Hillary Clinton Can’t Answer Conflict of Interest Question

As I explained quite a while back, a Hillary Clinton White House could be duplicitous, indeed. And this concerns me. It concerns me a great deal, to be honest. So when she passes up an obvious opportunity to explain why that won’t be the case, and instead laughs the suggestion away, I have to take the time to note it.

A reporter asked Hillary Clinton if it was possible that $800,000 in Clinton income paid for by a group that supports free trade between the United States and Columbia could be a conflict of interest, since she claims to oppose such a deal. (Hopefully more than she “opposed” NAFTA.) After a gaudy laugh (and this wasn’t her “gee, that was funny” laugh, but that annoying “I would like to avoid that question so I’m going to obviously fake laughter and hope my cheerful smile draws your ire away” laugh. Watch one of her debates sometime. The difference is so obvious it’s almost insulting. I mean, can’t she at least practice making it seem sincere?), she asked “How many angels dance on the head of the pin?”

This originally got my attention, because that was the same point the “fictional” Governor Stanton from Primary Colors, a book written by Joe Klein about the 1992 Clinton Presidential campaign, made to his campaign aide, the protagonist Henry Burton. After looking for dirt to dig up on the only other candidate who presented a roadblock between Stanton and the nomination, he was convinced not to take it to the presses by an old friend who committed suicide. So he decided to use it to convince his foe to quit, instead. When the argument was used that it would have been taken to the press had their friend not recently perished, Stanton answers (in an ever-so-slight paraphrase as I could not find the exact quote): “But those are fine little points. We’re talking about angels dancing on a pinhead points.”

When I think of that movie, I always think of two parts. The first is when Stanton’s wife (played by the beautiful Emma Thompson) finds the cell phone Stanton threw out the window in the brush, when he insisted it landed in the trees. His response? “Shoot, you wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t thrown it out of the window.” I laugh just thinking about it. But the other is that line. For some reason that scene, summed up succinctly by that line, always had a lasting impact on me. So it really struck me that she was using the same line which may or may not be attributed to Bill Clinton during a likewise potentially shady situation.

But at any rate, that was a movie and this is real life. Ultimately her response to that question was, and this is not paraphrased at all, “How do you answer that?”

Perhaps by describing how a group which paid your family a third of what you lent to your campaign will not have any kind of sway over your policy decisions? Just a stab in the dark, here. Maybe by not completely blowing off the question? Just a hint.

She did reiterate she was against the deal, even though Bill Clinton is for it. Her response to that was “Everybody is entitled to their opinion.” Fair enough. But when a person with no prior political office experience has such a large role in their spouse’s White House as she claims she had, how can we not expect the spouse which actually held that position will not have a similarly large role?

By not answering the question, but more so by discounting the legitimacy of a very legitimate question, she did nothing to show that this significant contribution to her economic well-being will have no effect on her decision making capabilities.

In other Clinton news, Bill got jealous of Hillary’s monopoly on lying about Bosnia. Seems he said “[T]here was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated, and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995.” He went on to say, “I think she was the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone.” Well, Hillary Clinton had “misspoke” on that several times, did not immediately apologize for it, didn’t even immediately admit it was a mistake for that matter, went to Bosnia in 1996 and not 1995, and wasn’t the first First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to visit a combat zone. Although, classifying Bill’s comment as a misstatement would be contingent upon what the definition of “one,” “immediately,” “1995,” and “go” is.

Grasping at Straws

So let me get this straight.  When the focus of the national press was erroneous comments Barack Obama’s minister made, you could take the high road and say you didn’t have a comment about it and this shouldn’t be a central issue, but almost two weeks later when everybody’s talking about your “misstatements” now you want to bring it up?

Give me a break.

Oh, I love this Hillary quote:  “(Obama releasing his income taxes) is a good first step. Now he should release his records from being in the state senate and any other information that the public and the press need to know from his experience, because I think that, you know, we should continue to make available the information that we have.”

So is that why you haven’t released your income tax records?  Or why you haven’t released documents related to financing of the Clinton Library or the Clinton Foundation?  Or why you wouldn’t release records of your time as First Lady until a Freedom of Information Act law suit? 

