Is Mrs. Clinton Smart Enough to be President?

The evidence says no.    Mrs. Clinton was asked how she would protect the privacy of our service personnel.   Patrick Healy, New York Times:  

She drew another ovation, too, with her response to an Air Force major, a 20-year veteran of the service who had served three tours in Afghanistan, when he asked how she would protect the privacy of service members if she went ahead with her plan to let gays serve openly in the military.

The so-called Smartest Woman in the World lacked the first clue what privacy means:

The Air Force major, Gary Mathis of Cedar Rapids, said afterward that he appreciated Mrs. Clinton’s points about conduct, but that she had side-stepped his question about privacy – specifically, what she would do to ensure the privacy of male soldiers who shower, sleep and work out in the gym alongside other male soldiers.

Basic concerns for privacy would mean that no person should ever be forced to involunarily expose his genitals for the sexual gratification of another.   Mrs. Clinton needs get out of her rose garden and out into the real world.   Dare she?

Hat Tip:  Memeorandum.

Edit:  (David)

LA Times:

 Dick Wilson, a character actor who turned “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” into a national catchphrase as exasperated shopkeeper Mr. Whipple in the TV commercial campaign that ran for more than two decades, has died. He was 91.

Wilson died Monday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, announced Procter & Gamble Co., maker of Charmin tissue.

From 1964 to 1985, and again in 1999, Wilson portrayed Mr. Whipple in more than 500 commercials for the toilet paper.

500? That’s 5 full length motion pictures, if you think about it. Topic: Toilet paper. Hmmm.

The first ad was filmed in Flushing, N.Y., a bit of trivia that the former stand-up comedian liked to share in interviews.

Whose good idea was that? Sheesh. Surely, it sounds like a straight line in a Zucker Brothers film.

And stop calling me Shirley.

Ya know, I’d always thought him admirably surnamed… since he would have made an ideal “Mr. Wilson” in the “Dennis the Meanace” movie.

Lileks has a few things to say on the topic.

In the irony challenged story the day, Mrs. Clinton cites the need for experience to mend an ailing economy, but offers none.

KNOXVILLE, Iowa (AP) — The economy needs help and fast, Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday, claiming the experience for the job and saying the nation can’t afford to break in a newcomer.

In speech that kicked off a two-day campaign swing through Iowa, the New York senator painted a bleak picture of a U.S. economy battered by home foreclosures, rising oil prices and lack of good jobs for middle class workers.

The former first lady compared the situation to 1992, when her husband ran against the first President Bush.

Mrs. Clinton cites the need for experience but only offers that of her husband.  Then Mrs. Clinton only expertise is in managing bimbo eruptions.

Addendum and bump:

Mrs. Clinton’s baseless claims of experience have gotten sickening.  Mrs. Clinton is now claiming foreign policy experience on the basis of foreign travel, and playing kissy face with Suha Arafat.

I have traveled the world on behalf of our country – first in the White House with my husband and now as a Senator. I’ve met with countless world leaders and know many of them personally. I went to Beijing in 1995 and stood up to the Chinese government on human rights and women’s rights. I have fought for our men and women in uniform to make sure they have the equipment they need in battle and are treated with dignity when they return home…

Hat Tip: Allah Pundit, Hot Air.

How much longer before Mrs. Clinton claims experience on the basis having shared her bedroom with a real President?

Jonah Goldberg in today’s LA TIMES:

As the hopeless but energetic presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) builds momentum in name recognition, fundraising and cross-ideology appeal, media conservatives are beginning to attack Paul in earnest

You’re usually more on top of things than this, Jonah, so I’m not quite sure what to make of this comment of yours.  The attack on Ron Paul’s been going on for several months now.  Where have you been?

Syndicated columnist Mona Charen calls Paul “too cozy with kooks and conspiracy theorists.” Film critic and talk radio host Michael Medved looks over Paul’s supporters and finds “an imposing collection of neo-Nazis, white Supremacists, Holocaust deniers, 9/11 ‘truthers’ and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists.”

For the most part, these allegations strike me as overblown and unfair.

I think not. I saw that article that article of Mona’s for example, the other day, and thought it one of the better researched articles on demand I seen thus far.  The title “unfair” is a little out of line, given that this stuff is all documented.

