Sunday, December 16, 2007

Who is Hillary Clinton?

Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to say she was born in the middle of the country at the middle of the century, in a Chicago suburb that defined a childhood out of "Father Knows Best" or "Ozzie and Harriet."

Years later, a group of her old teachers and classmates got together with her to reminisce, with a historian to moderate. During the round of introductions, Clinton's second-grade teacher turned to her and deadpanned: "And who are you?"

"Oh yes," said the first lady of the United States. "This is the question we're all trying to answer."

Clinton has charted a decade and a half now on the national stage. She is by far the most familiar to us of the nearly 20 people running for president. And yet she remains somehow paradoxical, impenetrable, unknowable.

Her life has been marked by polar forces: She is the daughter of a left-leaning mother and an archconservative father. She campaigned for Barry Goldwater, and then for Eugene McCarthy. She married a force of nature, then struggled to define her own image.

She has wrestled with a somewhat stilted public speaking voice, a scripted style, belied by what friends say is a whimsical affinity for costume jewelry at the holidays and a signature laugh she lets loose occasionally — boisterous and infectious.

She has an unquestioned intellect but, as former aide Melanne Verveer says, an "absolute tin ear for foreign languages" rivaled only by her flat singing voice infamously pilloried on YouTube.

There always has been a holographic quality to Hillary Clinton: Looked at from one angle, she can be the tough trailblazer, weatherer of a thousand storms. From another, she can be the personification of icy, calculating ambition.

But what about that teacher's basic question? Who is she?

There are clues at each stage of her singular American story.

___

On the day Hillary Diane Rodham turned 10 years old, she was in the midst of a childhood she later called cautious and conformist, growing up in a two-story brick house in Park Ridge, Ill.

It was 1957, and she won perhaps the first election of her life, co-captain of the safety patrol for her elementary school. As an adult Clinton reflected that it was one of many times as a child she had to learn to stand up to rambunctious boys.

She was a tomboy and a Girl Scout, encouraged by her mother to fight back when a neighborhood girl pushed her around. Mother and daughter played games of strategy and calculation: Concentration, Monopoly, Clue.

Young Hillary came early to politics, influenced by opposing pressures. This was true at home, where her father's outspoken, opinionated conservatism contrasted with her mother's quiet Democratic leanings, but perhaps more searingly at school.

She learned about Barry Goldwater through her ninth-grade history teacher at Maine East High, Paul Carlson, who taught passionately and with an admitted rightward bent, punctuating lectures with the expression, "Better dead than red!"

He later recalled Hillary as bright, talkative, enthusiastic.

"She always knew what the affairs of the day were," Carlson, who retired from Maine East just this spring, remembered years later in an interview with The Associated Press. "Her parents sat with her and her brothers at dinner, and they talked politics."

She grew up Methodist, and her social conscience was forged by a youth minister named Donald Jones. He took her to visit black and Hispanic churches in Chicago, and to see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Jones later joked he and Carlson fought for her mind and soul. She exchanged letters with both men regularly for decades, and 40 years later, desperate for spiritual guidance during the crisis that threatened her marriage, she turned to Jones for help.

In high school Hillary Rodham ran for student government and lost. And long before Hillary Clinton acknowledged presidential ambitions, she would tell a story about the sting she felt from one of her opponents that senior year.

He told her she was stupid to think a girl could be elected president.

___

On the day Hillary Rodham turned 20, she was halfway through her time at Wellesley College. It was 1967, and she was nearing a sort of political fulcrum in her life. She struggled, not for the last time, with her feelings about a war — in this case Vietnam — and continued support for it by both Republicans and Lyndon Johnson.

She served for a time as president of the campus Young Republicans. As a senior she was president of the student government and presiding officer of its Senate. On May 31, 1969, she was selected to give the student commencement speech.

The act she had to follow was Republican Sen. Edward Brooke, who spoke against "coercive protest." Rodham later wrote that she waited in vain during the speech for some mention of the pain and soul-searching of the time — Vietnam, JFK, RFK, MLK.

Rodham took to the dais, peering out through Coke-bottle-thick glasses.

