I Endorse Hillary Clinton for President

Sadly, Al Gore will not be on the ballot this year. We're all going to have to make the best of the current situation. Giving up on our Nation, our fellow citizens or the world is not an option. That's certainly not what Al Gore would want.

People have strong feelings about the remaining candidates. It's great that we feel passion. I strongly believe my choice is right but I'll try and refrain from overreacting to my fellow Democrats who have a different opinion. At the end of the day we do need to unite to get the Republicans out of the White House and start to heal the tremendous damage done by the Bush/Cheney regime.

I believe the best person for that job is Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton's Culture of Corruption: The Scandal Queen
The Fraudulent Senator: Part 1 of a 7 Part Series
Joan Swirsky, Featured Writer
March 13, 2006

Once upon a time the woman who former Democrat House Ways and Means Committee Chairman and convicted felon Dan Rostenkowski was credited with calling "the smartest woman in the world'' decided that departing the pinnacle of world power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – where she was co-president of the U.S. for eight years – was unacceptable.

In no time, she decided that the fastest route to regaining that power was to spend as few years as possible as the junior senator from New York and then move onward and upward to reclaim what she believes is her rightful place in history as the first female president of the United States of America.

Hillary Rodham Clinton promptly relocated to the Empire State and moved into an upscale house financed by the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Her senatorial campaign involved spinning the yarn that she was a long-time NY Yankees fan, assuring upstate conservative voters that she "cared" about their jobs, informing the large liberal base of NY City Jewish voters that she was part Jewish (endearing coming from the wife of the first black president), and convincing the Chasidic New Square community in Rockland County (that had formerly voted overwhelmingly for arch-conservative Sen. Alfonse D'Amato) to vote 99 to 1 for her.

Never mind that two months after her election she pardoned four residents of New Square who had been convicted of defrauding the federal government, an act not quite as egregious as her husband's attempt to win her New York's Hispanic vote by pardoning 16 members of the FALN terrorist group who had planted over 130 bombs in the U.S., killed six people and injured 70.

All that added to the sympathy of New York's bleeding-heart liberals for the woman wronged by her predatory husband and his paramour Monica Lewinsky, and Hillary ran up enough votes to elect her to the U.S. Senate.

The Past as Prologue
In preparation for her unchallenged role as America’s Scandal Queen, Hillary navigated the shoals of Arkansas politics for 12 years as the then-governor's wife – years that included scandals of her own, among them:

▪ A $100,000 windfall from cattle futures after a $1,000 investment.

• The Castle Grande real estate scam.

• Her role as attorney for the Rose law firm in what would become the endlessly controversial-cum-criminal Whitewater affair that would follow her to the White House.

• The serial philandering of her husband, which cast her – depending on one's viewpoint – as a clench-jawed stoic, a perpetual victim, or a willing collaborator.

According to veteran journalist Richard Poe: "During Bill Clinton's tenure as attorney general and then governor of Arkansas, the state became a veritable Dixie Casablanca, a hotbed of global intrigue, in which shady operators ranging from Columbian drug lords and BCCI money launderers to Chinese intelligence agents took part." And there, in the thick of it, was Clinton's "stand by your man's" wife, Hillary.

Chicago-born Hillary – who by way of education, career, marriage and circumstance had already migrated to Wellesley, New Haven, Washington D.C., and Little Rock – had learned a lot in "The Natural State," specifically how to supernaturally evade responsibility, deny accountability, and dodge law enforcement, all the perfect preparation for her lengthy stay in White House – at the lofty address she now wants to reoccupy.

Don't Throw Me in That Briar Patch!
By the time she moved into the White House in 1993, Hillary was so accustomed to – and comfortable with – her husband's and her own self-created scandals that living a straight-and-narrow, law-abiding life appeared to be alien to her.

Like Brer Rabbit, Hillary practically begged for scandal. To recount the Joel Chandler Harris classic, Brer Rabbit was despised by Brer Fox, who decided to teach a lesson to the uppity rabbit. He created a tar baby and, sure enough, Brer Rabbit struck up a conversation with the sticky statue, but to no avail. Frustrated, he punched the baby and his paw got stuck in the tar. Infuriated, he struck him again and his other paw got stuck. Then he kicked the tar baby with both feet and butted it with his head and they too got stuck.

Finally, Brer Fox appeared to taunt his captive. "I'm going to barbecue you today, for sure."