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say they’re not. Let’s even say that Paul has the passionate support of the Legion of Doom, that his campaign lunchroom looks like the “Star Wars” cantina, and that many of his top advisors actually have hooves.

Well, I would still find him less scary than Mike Huckabee.

…

What’s troubling about The Man From Hope 2.0 is what he represents. Huckabee represents compassionate conservatism on steroids. A devout social conservative on issues such as abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and evolution, Huckabee is a populist on economics, a fad-follower on the environment and an all-around do-gooder who believes that the biblical obligation to do “good works” extends to using government — and your tax dollars — to bring us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

For example, Huckabee has indicated he would support a nationwide federal ban on public smoking. Why? Because he’s on a health kick, thinks smoking is bad and believes the government should do the right thing.

I suppose I can’t argue that one, Jonah. But, we have survived GWB, and Bill Clinton, the two of which basically you’re describing in Huckabee.  Paul is still the bigger concern, for two reasons:

The first is one you yourself mention:

I would not vote for Paul mostly because I think his foreign policy would be disastrous

So it would… and that’s what my own objection boils down to…  our inability to survive a Ron Paul Presidency because of that misbegotten foreign policy.  As I said at Q&O the other night: Isolation doesn’t work. It never has, in the modern world. That disconnect alone makes me wonder about his mental capacity.

But, secondly, go back and look at Mona’s article again, and tell me anyone in their right mind will be involved in such groups as Ron Paul has been documented as being, even on a slightly removed basis. Sorry, it doesn’t wash.

I’ll grant, Jonah, that Huckabee is the more immediate threat, given he has a bigger chance of being elected. But a Ron Paul presidency constitutes a bigger threat to our nation’s survival… bigger on an order of scale. Mind, I won’t vote for either of them, but there it is.

 But there’s something weird going on when Paul, the small-government constitutionalist, is considered the extremist in the Republican Party while Huckabee, the statist, is the lovable underdog.

True, but that’s the nature of the beast. As to a solution, may I suggest better candidates?

Fred Thompson roars to mind.

Discussion, Memeorandum

The Washington Post:

Maryland lawmakers early this morning passed about $1.4 billion in annual tax increases and a public referendum on legalizing 15,000 slot machines as a far-reaching special session of the General Assembly hurtled to a close.

Passage of the bills is intended to solve two long-festering issues: chronic budget problems created by passing a landmark education law five years ago without funding to pay for it and the perennial debate over slot machine gambling.

Before adjourning at 2:36 a.m., lawmakers had sent two bills needed to execute a referendum on slots to Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), as well as another two tax bills and a measure to offer health insurance to 100,000 poor and uninsured adults without Medicaid coverage.

Let’s see, here. $1.4 Billion, divided among 5,600,388 people. (2000 census) That’s $178.55 for every living soul in the state.  Of course that’s unrealistic, since not everyone works… which ….irony abounds… is exactly the problem. Don’t call them ‘Tax and Spend”, though. That wouldn’t be nice.

Michelle Malkin notes the same story and leads with the headline:

“Happy Holidays, Maryland. Now bend over.”

Yeah, no kidding, Michelle.

Had enough of Democrats yet, Maryland?

Michael van der Galiën:

Of course, the problem isn’t that Fox News is biased, it’s that the bias isn’t liberal / Laborite. No, the real problem is that Fox News has a conservative bias. If the news network was pro-Democrats Michael Tomasky wouldn’t have said anything about it of course.

Although I agree that Fox News is biased, and that this isn’t always a good thing, I can’t help but point out that this:

In the meantime, Democrats should ratchet up their refusal to pretend that Fox bears any relationship to news. I’ve always felt they should just boycott the network en bloc. One can be pretty confident that if the situation were reversed – imagine a cable channel that was known as a Democratic house organ and run by, say, Bill Clinton adviser James Carville – Republicans would have done something like that long ago. I asked Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic speaker, about this last Friday, and she just replied wanly: “I think we have to reach out to all the viewers out there.”

is ridiculous. CNN anyone? If there ever was a pro-Democrats news network, it’s CNN.

