Posted on 01/25/2007 11:54:16 AM PST by Mia T
THE CLINTON MACHINE IS 'TRYING TO STRANGLE THE OBAMA CANDIDACY IN ITS CRADLE'
Of course, for this to work it has to be clear — preferably only to the true target(s) — who ordered the hit.
Take, for example, the offing of former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko last month from radioactive Polonium-210 poisoning. Like the assassination of Leon Trotsky more than 60 years earlier, the death is uniquely traceable to the Kremlin, and, but for standard-issue cutouts, to its head. The assassination of Litvinenko is the latest in a series of attacks on the outspoken critics of Putin that converge uniformly and precisely on Putin.
There are a lot of ways to make a man's death look like an accident, suicide or a street crime. That wasn't the intent of whoever murdered former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. By using such an exotic murder weapon — a radioactive isotope known as polonium-210 — his killers sent a message: Don't mess with the powers that be in Russia.
Max Boot
OUR PUTIN
Missus clinton is our Putin.
As with other Stalinists, missus clinton's functional assassination weapons of choice are drummed up charges of tax evasion and character assassination, 9 not necessarily in that order.
The Barrett Report, paid for by The People and redacted by the DC mutual protection racket writ large — which is also, we note (and will remember), paid for by The People — documents the clintons' abuse of the IRS and other clinton abuses of power that were — and still are — routinely used to silence clinton critics.
A reputation for inflicting bodily harm is another favorite clinton weapon.
It is so preferred by the clintons, in fact, that they never miss an opportunity to spread the rumors around themselves. By repeating every allegation of clinton murder and mayhem — while affecting an incredulous air, of course — the clintons accomplish two things:
There is a hunger on the Left for an alternative to hillary clinton. And no wonder. Barak Obama's charisma and freshness and humility are the perfect antidote to missus clinton's repulsiveness and baggage and sense of entitlement. 2
If we watch it carefully, her video announcement tells us why.
There is a certain unhip hipness and hypocrisy in hillary clinton's 'I'm in.' This even without considering the "to win" she tacked on the end, a clear acknowledgement of the electability problems plaguing her candidacy.3
Add to this 'laughable' and 'hopeless,' witness her attempt at human. (Not even real human, mind you-- virtual human.) There is no way--none--to make this creature credible.
So forget 'likeable.'
The performance, oozing a cloying, saccharine-coated evil, pulsates to the metronomic swing of stubby appendages that, together with the ample corpus, remind me of parentheses too short to contain the stuff between them. (Gesticulation is a dud's only sign of life... and then only if she has a speech coach to prod her.) 8
The performance is nothing if not humiliating: A direct measure of hillary clinton's hunger for power. Which reminds me... enough of that red Klingon power jacket already. Please.
"I'M IN"
No she is not.
She is INaccessible. 4 (INane, too.) 5
The clinton machine understands well the paradox of this peculiar candidate: In order for missus clinton to have any chance of winning elections, she must all but vanish from the public stage. 6
How to do it?
THE PLAN
According to hillary, herself, the plan is to use 'technology,' by which she means 'virtual reality.' It will shield her from the risk of real questions from real people in real time and space while conferring on her an aura of accessibility. Missus clinton cannot afford a Katherine Prudhomme moment, 7 you see.
Q SCORE
With a Q score--a measure of celebrity likability among the hoi polloi--in the toilet, missus clinton can win elections only by running virtually unopposed... and then only with the help of protheses, props, poses, PR machines, scripted appearances, screened audiences, vetted questions, Secret Service barracades, softball settings and sycophantic hosts, fictionalizing, humanizing, digitizing and otherwise hiding the real hillary clinton.
And then we have the baggage....
Anyone else but a clinton would have been summarily laughed off the stage.
The American people must understand that to get this defective candidate elected, the clintons must pervert the electoral process, turn democracy on its head. That is to say, the best candidate must lose.
But the clinton machine cannot keep the candidate cosetted in cyberspace and softball venues forever. That is why this early entry, forced by Obama's meteoric rise, is missus clinton's worst nightmare.
