To All the PUMAs And Their Would-Be Pied Pipers:

 

For a long time I, like you was dispirited. Like you, I felt that Hillary was robbed of her rightful place as the party standard bearer.

 

But then I began to ask what did I want more? Was it to sulk like Achilles in his tent over an insult while fellow Greeks died around him? Or was it to remember why I became active, and return to face the real enemy that is before us, a continuation of the past eight years of corrupt administration, an unnecessary war, the ruination of my country and the endless war on the middle class?

 

I look upon it as a cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, I could seek revenge by supporting McCain if I were that vindictive. But that would make me a hollow person. McCain betrayed me a long time ago.

 

One the other hand, I could remember that this is nothing less than a battle between good and evil. In war you can’t always choose your leaders, but you can remember what the struggle is about and whose side you are on.

 

Last week I saw a party that understands this, and a Republican so out of touch that he insults all Hillary supporters, PUMAs, and all.

 

At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, everyone there pledged at least on paper, to put aside their differences and fight for the common good. First, the Obama’s have acknowledged the importance of Hillary’s campaign. Everyone recognized the achievement of bringing 18 million votes into the picture. Next, Hillary, then Bill Clinton declared their support of and their confidence in Barack Obama. In addition, nobody whined about snubbing Hillary when they realized how strategic the choice of Joe Biden was for a running mate.

 

 

Hillary was the one who put it best:

 

I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama.

 

My friends, it is time to take back the country we love.

 

Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.

 

This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win.

 

And later she said:

 

I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

 

We need leaders once again who can tap into that special blend of American confidence and optimism that has enabled generations before us to meet our toughest challenges. Leaders who can help us show ourselves and the world that with our ingenuity, creativity, and innovative spirit, there are no limits to what is possible in America.

 

This won’t be easy. Progress never is. But it will be impossible if we don’t fight to put a Democrat in the White House.

 

So there it is. Your own leader, my Senator, supporting her party’s choice for President. Would you sulk in your tent while your friends pay the price?

 

And who is Sarah Palin?

 

Well for one thing, Palin is no Hillary clone! Any Clintonista who has heard anything Hillary said cannot mistake Sarah Palin for someone you knew and loved for years.

 

 I recognize that Palin may be an honest person in her own right, and maybe a good governor for Alaska. As mayor, she reduced her own salary. She then proceeded to cut wasteful spending. She resigned her position as chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission to protest what she termed “lack of ethics.” She challenged Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into financial dealings.

 

She opposed Frank Murkowski’s wasteful spending and sold his big vanity jet.

Nevertheless, being mayor of a town smaller than the Town of Onondaga, NY where I live is barely a prerequisite for becoming a governor, or state senator, not President! (Yes, I said something similar about Obama, but it’s all about issues and ideologies now!

 

Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton, let alone Barack Obama!

 

Hillary would be appalled at Palin’s stand on the environment.

 

Here’s Hillary on ANWR:

 

Ratify Kyoto; more mass transit. (Sep 2000)

 

Voted YES on disallowing an oil leasing program in Alaska’s ANWR. (Nov 2005)

 

Voted YES on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Mar 2005)

 

 

And Palin’s position on ANWR?

Let’s let her answer that!:

 

Convince the rest of the nation to open ANWR

 

The standard should be no different for industry. Ironically, we’re trying to convince the rest of the nation to open ANWR, but we can’t even get our own Pt. Thomson, which is right on the edge of ANWR, developed! We are ready for that gas to be tapped so we can fill a natural gas pipeline. I promise to vigorously defend Alaska’s rights, as resource owners, to develop and receive appropriate value for our resources.

 

 Source: State of the State Address Jan 17, 2007

 

On health care, Palin and Hillary are as different as night and day.

