Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

national news, political news

Clinton's going to run, period

One of my many pet peeves is when folks try to read the mind of public figures.

Therefore, I am going to get angry at myself for what I’m about to write: I believe Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to run for president in 2016 and that the only decision left is to decide the best time to announce her intentions.

http://news.msn.com/us/clinton-2016-decision-likely-by-early-next-year

Clinton is in Mexico City, as is Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., another possible candidate for president.

The former U.S. senator/secretary of state/first lady said she’ll decide by early next year whether she’ll seek the Democratic nomination for president.

Sure thing, senator/Mme. Secretary. My trick knee is throbbing a good bit right about now and it’s telling me she’s told her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that she wants to run for the office he once held. She has sworn him to secrecy and if the 42nd president has a brain in his head — and I believe he does — he’ll keep quiet about it.

If I were a bettor, I’d bet all HRC has to decide now is when to announce it. Indeed, you can parse her language just a little bit to conclude that’s the decision left to make. She’s spoken hypothetically about a presidential run; she’s been mildly critical of President Obama’s foreign policy doctrine; she said in Mexico City that her background gives her “unique” qualifications to be president.

I’m still baffled, of course, over why she’d want to run for the White House, given the intensely harsh, personal and in some case unfair criticism she’s received over many years. You can bet the mortgage the critics will be out in force when she makes her intentions known.

Is it blind ambition or a sense of public obligation that drives her? Perhaps it’s both. We’ll be able to make that determination for ourselves in due time.

 

Uncategorized

Is HRC running for president? Ummm, yes

Gosh, I think I’m ready to bet the farm that Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to run for president in 2016.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-takes-president-barack-obama-109887.html?hp=t1

The former secretary of state, first lady and U.S. senator is now putting some serious distance between herself and President Barack Obama.

Why? It seems clear she is reading the president’s poll numbers and doesn’t want to be associated any more than need be to his foreign policy doctrine.

That’s enough — all by itself — to persuade me she’s in, or that she’ll declare her candidacy in due course.

I realize this isn’t a huge flash. Just about every political pundit this side of Arkansas has been predicting she would run. I always had this reservation about it, which stems from the harsh treatment she’s gotten from her foes and the hideous treatment she and her husband, the 42nd president, received when Bill Clinton was serving in the White House.

The sweeping interview attached to this blog post, however, sends an entirely different message.

She wants the big prize and is piecing together the building blocks of a doctrine on which she’ll run.

I will have to dismiss one notion contained in the Politico story, which is that Hillary Clinton “doesn’t have a polling operation.”

Uhhh, yes she does.

Uncategorized

Impeachment talk is driving me insane

For the ever-loving life of me I cannot fathom how on God’s Earth Republicans around the country think Congress should impeach the president of the United States.

A new poll from CNN-ORC says two-thirds of Americans oppose the notion of impeaching President Obama. Yet the nutcases on the far right keep fueling this idiocy by suggesting the president has committed some specified impeachable offense.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/213323-majority-opposes-impeachment-calls-and-lawsuit-poll-finds

House Speaker John Boehner says impeachment is a non-starter. Other key Republicans say they oppose it, too. One of them, most interestingly, is former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who got himself entangled in an earlier impeachment effort against President Clinton. It didn’t work out too well for Gingrich and his House GOP brethren. The House impeached the president, but the Senate acquitted him on all the charges. Gingrich, meanwhile, resigned hi speakership and then left the House because of his own shabby personal behavior and because he lost the confidence of his House colleagues.

The pro-impeachment cabal has even less on Obama than the goons on the right had on Clinton. With Clinton, at least they could say the president lied under oath to a federal grand jury about his fling with that young woman who worked in the White House. Perjury is a felony.

President Obama’s alleged misdeed? He’s using the power granted him by the Constitution to invoke executive authority? What else is there?

Republicans are playing with some serious fire if they keep up this nonsense.

Can’t we get back to the business of governing, for crying out loud?

The mid-term elections might give Republicans control of the Senate — but it’s not nearly a sure thing. They’ll likely retain control of the House. If Capitol Hill goes fully Republican, then the GOP will have to settle into the role of co-equal partners in the process of running the richest, most powerful country on Earth.

Impeachment rhetoric from the GOP peanut gallery is an utterly ridiculous exercise.

It is irresponsible and reprehensible in the extreme.

***

Gosh, I now am asking my own congressman, Republican Mac Thornberry: What say you, Mac, about this idea of impeaching the president? Please tell me you haven’t swilled the GOP goofball Kool-Aid.

Uncategorized

Why Warren … and not Clinton?

Conservatives seem to have hitched themselves to a possible candidacy by a leading U.S. Senate liberal.

Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been wowing crowds at political events lately. She’s been firing up the political base of her Democratic Party. Warren also has gotten the attention of conservative commentators and pundits, such as Byron York, who contends that Warren offers a plan while Hillary Rodham Clinton is running essentially on her resume.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/will-elizabeth-warrens-fight-for-causes-put-hillary-clinton-in-the-shade/article/2551098

I’ll hereby offer my own explanation of why York, a columnist for the Washington Examiner and a Fox News Channel contributor, is so taken by Warren: He wants the Democratic Party to marginalize itself the way Republicans might be willing to do when they nominate their candidate for the 2016 presidential campaign.

