried to foist a massive government-run healthcare plan on the Untied States in the 1990s, and now she wants to try again, despite the fact that many Americans simply do not want to buy insurance- especially younger single people who do not see the need and choose not to spend the money. As the Power Line crew so correctly writes,

The least-acknowledged fact in the present debate over health care is that many millions of Americans have no good reason to buy health insurance. This is especially true of single young people, above all single men. They rarely become seriously ill, and they know that if they are unlucky enough to be in an accident or contract a serious illness, they will be treated anyway. So, quite properly, they see no reason to pay for health insurance or--the same thing--place a high value on health insurance as an employment benefit.

Pizza Hut learned this a few years ago when it pioneered a program that made health insurance available to its part-time workers at remarkably advantageous rates. To the company's surprise, few of its part-time employees--fewer than ten percent, as I recall--signed up for the plan. Even at subsidized rates, the vast majority of young, single employees had no interest in spending money on health insurance.

Thus, the crocodile tears that are shed over "the uninsured" are by no means entirely genuine. One of the basic purposes of just about anyone's "health care plan" is to find a way to force those millions of young, single people to pay for the health care required by their elders.

This is quite correct. And I for one, do not see anywhere in our Constitution that the government, especially the federal government, has any rights or power to force people to buy things they simply do not wish to purchase. If we were living in a Communist country, then the government would indeed have that power, as we see in China and other such countries. However, the United States is quite different- we deliberately chose to limit the government's power to force us to do things we don't wish to do. And forcing younger people to pay for their elders' healthcare is a particularly egregious abuse of that power. If Hillary wants to try that, then she ought to at least be honest about her intent to abuse the power of the federal government in ways that it was never intended. Hat tip to

Clinton Touts Government Control of Economy

Hillary Clinton allowed her moderate cover to slip slightly in an interview with the New York Times' David Leonhardt. According to the story, Clinton said that,

if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration.

In one of her most extensive interviews about how she would approach the economy, Mrs. Clinton laid out a view of economic policy that differed in some ways from that of her husband, Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton campaigned on his centrist views, and as president, he championed deficit reduction and trade agreements.

Reflecting what her aides said were very different conditions today, Mrs. Clinton put her emphasis on issues like inequality and the role of institutions like government, rather than market forces, in addressing them.

She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she characterized as often “offensive” and “wrong” and a tax code that had become “so far out of whack” in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class living standards.

Conservatives have long suspected that Hillary would apply more centralized controls to the economy if she were elected and these suspicions are based on Hillary's long-standing support of socalist policies. This interview provides more evidence that we were right. I do not doubt that if she wins in November, Hillary will try to push the United States toward a centralized economy. My only questions is whether or not Congress and the courts have the will-power to actually uphold the COnstitution's limits on the federal government. Based on their performance over the past six years, I sadly conclude that they likely do not.

Goodbye Hillary?

According to this morning's headline on the Drudge Report, the impending exit of Hillary Clinton from the 2008 Presidential campaign may be a distinct possibility. According to the report,

Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!

"She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."

This brings up two immediate thoughts- one, how Hillary's entire campaign has been based on the idea that her money, power and husband's name would make up for her own complete lack of experience and likability and two, how modern campaigns are so dependent on the media.

On the subject of Hillary, if she does indeed lose in New Hampshire and then drop out, that would almost certainly spell the end of her Presidential ambitions. 2008 was her best chance to win that elusive prize, with no incumbent running. If Barack Obama wins, Hillary cannot run again for eight years, by which time she will almost certainly be considered too old, and even if that is not the case, her high negatives are unlikely to recede. In addition, eight years of a Democrat in the White House will probably lead to voters' desire for a chance in leadership- Democrats have not done a stellar job of leading in the past and there is a good chance that will not change with an Obama presidency. And if a Republican wins, she would have to face an incumbent, and her bad performance in this campaign does not seem to indicate much eagerness by Democrats to nominate a candidate whose chances for winning are as low as Hillary's. I think if she is going to win even the nomination, she has to do it in 2008- this is really her only true chance.

On the topic of the media, it is a shame that cmapaigns have become more about the image than about the substance. How many of us really know what any of the candidates believe? the so-called 'debates' hoseted by the varioous media outlets have been designed more to show off the moderators than the candidates, it would seem. And at no point have we had a true debate of substance by any of the candidates. As shown by the Clinton insider quoted above, it is more about how the candidates are perceived than what they actually are. The Clinton 'brand' cannot take more damage? Isn't the election about the candidate who best represents the American people? What is this 'brand' idea? Bill Clinton cannot run again for President. Hillary has made a mess of her campaign. What is the 'brand'? Chelsea?