"I don't care what you do with me, roast me," Brer Rabbit said. "Just so you don't fling me in that briar patch." Then Brer Fox threatened to hang the critter, drown him or skin him. But those horrible prospects didn't daunt Brer Rabbit. "Snatch out my eyeballs, tear out my ears by the roots," he pleaded with his antagonist, "but please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in that briar patch!

Finally Brer Fox decided to do the worst of all possible things: hurl Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. In no time, the fox saw Brer Rabbit sitting on a chinquapin log combing the tar pitch out of his hair. "Born and bred in the briar patch," Brer Rabbit gleefully called out to the fox. "It's my favorite place in the whole world!"

An Expert at Scandal
Unlike Brer Rabbit, Hillary wasn't born and bred in the world of political scandal – far from it. In fact her family were Republicans and young Hillary supported the1964 presidential bid of Barry Goldwater, the archconservative senator from Arizona. Unphased by his loss, she continued her conservative ways by becoming the president of the Wellesley College chapter of College Republicans.

But with her exposure at Wellesley to the radical leftist Saul Alinsky and her subsequent introduction to Yale Law School's draft-dodging leftist Bill Clinton, the die was cast for her hate-America's-military-intelligence-defense establishment. To the smartest woman in the world and her then-boyfriend, the path to changing what they hated was clear: Get power and hold onto it no matter what it takes!

What it took in Arkansas was first learning and then becoming a scandal expert. Within months of taking up residence in the White House, Hillary put her expertise to work.

In May 1993, the co-president was accused of having a central hand in firing several long-time employees of the White House Travel Office, the better to give the pricey travel business to her Hollywood pals, Linda Bloodworth Thomason and Harry Thomason. In true scandal-mode form, Hillary denied everything and when Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray investigated Travelgate, he concluded that there was substantial evidence that involved Hillary but not enough to warrant an indictment.

A couple of months later, in July 1993, White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster was said to have committed suicide, although the case for his murder has been made persuasively by, among others, Christopher Ruddy, in his 1993 book, "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster: An Investigation."

But the case didn't end there. In 1996, Hillary was accused by the Senate Special Whitewater Committee of ordering the removal of potentially damaging files related to Whitewater from Foster's office on the night of his death. Hillary denied everything, once again proving her adeptness in the scandal briar patch.

In June 1996, White House security head Craig Livingstone, a political operative and former bouncer, illegally obtained over 700 FBI files of mostly White House personnel from former Republican administrations. Hillary was accused of requesting the files and, in fact, hiring Mr. Livingstone, but she denied everything to yet another Independent Counsel, and Filegate became one more notch in her briar patch scandal belt.

Ultimately, her co-presidency brought about the fall of more elected and appointed members of her regime, as well as "friends” who met untimely deaths, were indicted, pleaded the fifth, fled the country, and were imprisoned, than in any administration in American history.

Staggering Numbers
Keeping in mind that Hillary – in her own "two for the price of one" pronouncement – told the nation that she would be sharing the presidency with her husband, it would beg the imaginations of even her most fervent acolytes that the tsunami of scandals that inundated the Clinton tenure somehow escaped either the notice or personal involvement of Hillary herself.

To see the shocking Scandal Index of the Clinton years, as compiled by the liberal Progressive Review (http://prorev.com) is to appreciate the Clinton's 24/7/365 belief that any progress in their leftist domestic and foreign affairs agenda could only be realized through the most nefarious activity – much of which fit neatly into the criminal category. Under the listing of "Records Set'" by the Clinton administration (read: co-presidency), Progressive Review cites the following, of which I will only list a sampling:

▪ Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates.

▪ Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation.

▪ Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify.

▪ Most number of witnesses to die suddenly.

▪ First president sued for sexual harassment.

▪ First president accused of rape.

▪ First president to be held in contempt of court.

▪ First president to be impeached for personal malfeasance.

▪ First first lady to come under criminal investigation.

▪ Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign-contribution case.

▪ Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions.

▪ Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions or guilty pleas to date: one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners: 14.

▪ Number of Cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5.

▪ Number of individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine that were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47.

▪ Number of these convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33.

▪ Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61.

▪ Number of congressional witnesses who pleaded the Fifth Amendment, fled the country to avoid testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed: 122.

▪ Guilty pleas and convictions obtained by Donald Smaltz in cases involving charges of bribery and fraud against former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and associated individuals and businesses: 15; acquitted or overturned cases (including Espy): 6.