"Every protest, every dissent," she said, challenging Brooke by name, "is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age."

She had just begun forging one of her own. The speech was a sensation. She was featured in Life magazine.

She also said this: "And then respect. There's that mutuality of respect between people where you don't see people as percentage points. Where you don't manipulate people."

Fairly or not, precisely those qualities — manipulating people, seeing them as percentage points — would become the lodestar for those who chose to tilt the hologram to see Hillary Clinton in a negative light.

___

On the day Hillary Rodham Clinton turned 30, she was a young lawyer at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark. Her husband had been elected state attorney general, a losing race for Congress behind him, the governor's office on his mind.

It was 1977, and two years earlier she had finally married Bill Clinton, the energetic, talkative Arkansan whom she had met in 1970 at the library of the Yale Law School.

"Bill Clinton and I started a conversation," she would write years later. "And more than 30 years later we're still talking."

Sheila Bronfman, an Arkansas political consultant who met the couple in 1977, remembers Hillary for her "big glasses and hair" — and also for the almost intimidating way she had accomplished so much at such a young age.

"She was always somebody you looked up to," Bronfman recalled recently in an interview. "I was a young woman back then, and you're just breaking out and doing stuff — she'd already done so much. We always said — he'll kill me for this — she was smarter than Bill."

___

A few months after Hillary Clinton turned 30, a businessman named Jim McDougal came to the young couple with a plan to buy land on the White River, divide it into lots for vacation homes and resell at a profit.

The Clintons went in with McDougal and his wife and formed a shareholders company. They named it Whitewater.

It was the piece of frayed string that would later nearly unravel the Clinton presidency, a $70 million, yearslong investigation by a special counsel that led to the imprisonment of McDougal and his wife, Susan, but never resulted in charges against the Clintons.

___

On the day Hillary Rodham Clinton turned 40, her husband was three months removed from a decision not to run for president in 1988, despite the urging of prominent Democrats.

Allegations of sexual impropriety had derailed the campaign of Gary Hart, and at least one panicked adviser suggested to Bill Clinton that rumors of his own infidelity might derail a White House campaign. He chose not to run.

"We came up with this notion that maybe she could run for governor," Betsey Wright, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff in Arkansas, said in an interview. "The feeling in Arkansas at the time was that a spouse was a for-free, full-time volunteer for the state."

Wright, who calls Hillary Clinton one of the sharpest, shrewdest political minds she has ever known, said, "Things have changed a lot since then."

Bill Clinton ran for the presidency and won in 1992, of course, and Hillary struggled to reconcile her own profile — career-minded, politically astute, incredibly successful — with traditional American impressions about first ladies.

Two slips in particular were memorable. The first was her declaration in a "60 Minutes" TV interview during the campaign that "I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette."

The second, in response to a question about her law career, was that "I supposed I could have stayed home, baked cookies and had teas." Both created media typhoons.

Clinton herself later wrote that the outcry may have suggested a society "still adjusting to the changing roles of women" and — perhaps in an acknowledgment that some voters are still adjusting — insisted she had baked more than a few cookies in her day.

She also wrote that the episodes taught her never to take criticism personally. But there was another misstep early in the White House years — her disastrous attempt, at the direction of her husband, to overhaul the U.S. health care system.

Republicans smelled blood, railed against "Hillarycare," and swept into control of both houses of Congress in 1994. For Hillary Rodham Clinton, it was the darkest moment of the first Clinton term, friends say.

"It was a very difficult time," said Melanne Verveer, the first lady's former chief of staff. "I think she very much felt as though she had truly failed in what she was trying to do — with her husband's commitment to having her do it."

At a meeting of about 10 advisers, all women, Clinton wondered aloud whether she should completely give up on policy matters.

"She was clearly down," Verveer recalled in an interview. "She was expressing how deeply discouraged she felt. We all said, you've got a great deal that you need to be doing."

It was only the beginning of a rocky period. Her poll ratings dropped by more than 10 points in a single week in January 1996 when news reports were dominated by speculation about Whitewater and her role in White House firings. Columnist William Safire famously called her "a congenital liar."