Well, look; You’re right, CNN is a living definition of liberal bias.  However, let’s not forget CBS, ABC, and NBC.  A quick look at these reveals that liberal bias is not a problem limited to CNN alone.  (To leave aside for the moment the left-leaning in the dead tree media)

Michael, there is a reason why the supporters of the leftist media do not label it biased; they think they’re at the political center. The importance of recognizing that assumption on the part of the liberal press, cannot be overemphasized.

It is, however, an assumption which would seem to be blown away by the ratings of the respective networks… as would your own assumption about Fox being biased.

A look at the ratings of all four of the networks that we have established as liberal biased doesn’t approach what FNC has managed to do in terms of gathering viewers. TV, after all is the ultimate in popularity contesting.  (Ask Katie Couric.) In short, the people have voted with their feet, as to which is biased and which is not.  Fox won.

When the left loses, we have often enough heard the claim that the American public tunes out what they don’t want to hear.  Well, if that’s true, and if Fox is the ratings leader by a wide margin, how is it that the Democrat party can claim with a straight face that they are at the political center of the American people? If what we were talking about was a smallish lead, we’d view all this as a statistical blip, a little noise level. However, that’s not the case; the viewer numbers leaning toward Fox are overwhelming and have been for quite a while, now.

Beyond this measurement, how does one make claims of ‘bias’, when clearly Fox News is clearly and directly in the mainstream of America, and these others are being so soundly rejected?

Hume, last night:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to kill an amendment that would shield from lawsuits — employers who require their workers to speak English.

The Wall Street Journal reports one of those employers being targeted by an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit is The Salvation Army — which gives employees one year to learn English. The amendment to protect The Salvation Army and other businesses has passed both the House and Senate. But Pelosi promised to get rid of it after the House Hispanic Caucus threatened to kill a larger tax bill over the issue.

The sponsor of the amendment — Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander — told the Senate Thursday — “I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it’s discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee, ‘I want you to be able to speak America’s common language on the job.'”

Look, let’s be honest here; Lamar Alexander is a putz of the first order.  That said, he’s right on this one. I’ll take a step farther; English and the ability to speak it should be a requirement for entry into this country as an immigrant, and for a job.

Period.

The United Nations official in charge of spreading global hysteria about AIDS admits he lied.   Craig Timberg
Washington Post:

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 19 — The United Nations‘ top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic.

Is there a global AIDS epidemic?   Hard to say.   Dispite the UN hsyterical reporting of such an epidemic, there isn’t much evidence.

Hat Tip:  Don Surber.

The Confederate Yankee is reporting that The New Republic has canned its head fact checker.:

Interesting (my bold):

The New Republic is looking for an assistant editor to fill an immediate opening in our Washington, DC office. The assistant editor will be responsible for guiding the magazine’s fact-checking department (including overseeing the reporter-researchers), along with writing stories for the magazine and the website. Ideally, you’d be coming into the job with 1-2 years experience fact-checking and reporting, some solid clips, and a passion for the kind of long-form magazine reporting we do. Experience with specifically political journalism is, of course, a major plus — attention to detail and strong research skills are a prerequisite. Send cover letter, resume, and 4-5 clips to Britt Peterson at [email protected] with “assistant editor application” in the subject heading.

Looking at the masthead, the Assistant Editor that TNR is replacing seems to be Keelin McDonell, who was the longest-serving of TNR’s most recent crop of assistant editors.

If she was indeed the “responsible for guiding the magazine’s fact-checking department” during the period Scott Beauchamp published three articles with glaring fact errors in them, it would seem just cause for the magazine to find a replacement.

Which, of course would seem to leave Franklin Foer in place.  Foer still has not answered for the Beauchamp thing.  He’s been laying low for some time, now.  As we saw here just recently, when his name comes up, a silence falls that would make E.F. Hutton jealous.

Personally, this throwing McDonell to the wolves was justified but doesn’t close the case, by any means. There’s still a lot to answer for that the McDonell firing doesn’t begin to deal with.

McQ over at Q&O:

Frankly I’m surprised it has taken him so long to realize the potential.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants to turn OPEC into “an organization of monopoly and exploitation,” according to Saudi King Abdullah.