 

Here’s Hillary on the subject:

 

Health care initiatives are her first priority in Senate. (Feb 2001)

 • Voted NO on means-testing to determine Medicare Part D premium. (Mar 2008)

 • Voted YES on requiring negotiated Rx prices for Medicare part D. (Apr 2007)

 • Voted NO on limiting medical liability lawsuits to $250,000. (May 2006)

 • Voted YES on expanding enrollment period for Medicare Part D. (Feb 2006)

 • Voted YES on increasing Medicaid rebate for producing generics. (Nov 2005)

 • Voted YES on negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drug. (Mar 2005)

 

Sarah Palin’s position is nothing less than feudal:

 

Health care must be market-and business-driven. (Jan 2008) 

Take personal responsibility for personal health & all areas. (Jan 2008)

Doctors should manage health care, not bureaucracies. (Jan 2008)

Personal responsibility & choices key to good health. (Jan 2008)

Flexibility in government regulations to allow competition. (Nov 2006)

More affordable health care via competition. (Nov 2006)

 

However, what really strips bare the total bankruptcy of the Republicans in general and Pallin in particular is this statement Pallin made at the beginning of her

acceptance speech.

 

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.

 

Excuse me? Every politician on earth depends on community organizers! Who will “organize” events for Sarah McBush?

 

Martin Luther King Jr. was a community organizer, as was Mahatma Gandhi, César Chavez, Jayne Addams.

 

Community organizers are the people who look into the human condition and try to empower people to fix it. Are there broken sewers that are overdue for repair? Not enough cops on the street? Are anyone’s civil liberties violated? Community organizers rally the people to fight for themselves.

 

And who becomes a community organizer? Is it a position that requires a degree? Has there been a hierarchy imposed upon it? Or does it simply take someone sufficiently motivated like a disgruntled parent, or teacher, or sanitation worker who saw injustice, or squalid conditions, and tried to fix them?

 

So who is Sarah Palin to take on the mantle of “The Female Candidate?” That was Hillary’s place, and could belong to no other. Now we will unite for Obama to help bring sanity, not the McBush/Palin dystopia into this world.

 

 

To All the PUMAs And Their Would-Be Pied Pipers:

 

For a long time I, like you was dispirited. Like you, I felt that Hillary was robbed of her rightful place as the party standard bearer.

 

But then I began to ask what did I want more? Was it to sulk like Achilles in his tent over an insult while fellow Greeks died around him? Or was it to remember why I became active, and return to face the real enemy that is before us, a continuation of the past eight years of corrupt administration, an unnecessary war, the ruination of my country and the endless war on the middle class?

 

I look upon it as a cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, I could seek revenge by supporting McCain if I were that vindictive. But that would make me a hollow person. McCain betrayed me a long time ago.

 

One the other hand, I could remember that this is nothing less than a battle between good and evil. In war you can’t always choose your leaders, but you can remember what the struggle is about and whose side you are on.

 

Last week I saw a party that understands this, and a Republican so out of touch that he insults all Hillary supporters, PUMAs, and all.

 

At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, everyone there pledged at least on paper, to put aside their differences and fight for the common good. First, the Obama’s have acknowledged the importance of Hillary’s campaign. Everyone recognized the achievement of bringing 18 million votes into the picture. Next, Hillary, then Bill Clinton declared their support of and their confidence in Barack Obama. In addition, nobody whined about snubbing Hillary when they realized how strategic the choice of Joe Biden was for a running mate.

 

 

<a href =”http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=7937″>Hillary was the one who put it best:</a>

 

<blockquote>I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama.

 

My friends, it is time to take back the country we love.

 

Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.

 

This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win.</blockquote>

 

<a href =”http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=7937″>And later she said:</a>

 

<blockquote> I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

 

We need leaders once again who can tap into that special blend of American confidence and optimism that has enabled generations before us to meet our toughest challenges. Leaders who can help us show ourselves and the world that with our ingenuity, creativity, and innovative spirit, there are no limits to what is possible in America.

 

This won’t be easy. Progress never is. But it will be impossible if we don’t fight to put a Democrat in the White House.</blockquote>

 

So there it is. Your own leader, my Senator, supporting her party’s choice for President. Would you sulk in your tent while your friends pay the price?

 

And who is Sarah Palin?

 

Well for one thing, Palin is no Hillary clone! Any Clintonista who has heard anything Hillary said cannot mistake Sarah Palin for someone you knew and loved for years.

