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'REFUSAL TO LEVEL WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'
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KnowNothing's brother, Hugh Rodham, secured two of the 141 clinton midnight pardons, one for a cocaine kingpin and the other for a snake-oil swindler. Rodham netted a quick $400,000 for his "work" according to various rodhams and clintons and their assorted lawyers. KnowNothing's campaign treasurer, William Cunningham III, himself a law partner of longtime KnowNothing adviser Harold Ickes, helped obtain last-minute pardons for two convicted felons.
LA FAMIGLIA
Displaying a willingness to throw her brother (along with her husband) to the wolves, Sen. Victim Clinton was quick to make a distinction between her big, bad brother's pardon "work" and that of her campaign treasurer, "a fine lawyer and a fine man." The "family" connection of brother Rodham to Clinton rendered Rodham's "work" offensive, whereas the campaign treasurer Cunningham's connection to the senator and her campaign coffers made his securing of two pardons in record time a sterling example of highminded, effective public service.
KnowNothing has apparently not thought this thing through. If the "family" connection makes lobbying for cocaine-kingpin and snake-oil-swindler pardons unsavory for brother Rodham, then the "family" connection makes lobbying for the Hasidim 4 (see Keating 5) pardons even more distasteful for the wife, First Lady and senator-elect. Moreover, pardons for votes is arguably a greater offense than pardons for cash.
KnowNothing specifically declined to answer when asked whether she discussed the pardons with her husband, effectively pleading the fifth. Turning aside questions about the pardon decisions her husband had made, she told reporters they should address those issues with him and his staff. She refused to say whether he should agree to appear voluntarily before congressional committees investigating the pardons. Interestingly, no one asked her whether she would agree to appear voluntarily before those same congressional committees.
I DIDN'T HAVE SEX WITH THAT PARDON
"I did not have any involvement in the pardons that were granted or not granted," insisted Sen. KnowNothing, seeming to forget her presence at the New-Square/Oval-Office schmooze that secured pardons for the four Hasidic felons who set up a phony school in Brooklyn to swindle the government out of millions intended for the poor.
KnowNothing noted that her"best memory" was that she never spoke to her brother or to Mr. Cunningham about the pardons. With variations of "I don't have a memory" and "my best memory, and avoiding the more obvious "I don't recall" and "my best recollection," KnowNothing reprised the Ruffian standard used during the clinton years to commit perjury without penalty.
I GET LETTERS
...or more precisely, envelopes. During her denials of involvement in any of the pardons, KnowNothing made the curious claim: "People handed me envelopes, I passed them on [and never opened a single one. Honest.]"
Reprising the role of victim that enabled her to win a senate seat in spite of low poll numbers, high personal negatives and consistent public failures, the senator peppered her answers about big, bad Hugh (understanding that the subtext was big, bad Bill) with "saddened" and "disappointed" and "heartbroken" and "shocked."
UTTER CONTEMPT FOR THE PEOPLE
This session today was cut short by a staffer when reporters appeared dissatisfied by Senator KnowNothing's lack of candor.
In the end, this press conference full of poses, poll-tested phrases and prevarication was just another display of the clintons' utter contempt for the people. Bill Clinton committed the same error last Sunday in his shameless, lie-filled New York Times Pardongate Apologia.
The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains. |
RESURRECTING RUFF
I AM VICTIM
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006
And the usual droning-when-not-screeching,
Yet some would argue, perversely, that the Mao look was, in fact, precisely what made her choice of attire absolutely perfect.
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.