Hillary Hellacious

Update II: Fearing a divisive Democratic primary caused by Clinton dirty tricks,
Activists Dems Want a Democratic Truce

Sounds good, Hillary and Co. have been brushed back, and they know if they pull that sorry crap again, they will pay for it.

Update: Video at http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/1/13/113633/286

Just when she got out, she pulled her back in.

That's back into the self-serving, pernicious muck of the political lie, the cesspool where Hillary Clinton thrives.

Hillary's attacks on Barack Obama on Meet the Press this morning show again that absent misogyny and right-wing irrationality, the tragic Hillary apparently wishes to return to her sphere as the object of scorn, retaining her sad commitment to disingenuous assaults that has earned her the loathing of many hues of the American political spectrum.

Her presidential ambitions threatened by Obama, Hillary attacks Obama on civil rights, the Iraq War, and his character in an unrelenting display of negativity.

Transcripts and video should be up at at Meet the Press at 1:00 pm, ET.

Watch and read Hillary, and then take a bath.

Obama's Statement on Hillary's Meet the Press Attack

What we saw this morning is why the American people are tired of Washington politicians and the games they play. But Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson. I didn’t make the statement. I haven’t remarked on it and she I think offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King’s role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act. She is free to explain that, but the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.

I have to point out that instead of telling the American people about her positive vision for America, Senator Clinton spent an hour talking about me and my record in a way that was flat out wrong. She suggested that I didn’t clearly and unambiguously oppose the war in Iraq when it is absolutely clear and anyone who has followed this knows that I did. I stood up against the war when she was voting for it, at a time when she didn’t read the intelligence reports or give diplomacy a chance. She belittled the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate despite the fact that she stood on the sidelines during that negotiations on that bill.

I have to say that she started this campaign saying that she wanted to make history and lately she has been spending a lot of time rewriting it. I know that in Washington it is acceptable to say or do anything it takes to get elected but I really don’t think that is the kind of politics that is good for our party and I don’t think it is good for our country and I think that the American people will reject it in this election.What I want to do is spend talking about how we are going to make sure that people who are losing their jobs get work. How are we going to make sure that our young people are going to afford college? How are we going to make sure that the sub-prime lending crisis does not lead to an all out recession? How are we going to create the kind of foreign policy that allows us to bring our troops home and makes us safer and goes after a genuine terrorist threat? Those are the issues that we are going to spend time talking about in this campaign and if Senator Clinton wants to be distracted by the sorts of political point scoring that was evident today then that is going to be her prerogative.
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John McCain's Whopper on Meet the Press: Bush United Us

Senator John McCain for reasons beyond understanding still gets the red-carpet treatment from the media covering the campaign.

On Meet the Press, after distancing himself from Bush on the salient issues pertaining to Katrina, Iraq and corruption, McCain said this:

"(Bush) led this nation after 9/11 and united us."

Tim Russert let the statement go unchallenged.

Reality check: Were Americans just sitting around waiting for Bush to unite us after 9/11?

Americans were united, the world was united; and Bush took that unity and divided the United States and spread ill will throughout the world to an extent that no American president has ever done in history.

The straight-talking McCain is a joke, and we can expect more political honesty from even the Huckster and Romney than the phony John McCain.

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Karl Rove Lies as He Prepares to Leave

Karl Rove leaked and participated in an ugly scheme to leak the identity of Valerie Plame, an (undercover) non-official cover CIA operative working on halting weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

The leaking occurred after Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, exposed in a New York Times op-ed column one of the Bush administration's lies used to sell the invasion of Iraq.

Wilson's op-ed drew the attention of the highest officials in the U.S. government (Bush, Cheney, Rove and Libby), where orders for the subsequent leak of Wilson's wife were found to have originated.

Rove hit the Sunday talk shows to deny all this, getting in some last-ditch lies before he leaves at the end of August.

Two things about Rove's blowing the cover of this CIA operative are striking.

If a democratic administration had done this (a President Clinton, Edwards, or Obama), we would hear non-stop howls of treason and "unprecedented" betrayal, widespread impeachment calls, banner Country in Crisis coverage on the news networks and Bob Dole talking about how all of what he fought for was being betrayed by the administration.

Does this reaction describe coverage of Rove and Co. as Rove leaves government?

Even today, rightwing pundits look to excuse the leak, as Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have their crimes and lies almost completely covered up with the tremendous help of their friends.

Even Libby, found guilty of lying and obstructing justice, has his sentence commuted while Bush is still in office.

Via ThinkProgress

During his tour of the Sunday shows this morning, Karl Rove attempted to downplay and dismiss his role in the CIA leak scandal, telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he acted benignly in his conversations with reporters about Valerie Plame’s identity:

What I did say to one reporter was, I’ve heard that, too. And what I said to another reporter, off the record, was, in essence, I don’t think you ought to be writing about this.

Appearing on Meet The Press today, Matthew Cooper, one of the reporters to whom Rove spoke about Plame, said Rove’s version of the story was hard to believe. “I think he was dissembling to put it charitably,” said Cooper. “To imply that he didn’t know about [Plame’s identity], or that he heard it in some rumor out in the hallways, is nonsense.”

Cooper also contradicted Rove’s characterization of their conversation, describing the “essence” of it as much more than just an attempt to wave him off the story:

Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson [Plame’s husband] was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD.

Cooper’s right. Rove is peddling “non-sense” with his brushed off description of his role in the leak scandal. On Meet The Press, Rove also declared, “if a journalist had said to me, ‘I’d like you to confirm this,’ my answer would have been ‘I can’t, I don’t know, I’ve heard that too,’”

But as Cooper notes, Rove not only confirmed to him that Plame worked at the CIA, but he willingly pushed the information to him without it even being solicited, telling him that she “works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues.”

When pressed by Wallace about his conversation with Cooper, however, Rove resorted to the administration’s standard line when asked about inconvenient facts: “I don’t recall.”

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has more on Rove’s Meet the Press appearance here and here.

UPDATE II: Marcy Wheeler, who wrote a book about the Plame scandal, debunks Rove’s Meet the Press claims here.


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