Burned by her very public involvement in the proposed health care overhaul, she dug in as an aggressive force behind the scenes in her husband's 1996 re-election campaign and in the White House's response to a cavalcade of scandals.

When a former FBI agent published a book attacking the Clintons, she called it a "politically inspired fabrication." When President Clinton was unsure whether personally to respond to the conviction of three Clinton associates in the first Whitewater trial, she advised him to talk to reporters.

And when a newspaper reported in early 1996 about Vice President Al Gore's hopes of succeeding Clinton in 2000, Gore personally visited the first lady to stress his loyalty.

"Gore knew which Clinton to go to," an aide said at the time.

___

On the day Hillary Rodham Clinton turned 50, about 500 of her friends gathered on the White House South Lawn to celebrate, and the next day she reminisced in Park Ridge — the same day her second-grade teacher playfully asked, "And who are you?"

It was 1997, three months before the nation would first hear of a young intern named Monica Lewinsky.

Friends of Clinton like to recall the middle years of the White House term and say the first lady took a personal interest in her staff, relishing the chance to pop up in the back of the plane in gym clothes and no makeup and just shoot the breeze.

"She took a great interest in trying to be a matchmaker," Lisa Caputo, her former press secretary, said in an interview. "She loved to know just within the White House who was dating whom. She loved to be in on the social mix."

Then came Monica.

Hillary Clinton became the deceived wife in one of the greatest sex scandals ever to rock the government. She insisted on the existence of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Americans who once identified her in polls as domineering now saw her as strong.

As she tells it in her 2003 autobiography, "Living History," she faced the two toughest decisions of her life in her 50s. One was to stay married to Bill. The other was to run for U.S. Senate.

She wrestled once again with her identity. Criticized as a carpetbagger for running for Senate from New York, a state with which she had virtually no personal connection, she embarked on a statewide "listening tour," and easily defeated a Long Island congressman to win in 2000.

Her first Senate term would be remembered for two things: her insistence on federal aid for New York after Sept. 11, an effort for which even Republicans praised her, and her 2002 vote to authorize military force against Iraq — a vote for which she has refused, in the face of criticism from the left, to apologize.

In 2006 she captured two-thirds of the vote and won all but four of New York's 62 counties. Two and a half months later, exactly two years before Inauguration Day 2009, she appeared in an online video.

She was seated on a couch, her right arm casually draped over a pillow, soft light in the background. She spoke of energy independence, an end to the war in Iraq and, yes, health care for all Americans. And she announced her candidacy for president.

"Let the conversation begin," she said. "I have a feeling it's going to be very interesting."

___

On the day Hillary Clinton turns 60, the last Friday of this October, she and the rest of the Democratic presidential field expect to be preparing for one of their final debates the following week in Philadelphia.

The Iowa caucuses, no longer some far-off abstraction, loom just around the corner.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has deployed husband Bill on the campaign trail, though political pundits note his speeches are limited to a fraction of the length of hers and sometimes he's kept entirely off stage.

To people who know her, there is little doubt whose campaign it is.

"I believe Hillary makes the decisions," former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whom she calls a friend, said in an interview. "I don't think Bill Clinton, the former president does. I don't think (Clinton strategist Mark) Penn does."

"I'm sure she will listen," he went on. "But if she disagrees, I guarantee you, it's going to be Hillary's way."

Former aide Verveer tells a story about a December 1996 visit to La Paz, Bolivia — a South American city whose altitude, more than two miles above sea level, gives it notoriously thin air.

Two reporters had fainted by the end of the first event, and that was just the beginning. Security officers and aides wound up on gurneys. Someone was reaching for a tank of oxygen the staff had brought along for the trip when Clinton burst in.

"She runs in and says, `I'm sorry, you're going to have to give me that — we just lost the Secret Service agent,'" Verveer recalls. "She was playing nurse. She was having to minister to the less of us who were just passed out."

Verveer says, "She had a constitution different from all of ours."

Perhaps — but who is she?

It's the question, she herself said, "we're all trying to answer."