Now Bill Clinton is saying that Obama wants to “disenfranchise” Michigan and Floridian voters because he knows Clinton will win them.  Want to guess how many votes Obama cast in favor of not allowing early states to be seated?  How about the total number of votes Obama cast to move up the primaries?  I’ll give you a hint; it’s the total number of votes Obama cast when both states decided not to revote.

The answer to all three, in case you’re delusional enough to actually believe Obama somehow had an active part in the “disenfranchment” of the two states, is zero.  But the logic is classic Clinton:  “Everybody would know how much voters in each state love Hillary if they stopped allowing Obama to block the vote.”

I really hope at some point in the future the Clintons at least act like they respect my intelligence.

Hillary is Prepared to Be Commander-in-Chief. Oops! I Mispoke.

Hillary Clinton likes to talk about how the military thinks she’s the most capable to be Commander-in-Chief.  Now her campaign is being compared by a former Air Force Chief-of-Staff to one of America’s most famous defenders of homeland security:  Joe McCarthy.

USAF General Tony McPeak said Bill Clinton made comments which brought Joe McCarthy to mind when he questioned Obama’s loyalty to the country because . . .  well, Bill Clinton didn’t really say why.

Here’s his quote:  “I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

What “other stuff” would that be Bill?  Stuff like the immediately preceding sentence, perhaps??  To imply that Obama somehow isn’t as loving or devoted to the US and then immediately say that Obama’s candidacy would distract people from the issues isn’t just asinine, it’s completely mind-blowing.  Thanks for making the Republicans look just a tad more right about you, Sir William.

Though I must say, I would rather be called Joe McCarthy by an USAF General than called Judas by James Carville.

Of course, Bill Clinton isn’t the issue here.  Hillary Clinton is.  And nobody can deny that she is more than capable to be Commander-in-Chief.  After all, she did things like, oh, I don’t know, visiting Bosnia when it was too dangerous for Bill Clinton to do so.

Hillary Clinton made her case for being Commander-in-Chief when she said “I certainly do remember [emphasis added] that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went.  I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”  Sounds pretty scary.  Anybody with those kind of credentials should be a shoe-in for the White House.  Well, almost anybody.  There was just one simple problem with her story.

Other people were there.  Like Sinbad.  And Cheryl Crow.  And reporters.

Turns out her landing was nothing like that at all.  They didn’t land under sniper fire.  They didn’t cancel the greeting ceremony.  They didn’t run to their heads down to get into their vehicles.  In fact, the place was so dangerous, her and her daughter listened to a poem by an eight year-old girl.

Now, I’m fully aware that listening to poems by children can be pretty scary.  And I personally twinge a bit when I hear Cheryl Crow.  And sometimes when I hear Sinbad I laugh so much I think I’m going to die.  So I can see why she remembers things being a little tough.  So I would almost buy her story that “I went to 80 countries . . . if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.”  Except she “misspoke” while reading a prepared speech.  After the speech, she was asked about it again, to which she said “Everyone else was told to sit on their bulletproof vests.  And we came in, in an evasive maneuver. … There was no greeting ceremony, and we basically were told to run to our cars. Now, that is what happened.”  So this doesn’t really seem to be a “memory” problem.  It seems to be a lying problem.  And when I say “seems to be” I mean “is” and when I say “lying problem” I mean her nose just knocked the glass of whiskey off the table.  (By the way, it’s virtually impossible to say “millions of words a day.”  Assuming that “millions” means at least one million and one, she would have to say 11.5 words per second for all twenty four hours of the day without stopping for a drink of water.  So she’s not only a liar, but very bad at math.  But maybe I’m nitpicking . . .)

“I say a lot of things.”  Isn’t that what you usually hear from someone who just reneged on a deal?

When she amended her comments, she said that they had a meeting planned on the tarmac, but had to cancel that, though there was a girl reading a poem that she couldn’t ignore.  Oh, that and the dozens of military personnel she was moseying by shaking hands.

The thing is, people usually don’t forget running from sniper fire.  And they usually don’t forget trips with Cheryl Crow.  And I certainly don’t think someone prepared to be Commander-in-Chief would confuse running from sniper fire with traveling with Cheryl Crow.

No wonder the Clintons don’t think words matter.  They can’t seem to get them right.