After successfully moving past the terrible blunder in a recent debate where she supported driver's licenses for illegal aliens before she opposed them (all in the same sentence), the Clinton campaign has hit bump after bump.

First, her campaign allegedly packed the halls of the Democratic debate and booed Obama and John Edwards.  An excllent, crafty way to dupe Democrats into thinking their brethren have had a quick solid shift to Clinton.  But not true.

The Bill Clinton was Bill Clinton.  He talked and the truth and was on vacation.  But his obvious lie was about the subject that Democrats most distrust Hillary on - support for the Iraq war.

As if that weren't enough, now their campaign managed to slip one of its leaders into the CNN-hosted Republican debate as a "regular person" asking a question of Republican candidates.  Actually, he was not so much a regular Joe as a former Brigadier General in the reserves who has come out as gay and is leading the Clinton gay & lesbian steering committee. 

CNN failed to mention he was a Clinton campaign official.  He failed to mention it.  Which begs the question:

Does anybody in that campaign even recognize the truth?

I'm guessing not.

sharp 

Thank you, my liberal friends, for the removal of DDT. Thanks to that, poor African nations no longer have to worry about health care for seniors......because there aren't any seniors.

Thank you for the stark warnings when I was in grade school that the world would not have the capacity to produce enough food for all of us by the time I was a young adult. I guess this whole obesity thing has come as a quite a shock.

Thank you for calling all of us ignorant, heartless, backwards fools who had a problem with stem cell research, excuse me, cloning of human beings.  Thanks to the cloning research that has gone on everywhere, we are up to zero cases of anything cured.  But at least you had a chance to consider yourselves superior and we all know how much you love that.  In fact, now that the leader of the modern movement has walked away from stem cell research to a more "socially acceptable" and "scientifically superior" approach, perhaps we could all just forget that your bitter insults were off the mark - there really might be a better way and that there was no real path to success there.

Thank you for letting us know that the global AIDS crisis was on the verge of wiping out civilization as we know it.  For now telling me that the plummet in global AIDS cases that was just reported was actually a factor of prior exponential exaggeration of the crisis in order to extort funds, also known as tax dollars (which is THE point here).

Global what? 

Now I want to thank you for telling me how stupid I am not to be all wound up about global warming. 

I'm reminded that George Bush's global warming was to be the cause of a "season of hurricanes" just like Katrina.  I'm reminded every time I look at my drying lawn and read another story about a water shortage.  You see, the complete lack of hurricane activity hitting the Southeast has left us in a desperate water shortage. One that a single hurricane would fix.

I'm reminded when I see scientists who say the science for "earth in the balance" was tortured at best and false at worst.

I'm reminded when I see that Al Gore, the face of global warming threats, really doesn't take any of it seriously or personally and actually burns the equivalent of a small town's energy each day at his sprawling mansion.

I'm reminded when I see stories on the Disovery Channel of "global warming" from earlier chapters in this earth's history that actually..(pause for emphasis)...predated the internal combusion engine.  Even before aerosol.

I'm reminded of the gravity of the "experts" when I see a high-school dropout who gained fame playing a prostitiute in a movie providing me with all the pertinent facts about how ignorant I am, while overcharged old, white senior politicians vie for a little Hollywood attention.

I am changing the light bulbs in my house to low energy bulbs and I have replaced my washer and dryer and HVAC systems with energy efficient ones.  I'm replacing windows and turning off lights.  And as soon as I can afford it, I'll be replacing our cars with much more energy efficient ones.  I care about my family, my children and the environment as much, I think, as anyone else.  But don't expect me to believe the latest fad and to vote for the candidate ready to suffocate the issue in tax dollars. 

The science isn't good.  It's not good at all.  And sometimes you do more harm than good.  Speaking of which, what will we do with all the mercury in these bulbs in 10 years? 

sharp

I have railed against the lies of the Clinton administration and have called the constant stream of charges that the Bush administration is lying a bunch of bitter, sour grapes. Well, maybe not.

It will be interesting to see if Kucinich's calls for impeachment of Dick Cheney gain any traction from this latest strartling and infuriating news:

Scott McClellan, the press secretary for the White House a few years back, said he was lied to by the White House - at the highest levels - about the Valerie Plame affair.  While I think that whole thing was nonsense on steroids, lying lack a pack of dogs is not.  It's disgusting.  Here is Scott's quote:

unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

At the time, the president's chief of staff was Andy Card.