___

Associated Press Writer Nancy Benac in Washington contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press

» Login or register to post comments Printer friendly version


I'd like to get Barack's
Submitted by BoogeyMan on December 16, 2007 - 7:32am.
I'd like to get Barack's reaction to this "Mary Poppins" biography .... and I don't doubt it would be the same as mine - What a con job!

You'd think that during her years in the White House that she was a genteel homemaker who merrily skipped up & down the West Wing with a basket of flowers.

Hardly - she took her iron broom and used it to sweep out anything & everything she didn't want there. Her white house travel bureau cleansing, among others, were tips-of-the-icebergs of her ruthlessness outside of the public's eye. You cross this woman, and if you're not history (ask Vince Foster, R.i.P.), then you're castrated! You know for sure that Billy C. doesn't mess with this woman, because if all the truth came out about him (and who better to come from then her), he would be toast.

I can relate to Mr. C. to a degree - because I was married for 23 years to a woman who was about as ruthless behind doors as HRC. And, like William J, we were NOT frolicking in bed! Contrarily to him though, I never once cheated on her. I don't doubt that part of Hillary's modus operandi is also to prove that she's smarter, stronger, & greater than Mr. Clinton. And Bill knows that, though he's too affable to, and wouldn't dare admit it (now). But give him another 20 years, when her days in the spotlight are past.

Women, as well as men know what I'm talking about - whether slashing their way up the corporate ladder or in other pursuits, there are some women who have iron wills, and are incredibly effective at taking the ball from one end zone to the other - and no one and nothing can stop them. Unless it is themself, as occasionally they do lose control.

My ex-wife is one of these. I am not a weak man, and most women are not able to run the ball down my throat the way my ex did. She was and is an unstoppable fullback.
And Hillary is such a woman, too.

So again, I am amazed that this "Mary Poppins" description of HRC can be marketed as her primary persona; just another folksy gal down the street. Don't you believe it for a moment!

Is this what we want in the Whitehouse? Well, sure we want strength, but we don't want a Saddham Hussein dictator who will beat her own party into submission. Ultimately she's an isolationist, and we need a true consensus builder.

»
Login or register to post comments
Given as Doug's rants have
Submitted by hank-the-nite-w... on December 16, 2007 - 9:18am.
Given as Doug's rants have thoroughly educated me as to how rotten politicians are, I feel I would rather have a tough, sharp-tongued but intelligent

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Liberals

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Market Incentives for Peace « The Van Der Galiën Gazette

Market Incentives for Peace « The Van Der Galiën Gazette: "This is another attempt to skirt the problem which is the same problem the cowboys had with the indians. The difference is the palistineans reproduce. This is an attempt at genocide. The palistineans are so mad at being invaded that peace does not occur to many of them. To die in battle is their greatest wish. Some things are more important than life. I feel for them. Israel is doing to the palistineans what Hitler tried to do to them. Someday the tables will turn. They always do. Israel will have a lot to answer for. It has a history of going in and out of existence. These are the smartest people on earth. They need to wise up before there is too much water under the bridge."

Hillary Clinton’s Electability « The Van Der Galiën Gazette

Hillary Clinton’s Electability « The Van Der Galiën Gazette: "I wonder how much FDR was hated? Everybody knew that he would be the worst enemy to many. Hating Hillary shows how the right is headed into decline. They'll be back but not for a while. Let them hate. They're good at it. They think it works for them. They need to learn. I've seen it happen with liberals. Eventually the agenda always yields to radicalization. They are writing their epitath for this time around. They'll scream and moan and compare her to Hitler. Then they'll take their ball and go home. Such is change. The sound and the fury of it all will unnerve us. Unfortunately it is a necessity under the circumstances. It much like the conviction of a guilty person. He gets his chance to proclaim his innocence. Still he will go down to defeat. Reality will win again. Nobody said it would be pretty."

