If Mark Penn is Karl Rove, Then Mrs. Clinton is George W. Bush

I blogged the other day that liberals don’t just hate their enemies, they hate anybody, and everybody, who they see standing between them and their power.    Now Paul Begela seemingly sets out to prove my point.  Sam Stein, Puffington Post, reports that “Forehead” Begala thinks that not fired and maybe not even demoted, Mrs. Clinton campaign advisor Mark Peen is a “almost a Rumsfeldian thing:”

Longtime Clinton adviser and confidant Paul Begala took full aim at Mark Penn on Friday, expressing scorn for the recently demoted strategist, and comparing his time with the Clinton campaign to that of Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure as Secretary of Defense.

“I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Penn,” said Begala at a New York City breakfast sponsored by the non-profit group Public Agenda. “And for those of us who wanted to see him out from the beginning, it became almost a Rumsfeldian thing. And he is not even fired. He has been demoted. How could this be

I recognize that as a ‘rat, Begala is not used to deep thought.   However, by Begala’s logic, such as it is, if Penn is Rove, then Mrs. Clinton is George W. Bush.

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You got to admit one thing about the Clintons.  They are persistent.   If their lies get exposed, they still keep on telling them.   In fact, Jake Tapper, ABC News, goes so far as to footnote, B.J.’s continuing lies about Mrs. Clinton’s Tuzla trip.

Former President Bill Clinton offered this bit of revisionist history of his wife’s Bosnia story in Jasper, Ind., today, one riddled with a veritable sniper fire of errors — ones necessitating footnotes.

For the mathmatially challenged,  Allah Pundit, Hot Air does the math::

Jake Tapper went through his whole statement line by line. Two mistakes, one possible misinterpretation, and five — count ’em, five — clear lies.

I find it amusing that the main stream media is now taking the same position about the Clintons’ honesty, or utter lack thereof, that conservataives have had since the Clintons entered the national arena.  Of course there was no Barack Obama alternative in 1992

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The much talked about “oil for food’ program had it’s share of problems. Corruption, mostly. Not to be wondered at, give we’re dealing with the UN there. But apparently, trying to exchange food for oil isn’t much better, as James Joyner at OTB this morning, notes:

The drastic rise in prices for corn, rice, and other staples that is wreaking havoc in parts of the developing world is due in large part to Western investment in biofuels, according to a recent report of the World Bank.

…

World Bank President Bob Zoellick was on NPR this morning talking about this.

Demand for ethanol and other biofuels is a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices around the world, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says. Droughts, financial market speculators and increased demand for food have also helped create “a perfect storm” that has boosted those prices, he says.

The soaring costs of food and fuel led to riots in Haiti and Egypt and a general strike in Burkina Faso this week. Skyrocketing food prices are topping the agenda this weekend of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual spring meetings in Washington.

Zoellick held up a bag of rice during a news conference Thursday to illustrate the severity of the food crisis. “In Bangladesh a two-kilogram bag of rice … now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family,” he said. “The price of a loaf of bread … has more than doubled. Poor people in Yemen are now spending more than a quarter of their incomes just on bread.”

And Zoellick says prices for basic staples will remain high for an extended period of time. “I think you have a perfect storm of things coming together,” he tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep in an interview. “You have high energy prices. You have the increase in demand from some of the developing countries. … As the Indian commerce minister said to me, going from one meal a day to two meals a day for 300 million people increases demand a lot. “You have some of those countries moving to a different diet. So more meats require more grains. You have the biofuels expansion, which is a big source of demand.”

It has long struck me as wrongheaded, if not immoral, to take cheap, efficient sources of nutrition to turn them into expensive, inefficient fuels. A gallon of ethanol produces roughly two-thirds the energy of a gallon of gasoline and is far more expensive. And, while farmers and, especially, processors make more money by the increased demand for biofuels, it means that food is now out of reach for millions.

I say it’s time.

NBC tried serving up Keith Olbermann in prime time. The attempt failed… Miserably.
Newsbusters:

On Sunday, NewsBusters asked readers, “Will NBC Succeed in Making Olbermann Mainstream?”

70 percent of respondents said, “No, he’s too crazy.”

Well, Nielsen ratings of his “Countdown” program aired Sunday evening on NBC validate this position, and wonderfully depict Olbermann as clearly not being ready for primetime (h/t Thomas Stewart):

Let the smack talking begin: NBC ran a special one hour Countdown with Keith Olbermann and it pulled Quarterlife style numbers (3.37 million) and did even worse in the demo with a 0.5/2. I’d blame that on the basketball overrun except that a rerun of King of the Hill on Fox did about three times as well as KO in the demo. Even a rerun of America’s Next Top Model on the CW had a better 18-49 result than Olbermann. We know from our regular coverage that almost all of Olbermann’s (and O’Reilly’s too) viewers are over the age of 55 on cable, and it would seem NBC was doing their own little Katie Couric experiment to see if it could capture the youth using Keith Olbermann. The verdict is in: nope.