▪ Clinton machine crimes for which convictions were obtained: drug trafficking, 3; racketeering, extortion, bribery, 4; tax evasion, kickbacks, embezzlement, 2; fraud, 12; conspiracy, 5; fraudulent loans, illegal gifts, 1; illegal campaign contributions, 5; money laundering, 6; perjury, et al.

▪ Number of times that Clinton figures who testified in court or before Congress said that they didn't remember, didn't know, or something similar: Bill Kennedy, 116; Harold Ickes, 148; Ricki Seidman, 160; Bruce Lindsey, 161; Bill Burton, 191; Mark Gearan, 221; Mack McLarty, 233; Neil Egglseston, 250; John Podesta, 264; Jennifer O'Connor, 343; Dwight Holton 348; Patsy Thomasson, 420; Jeff Eller, 697; and Hillary Clinton, 250.

Believe it or not, this exhaustive list omits even lengthier lists – on public record – of crimes investigated, public officials and reporters intimidated, threatened and muzzled, and the raft of dead people associated with the Clintons who died by guns, knives, alleged suicides, etc. See http://members.tripod.com/~rcjustice/pres.html and http://prorev.com/legacy.htm.

Apparently, the Clinton Scandal Squad enforcers believed that nothing was more important than protecting the co-presidents from realizing their relentlessly leftwing agenda – this in spite of the fact that by 1998 under the Clinton co-presidency, the GOP gained 48 seats in the House, 8 seats in the Senate, 11 governorships, and 1,254 seats in state legislatures, and that during their tenure, 439 (out of 1,998 Democrats) became Republicans as opposed to 3 Republicans who became Democrats.

Hillary's…Um…Character
Throughout her scandal-contaminated eight years in the White House, Hillary – having refined her skills in deflection, dissimulation and denial – became comfortably entrenched in her self-created briar patch. With increasing audacity and a confidence borne of "beating the system," she also displayed behavior that didn't quite rise to the level of scandal but certainly occupied other, rather lowly, categories:

Megalomania: Hillary refused to acknowledge – publicly or in print – the woman who in essence wrote her 1996 book, "It Takes a Village."

Lying: Hillary gave false testimony about her co-defendant Ira Magaziner, who helped her conduct secret meetings about her failed plan to socialize U.S. medicine.

Obstruction of Justice: the "smartest woman in the world" couldn't remember where she placed the Rose law firm billing records that were subpoenaed in 1994, until they magically reappeared two years later in the White House library.

Tastelessness: In 1999, after the wife of terrorist Yasir Arafat told the co-president that Israel was deliberately poisoning Palestinians, Hillary saw fit to embrace her. And that is not to omit what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Goodwin called her "rancid race baiting" remarks at a recent Martin Luther King Jr. celebration about Republicans running "the House" like a "plantation." Significantly, she omitted mention of the holiday that Arkansans celebrated during her years in the state house that honored Dr. King while at the same time honoring Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who fought to allow the South to keep blacks enslaved.

Selective Amnesia: In her 2004 book, "Living History," Hillary strangely omitted mention of her own and her husband's key associates, men with whom she took numerous photographs and who donated millions of dollars to her husband's campaigns, going back to their Arkansas days. These include – among dozens of other shady characters and outright criminals – Moctar Riady, the Indonesian billionaire owner of the Lippo banking company (the partner of which is the Chinese communist government and reputedly a front for Chinese espionage), and his son James, who eventually pleaded guilty to campaign violations.

Contempt for Women: The world got its first glimpse of Hillary’s shabby character when she was co-running for the co-presidency in 1992 and – with what turned out to be supreme irony – told Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" that she "wouldn't be some 'stand by your man' woman like [country-music icon] Tammy Wynette."

Her low regard for women continued through the 1990s as the White House went after many but certainly not all of the president's women – Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Elizabeth Ward Gracen – by auditing their tax returns, and, in 1997, leaking Paula Jones' confidential tax returns to the press.

According to Candace E. Jackson in her book, “The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine,” Hillary “was right there in the inner circle taking a lead in giving these women zero credibility, in attacking them in public and through the press and in participating in all of these scare tactics, like hiring private investigators to threaten them and follow them…[she] is either as misogynistic as her husband or she is simply willing to conspire to mistreat women if that's what it takes to preserve their political careers."

In “Hillaryland,” Ryan Lizza writes in TheNewRepublicOnline, the New York senator has many Kool-Aid-drinking “crawl-across-broken-glass-for-Hillary” types [and] a “vast political empire based in Washington and New York…she has made every effort to change her image from far-left liberal by enacting legislation with Republicans…the more right-wing the co-sponsor, the better; extra points for anyone involved with her husband's impeachment.”