 

 I recognize that Palin may be an honest person in her own right, and maybe a good governor for Alaska. As mayor, she reduced her own salary. She then proceeded to cut wasteful spending. She resigned her position as chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission to protest what she termed “lack of ethics.” She challenged Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into financial dealings.

 

She opposed Frank Murkowski’s wasteful spending and sold his big vanity jet.

Nevertheless, being mayor of a town smaller than the Town of Onondaga, NY where I live is barely a prerequisite for becoming a governor, or state senator, not President! (Yes, I said something similar about Obama, but it’s all about issues and ideologies now!

 

Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton, let alone Barack Obama!

 

Hillary would be appalled at Palin’s stand on the environment.

 

<a href =”http://www.ontheissues.org/hillary_clinton.htm#Energy_+_Oil”>Here’s Hillary on ANWR:</a>

 

<blockquote>Ratify Kyoto; more mass transit. (Sep 2000)

 

Voted YES on disallowing an oil leasing program in Alaska’s ANWR. (Nov 2005)

 

Voted YES on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Mar 2005)</blockquote>

 

 

And Palin’s position on ANWR? <a href =”http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:NhffhrIXmbwJ:www.juneauempire.com/stories/011807/2007StateOfTheStateDoc.doc+%22The+standard+should+be+no+different+for+industry.%22&hl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us”>Let’s let her answer that!:</a>

 

<blockquote>Convince the rest of the nation to open ANWR

 

The standard should be no different for industry. Ironically, we’re trying to convince the rest of the nation to open ANWR, but we can’t even get our own Pt. Thomson, which is right on the edge of ANWR, developed! We are ready for that gas to be tapped so we can fill a natural gas pipeline. I promise to vigorously defend Alaska’s rights, as resource owners, to develop and receive appropriate value for our resources.

 

 Source: State of the State Address Jan 17, 2007</blockquote>

 

On health care, Palin and Hillary are as different as night and day.

 

<a href =”http://www.ontheissues.org/hillary_clinton.htm#Health_Care”>Here’s Hillary on the subject:</a>

 

<blockquote>Health care initiatives are her first priority in Senate. (Feb 2001)

 • Voted NO on means-testing to determine Medicare Part D premium. (Mar 2008)

 • Voted YES on requiring negotiated Rx prices for Medicare part D. (Apr 2007)

 • Voted NO on limiting medical liability lawsuits to $250,000. (May 2006)

 • Voted YES on expanding enrollment period for Medicare Part D. (Feb 2006)

 • Voted YES on increasing Medicaid rebate for producing generics. (Nov 2005)

 • Voted YES on negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drug. (Mar 2005) </blockquote>

 

<a href =”http://www.issues2000.org/Sarah_Palin.htm#Health_Care”>Sarah Palin’s position is nothing less than feudal:</a>

 

<blockquote>Health care must be market-and business-driven. (Jan 2008) 

Take personal responsibility for personal health & all areas. (Jan 2008)

Doctors should manage health care, not bureaucracies. (Jan 2008)

Personal responsibility & choices key to good health. (Jan 2008)

Flexibility in government regulations to allow competition. (Nov 2006)

More affordable health care via competition. (Nov 2006)</blockquote>

 

However, what really strips bare the total bankruptcy of the Republicans in general and Pallin in particular is this statement Pallin made at the beginning of her <a href =”http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/news/Speeches/c1af6c79-f5bf-42ed-9fb9-9e83b0c580e1.htm”>acceptance speech.</a>

 

<blockquote>I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.</blockquote>

 

Excuse me? Every politician on earth depends on community organizers! Who will “organize” events for Sarah McBush?

 

Martin Luther King Jr. was a community organizer, as was Mahatma Gandhi, César Chavez, Jayne Addams.

 

Community organizers are the people who look into the human condition and try to empower people to fix it. Are there broken sewers that are overdue for repair? Not enough cops on the street? Are anyone’s civil liberties violated? Community organizers rally the people to fight for themselves.

 

And who becomes a community organizer? Is it a position that requires a degree? Has there been a hierarchy imposed upon it? Or does it simply take someone sufficiently motivated like a disgruntled parent, or teacher, or sanitation worker who saw injustice, or squalid conditions, and tried to fix them?