Medical Marijuana

There are so many things that need to change in the world that it is hard to catagorize them. How long will it take before these changes happen? In the end it is all a matter of chance. Things will become better than ever before, and things will become worse than ever before. What bad things would we be willing to have happen to get the good things? Bad things will happen. I have lived too long and seen it too many times. With momentum comes destruction. What these bad things will be I have no idea. Just remember when we finally do get our way there will be a price to pay. As you suggest no price is too great for some of the changes that are so obvious.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Status versus friendship

“The impulse to collect as many ‘friends’ as possible on a MySpace page is not an expression of the human need for companionship, but of a different need no less profound and pressing: the need for status.” She continues:
Unlike the painted portraits that members of the middle class in a bygone era would commission to signal their elite status once they rose in society, social networking websites allow us to create status—not merely to commemorate the achievement of it. There is a reason that most of the MySpace profiles of famous people are fakes, often created by fans: Celebrities don’t need legions of MySpace friends to prove their importance. It’s the rest of the population, seeking a form of parochial celebrity, that does.

Consensus and Transparency

Ever since the early 19th century, there has been a vigorous debate about whether the Supreme Court and other appellate courts are best served by consensus or transparency — by unanimous opinions written by the chief justice, which was John Marshall’s view, or by separate opinions in which individual justices make their disagreements clear, which was the view of Marshall’s distant cousin and archrival, Thomas Jefferson. Roberts has explicitly embraced Marshall’s vision. Stevens, however, takes the Jeffersonian view. “I don’t believe in suppressing dissent,” he told me. “If you disagree you should say so. . . . I just feel I have an obligation to expose my views to the public.”

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

MND: News and Commentary Since 2001 » Seeing God

MND: News and Commentary Since 2001 » Seeing God: "I note that you only describe the God of the New Testament. What about the God of the Old Testament? You know, the one that demanded blood sacrifice. Or the one that feared what man might accomplish (Babel)? How about the one that caused 2 boys to be mauled by a bear for a childish prank? Maybe the one that flooded the entire earth? Oh no, you must be thinking of the God that punishes those he is unhappy about with an eternity of fiery torture. Why did you leave out these examples of a just, loving, fatherly God?
Did you ever wonder why, as Man, and his civilization, matures, so does the Biblical God mature from the OT, childish, temper-tantrum driven God to the NT loving, fatherly God?"

Sunday, June 17, 2007

I've never heard of you before, but you have written something really evil here. You're doing the same thing as the Islamic extremists teaching kids to hate.



See this entry in mental health blog. Sorry for the screw up

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Put Bush's 'puppy dog' terror theory to sleep

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By RICHARD CLARKE

Wednesday, April 25th 2007, 4:00 AM



Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.

The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities."

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

At last, the race to lead America is a talent contest | Subscriptions index | Guardian Unlimited

At last, the race to lead America is a talent contest | Subscriptions index | Guardian Unlimited: "Al Gore's recent appearance on Capitol Hill marked his dominance in Washington's debate about the science of global warming. It also raised a supremely important question about the state of political science in the US. Given the pain inflicted on the world by George Bush's faith-based presidency, are American voters ready for a knowledge-based presidency?"

True Compassion

True CompassionYou people are taking government money under false pretenses. Some of you should go to jail for this. Medical marijuana is as good as any pain medication. You should go back to the roaring twenties and fight alcohol addiction. You should have to visit patients that are dying and marijuana is the only thing that helps. Maybe you would like to ban morphine too. You probably deny evolution too. You have no shame. All you will ever know is scorn. Have a nice life.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Jack Bauer is full of baloney

It was two years before the photos emerged from Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon cops said, when they began arguing that coercive or abusive interrogations would not serve war-fighting or justice.





"No. 1, it’s not going to work," said Col. Brittain P. Mallow, the commander of the task force from 2002 to 2005.

"No. 2, if it does work, it’s not reliable. No. 3, it may not be legal, ethical or moral. No. 4, it’s going to hurt you when you have to prosecute these guys. No. 5, sooner or later, all of this stuff is going to come to light, and you’re going to be embarrassed."
******

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Townhall.com::Confronting the Donkey::By David Limbaugh

Townhall.com::Confronting the Donkey::By David Limbaughcat1 writes: Sunday, April, 01, 2007 12:15 AM
The real world
It wasn't hostile to swift boat John Kerry? It wasn't hostile to use Willie Horton? Democrats are militant? Democrats are sheep compared to the GOP. Being proud of Cheney and Rumfeld is really sick. Most of the time conservatives wouldn't recognize respect if it hit them in the face. They are so full of fear and anger. Really this whole piece is a complete lie, but that was the whole point, wasn't it? Extreme conservatives base their whole philosophy of privilege on lies. Take anything to the extreme, and it loses any truth it started with. The truth is the enemy to extremists. They cannot bear it. Their whole purpose is to avoid it. They go through life living in a fantasy. They don't have the strength to face reality.