But will her extreme makeover work? According to columnist Jonah Goldberg, Hillary’s recent return of a campaign contribution from Wal-Mart, on whose board she sat from 1986 until 1992, “is a perfect illustration not merely of her hypocrisy but of the quicksand she is now in. She thinks it's a winning message to say she's too good for Wal-Mart's money but not Hollywood's. That's not exactly red-state savvy.”

“The amazing thing about [Hillary],” Goldberg says, “is that she's so unappealing. Even liberals don't like what they see…at every turn, [her] Zelig-like public persona has been a fabrication – either by her fans, her enemies or herself…”

All of which may explain a recent CNN-Gallup poll in which 51 percent of respondents said they definitely would “not vote” for Hillary in a presidential race.

Indeed, according to an online conservative site, even “media liberals are starting to jump ship” on Hillary, with “one CNN veteran [Ken Bode] calling her a `certain loser,’ a Newsweek scribe [Jonathan Alter] warning that she'll take Democrats on a `kamikaze’ mission in 2008,” and arch-leftist Maureen Dowd of the Clinton-fawning New York Times batting her away as one would an irritating gnat.

Hillary’s…Um…Style
Equally difficult to overcome, however, are unfortunate personality traits that Hillary has none-too-convincingly tried to conceal from the public. While decades have passed since she was labeled “Sister Frigidaire” in her high school newspaper, her image of being cold, robotic and inaccessible continues to this day.

Some critics have called her angry, impatient, given to temper outbursts, calculating, opportunistic, and a chronic victim, but Tim Cavanaugh of www.reason.com said, “Plainly put, it's her personality... She still lacks a key quality that a politician can't achieve through hard work: likeability.”

Indeed, it’s difficult to like someone who constantly patronizes her audiences, speaking ever so slowly so that the stupid masses will “get” what the smartest woman in the world is saying. Or when she uses her alienating alternative oratorical style, which consists solely of the strident, the screechy and the preachy.

Expanding on the Zelig multiple-personality comparison, author and political commentator Kate O’Beirne calls Hillary a “skilled poseur,” enumerating the ways in which she takes positions “entirely at odds with the words she proclaims from the housetops.” Not the least being her advocacy for the little guy, when in fact Hillary is the second-biggest spender in the Senate after New Jersey’s Sen. Jon Corzine.

Mrs. O’Beirne cites Hillary’s “Liberal Quotient” from the Americans for Democratic Action, which was 95 last year, tied with far-left Senators Barbara Boxer and Richard Durbin, and her lifetime ADA rating of 95, which outscores both Senators Ted Kennedy (89.16) and John Kerry (88.7). NARAL scored her a perfect 100 percent since her election to the senate, and the National Rifle Association gave her the grade of “F.”

Although Hillary would like the public to believe that she is a born-again hawk when it comes to the military, O’Beirne reports that the conservative American Security Council gave her “a measly 20 percent on national-security issues” and states that “her ersatz hawkishness is one of tepid gestures and hollow speechifying.”

Another example of her counterfeit hawkishness was demonstrated when she denounced the recent election of the terrorist group Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections, which led terrorism expert Steven Emerson to remind the public that, while co-president, Hillary met repeatedly with "groups that had openly supported Hamas, Hezbollah and other foreign terrorist organizations,” including, among many others, the militant Islamic Relief Association and The American Muslim Council, whose followers carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.”

“A review of the statements, publications and conferences of the groups Mrs. Clinton embraced,” said Mr. Emerson, “shows unambiguously that they have long advocated or justified violence. By meeting with these groups, the first lady lent them legitimacy.”

Today, John Spencer, the former Mayor of Yonkers, NY, and a Vietnam combat veteran who will challenge Hillary in the November senate race (www.joinspencer.com) has accused the smartest woman in the world of accepting money from wealthy businessmen Hassan Nemazee and Faraj Aalaei, who are both associated with the American Iranian Council, a pro-Iranian-regime.

“Senator Clinton voted against the very munitions necessary to avoid a nuclear confrontation with Iran,” Mr. Spencer said, ”while at the same time accepting money from supporters of the Iranian mullahs…she lacks the credibility to keep New York safe and she should return this tainted money."

