The nerve! Last week, we heard cries of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" when McCain or Palin rhetorically asked who Obama was, or what to do about him. It wasn't just that the crowd yelled these things, it was also that neither candidate repudiated, or even mildly corrected the crowd until three days later. Instead, McCain stood there with his stupid smile. And Palin? Her accusing a political opponent of "palling around with terrorists," not only crossed a line, it shows a tremendous lack of understanding and intellect. Then there are the McCain surrogates who feel free to slander and insult their opponent with the seemingly tacit approval of the principals.
Which makes the crocodile tears and false indignance of McCain over John Lewis's protest all the more galling.

John Lewis lived through the era he is comparing McCain's campaign with. I know that McCain's absence from the Freedom Rides  or Mississippi's Freedom Summer was excusable, but didn't the public schools of Wasilla, or the five colleges that Sarah Palin attended teach about those things?

The brutal reception by the Klan of the Freedom Riders at every stop was a  result of the atmosphere created by men like George Wallace, Orville Faubus and Lester Maddox. In the South, many politicians gave a wink and a nod to Klan activities. With the atmosphere that the McCain / Palin ticket is creating, such politicians may soon be returning.

McCain accuses Obama of having more negative  ads than him, but answer me this Johnny, did Barack ever associate McCain any characters of ill repute? No! Obama took the high road in his attacks, and did not engage in innuendo and character assasination!

And yet to listen to John McCain's whine over John Lewis's written words, you'd think that Lewis was some Democratic Sarah Palin  claiming that McCain was "palling around with Klansmen."

This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign," Powell said. "But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him?

Colin Powell just gave his endorsement of Barack Obama. The above quote illustrates that he considered the  behavior of his long-time friend McCain to be unconscionable.

What McCain & Co. have done is paint themselves into a corner, and now that they have run out of any talking points with any hint of verisimilitude, they have been reduced to a dog and pony show.

The loss of Powell for John McCain betrays  another weakness in him that we don't want in a President, an inability to adapt.

MR. MATTHEWS: If you have liberal views, does that mean you have anti-American views? What's the connection? I don't get the connection. What's the connection between liberal and leftist and anti-American?

REP. BACHMANN: Anti-American is the point, because --

MR. MATTHEWS: I mean, if you're liberal, are you anti-American?

REP. BACHMANN: Well, the liberals that are Jeremiah Wright and that are Bill Ayers, they're over-the-top anti-American. And that's the question that Americans have. Remember, it was Michelle Obama who said she's only recently proud of her country. And so these are very anti-American views.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay.

REP. BACHMANN: That's not the way that most Americans feel about our country. Most Americans, Chris, are wild about America, and they're very concerned to have a president who doesn't share those values..

And now we have the latest episode of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot with their attempts at slander as '>Michelle Bachman gets her Joe McCarthy on.

This is the same person who blamed the Minnesota Democrats for failing to pass a bill that she herself voted  against - The Protect America Act.

She also has this fetish  for old-fashioned light bulbs, introducing a "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act" to combat the government intrusion of phasing out conventional light bulbs! Will the A.C.L.U. back her? Will the onslaught of incandescent bulbs lead to communism? Stay tuned!

Anyway, her jaunt into McCarthyism will cost her her job now that the RNC has pulled out of her campaign, and people incensed by her remarks have contributed enormously to her opponent's campaign.

It didn't take long for the mean to come out. No sooner did the Republican National Convention end, then did the broad brush lies about how Obama would raise taxes on "you" came out. Never mind that only one percent of the people would feel the pinch, McCain had buttons to push. At the time, he was twenty points ahead of Obama. There was no earth - shattering economic crisis then. McCain's insecurity was showing. And of course, that meant that the showmanship had to start. It started with the stunt casting of Sarah Palin as his running mate. My what a feminist our Johnny is! Of course, it pleased McCain's adopted by necessity base that she was against taxes, pro-drilling and pro-life! Well, I'm sure the base enjoys Sarah's endless verbatim repetition of the same stale talking points.

It didn't take long for the mean to come out. No sooner did the Republican National Convention end, then did the broad brush lies about how Obama would raise taxes on "you" came out. Never mind that only one percent of the people would feel the pinch, McCain had buttons to push. At the time, he was twenty points ahead of Obama. There was no earth - shattering economic crisis then. McCain's insecurity was showing. And of course, that meant that the showmanship had to start. It started with the stunt casting of Sarah Palin as his running mate. My what a feminist our Johnny is! Of course, it pleased McCain's adopted by necessity base that she was against taxes, pro-drilling and pro-life! Well, I'm sure the base enjoys Sarah's endless verbatim repetition of the same stale talking points.