OpinionJournal - Thinking Things Over Responses

OpinionJournal - Thinking Things Over Responses: "Our Arrogance Is Our Weakness
Mike Ballard - Denver

The reason we were in Vietnam was the false 'domino theory'--that communism would spread like cancer. Today Vietnam is a bastion of free market economics and capitalism--and an ally of the U.S.

Besides the obvious differences in terrain and climate, the biggest strategic difference between Vietnam and Iraq is religion. Thousands of would be martyrs are flocking to Iraq to fight the infidel--that is, us--from every Muslim nation in the world.

We didn't understand the Southeast Asian culture, and we don't understand Arab culture either. Americans assume every nation thinks like us, and if they don't they certainly should. We had the opportunity in Iraq, but we are blowing it because we don't have enough interpreters, we don't understand Iraqi customs, and we think that we can impose our ways on them.

Our arrogance is our weakness. We are a nation that came into being as an oppressed people that rose up against the greatest power in the world. We have forgotten where we came from, and this is a sure formula for failure. Until we learn humility and respect for other cultures, we will continue to dishonor ourselves on the world stage."

Friday, March 30, 2007

The Democratic Party

The Democratic Party: "This week, Boise State University College Republicans have joined the list of College Republicans who have held anti-immigrant 'games' by creating a despicable ad to promote a conservative speaker on campus. The ad advertises a food stamp drawing and a free meal at a 'Mexican restaurant' for students who 'climb through the hole in the fence' and submit illegal identification. This recent derogatory stunt comes on the heels of national news reports that confirm the rise in hate groups who are feeding off of anti-immigrant sentiments. Sadly, while these activities continue on America's campuses and while Republican presidential candidates use harsh words on immigration for political gain, the national Republican Party has remained quietly on the sidelines."

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Obama

Indeed Obama is a cross between Kennedy and Howard Dean. I wish him all the luck in the world, but I'm afraid of him getting swift boated. He talks about campaigning on a higher level. Isn't that what Dukakis tried to do?

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Recreational Drugs and their level of harm


March 24, 2007 Just how dangerous are recreational drugs and what’s the most effective way to classify drugs as the basis for law enforcement? With the technologies for creating new substances now well ahead of the law’s ability to even recognise them, it’s clearly time for a new way of doing things. Last year, the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee tabled a report entitled Drug classification: making a hash of it? which concluded that the current UK classification of drugs into A, B and C classes should be replaced with a new system more closely reflecting the harm they cause. One of the most striking findings of the report was that based on the committee’s assessment of harm, tobacco and alcohol (in red on the chart) would be ranked as more harmful than cannabis, LSD and ecstasy. The report also stated that, on the basis of harm, "alcohol would be classed as B bordering on A, while cigarettes would probably be in the borderline between B and C". Now a leading researcher on substance misuse has expressed concern that the proposed classification regime is too limited in its approach to serve as a basis for changes in the law.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

FBI: Extremists seek school bus work - Yahoo! News

FBI: Extremists seek school bus work - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - Members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police. An FBI spokesman said 'parents and children have nothing to fear.'
ADVERTISEMENT

Asked about the alert notice, the FBI's Rich Kolko said 'there are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern,' although law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to watch out for kids' safety.
The bulletin, parts of which were read to The Associated Press, did not say how often foreign extremists have sought to acquire licenses to drive school buses, or where. It was sent Friday as part of what officials said was a routine FBI and Homeland Security Department advisory to local law enforcement.
It noted 'recent suspicious activity' by foreigners who either drive school buses or are licensed to drive them, according to a counterterror official who read parts of the document to The Associated Press."