Personally, I would like to cut the media completely out of the equation,save as reporters, which is what they should be anyway. Let the candidates have real debates, as Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas did. Let the voters hear what candidates really think. If a candidate has a true philosophy of government, let's hear it. I don't care what Chris Matthews or Tim Russert or any other talking head thinks. They are only reporters, not oracles. I want to hear what the candidates think. And I believe that in the flurry of media coverage, we have lost the essence of what the election should really be about. What does Barack Obama, or John McCain, or any other candidate really believe? I don't really know. In the case of Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, at least we have some governing record to look at.

I think that any of the Republican candidates would be a better choice than any Democrat, if only because of the amount of experience, both executive and legislative on that side of the aisle. But I would really like to hear the candidates themselves allowed to expound on their ideas, as opposed to some puffed-up moderator wanting sound bites for the six o'clock news.

Media Discovers Library Donors- Silent on Campaign Donors

The Washington Post is aghast today to discover that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and other countries have contributed funds to some of the presidential libraries, including those of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. According to the Post's story,

Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia, according to interviews yesterday.

The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, according to people directly familiar with the contributions.

Hoqwever, the Post is not satisfied with this, and goes on to dig further into the sources of funding for presidential libraries. They discover that,

Spokesmen for Kuwait and Taiwan confirmed that each government has given the library $1 million. Both governments also donated to other presidential libraries. Kuwait contributed at least $1 million to the library of former president George H.W. Bush, and Taiwan gave $2 million to the Ronald Reagan library.

Calls to the other governments were not returned, and the Middle Eastern individuals could not be located for comment.

Jack Kuei, a press officer for Taiwan in Washington, said his government's donation "is a way to promote a mutual understanding and it's a kind of public diplomacy." Kuwaiti counselor Jasem Albudaiwi called his nation's contribution "a friendly donation from the people and the government of Kuwait to the cause of the library."

Personally, I cannot see the news interest in this story. Do foreign governments contribute to presidential libraries? Certainly, as this report confirms. Does this have any effect on American political decisions? Unless the library donations are used to pay back favors received while the president was in office, I would suspect it does not. Looking at a list of Reagan's foreign donors, this makes perfect sense. Japan and Taiwan were definitely beneficiaries of Reagan's muscular foreign policy, and he was known to be very strong in their defense. Therefore, their donations are unsurprising.

I would wish that the media focused on actual campaign funding issues- such as the Norman Hsu case that they have done their best to bury. Unless Senator Clinton is receiving money from her husband's library, then where said library's donations originate are really not anyone's business. If these are payoffs from her husband's years in the White House, then that is what the media ought to be investigating, but they did their best to kill any and all stories about Bill';s Asian money problem while he was President, so it is a little difficult now.

I suspect that the media has begun to realize that Hillary Clinton has some very serious problems as a candidate and since they are committed to getting a Democrat into the White House in 2008, they are trying to make certain that the Democratic nominee is not Mrs. Clinton, who has extremely high negatives and who would guarantee a high Republican turnout- she is despised and mistrusted by most Republicans. Since the media dares not attack Clinton too directly, I suspect this is a sideways strike to try to ensure that she is not the Democratic nominee.

Hillary's Donors

First it was Norman Hsu. Then it was the mysterious Chinatown donors. Now it turns out that yet another big Democratic donor with ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign has been arrested for impersonating a lawyer and a police officer.

According to Townhall.com, Mauricio Celis, a Democratic party activist in Corpus Christi was arrested and made released after posting 50,000 dollars bail.

Celis has contributed thousands of dollars to state and federal candidates, including the presidential campaign of Sen. Hilary Clinton. Several candidates for state office who accepted campaign cash from Celis have since donated the funds to charity.

Celis, 36, was indicted Friday on charges of impersonating a lawyer, impersonating a police officer, theft and perjury.

He has a controlling interest in the CGT Law Group of Corpus Christi even though he is not an attorney. Texas law prohibits anyone not licensed as a lawyer from owning a controlling interest in a law firm.

Interesting. It turns out that Celis is under fire in the South Texas town of Corpus Christi, where another attorney, one Thomas Henry, is launching an attack on Celis for practicing law without a license. Celis may also have impersonated a police officer, though it seems that he is a genuine reserve deputy. Not being familiar with the rules gtoverning use of a reserve deputy's badge, I cannot say if that charge is jusitifed.

However, it appears that Celis is very active among the Democratic fundraising circles, giving 4600 dollars to one Mikal Watts, a Democrat who is challenging for Republican John Cornyn's House seat. And it also appears that, like Hsu, Celis managed to become a big-time player in Democratic Party circles with little or no investigation.

There is an old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." One shady donor could easily have ben an honest mistake. however, when one has a history of shady donations as does Hillary Clinton, then perhaps it is time for we the voters to ask some hard questions about these donors, since the campaign either cannot or will not. And we don't want to be in a position of having buyers' regret come November 2008 if we cannot or will not ask these questions now. After all, the media won't ask them- it is too important for them to get Hillary into the White House.