You see, Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat in the mold of her husband, the 42nd president of the United States. Bill Clinton was the master of “triangulation,” and he parlayed his skill at working the extremes against each other so well that he won two smashing election victories in 1992 and 1996.

Republicans don’t want any more of that.

So some of them have glommed onto Warren’s candidacy, talking her up.

Don’t get me wrong. Elizabeth Warren is a powerhouse. She’s smart and courageous. She’s taking on big-money interests and is talking a darn good populist message about income equality, marriage equality, and financial and tax reform.

York and other conservatives likely don’t give a damn about the content of Warren’s message. They’re just thrilled to have someone out there willing to possibly challenge Hillary Clinton’s perceived inevitability as the Democratic presidential nominee in two years.

She reminds me vaguely of the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who in 1968 took on President Lyndon Johnson when it was perceived widely that LBJ would run for re-election. McCarthy stunned the president by nearly beating him in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. On March 31, 1968, LBJ declared he wouldn’t seek “another term as your president.”

The news thrilled Republicans in ’68. I suspect similar news from Hillary Clinton this time around would have the same effect on the GOP if Warren jumps in and then mounts a serious challenge to Clinton’s perceived invincibility.

Uncategorized

Tax cut … with no spending offsets?

I’ll have to admit that I’m a little slow on the uptake at times.

Folks have to explain some things to me on occasion to help me make sense of trends and decisions.

This decision by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives falls into that head-scratching category.

http://www.kxly.com/news/politics/house-republicans-vote-for-business-tax-cut/26906060

The House has approved a $287 billion business tax cut. It hasn’t included any spending offsets to pay for it. Speaker John Boehner boasts that the House is working to create jobs. Maybe it will. Then again, maybe those businesses benefiting from the tax cuts will take that money straight to the bottom line. That’s been happening quite a bit lately, you know?

What’s got me puzzled is why the House GOP keeps insisting on spending offsets whenever the Obama administration proposes job creation ideas. Infrastructure spending? Can’t afford it unless we cut spending in other places.

Another thing needs noting. The deficit is coming down in rather dramatic fashion. A tax cut of the size just approved by the House is going to blow up the deficit yet again.

My memory isn’t perfect, but I do remember a time when Republicans belonged to the party of “fiscal responsibility.” They loathed deficits, while Democrats blew them off. Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 partly because President Carter and Congress ran deficits of a whopping $40 billion annually; there was some other stuff also that contributed to Carter’s defeat.

Memory also reminds me of how quick congressional Republicans were to share in the credit for the balanced budget and the surpluses run up during the final years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. They made sure we all knew that their spending restraints were more responsible for the surplus than the modest tax increases proposed by the president — and, oh yes, approved by Congress.

The new age of Republicanism, though, sees the party in control of one half of one branch of government talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Spending offsets only count when the other guys want to do something. Tax cuts for business? Who cares?

In the meantime, President Obama is asking for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to help deal with that crisis along our southern border. The GOP response? It costs too much money.

Go figure.

Uncategorized

Impeachment talk makes me crazy

All this impeachment poppycock is making me nuts.

Some goofball right-wing members of Congress — not to mention a few bystanders perched in the political peanut gallery — are saying the House of Representatives needs to impeach President Barack Obama.

For what, you say? I don’t know exactly. For issuing executive orders in keeping with his constitutional authority? For the flood of illegal immigrants who are coming into the country, as if the president himself could order it stopped? For tweaking the Affordable Care Act after it became law?

The right-wing loons contend he’s broken laws. They haven’t cited specific laws — because he hasn’t broken any law.

Many of us have lived through two impeachable events involving presidents.

* The first one occurred in the early 1970s. President Nixon’s re-election campaign hired a team of goons to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. When word got out that they were captured, Nixon then ordered the FBI to block the investigation. Then that became known and all hell broke loose.

The House Judiciary Committee and a select committee of senators conducted hearings. The Judiciary Committee then approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face certain impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.

* Then came the episode involving President Clinton. A special prosecutor was hired by Congress to examine the Whitewater real estate dealings allegedly involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The prosecutor then began snooping around allegations that Clinton fooled around with a young White House intern. A federal grand jury asked Clinton about it. He lied when he denied any involvement with the woman. Oops. You can’t perjure yourself. The House impeached him on those grounds, but the Senate acquitted him.

Two specific incidents resulted in a near impeachment and the real thing.

The stuff involving President Obama? It’s all political hucksterism, meant to inflame the Republican base, get ’em riled up.

Sure, the president has made mistakes. Has any president skated through office without blundering here and there? Of course not.

Do these blunders require an impeachment? No.

To his credit, House Speaker John Boehner says he disagrees with the impeachment yammering.

Good. Now he needs to take the tea party yahoos within his caucus who keep fomenting this nonsense to the woodshed.