The Arab leader rebuked his South American counterpart during this weekend’s rare meeting of leaders of oil-producing states. Here’s an excerpt from the 23-minute speech that drew his ire:

“OPEC was born as a geopolitical force and not only as a technical or economic one in the ’60s,” Chavez said, according to Bloomberg News. “We should continue to strengthen OPEC, but beyond that, OPEC should set itself up as an active political agent.”

Hugo’s two for two in pissing off Kings this month. But don’t take this lightly. Obviously Abdullah isn’t for it right now, but things and circumstances change. Chavez realizes the potential of such an organization even if he is too dumb to keep quiet about it.

Bruce should not be surprised by this.  The reason that crazy uncle Hugo hasn’t figured this out until just recently is because he is fundamentally stupid.  This is totally borne out in his policies, and in his public ravings. Hugo’s biggest problem, however, would seem to be that he hasn’t noticed that OPEC has been using oil for political reasons for decades, now.

For that matter, so have the Democrat party in the United States.

Where, for example, you think all of this business about global warming, and this screaming about energy independence, (while not allowing us to drill for our own oil in the name of the ‘environment) and high taxes on gasoline, and mileage requirements, and so on, is coming from?  Pure politics.  And all surrounding oil.  It would make Crazy Uncle Hugo proud… if he were smart enough to notice. The Democrat part is doing, on a domestic scale, what Chavez wants to do world wide.

Headline:

Obama: Takes Terrorism ‘Deadly Serious’

Well, as I gather it, so do the terrorists.  They’ve been at it a bit longer. Somehow, I suspect that your level of “serious” doesn’t rise to that of theirs…. particularly since yours has all the appearances of being just recently acquired.

I’m starting to see an awful lot in the way of back channel chatter about Sybil Edmonds again.  In the last several weeks I’ve had at least three different people writing me, saying that I had to be delighted to expose her story.  Their version, I mean. I assume these to be Ron Paul troofers, since only they… and the whacked out far left, of course, think the story credible.  The trouble is, I already did that story, back in August 2004.  Nothing has changed. So here again is the story I wrote three years gone, just for the record:

-1-

Sibel Edmonds: another backfiring weapon

Who is she?

Well, Edmonds in October 2002 appeared on 60 Minutes and leveled several rather sensational criticisms of the FBI’s translation department, where she’d worked until she got fired. She claimed, for example, that her supervisor had told her to translate intercepted documents slowly, if at all, so that the agency’s budget would be increased. As such, she claimed, vital intel was lost. This would have occurred in the late 90’s under Bill Clinton’s presidency.

She went on to claim that many of her co-workers were not only incompetent, but that one, a Melek “Can” (Jan) Dickerson, had tried to recruit Edmonds to a terrorist front organization, had deliberately failed to translate important documents, so as to prevent the discovery of their import, and that this same co-worker, threatened to kill Edmonds and her family. This charge seems to have some serious credibility issues… Dickerson’s husband is U.S. Air Force Maj. Douglas Dickerson.

Appsrently this wasn’t large enough to attract any attention to Edmonds, so she went on to claim that she was offered a substantial raise and a full time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.

More recently… January, I think, Edmonds gave an interview to Gail Sheehy. In that interview, she repeated these allegations, and the went on to add some verbiage about how she’d be telling her tale about her supervisors and co-workers to the 9/11 commission.

Apparently now on a roll she want on to level new charges, saying that when she reported the earlier mentioned threat against her and her family to the FBI’s executive assistant director, that the director (Dale Watson, at the time I think) asked Turkey to interrogate Edmonds’ sister, who was in Intsanbul at the time.

The FBI fired Edmonds in 2002, and she responded by suing them… In February of 2004. The lawsuit case is still pending as this is written.

Now of course the link here, the reason why this is going to come up, is the Democrats are looking for something / anything they can use to wedge the idea that President Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, under the carpet. Which in turn is why I suggest this will come up at the Commission on Thursday.

I’ve seen several people question why, given such explosive charges, this woman’s name hasn’t been all over the papers, and the TV.