Hillary's Thesis

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to present herself as all things to all people. In this she attempts to copy her husband's incomparable political skills, as well as channel his complete lack of principle- he would do whatever it took to get elected and stay elected. Hillary, however, is not a political chameleon like her husband, but comes across more as a hard ideological warrior- determined to inflict as much socialism as she thinks she can get away with. Her attempt at government-run healthcare is one clue. And her refusal to get specific on how she intends to implement her proposed entitlement programs is yet another. But there is an ever more revealing piece of evidence.

In 1969, as a senior at Wellesley College, Hillary Rodham wrote a senior thesis on the activist organizer Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was no ordinary organizer- he was a committed Marxist who believed that violent revolution was the correct way to make changes. Alinsky wrote,

"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.

Though Hillary Rodham rejected Alinsky's grassroots organizing as 'outdated', she was apparently enough in agreement with him that he offered her a job in his organization- one she turned down in favor of law school, saying she needed to organize her mind better. However according to MSNBC, she was apparently in agreement with at least some of Alinsky's goals, as she later wrote.

“I agreed with some of Alinsky's ideas,” she explained in “Living History,” her 2003 biography, “particularly the value of empowering people to help themselves. But we had a fundamental disagreement. He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn't.”

To me this sounds like Hillary is even more dangerous than Alinsky- she wanted (and possibly still wants) to impose her brand of socialism through the power of government, where Alinsky wanted to impose it via revolution. This is more frightening because Marxists (who number socialists among their number) really are all about power- an elite class ruling over the less-favored. However, to see if the thesis actually supports the idea of Hillary as a Marxist I am currently reading the thesis, and will be updating this post as I slowly work my way through Hillary's prose. In the meantime, you can read the thesis and decide if this might represent a window into Madame Hillary's current mindset. Read the whole thing and decide for yourself.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Media: Clinton Censorship OK

Is the media hypocritical on censorship when conducted by Democrats versus Republicans? It would seem that this may indeed be the case. The media likes to claim that President George Bush's Administration is clamping down on civil rights, although they have a difficult time citing any actual examples of such. However, when the Clinton campaign really does exercise press censorship, the media is largely silent.

According to the Politico online magazine, GQ magazine was poised to run a story that would have been critical of the Hillary Clinton campaign. This in itself is a relative rarity in the current media. However, by threatening to withold access to former President Bill Clinton, the campaign managed to force GQ to pull the planned story. Editor Jim Nelson then tried to claim that this was normal procedure,

“I don’t really get into the inner workings of the magazine, but I can tell you that yes, we did kill a Hillary piece. We kill pieces all the time for a variety of reasons,” Nelson said in an e-mail to Politico.

He did not respond to follow-up questions. A Clinton campaign spokesman declined to comment.

This is normal procedure? I can believe that magazines kill stories all the time, but the fact is that no media source would have been willing to kill a story critical of a Republican in return for access to a former president. The Politico claims that Bill Clinton's star status gives his wife's campaign unprecedented power over the press, but I find this rationnale suspicious. The Poliltico also tries to make equivalency by writing,

The 2004 Bush campaign banned a New York Times reporter from Vice President Dick Cheney’s jet, and Sen. Barack Obama threatened to bar Fox News reporters from campaign travel.

Somehow, I cannnot see the equivalence between the 2004 Bush campaign banning a writer who was known to be hostile to the campaign and forcing a media organ to print what a campaign wants to be printed. The one simply denies personal access to the candidate but does not try to influence what is written, whilst the other is actually practicing censorship- something the press claims to be very much opposed to. Even the Politico admits that "But a retreat of the sort GQ is alleged to have made is unusual, particularly as part of what sources described as a barely veiled transaction of editorial leverage for access."

One would think that a press which genuinely wants to defend their editorial freedom would be up in arms over this blatant attempt to shape how events are reported, especially since the spiked story was apparently news, not opinion. However, the majorioty of the media have beeen completely silent on the affair. And unfortunately this is entirely unsurprising.

Let President Bush try to listen to foreign communications and the press screams about First Amendment rights. Let there be discussion of prosecution for publishing illegally leaked national security secrets in the New York Times and the press screams about their freedom to report whatever they see fit. But if Hillary really does exercise censorship, the press emits a collective yawn. Apparenlty Democratic censorship is OK to the Press. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.