That, and the fact that Obama will be the standard against which she will henceforth be measured. Which is not a good thing for missus clinton.
I would call missus clinton's 'I'm in' anticlimactic, but for the fact that an anticlimax requires antecedent impressiveness or consequence.
Watching the Saturday Night Live clip and missus clinton's "I'm in!" video in succession confirms the obvious: The pundits and pols are asking the wrong hillary! question.
The fundamental question concerning missus clinton's candidacy isn't "Can she win?"... or "Will she win?"... or even "Should she win?"
No. The fundamental question is this: "Can missus clinton be taken seriously? Is missus clinton's candidacy more than simply a bad joke? Is missus clinton's candidacy legitimate? "
By asking the other questions, legitimacy is the presumption, the unasked question, the "When did you stop beating your wife?" sort of fallacy.
But the Saturday Night Live clip and missus clinton's "I'm in!" clip taken together belie that presumption.
The reason the Saturday Night Live sequence is so devastating is because it is not the usual SNL farce based on fact.
Rather, it is fact based on farce.
And missus clinton's "I'm in!" video confirms it.
Let down the curtain: the farce is done. (Rabelais)
Somebody stick the fork in that baby, already. Please.
ADDENDUM:
This exchange on Hardball underscores the farcical condition of the hillary clinton candidacy. Pay special attention to Howard Fineman.
December 7, 1941+64
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.
The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.
We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?
In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?
Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.
What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.
COMPLETE LETTER
J. Bradford DeLong
Too many pundits, usually leftist and privileged, sneer at country music. To these critics, any music created by poor, Southern whites (at least those poor, Southern whites who didn't attend an Ivy League university) must be held in contempt, along with its correlatives: incest, racism and trailer parks.
Hillary Clinton? Who would even know her name were it not for her attachment to a man? Where would she be now if she as a child had to pick cotton from sun up to sun down?
Tammy Wynette stands alone, a legend; and she will be admired wherever people appreciate the honesty of the human experience. Human beings are vulnerable. We all should be thankful to any artist courageous enough to bare her soul on the public stage so the rest of us who are listening and know whereof she speaks might benefit.
... While America appears not to be ready for a female president under any circumstances, the post-9/11 realities pose special problems for a female presidential candidate. Add to these the problems unique to missus clinton. The reviews make the mistake of focusing on the problems of the generic female presidential candidate running during ordinary times.
These are not ordinary times. America is waging the global War on Terror; the uncharted territory of asymmetric netherworlds is the battlefield; the enemy is brutal, subhuman; the threat of global conflagration is real.
Defeating the enemy isn't sufficient. For America to prevail, she must also defeat a retrograde, misogynous mindset. To successfully prosecute the War on Terror, it is essential that the collective patriarchal islamic culture perceives America as politically and militarily strong. Condi Rice excepted, this requirement presents an insurmountable hurdle for any female presidential candidate, and especially missus clinton, historically antimilitary--(an image, incidentally, that is only enhanced today by her clumsy, termagant parody of Thatcher), forever the pitiful victim, and, according to Dick Morris, "the biggest dove in the clinton administration."
It is ironic that had the clintons not failed utterly to fight terrorism... not failed to take bin Laden from Sudan... not failed repeatedly to decapitate a nascent, still stoppable al Qaeda... the generic female president as a construct would still be viable... missus clinton's obstacles would be limited largely to standard-issue clintonisms: corruption, abuse, malpractice, malfeasance, megalomania, rape and treason... and, in spite of Juanita Broaddrick, or perhaps because of her, Rod Lurie would be reduced to perversely hawking the "First Gentleman" instead of the "Commander-in-Chief."
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOLLYWOOD
(NB: DreamWorks, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Oprah Winfrey, Oliver Stone, Ari Emanuel et al.)
he point of political assassination — both literal and merely functional — transcends the particular. The unfortunate target is not an end but a beginning, an example. Political assassination is, first and foremost, a warning.
