Not exactly love in bloom.
Posted on 12/13/2007 4:53:05 AM PST by Liz
As two new polls showed Clinton losing ground in NH, a top campaign aide blasted Obama's past drug use. The attack from NH co-chairman, William Shaheen, was the first time anyone on Clinton's team has raised Obama's marijuana and cocaine use - a history he's written about in the past and talked about more recently on the campaign trail.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Not exactly love in bloom.
Oh man is this going to get really ugly, real soon. Can’t wait.
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think this is going to hurt Hillary worse than it will Obama. I hope so, anyway.Let’see... wasn’t she the wife of the One who smoked but “didn’t inhale”? Where was she when he didn’t do that?
The Wicked Witch vs. the Prom King.
Big deal. It’s only going to matter with the oldsters, and they’re succumbing to the inexorable mathematics of the actuarial tables.
I find it rather funny that the wife of Bill (I didn’t inhale) Clinton, brother of Hugh (I took $$$ to get my BIL to pardon a drug kingpin), and brother-in-law of Roger (conviction for drugs) Clinton would be “hitting” anybody on pot use, or any other “vice” for that matter.
It looks like Barack Obama has taken the plunge and is forming an exploratory committee to seek the U.S. presidential nomination from his party. To me, this is a case of Local Boy Makes Good: though we didn’t really travel in the same circles and I was a year behind him, I actually went to the same high school he did (Punahou), and at the time he went by, yes, “Barry”. I’m pretty sure he’s “Mr. Obama” to me now. :-)
I’ve taken the liberty, since he’s a public figure and all, of reproducing his senior yearbook entry below. (Click to enlarge.)
Barry Obama, class of ‘79
Lots of late-70’s influence there, including that great haircut, those fantastic lapels, and the shout-out to his “Choom Gang” chooming = smoking pakalolo, at least back then).
Good luck, Barr…uh, Mr. Obama!
UPDATE: A number of commenters have taken me to task for posting this entry. I’ve added one final comment, and I’d like to address the “charges” here.
Some people have leapt to Barry’s* defense, assuming that I was mounting an attack or trying to embarrass him. My intent was merely to have a little timely fun in the “brush with fame” category. It was far from an attack; what I saw in the entry and what seemed to be the consensus among others (until this week) was a handsome, athletic fellow with plenty of friends at school and love for his family, who — yes — happened to be pretty fond of his teenaged bad habits.
I would never have deliberately broken any news about this, and in fact I established before publishing the post that this was indeed old news, broken and discussed many times by Barry himself in the last decade and largely dismissed by the media.
I do think that someone running for president has to tolerate a ton of public scrutiny, and I’m confident my entry was entirely fair and benign to post under those conditions. (Someone suggested it wasn’t fair to post under copyright law, but it seems to come under fair use guidelines as I understand them.)
However, I’m no longer confident that it wasn’t a uncool thing to do, and for that I’m sorry. Though I meant to cause no embarrassment, it’s apparent some felt it crossed the line. And because I would certainly have asked my close friends before sharing their entries, I’ve belatedly sent a note to Barry’s campaign asking what his preferences are.
One last point: I see that my lighthearted comment about smoking being a rite of passage was taken badly by some other former Punahou students. I’m truly sorry to have upset them. I certainly wasn’t intending to tar everyone with that brush (I feel I have to insert a “not that there’s anything wrong with that” here), so let me apologize to those who took it that way. Punahou was not and is not a hotbed of drug activity; I have the utmost respect for the school and the experience I had there, and I support it to this day.
Let me spell out the point I was trying to make in joshing fashion: it’s undeniable that the era (late 70’s), the location (Hawaii), and the venue (high school) lent themselves to such indulgences on the part of quite a few teenagers. The fact that such references could appear explicitly in a yearbook — a Punahou yearbook, no less — supports this. And I actually think it’s a fair part of a discussion anyone might want to have about politicians and former drug use, if people want to get into that. Personally, I care far less what someone did in high school than the political stances they take in the modern era. And for what it’s worth, I happen to support marijuana legalization.
*I had a tough time deciding how to refer to Barry in this update. Honestly, it’s really hard to think of him as “Barack”, but equally (as I noted above), we didn’t know each other at school. I ultimately decided to stick with the “Punahou usage” that pervades the thread, but please understand that he and I are not on a first-name basis.
1. pakalolo hawaiian word for marijuana
Yeah, right, she went to Wellesley in the 60’s and didn’t do drugs? William Safire had it right when he called her a “serial liar.”
"If your opponents had any common sense, they would upgrade their medical insurance."
Look for Hillary to offer him a private deal. She wins he gets VP nomination spot.
Fantastic casting:
Bill as the winged monkey, Hill as the Wicked Witch of the West and Obama as Aunty Em (oh wait, that’s Uncle Henry).
Sure beats lying lifeless in Marcy Park. Hill, such a sweetheart.
Theory....Hillary needs the black vote. If Hill takes on Obama and ticks off blacks, while winning the primary, and does not select Obama as VP, she will loose the majority of the black vote.
However, most are afraid to take her on because she is playing the gender card. Find your b@ll$, guys.
If Hillary plays this kind of game she loses any sympathy she might otherwise have when her opponents start pushing the “Hillary’s a lezbo” whisper campaign.
Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops
ROTFL-—good one.
Bingo.
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