Then there is Hillary’s paranoid streak, as evidenced, O’Beirne states, by “her modus operandi [which] has always been to rally troops against the enemy – whether the Clintons’ Arkansas enemies, the Gingrich forces in the House, Ken Starr and `the vast right-wing conspiracy,’ George W. Bush and his band of ideologues, or whoever will bear the Republican mantle in 2008.”

A Worm Under Every Rock
No matter where you look, Hillary’s name is associated with scandal. For one thing, she has acknowledged accepting contributions from the influence peddling, recently indicted, uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

There is also, according to Carl Limbacher at NewsMax.com, the Clinton campaign-finance scandal of the late 1990s, where millions of dollars of illegal Chinese campaign cash found its way into Democratic Party and Clinton legal defense fund coffers. Worse, American missile- guidance technology was given to Beijing. This outrage may be blamed on the senator’s husband, but that won’t wash for the “two for the price of one” Scandal Queen.

That is not to omit the recently released 400-page Barrett Report. In 1995, while Independent Counsel David Barrett was investigating the president’s Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros for various crimes, he discovered that the president had used the Internal Revenue Service (headed by Hillary’s college friend, Margaret Milner Richardson), the Justice Department (headed by Clinton puppet Janet Reno), and the White House (headed by co-presidents Bill and Hillary) to audit political enemies, particularly the women who had accused the president of sexual harassment and even rape.

Clintonista Democrats have tried for 10 years to have the parts of the Barrett Report that dealt with these matters redacted, and they succeeded. But Republican Senators Charles Grassley, Chairman of the House Finance Committee, and James Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, have both stated publicly that they are determined to get the entire report released.

The redacted portions must be pretty explosive because as columnist Tony Snow has noted, the “report is a bombshell, capable possibly of wiping out Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential prospects.”

The Nemesis Who Won't Go Away
Increasingly, Hillary and company have projected onto Republicans the “the culture of corruption” mantra and, onto President Bush, the “I” word – impeachment. This is to deflect attention away from Hillary’s latest scandal, one in which she will undoubtedly deny everything to escape accountability or even criminal indictment.

In short, Hillary’s current nemesis, Peter Paul – the largest single campaign contributor to her 2000 Senatorial campaign – has filed a suit against her and President Clinton – among many others.

According to Mr. Paul, the suit is “for committing a series of business frauds against me that involved me spending more than $1.2 million for Hillary's Senate campaign; having a Clinton front man go into business with my Japanese investor partner, causing the collapse of my public company; and filing fraudulent reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in the amount of nearly three-quarters-of-a-million dollars.”

Today, all of the many codefendants in the case – except Hillary – have exhausted their appeals and are now poised for discovery and trial, the schedule for which will be set by the court after a hearing on Hillary’s anti-SLAPP motion in Los Angeles in March.

NOTE: SLAPP suits, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, are recognized in California as lawsuits that are brought against individuals, corporations or organizations in an attempt to silence defendants who speak out on matters of public concern. An anti-SLAPP motion seeks to strike all claims against a defendant – in this case, Hillary herself!

Initially, Hillary’s anti-SLAPP motion appeal was denied by both trial and appellate courts but then sent back to the trial court to clarify a discrepancy. But on February 3, 2006, the judge changed his original ruling. He ignored the tardiness of Hillary’s original filing and agreed to allow her to argue that her 1st Amendment rights (to conduct her senatorial campaign) included her own and her husband’s right to defraud her largest contributor. This action will allow Mr. Paul’s lawyers to depose Hillary. [Read more about this case in Part II of this series].

As the disposition of Hillary’s appeal approaches, the Clintons, their lawyers and spinners, as well as their echo chamber in what used to be the "mainstream" media – but is now known as the Old Media and even the Antique Media – are using all of their formidable resources to make sure that Hillary dodges yet another scandal.

Sound familiar? This is exactly what the leftwing media did when they tried to smear Paula Jones when she accused the Philander-in-Chief of sexual harassment. What they didn't count on, however, was that Mrs. Jones had the truth on her side and believed so fervently that justice would be served that she refused to knuckle under to their unceasing assaults.

Today, Peter Paul (http://www.hillcap.org) also refuses to be intimidated by the Clinton machine and is equally assured that justice will out. He has become yet another Clinton nemesis who won't go away.

Joan Swirsky is a New York-based author and journalist who has been a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards... [read more]
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etc. etc.
Blah Blah Blah

That does it for me.
I have been waiting for a sign.
This must be it.

I'm votin' for Obama.

Look to the future not the past.