Chelsea Clinton is pregnant

I found this story through Americablog, which reported that former president Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton is now pregnant.  And it appears that the famous Clinton First Couple, Bill and Hillary, are excited about being grandparents.

Okay.  Ho-hum.  Congratulations to Chelsea, and all the other young women who have discovered they will be expecting a package from the stork. Chelsea Clinton is married to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky. To me, this is a non-story. 

But then I went over to Talking Points Memo, and found two interesting stories.  The first is this story, where New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin speculates that Chelsea Clinton's pregnancy will become a "game changer" for the 2016 presidential election, and Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions on MSNBC's Morning Joe program.  Sorkin believes that Hillary Clinton's grandmother status will result in a "softening effect" on Hillary's political image for the 2016 presidential election--even though MSNBC reported a Fox News poll showing Hillary's approval ratings remained unchanged after the pregnancy was announced:

The gang on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" is usually game to analyze (if not set) the latest political narrative, but as Andrew Ross Sorkin proved on Friday, even that show has limits.

Following a discussion about Hillary Clinton's poll numbers, the New York Times financial columnist eagerly turned the panel's attention to the real story.

"Can we talk about the human drama that is Grandma Clinton?" Sorkin asked, referring to Chelsea Clinton's announcement that she's pregnant.

"I don't want to be cynical and I'm not suggesting anyone's having a baby for election purposes, but —" Sorkin added before being drowned out by the panel's collective groans.

And with that, Sorkin had lost the room, despite his best efforts to salvage his argument. He insisted that the pregnancy was a game changer for Hillary Clinton.

"It's gonna change the dynamic of the campaign," he said.

How exactly?

"It's a softening, there's a compassion thing," Sorkin explained. "You don't think that over the next two years on the campaign trail this is gonna be part of the narrative? Come on. That's interesting."

The other panelists did not find his observation interesting.

Here is the video via Morning Joe:



I then saw a second story on Talking Points Memo, reporting Newsmax conservative host Steve Malzberg speculating that Chelsea Clinton's pregnancy was designed as a "prop" for Hillary Clinton's upcoming 2016 presidential run:

Hillary Clinton shoe-throwing truthers, meet Hillary Clinton baby-truthers.

Newsmax host Steve Malzberg on Thursday speculated that Chelsea Clinton's pregnancy was no accident, and that Hillary Clinton's grandchild would arrive just in time to serve as a "prop" for a widely expected 2016 presidential run.

"Now pardon the skeptic in me," Malzberg said. "Oh I can see Media Matters, I can see everybody going crazy on me now. Malzberg thinks this was a staged, planned pregnancy?"

"Well, now I'm not saying, when I say staged I have to believe she's pregnant, if she says she's pregnant," he continued. "I don't mean that they're making up she's pregnant. But what great timing! I mean purely accidental, purely an act of nature, purely just left up to God."

"And God answered Hillary Clinton's prayers and she's going to have the prop of being a new grandma while she runs for president," he added. "It just warms the heart, it brings a tear to my eye. It really does."

And here is the video:

 

 Looks like the crazies are really coming out to speculate on how a young woman's pregnancy will affect the outcome of a presidential election, that is still two years away!  It is complete madness here!  I could care less if a presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, became an expecting grandparent before or during a presidential campaign.  Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin became a grandmother a year before being picked as the GOP vice presidential candidate for 2012.  Did Sarah Palin's grandmother status affect my opinion of her as a political candidate?  Not really.  Although the story of Palin's grandmother status did raise a social issue of unwed teen pregnancy.

Personally, I'm going for CNN's take on the political impact of Chelsea's pregnancy for 2016--Chill Out and Shut Up!

Republicans bring up the Ghost of Monica against Hillary Clinton

I found this Washington Monthly story rather interesting:

Sen. Rand Paul, echoed by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, think they’ve got a real game-changer in response to claims that the GOP is waging a “war on women:” bring back Monica Lewinsky! Reminding Americans of the Lewinsky scandal, you see, will not only provide a distraction from the godless liberal idea that letting women control their own reproductive systems and obtain equal pay are relevant measures of what it means to be “pro-women,” but will also cause problems for Hillary Clinton if she runs for president in 2016! Brilliant, eh?

