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

She's clearly a very good chance to be the next president. How do you feel about that?

Probably no surprise but I'm happy about it. On this board though I think I'm the only one that is for Hillary.

[Answering blogger's question] "Why don't you people like this woman?"



Well, it is very nice that Hillary went [and] shook the children's hands and kissed the babies for the Kosovo refugees arriving in this country. It is also extremely admirable that Jesse Jackson secured the release of the prisoners of war in the "Kosovo Konflict".
However, neither of these actions negates the basic idiots that the actioners are.

Even the most immoral person appears moral once in awhile. The dumbest person says something smart once in awhile. The ugliest person appearz handsome in just the right light. The fattest chick looks a lot slimmer in the right outfit. Are you getting the point here? Hillary is basically a criminal and a pretty smile doesn't change that. Jesse Jackson is basically a racist and his admirable actions toward these three white people doesn't make him any less so.

For some Republicans that blog post could just be rubber stamped for any top Democratic candidate. Hillary may not be perfect but I think she's a way better candidate than Rudy or Mitt. Their the fat chicks looking for that outfit that might make them appear thinner.

Rudy's shown he has enough character for 3 wives & likes to exagerate his time at ground zero. Mitt has totally flip flopped on a wide range of issues just to get elected & Thompson use to lobby for a guy who enjoyed the smell of the burning tires placed on many of his people. These are your top candidates for '08!

You know, Chris, there's something really hypocritical about a guy who thinks sticking a shit-smeared penis in his mouth to be "normal" complaining about Rudy--or anyone else's--"family values."

Now, personally, I don't care what you do in your personal life, or who you do it with. But, given that Rudy's the most gay-tolerant mainstream Republican to ever be the frontrunner, you might want to reconsider the amount of time you spend attacking the guy for his lifestyle choices, while at the same time canonizing the wife of the man who signed the "Defense of Marriage" act into law.

Its almost as if you WANT to see one of the two major parties nominate as President someone who wants to put you back in the closet.

Talk about self loathing.

It's funny how sexual immorality ceases to be an issue for you when we're discussing Democrats. With Clinton even when he committed perjury, the mantra was: "It's just sex, it doesn't affect how he does his job".
Funny how the tune changes when we're discussing a Republican.
The same regarding Mark Foley, when so many Democrats had more clearly violated the law and had sex (gay and heterosexual) with under-age interns. Not only did Democrats not call for charges, in most cases they re-elected them.

Mitt Romney had to walk a fine line, as a Republican governor in a liberal state. He sure takes a hard stance on immigration, which is the reason I support him.

Regarding Fred Thompson, I have some reservations about how qualified he is compared to the others, but I don't see who he previously represented as a problem. I'm sure you could dig up quite a few unsavory clients represented by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. That's as much a red herring as saying Arnold Schwarzenegger's father was an officer for the Nazi SS. It's irrelevant. Thompson himself didn't do the things you allege by association.
Wikipedia doesn't mention "burning tire" lobbying controversy that you do, so I can only assume it's a liberal-partisan fabrication, on the part of the fanatics at MediaMatters.

Another client, Aristide, was widely denounced for endorsing "necklacing," the gruesome practice of execution where gasoline-soaked tires are thrown over a person's head and set ablaze. In September 1991, Aristide said: "The burning tire, what a beautiful tool! ... It smells good. And wherever you go, you want to smell it."

"Not everybody can come to Washington and look out for themselves,"

Clinton says negatives won't keep her from winning
Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:22pm ET
By Kay Henderson

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton acknowledged on Sunday that many voters do not like her, but she blamed it on years of Republican attacks and insisted she has a record of winning despite her negatives.

Clinton's remarks came as the eight candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination debated in the critical early voting state of Iowa and just days after President George W. Bush's political adviser Karl Rove said the former first lady was flawed for having high negative ratings.