Hsu Flees: Press Not Interested in Cash Source

Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, whose many large contributions to Democratic coffers, including Hillary Clinton came from an apparently non-existent source, has jumped bail yet again. As reported by the Associated Press,

Hsu, a Hong Kong native, was also supposed to turn over his passport Wednesday. Hsu's prominent Silicon Valley criminal defense attorney Jim Brosnahan said Hsu failed to give the passport to the legal team on Monday.
"Mr. Hsu is not here and we do not know where Mr. Hsu is," Brosnahan said outside court. Brosnahan said that "there was some contact" with Hsu a few hours before the scheduled 9 a.m. court appearance, but he declined to say how and who talked to Hsu.
Hsu pleaded no contest in 1991 to a felony count of grand theft, admitting he'd defrauded investors of $1 million after falsely claiming to have contracts to purchase and sell Latex gloves. He was facing up to three years in prison when he skipped town before his 1992 sentencing date.

This raises a number of questions- primarily why anyone would even think that a man who jumped bail once would bee trustworthy of being allowed to post bail a second time. However, the questions that should really be asked are where Hsu got his money, as it appears that he had no real source of income- certainly not enough to finance contributions on the scale that he made. So far it appears that not a single major news source has been interested enough to dig into Hsu's finances, just as they have neglected to report on the fact that most of his donations bear strong signs of beeing fronted through others. His benefitees, including Clinton, are only returning money given directly to their campaigns, but there was far more cash delivered via third parties who do not appear to have the resources to make large contributions, such as the Paw family.

Contrast this with the trweatment that the Press gave John Abramoff, who at least was a registered lobbyist with real sources of income. It would seem that Hsu should merit at least that level of interest. But at this time, nto a single MSM news organization has shown any interest in investigating Hsu's finances, with a few exceptions. In the same AP report that announced Hsu's flight, the reporter wrote merely,

But a few years ago, Hsu re-emerged in New York as an apparel executive and a wealthy benefactor of Democratic causes and candidates.

The fact that the money is difficult to trace to any source, appears to trouble no journalists on a national scale. is the threat of foreign corruption of the United States election process not tgrouboling to any of these so-called reporters? They still find the troubles of Idaho Senator Larry Craig newsworthy enough to be on the front page. Why is a Democratic fundraiser, with no known source of income, who is wanted for skipping bail on fraud charges and who may be linked to Chinese military money for all we know, not receiving more in-depth scrutiny?

Cross-posted on NewsBusters.

Clintons' China Connection Resurfaces

One of the most overlooked stories of the past decade was the Clinton White House's ties to Chinese money-raisers and possibly money-launderers. When Clinton was President, one of the major fund-raisers was a Chinese group that was tied to possibly illegal campaign contributuions from chinese military officials. Though there was an inquiry, most of the principals- Johnny Chung, John Huang, Charlie Trie, Maria Hsia, fled the country to avoid giving tesitmony and possibly being indicted. Therefore, Congress was never able to get to the bottom of the scandal. However, Congressional members of both parties said at the time that they belived that China had indeed attempted to influence U.S. elections.

President Clinton and his senior foreign policy advisers disagree with senators of both parties who have concluded China had a plan to influence U.S. elections illegally, according to administration officials, who said high-level White House discussions last week reaffirmed there is so far no cause for taking punitive steps against Beijing.

"We have received the relevant briefings," White House press secretary Michael McCurry said. "We believe there's no basis for any change in our policy toward China, which is one of engagement."

This has been the consistent White House line. What changed last week was that Clinton became newly isolated in his insistence that China's leaders still are entitled to benefit of the doubt. Others who have received the same "relevant briefings," including administration supporters such as Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio), have reached the opposite conclusion.

This is interesting as Senator Hillary Clinton once again has major campaign contributions coming from Asian sources that appear to be fairly well hidden. An unknown fundraiser, a Mr. Norman Hsu, has given over one million dollars to the Clinton campaign, and apparenlty hass organized many other contributions as well. One address that keeps turning up is a house in Daly City, Californai where a mail-carrier lives. Yet thiss address is listed ass the source for a nuimber of contributions. The amount is well beyond what a mail-carrier could afford. So how can thiss be the source for these contributions?

Without more information, this must remain conjecture, but one has to wonder if the Chinese money machine- dedicated to putting the most China-sympathetic leader possible into office- has picked Hillary Clinton as their candidate. The Manchurian cnadidate may be raising its ugly heead once again. When will the mainstram media pick up on thiss story? And when will they make the connection to the many quetions asked of Clinton's husband about his own Chinese connection? There is also one other interesting point. The Senator who led the investiagtion into Clinton's probably illegal Chinese campaign contributions was none other than Fred Thompson of Tennessee- a possible Presidential opponent for Senator Clinton in 2008.

UPDATE: The inestimable Michelle Malkin has discovered that the mysterious Mr. Hsu is fugitive from justice. It appears that Hsu pleaded guil;ty to grand theft, then vanished before he could serve his three-year prison sentence. If this is true, it brings even more meaning to two themes that Democrats would not like to emphasize- government inefficiency (how could the government lose sight of Hsu, who apparently has been hiding in plain sight) and the Clintons' proven habit of selling pardons for campaign cash (remember Marc Rich).