Apparently, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told MSNBC News that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was "on the table," in attacking Hillary Clinton's potential 2016 presidential run:

Rand Paul won't stop talking about Bill Clinton's "predatory behavior," and that's quite alright with Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus.

Priebus said Monday on MSNBC that the Monica Lewinsky scandal is fair game when it comes to evaluating Hillary Clinton's potential presidential bid.

"I think everything's on the table," Priebus told Andrea Mitchell.

"I don't see how someone just gets a free pass on anything. I mean, especially in today's politics. So, I think we're going to have a truckload of opposition research on Hillary Clinton and some things may be old and some things might be new. But I think everything is at stake when you're talking about the leader of the free world and who we're going to give the keys to run the United States of America."

Hillary Clinton, Priebus added, "provides a lot of opportunity" for Republicans.

The question I would have to ask is....Why?   Why are the Republicans bringing up this old scandal?  There is no new information to be presented here.  Monica Lewinsky did not sleep with Hillary--Monica Lewinsky slept with former President Bill Clinton, and she was a fully grown adult when she had her affair with Bill Clinton.  We all know that former President Bill Clinton lied about the affair, and that he went through the House impeachment process, the Senate trial, and his eventual acquittal.  There is nothing new here.  As for Hillary and Bill's marriage in the aftermath of the scandal, they have patched up whatever they had to and are still a powerful Washington DC couple.  I doubt the Republicans are going to sway women voters in attacking Hillary for her husband's infidelity--if anything, the women voters may just sympathize with Hillary and provide her with more votes.  Are the Republicans trying to rile up their own base? 

You mean to tell me the GOP base can't be riled up enough with a black, Kenyan-born, Marxist, socialist, dictator now sitting in the White House?

So the GOP is bringing up a tired, old scandal.  The only reason I can think of is that the Republican Party has shifted so rightward into Crazyland, that they have no coherent, working policies to help solve the problems of this nation.  Tax cuts to the rich and big corporations, when there is a huge inequality gap between the rich and everyone else, and corporate profits are still rising in this recession?  They have refused to compromise on any legislation with the Democrats--unless "compromise" is defined as the Democrats rolling over and giving the Republicans everything they want (And the Democrats have rolled over numerous times).  The Republicans have engaged in hostage taking on the government shutdown.  The Republicans have voted against unemployment insurance.  The list goes on. If the Republicans have no coherent policies to present to the table and refuse to compromise on any legislation, then what do they have left to sell to the voters?

So the Republicans turn to hate.  And who better to hate, than Hillary Clinton and her potential 2016 presidential campaign.  Time to ramp up the "vast, right-wing conspiracy!"

MSNBC: Gingrich admits having an affair in Clinton era

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday, March 3, 2007 in Washington. Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, FILE)

I just love Republican hypocrisy. This is off MSNBC News:

WASHINGTON - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

So while Newt was busily pushing the impeachment process on President Clinton for lying about his own affair with Monica Lewinsky, Gingrich was also happily enjoying a little extramarital-curricular activities--hey, impeaching a sitting president is hard work! I'll admit that the irony here is just incredible. But I can also accept that people can do some really stupid things here. That is what makes us human. And Newt Gingrich did a really stupid thing in having an extramarital affair while he was impeaching President Clinton for lying about having an extramarital affair.

But that is not what is so incredible about this story. Continuing with the MSNBC story:

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. "I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials."

