RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Hillary in 2008

It seems to me that the Democrats have really screwed this up in ways they didn't have to screw this up.

The Democrats could have easily taken the position that Bush failed to plan for the war, that he rushed in on bad intelligence, that he inadequately funded and/or trained the troops, etc.

And then, instead of calling for surrender, they could have explained exactly how they would...gasp...WIN this thing by correcting flaws in Bush's strategy.

Unfortunately, however, that wasn't to be. Instead we have this constant drumbeat of defeatism that serves no one.

surrender and withdrawl are totally different. Surrender implies that we'll be giving up land and paying reparations. Withdrawl is basically admitting that it's just too fucked up and pulling our guys out. Ultimately Bush has painted us in a corner. There really doesn't seem to be a way to "win," the Iraqis need to settle their country for themselves.

That's a pretty tortured distinction in my opinion. At best it sounds like the Democrats are arguing for "permanent retreat".

He just parrotted his old boss election rhetoric. Rhetoric that has been spewed while the terrorist have regrouped & grown. Attacking Dems while helping get troops killed & terrorists gain strength isn't going to work for the American people any longer IMHO.

So, to sum things up:

Hillary Clinton recently sent a letter to an assistant SECDEF condemning the war and Bush and demanding to know what plans the Pentagon has for our inevitable defeat.

Instead of kissing her ass, the way she expected, the Pentagon replied that she was out of line and that it was unacceptable to be discussing a defeat when the US is involved in winning the war.

And now the same democrats who normally claim that they want candor from administration officials are demanding that SECDEF Gates punish his subordinate for calling it as he saw it.

Yes, that would be how you would sum it up G-man.


RAW

So to sum things up, Cheney's guy is full of shit.

Glad to see you forming your own opinions there, dude.

When you edit something like that please don't keep it as if it's still my quote. There's a perfectly good Off Topic & Offensive forum for that type of crap.

There. Fixed it for you. Better?

Whatever. It's to your benefit to play nice but I've come to expect less.

Oh, come on, MEM. Its not like anyone couldn't read your original post right above it and see that all I was doing was busting on you for once again cutting and pasting from one of the most partisan blog sites out there.

So you a partisan conservative have a problem with a site being partisan liberal.

That of course doesn't change that Hillary did indeed do what RAW & pretty much any other major outlet reported. Was there anything that you feel RAW did wrong other than being guilty of being a liberal site?

I think it's the fact that RAW is such a blatantly one-sided source, that always spins things to demonize Republicans, and always spins things to make Democrats look good, or at worst, dredges up Republican abuses to say: There, see, Democrats are only guilty of what Republicans already did.

G-man often posts from sources like the New York Times and Washington Post. Which while these are also arguably liberal-partisan sources, at least will frequently voice criticism of Democrats and expose unethical/criminal behavior of Democrats, as well as that of Republicans.

But RAW is just reliable one-sided propaganda. Excrement.
Manufactured anti-conservative vitriol, served fresh daily.

RAW covers things of interest to liberals. The bulk of it's stories are links to other sources. They do have an editorial part but I don't think I've ever posted anything here from that section. It does have stories about bad Democrats & definitley plays favorites in my opinion. For example many of the Hillary stories concerning protestors that G-man has posted could also be found on RAW.

And as I pointed there doesn't seem to be any problem factually with the article I posted from RAW. It appears the issue is that it's from a site that people who like Brit Hume, Ann Coulter & Rush Limbaugh feel is to one sided. Well I think you guys are to one sided (but I don't think your excrement if it's any consolation)

As I've pointed out in any number of similar discussions of liberal spin, it's more often a case of selective omission.

Two books I've read in the recent past that do an excellent job of deconstructing liberal manipulation of the facts are Bias, by 30-year CBS veteran reporter Bernard Goldberg, and Slander by Ann Coulter.

Despite your low opinion of Ann Coulter, she does her homework, and her documented facts are beyond reproach. She frequently makes partisan remarks that make me cringe, but just as often presents well-reasoned arguments. Though I wish she'd curb her more bombastic tendencies.

Anne Coulter is a cunt. I spend about 20 minutes skimming Slander in a bookstore a few years ago. It's poorly written and no matter what page I turned to it just offered her opinions dressed as facts. It was like reading a Wonder Boy post. "Liberals are stupid here's why" "liberals lie" liberals don't get it."
She doesn't actually deal with issues, she just attacks the left for the sake of attacking them. Compare it to Al Franken's books which will attack a person for their actions and words. And her stuff has been shown to be poorly researched with a lot of lies. Check the endnotes on her books, there she fulfills the legal technicalities to avoid lawsuits but basically admits to misleading statements in the main text.

Well if you look at the discussion that started with a cut & paste article from FOX titled Hillary aiding the enemy: Pentagon, I would point out that G-man just posted the one side. Left out was any response from Hillary's side nor the fact that she is hardly alone in raising the issue...


So this really started out with selective ommissions with the intent of getting Hillary IMHO.

Coulter is one sided no matter how well you feel she does her homework.

Point of information: the article was from the Associated Press. It just happened to be linked to at the Fox website. Many other news organizations carried the same article.