The reason you’ve not heard much about this woman is simple… The woman is a nut, and even the leftist press can’t make this pig fly. As usual, their ‘rock solid’ evidence is questionable at best; Edmonds is simply not credible. I personally think she has strong personal motivations to discredit those who fired her, that have nothing to do with National Security, 9/11 or anything but her job performance. Beyond that, there seems to be some questions about her mental stability in many quarters.

That point aside, there’s the issue of why she’s only bringing this lawsuit now… Literally years after the event, and why she would wait until an election cycle.

Then, too, there’s the idea that all of this went down during the Clinton administration, and so if the Democrats are hoping to hang anything on Mr. Bush, this tactic will backfire.

-0-

Now, I’d like you, please, to pay particular attention to the second to last paragraph and the question it poses about the timing of the release of these questions.  It points out that Edmonds decided she was going to wait until such time as the election came around.  Interestingly enough, that was the last election.  She’s doing so again this time.  What do you suppose her motives are? If there was ever a more blatant attempt to throw an election with a myth, I don’t know of it.

Oh… this time round, they’ve dredged up Daniel Ellsberg to pitch the tale. Boy, there’s credibility for ya, huh?

Thing is, she, and the people pushing her fantasy are no more credible now, then she was then.  In fact, less so with the addition of the hangers on like Ellsberg. Can you morons stay out of my mailbox, now?

Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, reports on the City of Brotherly Love:

PHILADELPHIA — This may be the last free Thanksgiving dinner for the Boy Scouts of Philadelphia.

Citing a local 1982 “fair practices” law, the city solicitor has given the Scouts until Dec. 3 to renounce its policy of excluding homosexuals or forfeit the grand, Beaux-Arts building it has rented from the city for $1 a year since 1928.

“While we respect the right of the Boy Scouts to prohibit participation in its activities by homosexuals,” the solicitor, Romulo Diaz, said last week in an interview, “we will not subsidize that discrimination by passing on the costs to the people of Philadelphia.”

The City of Philadelphia does not respect the Boy Scouts  and that is a shame. 

Hat Tip:  Memeorandum.

Since this news came out that Hillary Clinton supposedly has some dirt to throw at Barack Obama, the apologists for the Clinton campaign have been coming out in force.  No surprise then one of the to find the chief chief apologists, Marc Armbinder playing the part of Don Quixote to every shadow that comes along, defending his rather twisted version of Dulcinea:

Why does it seem that Republican columnists have better sources among Democrats than everyone else?

Here’s John Fund, writing in today’s OpinionJournal.com:

The murmured charge is that as an Illinois state senator, Mr. Obama engaged in a real estate deal that benefited him in exchange for legislative favors. In short, what might pass for standard operating procedure in the Illinois legislature could nonetheless prove embarrassing to someone campaigning as a paragon of political virtue for president. So far, however, no proof of the allegation has been presented.

Pretty thin stuff.  And haven’t we heard the Tony Rezko tale already?

Well, Marc, in answer to your first question the Republican columnists have better sources among Democrats than anybody else, for one simple reason; why on earth would you allow yourself to be caught by your fellow Democrats was spreading dirt?  Why not set it up in such a way to get blame the attack on the Republicans?

As to the second question, yes indeed we have heard that particular tale previously.  However, since when does a rumor have to be an original one, particularly when you let slip that you hadn’t planned on making use of the rumor in the first place? Clearly, this thing was designed witha slight twist to the lesson the Clintons learned a few years ago… it’s not the wrongdoing, it’s the idea that something got covered up.

At least this particular rumor has the distinct advantage of having been ignored the first time around.

In the meantime, trust me… That particular lady has no honor to defend…and after watching her operate for eight years, I doubt there’s many Americans left to who are willing to succumb to the illusion that she does.

So, ABC has decided to announce that Barack Obama is giving Hillary Clinton some serious trouble in Iowa.

The meme is that Obama is seen, by about 2 to 1, as the most trustworthy candidate of the two.  That’s not a surprise in itself; She’s got herself a reputation as a liar. But what of their respective positions on the issues of the day? I ask because I don’t see as you can fit water between them. So on what are these people making these judgments that ABC is reporting to us?

Emotion. Pure emotion, devoid of factual input.

And isn’t it interesting that emotion is exactly what the democrat talking points going into this primary season said the Dem candidates should focus on?