Pillory Hillary

Politics and religion
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Two biographys of Hillary are coming out - if they are as bad for Hill as the Washington Post article paints them…I might have to buy them.

Some highlights -

“A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” by Carl Bernstein, reports that Clinton as first lady was terrified she would be prosecuted, took over her own legal and political defense, and decided not to be forthcoming with investigators because she was convinced she was unfairly targeted. While in Arkansas, according to Bernstein, she personally interviewed one woman alleged to have had an affair with her husband, contemplated divorce and thought about running for governor out of anger at her husband’s indiscretions.

“Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., reports that during her husband’s 1992 campaign, a team she oversaw hired a private investigator to undermine Gennifer Flowers “until she is destroyed.” Flowers had said publicly that she had an affair with Bill Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas.

The book also suggests that Hillary Clinton did not read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in 2002 before voting to authorize war. And it includes a thirdhand report that the Clintons had a secret plan after the 1992 election in which he would have eight years as president and then she would have eight years, although last night a key source disavowed the story.

In the works for eight years, Bernstein’s 640-page book is the more extensive biography and, while not unsympathetic, includes some damning observations from people once close to the senator.

Bob Boorstin, who worked for Clinton when she was pushing her plan to restructure the nation’s health-care system in the early days of her husband’s presidency, blamed her for its collapse. “I find her to be among the most self-righteous people I’ve ever known in my life,” he told Bernstein. “And it’s her great flaw, it’s what killed health care,” along with other factors.

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More Highlights -

Featuring Bill being Bill -

The women who also figured in Bill Clinton’s life in Arkansas make a return appearance in the book, most notably Marilyn Jo Jenkins, a power company executive he fell in love with and almost left his wife over, according to Bernstein. Jenkins has been linked to Clinton before – she was spirited into the governor’s mansion at 5:15 a.m. for a final, furtive meeting with him the day he left for Washington to assume the presidency – but Bernstein’s account makes clear her pivotal role.

Bill Clinton wanted to divorce his wife to be with Jenkins in 1989, Bernstein reports, but Hillary Clinton refused. “There are worse things than infidelity,” she told Betsey Wright, the governor’s chief of staff. The crisis frayed Wright’s relationship with Bill Clinton too, and she told Bernstein that she arranged for the two of them, Wright and Clinton, to see a therapist together.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, turned to her best friend, Diane Blair, obliquely raising the prospect of divorce during a long walk. “She was thinking that they had not made much money,” Blair told Bernstein before her death in 2000, and she was concerned about her daughter. “Chelsea was there now. What if she were on her own? She didn’t own a house. She was concerned that if she were to become a single parent, how would she make it work in a way that would be good for Chelsea.”

The Clintons stayed together, but out of “anger and hurt” she considered running for governor in 1990, when he presumably would step down to prepare his 1992 presidential campaign. The idea ended after consultant Dick Morris conducted two polls showing she had no independent identity with Arkansas voters and compared her to George Wallace’s wife, who ran to succeed him in Alabama – an analogy that offended her.

By the time Bill Clinton was running for president, Hillary Clinton suggested to Blair that victory would be good for the marriage because her husband’s sexual compulsions would be tempered by the White House and the ever-present press corps, Bernstein reports – a flawed assumption, as it would turn out.

In Bernstein’s account, both Clintons went to great lengths to keep the lid on his infidelities. At the behest of Wright and Hillary Clinton, two partners with Hillary Clinton at the Rose Law Firm, Webster L. Hubbell and Vincent W. Foster Jr., were hired to represent women named in a lawsuit as having secret affairs with the governor. Hubbell and Foster questioned the women, then obtained signed statements that they never had sex with Bill Clinton. On one occasion, Bernstein reports, Hillary Clinton was present for the questioning.

Bernstein also reports that Bill Clinton, with Morris’s help, pressured Wright to issue a false statement denying comments she had made to David Maraniss, a Post reporter, for his book “First in His Class,” in which she said Arkansas state troopers had procured women for the governor.

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Something that should be remembered is that books like this have almost no editing and no fact checking. So you should take their big revelations with a grain of salt.

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And…

The book looks in detail at Hillary Clinton’s Senate vote in support of the Iraq war, suggesting she may have been motivated by a desire to not abandon her husband’s tough-on-Iraq policy and a need “to prove that she was tough enough” as a woman. But Gerth and Van Natta suggest that she did not read the National Intelligence Estimate, which included caveats and dissents about reports of Iraq’s weapons program.

Reines, Clinton’s Senate spokesman, seemed to confirm last night that she did not read the NIE, saying by e-mail that she was “briefed multiple times by several members of the administration on their intelligence regarding Iraq, including being briefed on the NIE.”

Gerth and Van Natta portray Clinton as fixated on secrecy and loyalty. She has used her Washington house as a staging ground for her presidential campaign, holding strategy meetings and fundraisers under strict confidentiality. “Visitors are asked to check their bags, cameras and cell phones at the door, pictures are taken by an authorized photographer,” they write.