OK, I’m convinced. It’s all a Boooooooshhhh/Cheney/Haliburton conspiracy. clearly, there are submiminal messages beingplaced in the picture stream of  “King of the Hill” reruns.

I mean, it couldn’t be that Keith Olbermann is a pompus, guano crazy, anal pore, and the vast majority of the American people have labeled him as such? Could it?

¼/p>

• Look, I for one could care less about The Perky One, unless she wants to appear on ‘The Nude News”…(Just so I can see how far that perkiness extends, mind) But this bit with her and CBS was doomed from the start as I told you here, two years ago. The issue with CBS news is not now, nor has it ever been, the personality in the big chair. The big issue now is how far left the place leans. We hear she’s considering taking over for Larry “Ask the question” King leaves. As to the degree of Couric’s involvement with the furthering of that leftist image of CBS, let me just say this: A stint on King, where the illusion of bias is less damaging and thereby less important, will expose that bias, removing whatever doubt there may have been on the subject.
• Why is a group of people involved in a sect, using a temple for sex with young girls a bad thing, and Bill Clinton using the Oval office for sex with young girls NOT a bad thing?
• There may be good reason to ground all those MD-80s in this case, and perhaps there is not. I honestly don’t know, not having followed the particulars on that one closely. But the financial damage being done to American Airlines as a result must be attended, and studied. This is perhaps a bad example, but I think it does illustrate how a ruling can affect day to day operations of a private business. And can you imagine the fallout that is created in much smaller ways in smaller venues on a daily basis because of arbitrary, or vindictive rulings on the part of government agencies everywhere, and at ever level of government? Or even well meaning ones? As I say, there may have been a good reason for this one… and I’m inclined to given them the benefit of the doubt, here. But the damages from this will not be short term, nor will they be cheap.  Things may in fact get worse, if it’s found that the call to ground all those MD80’s was needless. But even absent all that, this situation illustrates well the adverse effects on our very financial survival, one ruling from the government can have.
• The terrorists have confirmed the meeting being scheduled with Jimmy Carter. Assuming they don’t do their Nick Berg number on Carter…(I doubt it; many would consider it a service to the western world, so there’s no danger of that) the man should be arrested and jailed.
• We won’t see this story after the next couple of days, unlike other stories of it’s kind. Why? The principal isn’t a leggy blonde.

Heart breaking news to all seven of Randi Rhodes’s listeners.    The toothless wonder has been termininated by Err America., Mike Stern, Radio & Records:

According to John Scott, PD of Clear Channel talk KKGN/San Francisco, suspended talker Randi Rhodes (pictured) and Air America network have parted company as of Wednesday (April 9). In a posting on the station Web site Scott says that on Monday (April 14), “it will be our pleasure to announce the return of Randi Rhodes to the Green 960 family

Now who’d have thought that Katie Couric would outlast Rhodes?

Addendum:(Bit)

Rhodes, who famously went seventeen rounds with a martini glass, and then a round or two with a New York City curbside, losing several teeth in the process… (Wow, a curb guilty of a hate crime?) … is now to be working at  960/KKGN, according to the report. Well, they’ll love her out in SanFran, I guess. We’ll see.

Hat tip:  Little Green Footballs.

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A Follow up to  Bit’s comments on Jay Rockefeller‘s, slander of the American Fighting Man,  such lies should never go unanswered.  In that spirit, the Charleston Daily Mail, runs a column by Bud Day, Knox Nunnally, Orson Swindle and Nick Veasy.   A brief deception of the authors’ military bona fide appears at the bottom of the column:

Day, an Air Force pilot, served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, where he was a POW for five years and seven months. Nunnally, a former Marine captain, has done three tours in Iraq. Swindle, a Marine pilot, was a POW for six years and four months. Veasey, a former Marine captain, was recon platoon commander at the Battle of Fallujah.

I count six wars among the four authors.  Yet the description provided is a modest one, even if if dwarfs Rockefelller’s military career.  George “Bud” Day is pictured and the Congressional Medal of Honor is around his neck.    These men are better men than Rockefeller.   They write, “Rockefeller is quite wrong:”

WE were astonished to read Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s remarks smearing John McCain’s honorable and courageous service.