 

So who is Sarah Palin to take on the mantle of “The Female Candidate?” That was Hillary’s place, and could belong to no other. Now we will unite for Obama to help bring sanity, not the McBush/Palin dystopia into this world.

 

 

Babushka Doll › Create New Post — WordPress

Babushka Doll › Create New Post — WordPress.

Hillary Clinton and SCHIP: The Unvarnished Truth and The Massaged Talking Points

So now nothing is sacred. Not even something as laudable as the bipartisan coming together on the Children’s Health Insurance Program! The very people who credited Hillary for her role in it’s passage, are now so mercenary as to deny her any credit for CHIP at all! Well, in order to do this they’ll have to talk out of the other sides of their mouths.

 

Back then, when it was passed, they were more than happy to heap praise on Hillary for persuading Bill to come around on the deal, so they could pressure Trent Lott to roll over. Kennedy had then acknowledged that the First Lady had a very important role in getting the White House on board.

 

From the Boston Globe  October 6, 2007:

 

The children’s health program wouldn’t be in existence today if we didn’t have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Kennedy told The Associated Press. President Clinton signed the bill in August 1997.While Kennedy is widely viewed as the driving force behind the program, by all accounts the former first lady’s pressure was crucial.

 

It goes on to state:

 

‘She wasn’t a legislator, she didn’t write the law, and she wasn’t the president, so she didn’t make the decisions,’ says Nick Littlefield, then a senior health adviser to Kennedy. ‘But we relied on her, worked with her and she was pivotal in encouraging the White House to do it.’

 

Well, what a pair of witnesses! Not just Ted Kennedy, but one of his senior health advisors!

 

The story goes that Bill was a little wary on account of his negotiating a balanced budget with Lott, who called the children’s health bill a “deal buster.”

 

But in another article in the New York Times from August 11, 2000, Littlefield again states:

 

‘She was a one-woman army inside the White House to get this done,’ Mr. Littlefield of the Health, Education and Labor Committee said. He said that he and Senator Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the major force behind the bill, enlisted Mrs. Clinton’s help in the spring of 1997 when the president became ’skittish’ about the program. Mr. Littlefield said the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, was threatening that it was a ”deal buster’ on the balanced budget agreement that he and Mr. Clinton had reached. ‘At that point we went to Mrs. Clinton and said, ‘You’ve got to get the president to come around on this thing,’ ‘ Mr. Littlefield said. ‘And she said, ‘Absolutely.’ And we very quickly noticed a change. The president was very much on board.’

 

How times have changed!

 

Now that two factions have emerged in the struggle for the nomination, legislators who cooperated with one another now belittle each other.

 

After the Hillarycare debacle of 1993, Hill and Bill decided three things:

 

•            Secretive decision making was not working.

 

•            Hillary had to keep a low profile if she was to be of any legislative use to her pet projects.

 

And so, some people must’ve gotten confused or something. Someone played telephone and a whole lot of hats got hung on an inaccuracy. The Washington Post says:

 

During months of SCHIP negotiations in 1997, her name rarely surfaced in news accounts. Clinton never testified before Congress or held a news conference on the bill. When Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the lead GOP negotiator of the children’s health bill, heard reports that Clinton was depicting herself as SCHIP’s main advocate, ‘I had to blink a few times,” he said. Hatch said he doesn’t recall a single conversation with Clinton about SCHIP, even a mention of her name. “If she was involved, I didn’t know about it,’ he said. ‘You know how she says, ‘I started SCHIP’? Well, so did I,” joked Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), one of the Democrats who pushed the bill across the finish line along with Kennedy. Both have endorsed Obama.’

 

I guess Senator Rockefeller didn’t get the very Clintonesque strategy of bypassing obstacles if you can’t remove them. Kennedy and Hatch wanted to attach SCHIP to the budget bill as an amendment. Clinton knew that Lott wouldn’t go for that, and according to Gene Sperling, the White House chose to back it as a seperate bill:

 

Gene Sperling, a former chief economic adviser in the Clinton White House, said the budget resolution never would have passed the House with the Hatch-Kennedy amendment in it. He said that both the president and his wife wanted the SCHIP program and that Hillary Clinton lobbied hard to get it included in subsequent legislation.