This is just outrageous! Newt Gingrich should not be viewed as a hypocrite for impeaching President Clinton on lying about having a sexual affair, when Gingrich himself was having his own sexual affair, because Clinton had lied to a federal judge about the affair. Gingrich was "not rendering judgment on another human being," but rather judging Clinton as a government official. Talk about hypocrisy here! The reason Clinton ended up lying about his sexual relations was because of the endless Republican investigations during his presidency. The Republicans wanted to take down Clinton in any way they could. They started the endless investigations into Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, and even the Vince Foster suicide. It was only after Monica Lewinsky started talking to Linda Tripp about her affair with Clinton, that this whole mess ended up into Ken Starr's lap. And the Republicans had their smoking gun to not only smear Clinton with the Starr Report, but also to embark on removing Clinton through impeachment. Excuse me Newt, but you were so bent on taking down President Clinton, that you, and your GOP ilk, would submerge yourselves into the slime of investigating Clinton's personal affairs. You could not accept the fact that Bill Clinton was a successful Democratic president. You had to find a way to remove Clinton. Even better yet, if you could have forced Clinton out on impeachment, then Vice President Al Gore would become president and be under tremendous pressure to pardon Clinton--something you could then use as a means to impeach Gore, and make the Speaker of the House president. And that Speaker of the House would have been you Mr. Gingrich. Was that your political plan?

Either way, it was all old news. What is new here is the resurfacing of your own hypocrisy regarding the Clinton impeachment proceedings. I could care less if you, Mr. Gingrich, had one affair, or a thousand affairs while you were Speaker of the House during the Clinton years, and even when you were embarking on the impeachment proceedings against Clinton. That is politics. But don't give me this bull crap about how you were correct in impeaching Clinton because he lied about having sex without looking down into your own, stained pants. You, and the entire Republican right-wing conspiracy could have ended the Starr investigation without looking into Bill Clinton's pants. But you didn't. You could have ended the Clinton sex scandal with the publication of the Starr Report, and even a censure of the president. But you didn't. You wanted to remove Clinton from office. You are just as responsible for creating this sordid mess as Clinton was in engaging in such behavior.

Mr. Gingrich--You are a hypocrite!

Bush Faults Clinton Policy, But the Debate is Complex

Here we go again--Let's blame Bill Clinton! This is from The Washington Post:

President Bush asserted yesterday that the administration's strategy on North Korea is superior to the one pursued by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, because Clinton reached a bilateral agreement that failed, while the current administration is trying to end North Korea's nuclear programs through multi-nation talks.

"In order to solve this diplomatically, the United States and our partners must have a strong diplomatic hand," Bush said at a news conference. "And you have a better diplomatic hand with others, sending the message, than you do when you're alone."

I guess Bill Clinton is to be blamed for North Korea's testing of its nuclear weapon. And the Bush administration had nothing to do with this. But now look at what else the WaPost reports:

Bush's current policy, in fact, envisions direct, bilateral negotiations with North Korea on certain issues in the six-nation talks, such as missile proliferation and normalizing relations. That commitment to direct talks is enshrined in the agreement of principles guiding future negotiations that was reached in Beijing in September 2005. Indeed, Rice was prepared to authorize her chief negotiator to travel to Pyongyang in November 2005, provided that North Korea shut down its nuclear reactor as a sign of good faith. It refused that condition, and the trip was scrubbed.

By the same token, it is not fully accurate to describe the negotiations that led to a 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea as purely the result of one-on-one negotiations. During talks that produced the Agreed Framework, in which North Korea said it would freeze its nuclear program, U.S. negotiators briefed Japanese and South Korean officials every day. South Korea and Japan agreed to bankroll much of the cost of the light-water reactors that were to be provided to North Korea under the deal.

Robert L. Gallucci, the chief negotiator of the accord and now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said it is a "ludicrous thing" to say that the Clinton agreement failed. For eight years, the Agreed Framework kept North Korea's five-megawatt plutonium reactor frozen and under international inspection, while North Korea did not build planned 50- and 200-megawatt reactors. If those reactors had been built and running, he said, North Korea would now have enough plutonium for more than 100 nuclear weapons.

By Gallucci's account, North Korea may have produced a small amount of plutonium for one or two weapons before Clinton came into office -- during the administration of Bush's father -- but "no more material was created on his watch." When Clinton left office, officials saw signs that North Korea may have been attempting to create a clandestine uranium enrichment program, but nothing was definitive.

