Hat tip: AdClassix
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
When cigarette ads were legal
Hat tip: AdClassix
Good day?
Hope Floats
...Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the voters of South Carolina may have personally tolled the death knell for the Clintons’ reprehensible politics of personal destruction...
Remember how the Clintonites released Linda Tripp’s confidential employment files to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker after Clinton hit man Harold Ickes met with Tripp’s boss? Years later, the Department of Defense settled a lawsuit with Tripp for over $600,000 for invading her privacy. And then there were the stories branding Monica Lewinsky as a ‘stalker’ who was trying to hurt the president? Those were traced back to Sidney Blumenethal, a Clinton White House adviser, and the author of the right wing conspiracy theory that Hillary so loves. Of course, then it turned out that this ‘stalker’ had been called by the President from the White House hundreds of time and invited into the Oval Office for sex in the private kitchen. Then there was Gennifer Flowers –smeared by George Stephanopoulos and James Carville as a liar and opportunist. Eventually, Bill Clinton admitted under oath that he, in fact, had a sexual relationship with Flowers... And none of these folks have ever apologized for their as the brass knuckles enforcers of the Clintons.
Now the voters of South Carolina and the Kennedys have stepped forward and openly challenged the tawdry Clinton politics of personal destruction, their hit job on Obama, their use of the race card, their claims of dynastic privilege...
And Ted Kennedy, in his lofty endorsement of Obama, served notice on the Clintons that the days of their politics of personal destruction are over...
Apparently Senator Kennedy called the Clintons last week and demanded an immediate end to their transparent racial politics and attempts to destroy Obama. They ignored him. After the polls closed, Bill Clinton’s surly and irrelevant reference to Jesse Jackson’s showing in South Carolina twenty years ago was meant to diminish Obama’s victory. But the press and the public – and apparently Senator Kennedy – caught the unattractive performance on YouTube.
Hat tip: AdClassix. With apologies to the original National Lampoon.
The "Smart" Car
Est. Cost: $12,000 to $24,000, depending upon options
Mileage: city 33 mpg, highway 40 mpg
Base warranty: two years or 24,000 miles.
Est. Cost: $11,300 to $18,000, depending upon options
Mileage: city 29 mpg, highway 36 mpg
Base warranty: three years or 36,000 miles (drivetrain 5 years or 60,000 miles).
So, which car is the "smart" car?
Monday, January 28, 2008
Eerie Portents
This is all happening as we speak. We can only expect more of the same as climate change continues to transform the Earth.
Al Gore explains.
New evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us," the former US vice president and climate campaigner told delegates at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos......the North Pole ice cap may disappear entirely during summer months in as little as five years, Gore said."This is a planetary emergency. There has never been anything remotely like it in the entire history of human civilisation. We are putting at risk all of human civilisation," he added.
As if to reinforce the point, Al Gore announced a once-in-a-lifetime carbon offset sale. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to pollute guilt-free.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Hillary Clinton by the Numbers
0: the number of questions that Hillary answers during a typical campaign appearance.
18: the number of months that Bill Clinton carried on an affair in the White House without Hillary's knowledge, despite the claim that she is "the smartest person" he knows.
30: the number of times Hillary Clinton's new HillaryCare plan refers to "Americans" as opposed to the number of times the plan references "citizens" (zero), even though approximately 10.2 million uninsured Americans are believed to be illegal aliens.
32: the number of times Hillary Clinton sponsored, cosponsored or voted for legislation providing amnesty or rewarding aliens for illegally entering the United States.
41: the number of Clinton friends, colleagues, business associates, and relatives convicted of crimes through January 2001.
100: the number of redacted pages in the Cox Report, which revealed a massive espionage campaign conducted by the Chinese government under the Clinton administration's watch. One major aspect of the operation related to the apparent swap of sensitive ballistic missile technology to China in exchange for campaign donations to the Democratic National Committee.
120: the number of redacted pages in the Barrett Report, which describes the "effort by Clinton administration officials to first block and then limit the probe as a way of taking pressure off an administration that was already beset by scandals" in the case of disgraced former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros.
250: the number of times Hillary said she didn't know, didn't remember, couldn't recall, etc. over the course of multiple investigations.