Did Rupert Murdoch purchase the AP while I wasn't looking? Or is AP now also part of the vast right wing media conspiracy?

You of course only used the portion of the AP article to present one side.

I took the article, pointed out the portion I thought was relevant and then went on in a separate post to discuss how to deal with the Iraq war, pointing out where I thought the Democrats in general were wrong and discussing how I thought they could have made some good points and actually improved the situation with the war while still opposing President Bush's policies.

That's a little more than the standard issue: "Raw Story says Republicans Bad" game of grab-ass that you seem to think passes for discussion of an issues.

Furthermore, I would respectfully submit that your most recent "but, but G-man quoted 'Fox'" misstatement is simply one more example of that game. You got caught again posting one sided crap from a blog as an authoritative source and the best you could come up with was falsely accusing me of doing basically the same thing.

start posting the same articles from CNN G......I go to both web sites equally and most of the time it's the same stuff.....just different headlines.

Actually, I try to do that sometimes, if for no other reason that it saves us all from the inevitable "ah, its only Fox" accusation. However, sometimes, I don't feel like bothering to find the same article from another source.

What you call relevent was also just one sided G-man. I feel presenting Hillary's response to Cheney's one time aid obviously balances out the discusion.

Well, here is the letter; and this is the passage that Hillary (and you) find so offensive:

• Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in order to achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqi constitution, and other contentious issues. Fear of a precipitate U.S. withdrawal also exacerbates sectarian trends in Iraqi politics as factions become more concerned with achieving short-term tactical advantages rather than reaching the long-term agreements necessary for a stable and secure Iraq.

To the objective reader this is hardly, as Hillary claimed, "outrageous and offensive." Its a discussion of whether the tactic proposed by Hillary is a good one. There's not a word in there about her patriotism or lack thereof.

The writer only argues that it is harmful for politicians to make public demands for early withdrawal because such public demands tend to embolden the enemy. He is making a claim about the wisdom and likely consequences of her actions, not about her motives.

Hillary, however, and her syncophants (such as yourself) appear to have no response OTHER than attacking motives. Witness the desparate need to argue that the writer, an employee of a republican administration is--SURPRISE--a republican.

In the 40s and 50s, there was an adage that "politics ends at the water's edge"--that America's political parties, whatever their differences on domestic policy, were obliged to present a united front to the outside world. They might disagree internally, but not in the pages of the New York Times and on the wavelengths of ABC News. The politicians understood that publicly attacking the mission undermined the troops and emboldened the enemy.

Today, however, people like Hillary (and, yes, there are Republicans who do the same thing [see, e.g., Chuck Hagel]) seem to want to invert this principle. They assert the moral right not only to undermine U.S. foreign policy but to do so with impunity.

They want to score political points criticizing the President while demanding to be immune from criticism themselves for their own statements and actions.

She wasn't scoring political points as your spinning it. We entered the Iraq War poorly planned & we payed for it. It's just more stupidity not to be prepared when we leave Iraq.

Gates has since responded...
Washington Post

A liberal partisan who skimmed the chapter titles and didn't actually read the book would see it that way.

Certainly, I'd have to agree, she makes a number of sweeping anti-liberal partisan remarks that I don't take to be factual.
And as has been pointed out across at least two previous Ann Coulter topics, her more hyperbolic rhetoric often makes it easy for her more serious points to be dismissed by the left.
But these showy tactics also get her noticed, to some degree it's playful banter, and if she were such a poor writer, she wouldn't have an unbroken chain of five top-ten bestsellers.

For example, she reports how in the 2000 Bush/Gore election, using detailed statistics, how the liberal-partisan networks were quicker to call states for Gore than they were for Bush, with only a tiny fraction of the votes counted.
In particular, how Florida was falsely called for Gore prematurely, and that supressed Republican voter turnout by an estimated 35,000 votes (based on voter statistics from the two previous presidential elections in Florida).
And how these "stolen" votes by a partisan media would have decisively given Florida's electoral votes to Bush, beyond any possible dispute margin.
How Gore tried to suppress military absentee ballots int he re-counts, and other manipulations.
Not simply opinion.
Coulter makes her views with extensive statistical facts.

Coulter also compares conservative Phyllis Schlafly, and her lifetime acheivements, her scholarly works, and how she almost singlehandedly annihilated the Equal Rights Amendment, through her research, public speaking and other scholarly work.
And yet despite her achievements, has been snubbed and ignored by liberal reporters, liberal academics, and liberal feminists.
Coulter details in contrast Schlafly's achievements, as compared to the darling of liberal feminism, Gloria Steinem, who far from acheiving personal success, has been a financial and commercial failure, propped up by money from wealthy men she's had sexual relationships with, who make her appear far more successful than she truly is, and far from a model of female independence, is a kept woman. Unlike Schlafly
Yet Schlafly is reviled by liberals, and shunned by liberal reporters and liberal publishers, while Steinem is exalted.