Such a program would violate the Agreed Framework. When the Bush administration decided it had conclusive proof of that enrichment in July 2002, it confronted North Korea and terminated fuel oil deliveries promised under the Agreed Framework. In response, North Korea evicted the inspectors, restarted the reactor and retrieved weapons-grade plutonium from 8,000 fuel rods that had been kept in a cooling pond. Intelligence analysts now think that, before Monday's apparent nuclear test, North Korea had enough plutonium for as many as a dozen weapons.

So Clinton's Agreed Framework had kept North Korea's plutonium program pretty much frozen for eight years. And while there were reports of North Korea cheating on the framework by enriching uranium, there was no conclusive proof. The program worked. Now the Bush administration comes into office and what do they do? They confront the North Koreans, terminating fuel oil deliveries as promised under the Agreed Framework. The North Koreans kick out the inspectors and restart their nuclear weapons production program. And for four years they have been happily producing plutonium for their new weapons stockpile.

The Bush administration calls former President Clinton's Agreed Framework agreement a failure? President Bush calls his own confrontational policy on North Korea a success?

But now check this little bit of information from the Post:

Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pressed China to host three-way discussions because it was clear that Bush was opposed to direct talks, according to the new book "Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell," by Washington Post Associate Editor Karen DeYoung. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld adamantly opposed any dialogue, arguing in a series of memos that the goal should be the collapse of North Korea's government, the book says.

Now this is interesting. Rumsfeld opposed any dialogue because he believes that the Bush administration's goal should be the collapse of North Korea's government. I wonder if this type of thinking is prevalent throughout the Bush administration.

Of course, the tie-in between Rumsfeld’s desire to force a collapse of the North Korean government and the Bush administration’s confrontational-style policies against North Korea fits nicely together. If you want to force the North Korean government to fall, the last thing you would want is to provide North Korea with economic aid in exchange for the North Koreans promise not to continue their plutonium production program. You force a confrontation, break the Agreed Framework, and impose your worthless economic embargo against the North Koreans—who, of course, go back to building their bomb.

When will the neocons learn? We've tried to isolate and economically blockade both North Korea and Cuba for decades, hoping to cause both of these nations' governments to collapse. I don't see either government falling for a long while.

This is a complete mess.

Keith Olbermann rips into Bush again

Keith Olbermann had another Special Commentary in his MSNBC news show Countdown with Keith Olbermann. He rips into President Bush and the neocon's--and especially Fox News'--desire to blame President Clinton for the September 11th terrorist attacks. Another devastating commentary.

Crooks and Liars has the video stream of Olbermann's Special Commentary here.

And here is YouTube's link:



I'm just going to post this special commentary in its entirety here:

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong.

It is not essential that a past president, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.

Nonetheless. The headline is this:

Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.

He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration did not try.

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs—some of them, 17 years old—before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for—if not the Great Depression itself—then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War—though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this president.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 -- or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the executive.

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except for this.

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts—that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: the very weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is—not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it.

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired—but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for “e-mailing” you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth untold about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist, and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11." Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it—who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews—have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for bin Laden in 1998 because of the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on Aug. 20, of that year? For mentioning bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri—the future attorney general—echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been “distracted” by the Lewinsky witch-hunt, who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?

Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them in order to strangle us with the trivia that was, “All Monica All The Time”?

Who distracted whom?

This is, of course, where—as is inevitable—Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton, but by the same people who got you elected President.

Thus, instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it, we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently read the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus, instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since—a statement that might range anywhere from zero, to 100 percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush, you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous president to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be a textbook definition, Mr. Bush, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair—writing as George Orwell—gave us in the book “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power...

"Power is not a means; it is an end.

"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

"We must disenthrall ourselves."

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence.

He might well have.

"We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date, to save our country.

The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush.

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us—then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.

And there it is, Mr. Bush:

Are yours the actions of a true American?