Sunday, March 18, 2007

: "'You know, this war is so fucking illegal.' - SPC Pat Tillman"

Saturday, March 17, 2007

New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks - New York Times

New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks - New York Times

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. There is a Public Enemy song called "Fight the Power". People who fight the power are my friends. Power corrupts. Terrorism fights this corruption. It is right wing extremists of foreign lands fighting the right wing extremists of this land. I dislike the methods of both sides. I hope they destroy each other. I can, however, understand right wing extremists of foreign lands better than I can understand those of this land. It is as if those of this land have become evil and must be destroyed. I am not a violent man. I do not feel it is my role to join either side of the struggle. I must admit, however, I am not on the side of the rich in this country. They must eventually be brought down. It is only a matter of how.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Get ready. Here they come again!


Swift Boat Leader Hired To Run Right-Wing ‘Online Community’
Yesterday, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak reported that TheVanguard.org, a new right-wing advocacy group, has hired Jerome Corsi as a senior political strategist.

Vanguard describes itself as an “online community of Americans who believe in conservative values,” and Novak claims it is a “right-wing version of the leftist MoveOn.Org.”

By hiring Corsi, Vanguard has made it clear that it intends to hit below the belt and be more than just an “online community.” Corsi coordinated the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth attacks against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and plans to use Vanguard to “similarly undermine Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton” for her progressive policy stances. Media Matters has documented Corsi’s posts on the right-wing Free Republic site. Some excerpts:

On Islam: “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion”

On Catholicism: “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press”

On Muslims: “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters — it all goes together”

On “John F*ing Commie Kerry”: “After he married TerRAHsa, didn’t John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?”

On Senator “FAT HOG” Clinton: “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?”

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Liberalize me

I commend you on a very thoughtful post. I, however, am against a strong military. What did it get us in the cold war, but Vietnam? As a vietnam veteran I saw the horrors and the shame of a strong military. The Soviet Union fell on its own. It was a bad idea and it paid for it. Terrorism will do the same. As for Falwell, Robertson, Dobson et al I pray for them because they are indeed going to hell. Religion causes as much evil as it does good, and we are seeing a lot of evil these days. Bin Laden is a good social conservative. He has devoted his life to stopping the split between church and state. Conservatives from different nations just like to kill each other. Liberals on the other hand think we should all join together and be one. States rights and even nations rights need to be subjugated. The whole earth should be the ultimate decider. Thank you for your time.

Balloon Juice

Balloon Juice: "Cat Travis Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

“It would have been worse with Al Gore.”
Give me a break! Are you people brain dead? I can’t believe it. Bush will indeed go down in history as one of the most inept presidents ever. But Al Gore would have been worse? There is absolutely no sense in that statement what so ever. We might as well just nuke ourselves. It’s like saying McGovern would have been worse than Nixon. This nation deserves destruction if people think George Bush was the lesser of two evils.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:38 pm "

Message to Hillary haters

Conservatives are right to hate Hillary. Hillary will make us a better country. They won't be able to swift boat her. Hillary's example shows how vain and vile the right wing is. She shames them. She's like FDR. The right will have no voice with her in office. Fear her you useless beings! The future holds little for conservatives. That's why they always want to live in the past. Well, the future is coming. Get used to it.
ReplyReport AbuseEditDeleteHide Options

Israel

the cost to Israel itself of its occupation: the deterioration of its democracy, the loss of international prestige, and the growth of terrorism and Islamist extremism as a direct result of its oppression of the Palestinians.

After four decades, friends of Israel, especially American Jews, must lose their inhibitions against “washing dirty laundry in public” and finally raise their collective voices against the self-destructive madness of Israeli policy.