Out came Sarah Palin with all the beauty and superficiality of a Miss Alaska runner-up. As she cheerleaders her way around the lower 48, with her Stupid Smile and her script of tired catchphrases, has stoked up the base, some of whom wish that she'd run for the top of the ticket, instead of that tired old man hiding behind her! That brings me to the worm in this apple. The real inner insecurity of John McCain. McCain is competing against a younger, more energetic opponent called Barack Obama, not old Kankles Clinton. He is afraid that when people compare him to Obama, they will see a decrepit old man, devoid of possibities, trying to beat a younger man - who is out to change the world. This makes him desperate. And in an election that's favoring the Democrats, a desperate Republican feels rotten and mean.

And the economy continued to fail. While people and yes, mortgage and investment banks continued to gorge themselves on the high cholesterol of subprime mortgage loans, McCain said "OK" to continued deregulation of the securities market. With this bankruptcy of ideas, McCain has sought to lead his soulless party to four more years of Bush's madness. Only how to do it? His campaign, his party and his allies were going to be out organized, outspent and outproduced by Obama and the Democrats. The answer? Free publicity! How to get it? Stunts! You see, if you don't have thought one on how to change the country, you have to follow the old magician's rule of misdirecting the audience in order to scam them. Now, a magician only wishes to entertain the audience with his illusions. McCain wants to pull the Presidency out of his magic hat.

And so, in 2007, John McCain, the maverick who in 2004 opposed Bush's wartime tax cuts for the upper 1%, decided in 2007 that it just as "maverick-y" to suddenly be for them! Again regarding the Iraq War, McCain showed his convenient ambivalence. Though he wasn't against the war, he made noises like he was reluctant to go to war. The U.N. was to referee the end game, and the pitiful few troops in lraq had to be reinforced. But after the Surge, McCain was all ready to jump into the war bandwagon. Suddenly it wasn't important that we rendered the U.N. helpless, and were continuing a military adventure that was bleeding our economy. We needed "victory!" Despite that, people are still unmoved about the war, and want it to end.

McCain seemed like only one who could talk the middle class's language. After all, wasn't he the "maverick?" Didn't he always speak his mind, especially on matters of civil rights, social justice, and other things that ruffled the feathers of the party elite? And yet, he was certainly no "tax and spend" Liberal! Just a moderate Conservatlve. He even hated fundamentalist evangelicals, and had no truck with the "Culture War!" But then something happened in the 2000 elections that changed McCain. Honest John got beaten in the primaries by an upstart governor from Texas who used sleazy smear tactics and had no shame. He became the victim of smear tactics and innuendos. The lesson he took from that was: a conscience is an inconvenience to a man with high ambitions. And, in order to win the Oval Office, he had to play to the base of hls party. And so, in 2007, John McCain, the maverick who in 2004 opposed Bush's wartime tax cuts for the upper 1%, decided in 2007 that it just as "maverick-y"

And Now The Flailing Begins: Now the comedy known as the McCain / Palin campaign is in it's last stages - that of flailing about incoherently.And Now The Flailing Begins: No wait, wasn't that the condition it was in throughout the general election? It seems only a year ago that the Republicans were fighting a primary over who is best suited to beat the Democratic Opponent and keep the White House in G.O.P. hands.1 Only they were counting on the Democratic Opponent to be Hillary Clinton. What they got was Barack Obama. That plus the damaged Republican brand. And then they got John McCain. He was the best of a bad lot. All of them bear the taint of Republican misrule. Most, like Huckabee and Romney were so in the Bush tank that they almost said "Sieg Heil" Grover Norquist's tax cut pledge during their Youtube debate. Fred Thompson doddered around in a manner appropriate to his age. They played so far to the Right that you just knew that in a year when Republicans were expected t

NationALReviEW

Now the comedy known as the McCain / Palin campaign is in it's last stages - that of flailing about incoherently. No wait, wasn't that the condition it was in throughout the general election? It seems only a year ago that the Republicans were fighting a primary over who is best suited to beat the Democratic Opponent and keep the White House in G.O.P. hands.1 Only they were counting on the Democratic Opponent to be Hillary Clinton. What they got was Barack Obama. That plus the damaged Republican brand. And then they got John McCain. He was the best of a bad lot. All of them bear the taint of Republican misrule. Most, like Huckabee and Romney were so in the Bush tank that they almost said "Sieg Heil" Grover Norquist's tax cut pledge during their Youtube debate. Fred Thompson doddered around in a manner appropriate to his age. They played so far to the Right that you just knew that in a year when Republicans were expected to lose in the House and Senat

Rarely does something come along that epitomizes how I feel about many things. About the country of my ancestors, (Ukraine) and my home, the country I live in. (USA) But this poem puts it in a nutshell. About America, I feel that we here have been robbed of our birthright, as if some foreigners with no feeling for the people they conquered have invaded us! We have always been the first victims of our own imperialism. Hard working people have been the victims of those who want to plunder the country for themselves.