Clinton and top rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, came under fire early in the debate at Drake University when other candidates were invited to comment on their perceived weaknesses -- Clinton's high negative ratings in the polls and Obama's inexperience in foreign policy.


"I don't think Karl Rove's going to endorse me," Clinton told the audience at the debate, which was aired by ABC News' "This Week" program. "But I find it interesting he's so obsessed with me. And I think the reason is because we know how to win."

She tackled the issue of her high negative ratings head-on, saying, "The idea that you're going to escape the Republican attack machine and not have high negatives by the time they're through with you, I think, is just missing what's been going on in American politics for the last 20 years."

Polls have shown Clinton holding double-digit leads over Obama in their effort to be the Democratic candidate in the November 2008 election.
...

Wash. Times again falsely claimed Clinton said "the surge is clearly 'working' "
Summary: The Washington Times falsely claimed that "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton [D-NY] ... told the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] conference on Monday that the surge is clearly 'working.' " In fact, Clinton never said that President Bush's troop "surge" policy in Iraq "is clearly 'working.' " Instead, she linked the improvements in Iraq's Al Anbar Province to new "tactics," not Bush's troop escalation.
An August 23 Washington Times article falsely claimed that "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton [D-NY] ... told the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] conference on Monday that the surge is clearly 'working.' " In fact, as Media Matters for America previously noted, Clinton never said that President Bush's troop "surge" policy in Iraq "is clearly 'working.' " Instead, in a speech she gave on August 20, Clinton linked the improvements in Iraq's Al Anbar Province to new "tactics," not Bush's troop escalation. Reporter Joseph Curl contrasted what he falsely claimed she said at the VFW conference with her reported August 22 statement that "[i]t is abundantly clear that there is no military solution to the sectarian fighting in Iraq. ... We need to stop refereeing the war, and start getting out now."
According to an August 21 New York Times article, Clinton stated to the VFW: "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working. ... We're just years too late changing our tactics. We can't ever let that happen again." The New York Times also reported that "[a]ides to Mrs. Clinton said her remarks that military tactics in Iraq are 'working' referred specifically to reports of increased cooperation from Sunnis leading to greater success against insurgents in Al Anbar Province." And according to an April 29 New York Times article on improvements in Al Anbar, the progress there "began last September" -- months before Bush announced his plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq.
...

Matter-eater Man said:
Media Matters ...clearly isn't nonpartisan.

Matter-eater Man said:
Media Matters ...clearly isn't nonpartisan.

"The war is 360 degrees, there is no battlefield," she said. "So I want to get our combat troops out of a sectarian, civil war. And I have also said, and I somewhat do differ with some of my other colleagues, I think you have to take a hard look at the situation we are in. We are making some progress it turns out, in what is called Al Anbar province against al Qaeda, and the reason we are is that our military leaders have learned a lot in the last several years there and they have made common cause with some of the tribal leaders, who don't like Al Qaeda any more than we do because Al Qaeda is also going after them."

Matter-eater Man said:
Media Matters ...clearly isn't nonpartisan.

Media Matters wins this one since they have a source from a story dated back in early May from the New York Observer


and this is why G-man attacks the media in general (unless it's conservative & works the GOP talking points)