Jacob Bender
New York, March 12, 2007

Sunday, March 11, 2007

United Press International - International Intelligence - Czech Pres: Environmentalism is a religion

United Press International - International Intelligence - Czech Pres: Environmentalism is a religion: "Environmentalism should belong in the social sciences,' much like the idea of communism or other '-isms' such as feminism, Klaus said, adding that 'environmentalism is a religion' that seeks to reorganize the world order as well as social behavior and value systems worldwide"

ABCNews.com : Message Boards

ABCNews.com : Message BoardsWhen will america see that the war on terror is the same as the war against communism? Communism fell from its own weight. We need to let Al Qaeda do the same. It won't be quick, but us being scared all the time only makes them look stronger. We don't have to torture ourselves. There's no way we can defeat them through conventional means. Relax, they'll beat themselves. There are some things you can't cure. You have to live with them. Acceptance is the best weapon that we have. They cannot win, but neither can we. Let's not spend all our time worrying about them like we did the communists. If they want to live in caves let them. Running scared does not make us a great nation. Finding a way forward and learning from the past would.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Understanding the Holocaust

Understanding the Holocaust: "After the Holocaust, is there a Jew on earth who would choose to be born a Nazi instead of a Jew? After the Holocaust, is there a Jew on earth who does not see the need for a nation of teachers? Who else will help mankind rise above its potential for such cruelty if not the Jews?"

Friday, March 9, 2007

Afghan anti-corruption chief is a convicted heroin trafficker - USATODAY.com

Afghan anti-corruption chief is a convicted heroin trafficker - USATODAY.com: "KABUL, Afghanistan — When the deal went down in Las Vegas, the seller was introduced only as 'Mr. E.' In a room at Caesars Palace hotel, Mr. E exchanged a pound-and-a-half bag of heroin for $65,000 cash — unaware that the buyer was an undercover detective. The sting landed him in Nevada state prison for nearly four years.
Twenty years later and Mr. E, whose real name is Izzatullah Wasifi, has a new job. He is the government of Afghanistan's anti-corruption chief.
Wasifi leads a staff of 84 people charged with rooting out the endemic graft that is fueled in part by the country's position as the world's largest producer of opium poppy, the raw ingredient of heroin.
President Hamid Karzai's office won't say if he knew about the drug conviction when Wasifi was appointed two months ago as general-director of the General Independent Administration of Anti-Corruption and Bribery. Wasifi, a childhood friend of Karzai, is the son of a prominent Afghan nationalist leader."

Monday, March 5, 2007

No U.S. Backup Strategy For Iraq

No U.S. Backup Strategy For IraqThis war and vietnam show the true nature of the USA. We are so rich that we believe in the true evil of conservative extremists! We'll survive this, but then what? Who will be next? Could the terrorists be right? Is there anyway we can overcome our own propaganda and become a credit to this world? Does the world have to say what we said about villages in vietnam, "the only way to save them was to destroy them."

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

On Faith: Guest Voices: Goldberg: Judge Not Israel Alone

On Faith: Guest Voices: Goldberg: Judge Not Israel AloneCan anyone criticize the Jews? Apparently not. They are after all the chosen people. It was certainly tragic when they ran up against people who thought they were the master race. I've heard many times from jews that "everyone hates the jews". Has this been God's will? Will we ever be able to make sense of it? Many view Israel as the west's attempt to colonize the middle east. The west first thinks in terms of power rarely in terms of fairness. Burning petroleum is bad for the earth. When we finally give it up we will be a lot closer to peace

On Faith: Guest Voices: Faith In the Public Square

On Faith: Guest Voices: Faith In the Public SquareI think Jesus was right. I'm not interested in all the dogma that has come behind him. I believe in an essential unity of all religions. There are polarities in religion as there is in anything else. We constantly flucuate between those poles. Right now we are getting right up on the edge of one side. We should be backing off any time now. It's kind of like the stock market. Jesus said in the sermon on the mount that there will be many that say his name, but he will not know them when they get to heaven.

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Putting 9/11 into perspective - Los Angeles Times

Putting 9/11 into perspective - Los Angeles Times: "Human societies, wrote the influential thinkers of the time, followed a common path of historical evolution from savage beginnings toward ever-greater levels of peaceful civilization, politeness and commercial exchange."

Hillary

Can someone as polarizing as Hillary Clinton really be elected? "I know how to win," she insisted at the Teamsters hall. "I can win the nomination and I can win the general election because there isn't anybody besides my husband who's been through more with the folks on the other side than I have, and I know how to beat them."