As combat veterans, we know firsthand war’s terrible cost, and these remarks are a grave insult to all our military men and women who have served or are serving.

Hat tips: article, Don Surber; photo:  South Dakota Politics.

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Hume, last night:

The man who is about to become the United Nations’ lead investigator into Israeli conduct is standing by his comments comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis. Richard Falk will begin his job as special rapporteur for the UN’s Human Rights Council later this year.

He said last year that Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is similar to Nazi Germany atrocities during World War II. He tells the BBC that he made the comment in order to shake up ambivalent U.S. public opinion. Falk says up to now Israel has been successful in avoiding the criticism that it deserves.

Well, look, anyone who is shocked by this behavior from both this guy and the UN as a whole hasn’t been paying attention.  Falk has a long history of bias. So, too, does the “Human Rights council of the UN”.  UN Watch is saying:

The UN Human Rights Council’s preoccupation with Israel will surge to a new intensity this week with the expected election of two officials who describe the Jewish state in Nazi terminology, along with three more resolutions indicting it for a litany of alleged crimes.

Unless the European Union starts showing backbone, the UN’s other powerful voting blocs will continue scapegoating the Middle East’s only democracy in order to divert attention from situations of gross human rights abuses in places like Tibet, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, which target peaceful protesters, women and dissidents.

The council was created in June 2006 to reform the discredited Commission on Human Rights, criticized by many for its regular focus on Israel to the exclusion of the world’s worst human rights violators. However, apart from some passing attention to Burma, the supposedly reformed body has devoted all of its condemnatory resolutions to the Jewish state — 16 to date.

 Interesting, isn’t it, how we get an attitude from the UN Human Rights Council, that is quite similar to the discredited and biased group it replaced? It shouldn’t be. THe members of the new group are the same as the old… they simply shfted the deck chairs and called the iceberg hole ‘fixed’.  

Interesting, also, how this is the second time in as many days the words ‘human rights council’ and ‘bias’ have come up, the other being in relationship to the unbeleiveable slime, Warman, that we mentioned here.  We have the appearence, at least, that the abuses we see in the HRC in Canada with Warman, going on, on a world-wide basis, given the ‘world government’ pretense of the so-called “United Nations”. I’m sure Warman and Falk consider that a good thing, though I wonder how any others who are not socialist-leaning do.

“I never cease to be amazed at the misogynist attitude of some of the people in this country,” he said. “I say to hell with them.”

–Elton John at a Hillary Love-in last night

Oh… so Hillary Clinton is losing her battle for ultimate control because we’re all misogynists, right? And wait… since the voters who are currently voting aginst her are Democrats…… who is it you’re calling “misogynist”, Reggie?

Interesting how this stuff slips out once in a while.

 Hmmm. Never mind.

Meanwhile…

CAIRO, Egypt – An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said

Hmm. As usual, Reggie,  your gunsights are apparently in need of serious adjustment.

Sad, that someone I used to have a great deal of respect for as a musician, (…I thought 11-17-70 to be one of the most powerful live performances ever recorded…) has in just about every other aspect of life, turned out to be such a blithering idiot.

Addendum: (Mrs Bit):  Well, he’d know about misogynist attitudes, being a woman, himself.

Richard Warman, Canada’s most litigious bigot, not content with merely persecuting, Ezra Levant and is now persucuting the vertiable Who’s Who of the Canadian conservative blogosphere, Levant; Kate McMillan, Small Dead Animals; Kathy Shaidle, Five Feet of Fury and Free Dominion. If you are blog, are Canadian, conserative and big Warman is suing. Levant:

Today I was sued by Richard Warman, Canada’s most prolific – and profitable – user of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. As readers of this site know, Warman isn’t just a happy customer of section 13 and its 100% conviction rate, he’s a former CHRC employee, an investigator of section 13 thought crimes himself. In fact, he was often both a customer and an investigator at the same time

Ezra estimates it will cost each of the defendent thirty thousand dollars to defend themselves. Warman seems like a Canadian version of Eliot Spitzer, using the resources of the state to oppress individual freedom.

Addendum I:

Michelle has more. I missed a some bloggers. Sorry about that.

At Ezra’s, Kathy’s, Connie and Mark’s, and Kate’s blogs, you can find “Donate” buttons.

I’ve pitched in $100 to each blog. Can I find at least 10 readers out there who can match? If you can pitch in anything at all, please take time today to do so.

As I said when I wrote about the coming attack last month, their fight is our fight. Time to put our money where are mouths/hearts/blogs are.

I note, and applaud, that Michelle matches her words with deeds. Well done.