Dan Balz's Take
Romney's Rush to Critique Clinton Missing The Facts

Mitt Romney criticized Hillary Clinton's health care plan at an event yesterday outside of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. (AP).
If ever there was an issue that cried out for a serious national debate, it is health care. Unfortunately, the Republican presidential candidates prefer partisan sloganeering to honest discussion, with Mitt Romney the most egregious example.
Romney couldn't wait Monday to criticize Hillary Clinton's new health care proposal. He called it a "European-style, socialized medicine plan" and staged a photo-op in front of St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan to denounce the proposal as "HillaryCare 2.0." It amounted to a canned press release in search of the facts.
Clinton presents an irresistible target for Republicans, particularly on health care. Her new plan leaves many questions unanswered and, given her record on the issue, she must overcome inherent skepticism from many Americans who believe she wants to dictate the kind of health care they receive. But it is a far different plan than the one she authored in 1993.
Instead of engaging in a debate on the merits of her proposal, the Republican candidates eagerly rushed to attack it as rampaging big government. It is one more example of why campaigns have left so many Americans disillusioned with the political process.
Romney above all others in the GOP field should have used more caution in the way he responded, given his own admirable record on health care in Massachusetts -- a record that he has decided to run away from rather than embrace.
The reason Romney is more vulnerable in the way he responded is that, in broad strokes, what Clinton proposed on Monday bears a striking resemblance to the plan he proposed and then negotiated through the Massachusetts legislature when he was governor. The plan's passage was one of the most acclaimed achievements of his term in office.
Both plans call for an individual mandate requiring everyone to purchase health insurance. Both feature subsidies to help low income families pay for that insurance. Both create pooling mechanisms to help make insurance more affordable. Both impose a tax on large companies that do not provide health insurance to their workers.
Clinton proposed no new government entities to administer the plan, although her aides acknowledge that some additional people would have to be hired within the existing bureaucratic structure to handle some aspects of it. The Massachusetts plan actually did create a new regulatory agency, although it is a fairly lean and not very costly addition to the state bureaucracy.
There are differences in some details of the two plans -- the subsidies available for purchasing health care, the size of the tax on big companies that don't offer insurance, the scope of the basic benefits package, the tax credits offered to small businesses to provide insurance. But as Jonathan Gruber, an economist at MIT, told me today, the two plans are "very, very similar."
Gruber advised Romney as governor in the development of the Massachusetts plan and now is a member of a board overseeing its implementation. He said Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards consulted him as they were preparing their proposals this year.
Gruber said what Clinton proposed is far different from the plan that never came to a vote in Congress in 1994. He is dismayed by Romney's response and what he called "misleading Republican rhetoric" to the Clinton plan.
"Romney deserves the credit for what he did in Massachusetts," Gruber said. "He provided the intellectual leadership for much of what is going on. He should be basking in his glory and instead he's running away from it, and I'm very disappointed."
As a presidential candidate, Romney has said he would not try to take the Massachusetts plan national. He argues that he prefers to allow states to develop their own approaches to covering all their citizens. As president, he says, he would make sure the federal government provides waivers, flexibility and encouragement to the states to innovate, rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all federal solution.
Kevin Madden, Romney's spokesman, said the former governor is the one candidate in the race with a record of delivering on the goal universal health care as an elected official. Comparing Romney's approach with Clinton's, Madden said, "What you have here is two fundamentally different world views on how you achieve coverage."
Romney, however, has said little about whether he would provide federal resources to help states pay for covering everyone with insurance. Most of the plans coming from the Democrats peg the cost of universal insurance at about $100 billion annually.
Clinton's plan illustrates the lessons she learned from the debacle of 1993 and 1994. It is a more cautious and evolutionary approach, starting with the recognition that most people who already have insurance through their employers probably want to keep it. Her aides said she has come to realize that the plan she authored during her husband's presidency sought to impose too much change at once.
Policy experts will say nothing is more complex than attempting to repair what is broken in the nation's health care system while preserving what is best about it. Anyone who tries will have to defend his or her proposal against legitimate question and criticism -- and then seek to develop the political consensus to turn concepts into legislation.
Democrats and Republicans have dramatically different ideas about how to fix the system, with GOP candidates favoring market-based changes designed to increase competition, as Karl Rove pointed out in an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal. Romney's argument that a national solution won't work deserves discussion as well.
Gruber framed the debate this way: "The Democrat want to cover the uninsured. The Republicans do not, or at least it's not a priority for the Republicans. The voters can now choose.... Should we put $100 billion into solving this problem or not? I'm not saying we should, but there's no blurring of the lines. There is a choice."
That's a defining difference on a big issue -- but only if the candidates treat it seriously. Romney and the Republicans failed that test in their first response to the Clinton plan.