But how is it that I may claim that my history informs a great deal about how I feel about what is being done to this country? To answer that I must tell you how I feel about my people, their history and their present situation vis à vis Russia. Since the fall of Kievan Rus our land was overrun by conquerors. Each one of them made serfdom part of the deal, and tried to wipe out our identity. As far as the conquerors were concerned, our land was not ours, but theirs all along. A resource waiting to be exploited. And so they enriched themselves off of our misery. There were those who tried to liberate us. Bohdan Khmelnytsky was one. He freed us from Poles. But he also started us on the long road to Russian tyranny, when he needed to find an ally against new Polish incursions. Russia slowly strangled the life out of the Cossack State. Taras Shevchenko bravely raised our consciousness amid the worst of Nicholas !'s repression. Then came Stalin's Great Terror, the camps, genocidal famine. After that came Hitler's Germany to whom all Slavs were second-class slaves. And more genocide, more repression. The Soviets came back to return the "Worker's Paradise." We all jumped for joy when the U.S.S.R. collapsed of it's own rot in the end. We became independent in 1992. But Kuchma and other leftovers from the Soviet Union couldn't let the corruption go, and it was up the Orange Revolution to sweep him out of power. And now Viktor Yushchenko is trying to bring back justice to a free and independent Ukraine. The Russian threat is still there in the form of Vladimir Putin an ex-KGB who is trying to revive the U.S.S.R. He is a bully, who is squeezing the freedom of his people to death and wishes to do the same to his neighbors. And what of America in all of this? Under Clinton, Ukraine had a strong ally and a friend. Bush's America can no longer guarantee the security of Georgia, Ukraine, or any other successor state to the Soviet Union because of Iraq. The U.S. economy is hoc to China, and now things could get much worse. The tragedy is that Ukraine needs NATO presence to guarantee it's freedom! Maybe the ten vital years of American help under Clinton gave it enough strength and time so that with Obama's America as a friend it can withstand Putin's Russia and stay free this time!

SUBOTIV

by Taras Shevchenko

In the village of Subotiv

Upon a lofty hill

There stands the coffin of Ukraine

A crypt both wide and still:

It is the church of great Bohdan, 

Where once he used to pray

That Muscovite and Cossack might

Share good and ill alway.

May peace be to your soul, Bohdan!

Their gain has been our loss:

The Muscovites have snatched away

All that they came across;

And now they rend the burial mounds

In search of further loot;

Their hand assaults your hidden vaults;

They curse your soul to boot

Because they've nothing for their pains . . .

That's' how it is, Bohdan!

You've ruined derelict Ukraine

By your most friendly plan!

And this must be the gratitude

Now falling to your share . . .

The church that once had coffined you

No neighbour will repair!

That same Ukraine where long ago

You broke the Polish threat

The bastards of Great Catherine

Like locusts have beset.

And thus it is, Zenobius 

 faithful friend, 

You gave them all; but gratefulness

Is plainly at an end! '

They say, you know. that all Ukraine

Was always really theirs,

And that we only farmed it out

To all the Tartars' heirs

And to the Poles . . . . Appears it so?

Suppose it is the truth!

But on that score the neighbours' tongues

Deride us without ruth . . .

Yet do not laugh; ye foreign folk!

That church beneath the skies

May crumble down, but from it’s vaults

A new Ukraine will rise

To end the night of slavery;

Injustice will be gone;

Our serf-born sons’ glad orisons

Will greet sweet Freedom’s dawn!