900: the number of secret FBI files illegally gathered by Bill and Hillary Clinton in an effort to discredit the women who had charged President Clinton with sexual misconduct. Courts found that the privacy of Linda Tripp and Kathleen Willey had been violated: "when faced with discovery, the Clinton-Gore White Housecompounded their legal troubles by launching a cover-up and failing to turn over documents as required by subpoena... Judicial Watch was able to link Mrs. Clinton directly to the center of the Filegate controversy."
100,000: the approximate amount Hillary Clinton made in cattle futures commodity trading in 1978, although her account was underfunded by $11,000 of the required $12,000 investment in what some believe was an exchange for favorable treatment of Tyson Foods by the Bill Clinton administration ("In return, as reported in The New York Times Magazine, [Tyson] expected the new governor to raise the legal truck-weight limit in Arkansas so that Tyson Foods could compete with out-of-state poultry truckers").
113,000: the number of donors to the $165 million Clinton Library, for which the Clintons have not released information. Investigations by the Washington Post and New York Times have revealed a substantial number of foreign donors (e.g., Saudi and Chinese) that also contributed to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
200,000: the amount of a falsified invoice that Hillary's 2000 Senate campaign presented to the Federal Election Commission, which led to her finance director's indictment. The rancor around the Peter Paul celebrity fundraising event is simply one small piece of what some have called "the largest election law fraud in history."
850,000: the amount given to Hillary Clinton and Democratic campaigns by jailed fugitive Norman Hsu.
1,450,000: the approximate amount given to the Clintons and/or Democratic causes by Denise Rich, wife of fugitive Marc Rich, in an apparent exchange for a Presidential pardon.
3,022,030: the number of HillaryCare documents from 1993-1995 that have not been released, despite repeated promises to do so.
7,000,000: the approximate annual budget of the White House travel office, which was replaced after decades of service by the Clinton administration: "First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton... came under scrutiny for allegedly having played a central role in the firings and making false statements about her role in it... In 2000, Independent Counsel Robert Ray [stated that] Hillary Clinton had made factually false statements but saying there was insufficient evidence to prosecute her."
50,000,000: the approximate high range of Hillary Clinton's net worth as of 2005, an increase from a high range of $3.8 million in 2003 (an approximate gain of 14,000% in two years).
Update: Linked by The Anchoress, Grouchy Old Cripple, The Jawa Report, Parkway Rest Stop, and Stop Her Now!. Thanks!
Someone pinch me, Frank Rich won my Line o' the Day award
Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times ("The Billary Road to Republican Victory"):
Asked by Tim Russert at a September debate whether the Clinton presidential library and foundation would disclose the identities of its donors during the campaign, Mrs. Clinton said it wasn’t up to her. “What’s your recommendation?” Mr. Russert countered. Mrs. Clinton replied: “Well, I don’t talk about my private conversations with my husband, but I’m sure he’d be happy to consider that.”
Not so happy, as it turns out. The names still have not been made public.
Just before the holidays, investigative reporters at both The Washington Post and The New York Times tried to find out why, with no help from the Clintons. The Post uncovered a plethora of foreign contributors, led by Saudi Arabia. The Times found an overlap between library benefactors and Hillary Clinton campaign donors, some of whom might have an agenda with a new Clinton administration. (Much as one early library supporter, Marc Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had an agenda with the last one.) “The vast scale of these secret fund-raising operations presents enormous opportunities for abuse,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat whose legislation to force disclosure passed overwhelmingly in the House but remains stalled in the Senate.
...When Mrs. Clinton was asked by Mr. Russert at an October debate if she would [allow the HillaryCare records to be relelased], she again escaped by passing the buck to her husband... The credibility of a major Clinton campaign plank, health care, depends on it. In that same debate, Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Russert that “all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care” are “already available.” As Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported weeks later, this is a bit off; he found that 3,022,030 health care documents were still held hostage...
Update: The runner-up for my Line o' the Day is from Small Dead Animals:
...the one question no interviewer has yet had the courage to ask of Hillary - What will you do, as President, if there is another bimbo eruption in the White House?
Victory becomes her
Hillary in New Hampshire, courtesy of the world's dominant undead blogger.
I'm also trying to find pictures of her after the debacle in South Carolina on Saturday, but so far I'm drawing blanks. This would help me contrast the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of political competition!
But I don't think she likes to have her picture taken after brutal defeats.