Uncategorized

Dynasties not that rare

Hillary Clinton says the nation has had more than one Adams sitting in the White House.

She defends the Bushes as well, contending that the nation has had dynasties during its entire life.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/hillary-clinton-political-dynasty-der-spiegel-interview-108652.html?hp=r3

There’s more.

We’ve had two Harrisons — William Henry and grandson Benjamin.

We’ve elected two Roosevelts — cousins Teddy and Franklin Delano.

Of course, fathers and sons John and John Quincy Adams, and George H.W. and George W. Bush.

If Hillary Clinton runs in two years and wins, she’ll be the first spouse of a president to win the office. So that changes the equation a good bit.

Let’s not get too worked up over this dynasty business. We’ve had ’em before.

Uncategorized

Not 'truly well off,' Mme. Secretary?

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book tour has hit another pot hole on the road to her probable 2016 presidential candidacy.

The former U.S. senator, first lady and secretary state now says she and her family aren’t like the “truly well off.” She means that even though she has lots of money now, she somehow doesn’t qualify as rich the way, well, the really rich people would define the term.

http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/06/22/hillary-clinton-says-shes-not-truly-well-off/

Here’s where Clinton might get into trouble.

Suppose she announces her campaign for president and starts hitting the trail. She runs into her political base of voters, which traditionally comprises working-class, lower- to middle-income, possibly union-affiliated and ethnic minority voters. How is she going to explain to them that she’s not “truly well off”?

For that matter, how is she going to explain that to other Americans of means who believe they’ve done well for themselves and consider their lot in life to be one of relative privilege?

First she said she and her husband, President Clinton, were “dead broke” when they left the White House in January 2001. All they did after that was buy a significant home in New York, where Hillary Clinton was elected to represent in the U.S. Senate. How does a “dead broke” couple secure the financing to make such a purchase?

Poor choice of words there, Mme. Secretary.

Now she’s saying she’s not “well off” the way the mega-rich are?

The Independent newspaper reported: “A CNN analysis found that Bill Clinton earned more than $106 million in speaking fees since the end of his presidency in 2001 through January 2013. Since leaving the State Department early last year, Hillary Rodham Clinton earned as much as $200,000 per event through speaking engagements before trade groups and businesses.”

By my definition of the term “well off,” the Bill and Hillary Clinton fit the bill.

Uncategorized

IRS controversy lives on … and on

The Internal Revenue Service controversy hasn’t yet blown up into a full-scale scandal, no matter how hard the right wing tries to make it so.

Now the talking heads and pols on the right are clamoring for a special counsel to investigate the matter. Recall, now, that it began with revelations that the IRS was vetting conservative political action groups’ requests for tax-exempt status. It does the same thing for liberal groups, too, but the conservative chattering class got all wound up over it and have raised a stink ever since.

Now there’s been further revelations about two years worth of emails that went missing from IRS honcho Lois Lerner’s computer. What the heck happened to them?

Republicans, not surprisingly, are trying to tie the IRS matter to the White House, even though no evidence has been uncovered that the IRS was doing anything under White House orders. They want to implicate the president — naturally! — for all this. So far they’ve come up empty.

A special prosecutor might be a good idea if Congress could limit the scope of his or her probe. The last notable special prosecutor hired was one Kenneth Starr, who was brought in to investigate the Whitewater real estate dealings involving President and Mrs. Clinton. Starr, though, went rogue and discovered the president had engaged in a tawdry relationship with a young White House intern.

The House of Reps impeached him because he lied to a federal grand jury about that relationship; the Senate acquitted the president at trial.

Is a special prosecutor needed in this case? I believe the GOP-led House of Representatives has looked thoroughly into this matter and has found zero evidence of White House complicity in anything involving the IRS.

That, of course, will not end the clamor.

Uncategorized

Pay us a visit, Mme. Secretary

Just thinking out loud here.

Watching the reporting on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book tour brings to mind a 2008 campaign stop her husband, the former president of the United States, made here on her behalf — in Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle, of all places.

Bill Clinton came to campaign for his wife as she fought Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

He packed the Grand Plaza Ballroom at the Amarillo Civic Center. Indeed, it overflowed. A lot of Republicans attended the event just to get a glimpse of the 42nd president and to determine for themselves if he is as charismatic as everyone says he is.

President Clinton didn’t disappoint anyone, Republican or Democrat. Clinton would win the Democratic primary that year, but eventually lose the nomination fight to Obama.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/06/20/hillary-clinton-book-tour-comes-austin/

I’d bet real U.S. money that Hillary Clinton would get a smashing reception here if she chose to come to Amarillo to hype her new book, “Hard Choices.”

She’s a possible, if not probable, candidate for president in 2016. There would be interest in that campaign as well.

The Texas Tribune reported on her book-tour stop in Austin, which everyone knew she’d make. Austin is one of the last Democratic bastions left in Texas. It’s a no-brainer for her go there and visit with friendly audiences.

Why not pay a visit to us here, on the High Plains of Texas, where no one would expect her to go?