Addendum II: (Bit)

Rusty Shackleford at the Jawa Report notes the story and passes on a note from Levant:

Obviously, this fight isn’t just about Warman and the defendants. It’s about political censorship, the abuse of government power, and the freedom of the blogosphere. Warman wants to marginalize and perhaps even criminalize conservative ideas. Well, I want to denormalize the human rights commissions. It’s going to be a helluva fight – and an excellent opportunity to showcase the abusive, corrupt, bullying, censorious nature of the CHRCs and their star pupil, Richard Warman.

I don’t even think the importance of this fight is limited to Canada. The creeping censorship that Warman embodies is of the same breed as the censorship that Geert Wilders faces for his film, Fitna. It’s part of a global attempt to squelch ideas about liberty and other western values. It’s part of an unholy alliance between domestic leftists and foreign jihadis.

I can only say that I suspect we may take Warman still wasting air as being the direct result of Canadian gun control.

Addendum III:  ( David L )

The Canadian HUman Rights Commission is a kangaroo court, but as Eliot Spitzer demonstrated, kangaroo courts can continue to operate if they have public support.   In Spitzer’s case, he maintained  public support by attacking Wall Street, widely percieved as being selfish and greedy.

In Canada the HRC maintains support by having an obstensive nobel purpose.   Liberals are loath to kill an institution said to dedicated to human rights.    George Orwell would be proud.

The task of Levant et al to convince the Canadan public that Warman is not pro human rights, but rather anti freedom.   As the ‘rats have demonstrated south of the border, liberals don’t merely hate conservatives.   They hate anybody their percieve as threat to their power.

• “If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father”, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, ‘All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own.’ (p. 220) And what was that image? It was ‘the father of my dreams, the man in my mother’s stories, full of high-blown ideals ..’ (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, ‘It was into my father’s image .. that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.’ And also that, ‘I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father’ in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)”

  Greg Ransom is digging up {ahem} “legacy”. Go read it all and be shocked… shocked, to discover the commies in the closet.

  Nor should you be, Billy….but you know, it does beg the question about how, for example, a Robert Mugabe would fare with an Obama foreign policy. Or, Fidel’s replacement. In the end, I suppose that the only difference between an Obama Presidency, in that regard and a Clinton one, would be the difference between advancement of communism by means of carelessness in Clinton’s case, and a willing  and indeed, vigorous prostitution in Oabama’s case. To be honest, I’d be hard pressed to tell you which would be worse, then.

•  As I said the other day, every once in a while, the true level of vitriol, and just plain hatred, leaks out of Democrats. the most recent case involves the Petraus hearings, yesterday wherein we see West Virginia Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller in an interview in the Charleston Gazette:
  

  “McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they (the missiles) get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.”

  Look, aside from his being clueless about the weaponry about a Vietnam-era aircraft, (Laser guided bombs?) … isn’t it interesting that a draft dodger like Jay Rockefeller would have the sheer gall to make such a statement? Says Bruce at Q&O yesterday:

  Speaking of insensitive, that has to rank up there with some of the most clueless and insensitive statements ever uttered. Talk about “Stereotypes ‘R Us”.

  Indeed. While obviously, the remark was a political one aimed at the Presidential candidate from the party opposite, what he’s managed to do is to label anyone in the military who direacts weapons fire against an enemy target as uncaring. Gee, there’s a message to be sending our uniforms, huh?

  I’ll tell you, gang, that in all of this, we are (once again) clearly shown the vitriol that Democrats harbor. Apologies or no, (And I found Rockefellers disingenuous, at least… does it extend to all pilots, or is this just Jay Rockefeller weaseling out of his own words, again?) …this vitriol, this hatred is what drives Democrats. Every once in a while, and this is one such time, their real values, their real feelings, their real motivations peek out for all to see.

• I note that reports have Oprah Winfrey’s poularity dropping like a laser guided bomb from a Vietnam era plane…(II hadda get that one in)  Why is it falling so fast? Apparently it has to do with her endorsement of Obama.  We’ve seen the popularity of stars of both stage and screen drop like stones after endorsing a whacko position. the Baldwin Brothers. Viggo Mortensen. Mellencamp. etc. Why should Winfrey be any different?  The obvious question becomes why get into that mess in the first place? The answer is simple enough…; You either visably lean left, or you get the cold shoulder from Hollywood. The recently brought up example of ChuckHeston should show us that.
• By now, it’s old news that Mark Penn got canned, to quell the oncoming rebellion from the Unions over a Free Trade bill, with Columbia, which Penn was in the process of trying to get passed. well, it turns out, now that a goodly number of people on her staff were doing the same thing.  Gonna fire them all, Hillary?  Mind, I supprt the free trade agreement with Columbia if for no other reason than it annoys Hugo Chavez, and the unions here in the States. Which come to think on it, now,  are pretty much the same thing.
• So, just now the word comes that according to the governmental investigation, Joe Lieberman’s website crashed on it’s own. You know, I suppose I could accept that, if I trusted the technical ability of government hacks, particularly as regards network security. As you may have figured out by now, I most certainly do not, any more than I trust government expertise in about any area… particularly where there’s even a slight chance of political motivations involved.