Sunday Morning Linkfest
• The London Daily Telegraph reports that socialized medicine is working swimmingly well in the U.K. Except that "Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives."
Since "most [say] the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone," they're recommending that those pesky smokers, drinkers, overweight and elderly patients simply lie down and die in the streets.
• The Sunday Express reveals that an overwhelming majority of Britons fear the Militant Quakers in their midst.
• Susan Taylor Martin examines the sometimes explosive mixture of research and religion.
• Tim Blair marshals the meteorologists at Sundance. Maybe these Doctors' efforts will help those suffering from Global Warming Dementia.
The Saudi investments in Bill and Hillary Clinton
Democratic Underground certainly comes in handy from time to time. This post, which describes the Clintons' eight-figure ties to the Saudis, deserves investigation.
...when we learn that the Saudis were... 'donating' to the Clintons, we need to ask ourselves, how much... and what did they get in return?Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia, according to interviews yesterday.
The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million... according to people directly familiar with the contributions...
...it is worth pointing out, as Craig Unger does in his book, that Saudi Arabia has not just contributed to the Bush family. According to Unger, Bill Clinton approached Prince Bandar in 1991 for $20 million to launch a Middle East studies program at the University of Arkansas and that Prince Bandar announced that the request was approved shortly before Bill Clinton won the presidential election...
...There may be some irony in that, by Unger's own account, Saudi Arabia has contributed eight times as much to Bill Clinton's charities than to George H.W. Bush's"... So what did the Saudis get in return ? ...Did the Clintons think that the money was 'no strings attached'? ...of course not... the favors would start to roll...
The Clinton administration shut down a 1995 investigation of Islamic charities, concerned that a public probe would expose Saudi Arabia's suspected ties to a global money-laundering operation that raised millions for anti-Israel terrorists, federal officials told The Washington Times... If federal agents had been allowed to conduct the investigation they wanted in 1995, they would have made the connection between the Saudi government and those charities," said Mr. Loftus, now a St. Petersburg, Fla., lawyer who filed a lawsuit last week accusing a Florida charity of fraud...
"Had the charities been shut down, they would have been unable to raise the millions that since have been used by terrorists in hundreds of suicide attacks," he said...Following the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, Clinton hunted Osama with a passion -- but a passion circumscribed by the desire to protect the sheikdom sitting atop our oil lifeline. In 1994, a Saudi diplomat defected to the United States with 14,000 pages of documents from the kingdom's sealed file cabinets. This mother lode of intelligence included evidence of plans for the assassination of Saudi opponents living in the West and, tantalizingly, details of the $7 billion the Saudis gave to Saddam Hussein for his nuclear program -- the first attempt to build an Islamic Bomb...
The Saudi government, according to the defector, Mohammed Al Khilewi, slipped Saddam the nuclear loot [...thinking...] he would only use the bomb to vaporize Iranians... Clinton granted the Saudi defector asylum, but barred the FBI from looking at the documents.
Al Khilewi's New York lawyer, Michael Wildes, told me he was stunned. Wildes handles some of America's most security-sensitive asylum cases. "We said to the FBI, 'Here, take the documents! Go get some bad guys with them! We'll even pay for the photocopying!'" But the agents who came to his office had been ordered not to accept evidence of Saudi criminal activity, even on U.S. soil.
In 1997, the Canadians caught and extradited to America one of the Khobar Towers attackers. In 1999, Vernon Jordan's law firm stepped in and -- poof! -- the killer was shipped back to Saudi Arabia before he could reveal all he knew about al Qaeda (valuable) and the Saudis (embarrassing). I reviewed, but was not permitted to take notes on, the alleged terrorist's debriefing by the FBI. To my admittedly inexpert eyes, there was enough on al Qaeda to make him a source on terrorists worth holding on to. Not that he was set free -- he's in one of the kingdom's dungeons -- but his info is sealed up with him. The terrorist's extradition was "Clinton's." "Clinton's parting kiss to the Saudis," as one insider put it...
It certainly begs the question: Why have the Saudis invested in Bill and Hillary Clinton?
And why are the Clintons withholding their Library's list of donors?
Saturday, January 26, 2008
History's Most Disturbing Ads
Major hat tips: AdClassix, Eatliver and Frozentoy's Disturbing Vintage Ads
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