RADIOACTIVE TRACER
The identity of his murderers is likely to remain unknown, but in all probability Litvinenko was poisoned because of his campaign against Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and the KGB's successor, the FSB. He is only the latest to pay with his life for offending Russia's ruling clique. The list of prominent people murdered in the last few years includes crusading journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya (whose death Litvinenko was investigating), politicians, executives and government officials. Others, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, have narrowly survived assassination attempts or have been exiled or silenced with threats of violence or legal charges.
Alleged tax evasion has been a favorite tool of intimidation. Wielding such dubious accusations, the Kremlin was able to consign Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to a Siberian prison camp and to expropriate his giant oil company, Yukos. Whatever the state of his taxes, Khodorkovsky's real sin was to bankroll opposition to Putin.
Stop Petting Putin
Dec. 9, 2006
New York Post
Which brings us to Barak Obama.
OBAMA-MANIA vs. "CLINTON FATIGUE"
Hence the threats to the big donors.....
LET DOWN THE CURTAIN...
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRORE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
Dear Concerned Americans,
December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005, 2007
Clinton Administration Veteran:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life."
My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.... there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.
professor of economics, Berkeley
clinton Administration veteran
Hillary Clinton?
Who would even know her name were it not for her attachment to a man?
Thank you, Gavin McNett, for your tribute to the incomparable Tammy Wynette. (TAMMY WYNETTE, 1942-1998)
Mia T, 10.02.05
HILLARY'S COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF PROBLEM
(see descriptor morphs)
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2007
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2007
bump for later.
ping
thx :)
ping
ping
ping
Personally I think Hillary is going to eat Obama alive in the primaries.
It appears hillary doesn't agree with you. ;)
thank you :)
ping
My favorite later ping!
:)
Forget the Oscars! Hollywood Debates Hillary vs. Barack
Clinton Commands Loyalty From Studio Execs but Obama's Got Clooney, Affleck, Geffen
By MARCUS BARAM
EXCERPT:
Jan. 19, 2007 -- This town ain't big enough for the two of 'em.
It may not get as bloody as the final shootout in a Western, but the duel between Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois to win the heart of Hollywood could prove to be just as dramatic.
The two leading presidential contenders are vying for the support of the entertainment community, with big stars and powerful producers and agents already making their choices this early in the 2008 race for the White House.
Though Clinton commands the loyalty of the entertainment world's most established players, it appears that Obama currently has the momentum.
Next month, Dreamworks mogul David Geffen and superagent Ari Emanuel are both reportedly planning fundraisers for Obama. The candidate has already lined up strong backing from George Clooney, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey, who pledged to "do everything in my power to campaign for him."
... But Obama is the fresh face that's captivated many in Hollywood with comparisons to both Jack and Bobby Kennedy.
In the fall, Clooney sent out an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times that said, "If SENATOR Obama became PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Obama it would be the most electrifying thing to happen to the Democratic party since Kennedy."
Geffen and Emanuel have both supported Clinton in the past, but they've apparently settled on Obama when it comes to the presidential race.
Geffen, who has not been a major political player in the past, was reportedly concerned about Clinton's electability. And he remains upset that former U.S. President Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich rather than Leonard Peltier, an American Indian accused of murder, whose case has become a cause celebre in the entertainment community, sources in Hollywood say.
The support of Emanuel is an important factor since his brother, Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), is the powerful House Democratic caucus chairman. When the agent, who was the inspiration for Jeremy Piven's character on "Entourage," threw open the doors of his Brentwood, Calif., home for a meet-and-greet with Obama in December, a who's who in Hollywood from Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner to Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, showed up to shake the senator's hand.
After Obama gave a brief speech in the foyer of Emanuel's home, "the room was buzzing with excitement," said Edward P. Lazarus, one of Obama's fundraisers in Los Angeles....
Who, indeed?
Then again, it may...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/politics/blog/2007/01/top_kerry_fundr.html
Another Clintonite jumps ship to the S.S. Obama
Mia T. Bump.
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