 

Of course, Senators Kennedy and Hatch, who have both endorsed other candidates, acknowledge support by the White House, but try to play down the support of Hillary. Yet, according to the Boston Globe Sperling gives a different account:

 

Gene Sperling, a Hillary Clinton campaign adviser who served as one of President Clinton’s lead budget negotiators in 1997, said efforts to include children’s health coverage were constrained by a balanced budget agreement between the White House and Republican congressional leaders. But he said Hillary Clinton pushed hard and even favored boosting the price tag to $24 billion, instead of the $16 billion that had been floated as a compromise. ‘Her office was across from mine, and I knew what her priorities were,” Sperling said. “I remember her having a lot of influence — you’re getting this done because you know the first lady wants it.’

 

And so, the Obama partisans either in error, or deliberately, downplay Hillary’s legislative history as First Lady and use her misperceived inaction in this area as a politcal football against her.

 

But the high profile legislators ought to know better. Their legislative histories are recorded ad infinitum, and makes their words over time seem untrustworthy concerning Hillary:

 

 

‘Last fall, Kennedy said SCHIP ‘wouldn’t be in existence’ without Clinton’s support inside the White House. But when her rhetoric on the campaign trail started to filter back to the Capitol, the veteran legislator became stingier with his praise.

 

‘At the last hour, the administration supported it, and she was part of the administration, so I suppose she could say she supported it at the time,” Kennedy said.’</blockquote>

 

Setting a Few Matters Straight: Why I’m for Hillary and not Obama.

  

Part One” She’s Not the Devil! 

An Open Letter To John Lewis

It is with grave concern that I ask you to reconsider your endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for our party’s nomination. I base my request on three suppositions:

1. The exacerbating factor that is disuniting the party is NOT Hillary R. Clinton, but Barack Obama.

1. Given the fact that Mr. Obama’s campaign engages in EXACTLY the same tactics that it professes to deplore of H.R.C., I do not see how he could change the face of politics in this country.

1. Mr. Obama shows that he has yet to finish learning to represent his state in this country and abroad as a member of a delegation let alone as President of the United States. His philosophy that good judgement is equal to experience precludes what we all know to be true, good judgement is preceded and informed by experience.

Our party was well poised to take control of this country and turn it back well before Mr. Obama decided that he was the man to do it. Our party could now be united and ready to fight the general election. This could have caused such consternation on the other side that they would be split along ideological lines much like we are now.

Instead, we are the ones who are divided, and I blame Barack Obama. It was his choice to announce for the Presidency and throw us into disarray.

Mr. Obama says that he wishes to leave behind the “old politics.” But when have you ever seen any instance in this campaign where he has engaged in his so-called; “new politics?” I haven’t.

Firstly he disillusioned me when only after two years in the Senate, he chose to run for President. As if the Senate was only a stepping stone. What of the promise he made to people of Illinois to represent them?

He calls his time in the Illinois State Senate experience enough to add to his resume for the job of President. But you and I both know that such experience as his only makes him elligible to represent his state or Congressional district, and that way – to start learning the ways of federal government. How his arrogance makes him think he is ready to be President, I don’t know.

If that were all, I could still forgive his youthful exuberance. What I cannot forgive is his dishonest behavior.

He professes to be the apostle of the “new politics,” a politics based on “inclusion,” speaking to the enemy, and being honest. But the  reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, he is merely another politician, but with a better disguise and a silver tongue. In his message he distorts the facts, misquotes third party sources and takes them out of context like any other politician. And of course, he misreprents his opponent’s position, misquotes her and consciously misrepresents her position – like any other politician.

But he is supposed to be above all that isn’t he?  And so he misdirects his listeners with flowery phrases, espouses those noble sentiments and like a  magician, sneaks into the message all his distortions. And under his facade, he allows his attack dogs to do the dirty work – like any other politician.

He’ll also learn that while in Congress, on-the-job training is apporiate, in foreign policy, it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.

In conclusion, I’d have to say that to me it’s all Old Politics – all showmanship, and I’m not buying the ticket!