McClellan also writes he felt his trust was breeched.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

In an March interview with CNN's Larry King, McClellan said that if he knew now what he knew then, he wouldn't have issued the reassurances to the press, and suggested that he believed that both he and the president were misled by advisers — indicating that while the president passed on bad information, he didn't do it knowingly.

King asked McClellan if he was lied to, and McClellan responded:

"Well, Larry, I said what I believed to be true at the time. It was also what the president believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given. Knowing what I know today, I would have never said that back then."

Yes, he exhonerates the President, but not anybody else at that level.  What kind of morally vacant leadership is that?  I am sick and angry, not happy and proud about this.  These are Nixonian tactics that I condemn in the Clintons. 

Let the chips fall where they may.

sharp

Last week's Democratic debate found me sitting in an O. Henry Hotel room (go there if you haven't, wow) avoiding work I should be doing. I found that debate to be interesting on several levels.

Quality thinkers - These are not bad candidates.  I don't necessarily agree with them, but the ones who say what they believe are refreshing.  I found Obama to be an every-man and as transparent and refreshing a candidate as I remember, while Edwards seemed to have greater clarity and be on his game (despite the boos).  Kucinich is entertaining in a crazy uncle sort of way, but has thought-through his positions - such as his comment that "there are no illegal human beings" in opposing the characterization of undocumented Mexicans as "illegal aliens". 

Hillary-town - Either Edwards was right (as was the World Socialist Web Site: see debate coverage) and the park was packed with Hillary supporters, or the Democratic party has decided to crown Hillary and cut off this debate nonsense.  The boos directed at Obama and Edwards seemed oddly out-of-place and one-sided.  Would the group that planted questions and lied about it be likely to pack the audience?  Surely not.  Right?

Degeneration - There must be some sentence that doesn't begin with a snarling reference to George Bush (see: applause lines), but this exhausted oral manuever gutted any real discussion of answers to issues and complications they might bring about.  Every time we seemed on the verge of a real discussion - short of Governor Richardson's stance on driver's licenses for non-illegal human beings and Kucinich's (sorry, friend) comical glares to punctuate each line, we only heard about what these candidates hate about George Bush and how, I suppose, a yellow dog would be preferable.  I kept wondering if that was the best thing they could say about themselves:  "I'm not George Bush - vote for me!"

Shift of focus - The last debate was a disaster for Hillary.  I doubt her skilled political crew would let this one be the same.  For that reason, I suspect that Edwards and the Socialist's were right about a packed audience.  When Edwards cited factual contradictions in Hillary's statements - which all have reported on in the period since - she tossed them aside with a nonsensical accusation of "mud-slinging" from the "Republican playbook".  While this strangely satsified the crowd at that debate, it will not prepare her for a less-partisan audience.  Frankly, I thought her awful stumblings at the last debate were the best thing that could happen to her because they would make her a better prepared, more focused candidate.  But, instead of taking on the charges head-on, she played to "her" crowd with a wholly unsatisfying response.  The upshot is that she may not have learned anything more than how to avoid an unbiased audience.  And the Republicans will not be so easily defeated.

Running for VP - Who on this planet would willingly work that hard for the worst job on the planet?  Apparently several of these guys.  Sad.

sharp

So far, we've seen Hillary look smart and tough - and then waffling and vague.

Now, it's phony.

Admitting to a planted question, her staff said it won't happen again.  It should be noted that the student who blew the whistle on the plant said they were planting questionS.

 That leads me to believe that the staff is trying to cover up a lie with another lie.

This was precisely what America got sick of during the first Clinton administration.  Times were good.  No war.  But lies on top of lies from a guy who lived up to the nickname "slick willie".

Is it possible that this leopard hasn't changed her spots?  And if so, will America be as long-suffering this time?

We'll see.

10-13 update: Since I posted this, a minister has come forward and said they planted a question with him at a different town hall meeting. 

This is not even about planted questions at all, but about lying through their teeth.  Is this what we really want? 

To my independent friend:  I'll take a guy with whom I disagree on some issues but agree on many others over someone for whom the truth is less familiar than an accusatory finger-wagging lie.  But I would prefer Huckabee or Romney first.   And I'm not sure Guiliani can win anyway, without enthusiastic support from conservatives.

So, in the end, the President will be the one that it should be.  Whether any of us likes it or not, in my opinion.  And unlike my liberal friends, I won't be putting mocking pictures and hateful bumper stickers on my car the day after the election.  That would be unlike a true "Repub".  And I'd have to change my nickname to SUAB - Southern, Unhappy and Bitter :)

sharp