Coulter also details the biases of the liberal book-publishing industry, and demonstrates --again, through 40 years of extensive book-sales statistics-- that despite how conservative books statistically sell better than liberal works, they are spurned by the liberal book-publishing industry, who instead take great losses to publish the works of their pet liberal causes.
Smaller, less mainstream publishers distribute conservative works, and reap enormous profits.
Despite 4 decades of conservative book sales statistics, that show the wisdom of at least publishing a somewhat proportionate percentage of conservative works.

These are just three examples from Coulter's book Slander. That you choose to dismiss and ignore.

And how comedic that you would hold up Al Franken as a contrasting masterwork of öbjectivity"and "research"! Whose only books I've heard of are Rush Limbaugh is a big fat ugly etc., etc. and Lying liars and the lies they tell or somesuch. Both have a sneering infantile namecalling nyah-nyah-nyah quality.
Coulter may indulge in partisan remarks at many points, but at least she has some extensive facts beyond angry insults to back up her partisan stance.

It's clear she said this to appeal to her Demoicrat anti-war voter base (whom she has to dig herself out of a hole with because of her previous support of the war, and explains why Barack Obama is outfundraising the living hell out of her, and why he is rising in the polls as well).

There's no reason to immediately begin a contingency withdrawal plan, which implies failure in its very request!

The troop surge in Iraq despite liberal propaganda to undermine it before it has even been fully implemented, actually seems to be working. Anbar province, which had previously been the most bloody area outside of Baghdad, and written off to Al Qaida prior to the troop surge, has been cleared.

Nothing is written in stone, but the plan, based on early victories, seems to have a very reasonable chance of success.


And even if Democrats refuse to see that: What is the Democrat alternative plan, other than abandoning Iraq's democratic reformers to slaughter, and leaving Iraq to be a safe haven for Al Qaida expansion of de-stabilizing violence throughout the region?

You just speculated on Clinton's motivations WB. Guess that's different eh?

I don't agree with your speculation about her motivations & I think her & Republican Senator Luger make a valid point that a contigency plan is needed.

Washington Post

At this point, outside of talk radio and a few other outlets, Hillary still hasn't been the subject of anything other than fawning by the press. She carefully cultivates her media image by being interviewed on typically "soft" news shows (Today, the View) or outright entertainment shows (David Letterman).

Meanwhile, Obama is raising a lot of money and going on both entertainment shows and hard news.

Once the election campaign begins in earnest, expect to see her halo get tarnished more than a bit, by both Obama and Edwards.

That's a big reach on your part, M E M.


I'm not speculating, I'm stating the obvious, what every political pundit on every network has been saying for weeks, pundits of the Left and Right. That, quite obviously, Barack Obama is raising more than double what Hillary Clinton is in campaign funds. And the reason consistently given is that Obama never supported the Iraq war. And that Hillary is trying to reconcile on that issue with her base, by taking a harder stance. You can look at any political analysis from the extreme left to the extreme right, and they've all come to the same conclusion.

There's hardly anything wildly speculative about my saying the same as every political commentator.

That just isn't true. I think it's more of a case of the press not being anti-Hillary to your satisfaction. Granted she doesn't have it as bad as Edwards but usually the only good headlines I see are the ones on her poll numbers. Usually even then their kind of "meh" about it.

I chalk all the political commentators as the press that G-man says "fawns" over Hillary. I know very few people who feel the same way about Iraq that they did when it started. Even Republicans talk way differently then they did a year ago. With Hillary political motivations are just assigned to her because "it's obvious". In reallity she's really just like most of us.

BTW what source says Obama is making "more than double the campaign donations"? The last reporting of campaign money I saw had Obama only slightly ahead of Hillary.

Just a guess, but it could mean that Obama is currently raising twice as much money as she is raising. Since Hillary started fundraising earlier, if he has even close to the amount of cash she has, it would tend to indicate that he is raising it faster than she is.

Even taking that into account I don't see where it comes to anywhere close to more than double. Can anyone actually provide a source on this?

And since Hillary has increased her lead in the polls I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama's campaign donations reflect some of that in next couple of months. What's kind of amazing is that both are drawing in the most while basically drawing from the same pool of voters.

Several articles were posted about this about two weeks ago, when it was announced that Obama had raised 31 million

This article posted by G-man has the numbers:

• Obama Raises 31 Million, Clinton 21 Million

I saw commentary/analysis on this on PBS News Hour, Washington Week, and McLaughlin Group, and probably on Fox, ABC and CBS as well.

The "more than double" was, as I recall, discussed on Washington Week, discussing funds raised by Obama and Clinton in the same period, as compared to their 31 million vs. 21 million cumulativetotals.

Hillary Clinton began fundraising earlier, and yet has raised less than Obama. As pundits on various networks and shows have pointed out, that indicates a greater enthusiasm for Obama's candidacy.

I still don't see where any of the numbers add up to more than double raised. Either way the end result is Hillary has a little less money then Obama & a big lead in the polls.

But surely you must concede that if Obama keeps raising that kind of money, it wouldn't be difficult for him to begin using it to attack Clinton and/or promote himself?

In fact, even without keeping up that pace, I would think you would have to concede his fundraising gives him the ability to get at least competitive with her as we near the primaries.