from the Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko

translated by C. H. Andrusyshen

Rarely does something come along that epitomizes how I feel about many things. About the country of my ancestors, (Ukraine) and my home, the country I live in. (USA) But this poem puts it in a nutshell. About America, I feel that we here have been robbed of our birthright, as if some foreigners with no feeling for the people they conquered have invaded us! We have always been the first victims of our own imperialism. Hard working people have been the victims of those who want to plunder the country for themselves.
But how is it that I may claim that my history informs a great deal about how I feel about what is being done to this country? To answer that I must tell you how I feel about my people, their history and their present situation vis à vis Russia. Since the fall of Kievan Rus our land was overrun by conquerors. Each one of them made serfdom part of the deal, and tried to wipe out our identity. As far as the conquerors were concerned, our land was not ours, but theirs all along. A resource waiting to be exploited. And so they enriched themselves off of our misery. There were those who tried to liberate us. <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Khmelnytsky">Bohdan Khmelnytsky</a> was one. He freed us from Poles. But he also started us on the long road to Russian tyranny, when he needed to find an ally against new Polish incursions. Russia slowly strangled the life out of the Cossack State. <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Shevchenko">Taras Shevchenko</a> bravely raised our consciousness amid the worst of Nicholas !'s repression. Then came Stalin's Great Terror, the camps, genocidal famine. After that came Hitler's Germany to whom all Slavs were second-class slaves. And more genocide, more repression. The Soviets came back to return the "Worker's Paradise." We all jumped for joy when the U.S.S.R. collapsed of it's own rot in the end. We became independent in 1992. But Kuchma and other leftovers from the Soviet Union couldn't let the corruption go, and it was up the Orange Revolution to sweep him out of power. And now Viktor Yushchenko is trying to bring back justice to a free and independent Ukraine. The Russian threat is still there in the form of Vladimir Putin an ex-KGB who is trying to revive the U.S.S.R. He is a bully, who is squeezing the freedom of his people to death and wishes to do the same to his neighbors. And what of America in all of this? Under Clinton, Ukraine had a strong ally and a friend. Bush's America can no longer guarantee the security of Georgia, Ukraine, or any other successor state to the Soviet Union because of Iraq. The U.S. economy is hoc to China, and now things could get much worse. The tragedy is that Ukraine <em>needs</em> NATO presence to guarantee it's freedom! Maybe the ten vital years of American help under Clinton gave it enough strength and time so that with Obama's America as a friend it can withstand Putin's Russia and <em>stay free this time!</em> <blockquote><strong>SUBOTIV</strong> <em>By <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Shevchenko">Taras Shevchenko</a></em> In the village of <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subotiv">Subotiv</a> Upon a lofty hill There stands the coffin of Ukraine A crypt both wide and still: It is the <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Subotiv_cherch_of_Bohdan_Khmelnytsky.jpg">church</a> of great <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Khmelnytsky">Bohdan,</a> Where once he used to pray That Muscovite and Cossack might Share good and ill alway. May peace be to your soul, Bohdan! Their gain has been our loss: The Muscovites have snatched away All that they came across; And now they rend the burial mounds In search of further loot; Their hand assaults your hidden vaults; They curse your soul to boot Because they've nothing for their pains . . . That's' how it is, Bohdan! You've ruined derelict Ukraine By your most friendly plan! And this must be the gratitude Now falling to your share . . . The church that once had coffined you No neighbour will repair! That same Ukraine where long ago You broke the Polish threat The bastards of <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_The_Great">Great Catherine</a> Like locusts have beset. And thus it is, <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Chmielnicki">Zenobius</a> <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Aleksei_Mikhailovich">Alexey's</a> faithful friend, You gave them all; but gratefulness Is plainly at an end! ' They say, you know. that all Ukraine Was always really theirs, And that we only farmed it out To all the Tartars' heirs And to the Poles . . . . Appears it so? Suppose it is the truth! But on that score the neighbours' tongues Deride us without ruth . . . Yet do not laugh; ye foreign folk! That church beneath the skies May crumble down, but from it’s vaults A new Ukraine will rise To end the night of slavery; Injustice will be gone; Our serf-born sons’ glad orisons Will greet sweet Freedom’s dawn! <em>from the <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobzar_(book)">Kobzar</a> by Taras Shevchenko</em> <em>translated by <a href ="http://catalog.onlib.org/polaris/search/searchresults.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.4&type=Browse&term=Andrusyshen">C. H. Andrusyshen</a></em></blockquote>

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.

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 <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/06/clinton_claims_credit_for_child_program/">Boston Globe</a> October 6, 2007:

 

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

 

It goes on to state:

 

<blockquote>'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.'</blockquote>

 

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 <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504E7DA143FF932A2575BC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print">New York Times</a> from August 11, 2000, Littlefield again states:

 

<blockquote>'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.'</blockquote>

 

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 innacuracy. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301706.html">The Washington Post</a> says:

 

<blockquote>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.'</blockquote>

 

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:

 

<blockquote>"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." </blockquote>

 

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 <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/06/clinton_claims_credit_for_child_program/">Boston Globe</a> Sperling gives a different account:

 

<blockquote>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.'</blockquote>

 

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:

 

 

<blockquote>'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>

 

 

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!