The authors assert that Clinton did not properly file paperwork with the Senate ethics committee to document many congressional fellows borrowed from universities to beef up her expertise on various issues. The ethics committee therefore could not determine if the free service, underwritten by university funds, created any conflicts, Gerth and Van Natta write.

The book portrays Clinton as constantly seeking the spotlight, pushing her way into Senate discussions without invitation. As Senate Democrats were wrestling with their approach to the Iraq war in mid-2006, for example, Clinton is described as inserting her name into a piece of legislation calling for a phased redeployment of U.S. troops. Although she was not originally a co-sponsor of the bill, she said she was, and after storming the floor of the Senate before her turn, she shifted her rationale for her original war vote, the authors write. Her behavior amazed Senate colleagues, they write.

As part of her presidential ambitions, they write, the Clintons plotted to steal some of the thunder of former vice president Al Gore on climate change, creating tension between the onetime partners. They recount how Bill Clinton filmed ads for a California ballot initiative that overshadowed a Gore ad.

Good times…good times.

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I’d advise reading the whole article (you have to sign up but its free) -

Unlike many harsh books about Clinton written by ideological enemies, the two new volumes come from long-established writers backed by major publishing houses and could be harder to dismiss. Bernstein won national fame with partner Bob Woodward at The Post for breaking open the Watergate scandal, while Gerth and Van Natta have spent years as investigative reporters for the New York Times.

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I can’t believe the whole tone of these books can be as negative as the Post’s article paints them (Bernstein’s book is 600+ pages!), I’m sure they are just pulling the worst anecdotes. It looks like Hillary pissed off someone at the Post.

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I’m not saying those guys don’t have credibility - just that they should be taken with a grain of salt.

also yeah Post has a huge hardon for Hillary it seems.

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How is any of this remarkable in any way? These excerpts paint her as a self-absorbed, cynical, egomaniacal cunt–which is exactly what she is.

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wow, just when I thought i had no sympathy for Hill, bags comes along and evokes some. Nice.

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A couple of things about books like these (not just Hillary either)…

Where were these books at the times when they were actually relevent to the subject matter?

Why do they only come out at times when somebody is making the headlines?

Why do most of these tell all books only deal with the Clintons? No other boogeyman to go after?

Personally, I just don’t buy it. If this book came out in 2000 (or even 2004 when Hillary wasn’t running for pres) it might have some weight. However it comes out in 2007, at the time Hillary is running, it just screams “lets fuck with her” and has really no merit.

It might has well been Hannity or Coulter writing it.

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(Its two books)

If I were writing a book on Hillary this is when I’d put it out. Its called maximizing sales. Everyone knew she was going to run in '08, I’m sure something would have come out in '04 if she would have run.

Why do most of these tell all books only deal with the Clintons? No other boogeyman to go after?

Are you high? Every prominant politician gets this treatment. Maybe you’ve heard of Kitty Kelly? 'Sides, Bill was the POTUS and Hill wants to be. Fair game.

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Remember: nice but young college girls are vapid degenerates; it’s no surprise that a controversial politically-powerful woman like HRC is a cynical egomaniacal cunt.

Audience analysis, BlueJ. Consider the source of everything. :)

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You feel the same way about All the President’s Men, I take it?

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Carl Bernstein?

flips hair

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Alright, geez, I’m persuaded. Hillary '08! Now stop trying to impress us all with how much more ballsy she is than the men in the race.

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Oooh, you sure got me Kyle! ROLLEYES

I didn’t say that all revelations in books are necessarily false. I said that they should be taken with a grain of salt.

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Extrabags is a vapid degenerate young college girl? I just thought he was a cunt. My bad.

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This isn’t Scientology Smokey, there are rules.

Anyways, big ups to Bill Clinton for l-i-v-i-n in the shadow of an ice queen who bakes shitty cookies.

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Crestwood, N.Y. : Good morning Jonathan! You’re one of the few honest ones left! (I’ll leave that mysterious.) In today’s Washington Post article about two critical Clinton books being rushed out to publication, Mr. Solomon states that Jeff Gertz is an “objective” source that the Clinton campaign will have difficulty brushing off. Gertz is the questionable character who almost single-handedly flacked the Whitewater farce for years in the New York Times. Sort of a domestic Judith Miller. I’m for Richardson, not Clinton, but this is just silly. Are the Clinton Rules being rolled out again?

Jonathan Weisman: Yiu may have noticed today’s story in the Post gave a lot more ink to our alumnus, Carl Bernstein. Jeff Gertz is a tough reporter, and he has taken quite a few shots at Republicans too. But I tend to agree that his early Whitewater stories have been pretty discredited.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/05/21/DI2007052101176.html

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Not saying that politicians aren’t fair game, but if you ever listen to Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, Hitchcock, or any other right leaning individual, everything from world hunger to Katrina to Iraq to the price of tea in China can be related to the Clinton administration. So yeah, to the audience those books (notice I said BOOKS) cater too, Clintons are the boogeymen.