Horrible story    Eight teenagers, who apparently know no shame.  Eight Lakeland, Florida teenagers beat one girl for thirty minutes, video tape and post the video on YouTube.    If viewing the video doesn’t make  you sick, you’re not human.

Allah Pundit, Hot Air,  posted a version of this story with the following discrlaimor:

I’m embedding the clip reluctantly since I goofed on O’Reilly last week for tut-tutting the sordid side of the Internet while happily airing the footage he claims to object to, and I don’t want to commit the same sin. The written reports simply don’t do this justice, though; you have to see it to disbelieve it.

Amen, Allah.  A description of the attack from, Stop the ACLU:

On March 30, 2008, the victim, 16 year old Victoria Lindsay, was lured to a home in Lakeland, Florida and when she arrived, two girls started yelling at her, one girl began beating her and slamming her head into a wall until she fell unconscious.

When she awoke on the counch, there were six girls, in total, beating on her and they were video taping the attack.

According to police, all the girls that were attacking the victim, Victoria Lindsay, were laughing and urging each other one and two boys were outside standing guard.

 Lucky for you, I didn’t find the original version.   The excerps are disgusting enough.    See the video:

[wp_youtube]kalFn-wg2yw[/wp_youtube]

To add to the disgust, the mother of one of the perps defended the attack.

I don’t condone YouTube posting the original vidwo,.  However I would not blame YouTube for the attack itself.

In culture that puts little value on actually being good, but glorifies feeling good, a.k.a. self-esteem, it is a wonder we don’t have more incidents such as this.    In a moral society, being good must have a higher value than feeling good.  You can’t have shame without moral values.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats plan to push legislation this spring that would force the Iraqi government to spend its own surplus in oil revenues to rebuild the country, sparing U.S. dollars.The legislation follows a recommendation by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, that the Bush administration halt troop withdrawals in July. Petraeus on Wednesday was wrapping up two days of congressional testimony in which he has said security gains in the war zone are too fragile to promise further drawdowns.

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said pausing troop reductions would signal to the Iraqis that the United States was committed to the war indefinitely.

 

“Rather, we need to put continuous and increasing pressure on the Iraqis to settle their political differences, to pay for their own reconstruction with their oil windfalls, and to take the lead in conducting military operations,” said Levin, D-Mich.

Hmmm. Aside from any other consideration, wasn’t Levin one of the ones charging that we were only in Iraq for the oil, and that was an evil thing? No blood for oil was the chant.

Now, they complain we’re not moving fast enough to grab the oil?

Fox is reporting:

A U.S. official confirmed to FOX News Wednesday that Al Qaeda operative and bomb expert Abu Ubaida al-Masri is dead.

Al-Masri was one of the top 10 Al Qaeda leaders and was responsible for the organization’s external operations, meaning he plotted attacks outside the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The unidentified official said it is believed that al-Masri died of natural causes, possibly hepatitis, in Pakistan, and are staying away from a report that he was killed in a January CIA predator strike.

 Good news, either way.

Apparently, he’s been dead for months, according to the report.

So, Jimmy Carter is going to Syria to meet with Hamas?

Cute.

Does anyone remember how there was a little nonsense form the Democrats who were spreading the SR71 Blackbird rumor? Where GHW Bush had suppsoedly gone to Iran to negotiate in secret? If you’ll recall there was a lot of chatter about how he should have been arrested for conducting his own foreign policy. So, why are we not arresting Mister Peanut? Isn’t dealing with terrorists a crime?

Allah has more.

Addendum I:  (David L)

Jimmy Carter is not traveling to Damascus for figs and dates.   Carter is acting as somebody’s Representative.  I want to know who Carter is purporting to represent and what Carter’s message is.   Further, I would want each of the major candidates, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Mrs. Clinton to confirm or deny Carter’s connection with their campaign.   Convene a grand jury, and compel Carter’s testimony.   More than enough evidence exists for a violation of the Logan Act.   I don’t necessarily want to convict Carter, but the United States is entitled to know what message he was carrying and for whom.

Addendum II: (Bit)

Well, exactly. The timing of this, being right in the midst of an election cycle,  is no accident.

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