Reflections From a Murky Pond

According to a report from the LA Times, since becoming New York’s junior Senator in 2001, Hillary Clinton has provided $500 million of earmarks that have specifically benefited 59 corporations. Approximately 64% of those corporations have provided funds to her campaigns through donations made by employees, executives, board members or lobbyists. Since Clinton arrived in the Senate, she has collected in excess of $1 million from earmark beneficiaries and their associates.

Clinton’s staff has maintained that she used the earmark privilege effectively for her constituents and denied any connection between her legislative action and campaign contributions.

In total Clinton has earmarked more than $2.3 billion in federal appropriations for projects in New York since her election to the Senate, much of it for public works projects funded in conjunction with fellow Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer and others in the New York congressional delegation.

Read more from the source article.

As the Democratic primary race heats up one issue seems to be coming to forefront – Who of the candidates would do more to provide health coverage for the uninsured? Clinton and Obama have been engaged in aggressive arguments about the merits of their respective plans. Edwards, who released his healthcare plan has now entered the fray. But beyond the rhetoric which candidate has the better healthcare plan for the US?

All three of the major players – Clinton, Edwards and Obama – in the race for the Democratic nomination have sweeping plans for healthcare reform. All three candidates have based their proposed reforms on universal health insurance coverage for Americans. The primary difference between the plans is that both Clinton and Edwards intend to mandate by law that every American purchase and maintain health insurance policies, while Obama would only mandate that children must be covered by law.

The other key elements of their respective healthcare plans are quite similar. Each includes government subsidies to help lower-income and even middle-income families pay health insurance premiums, and various proposals to cut the cost of health care. All three candidates say they intend to pay for their healthcare plans by rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts for upper-income earners and by creating costs savings in health spending through various measures.

That’s right, all three plans are based on universal health insurance coverage, not on some form of government healthcare infrastructure. So be assured that great pains will be taken to ensure that the $500 billion per year health insurance industry gets their share of the candidates’ proposed $100+ billion per year plans.

So it appears that the major difference between the candidates’ plans, and the cause of the increasingly vicious argument between Clinton and Obama that Edwards is now weighing in on, is the fact that Obama does not wish to mandate via federal law that every American purchase health insurance. Obama only wants the government to force the US people to purchase health insurance for their children.

I don’t think we should start by giving up on 15 million Americans. That’s why my health care plan covers everyone.

— Sen. Hillary Clinton

And who are these 15 million Americans? These are the estimated 15 million Americans who would voluntarily choose not to purchase health insurance even though they could do so. Both Hillary and Edwards have a severe problem with the idea that American’s might exercise their right to choose not to insure themselves.

At what point did Americans lose the right of self determination? Is the US at the point where The People are willing to be forced to do something that may be in their own best interests, but is assuredly in the best interests of the healthcare industry?

During the CNN/YouTube Republican Debate on November 28th, 2007, Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee wittily responded to a question asking if he would endorse more money would be put into the nation’s space exploration program. The Republican presidential candidate outlined one very special plan he’d consider for NASA’s exploration of space.

“(Sic)…Maybe Hillary can be on the first rocket to Mars,”

— Mike Huckabee,
CNN/YouTube Republican Debate, Question #29

This sounds like a very good idea to me, though the negative effects Hillary might have if Mars does turn out to have life on it worry me a bit. She’s a bit too much like Marvin the Martian and no where’s near enough like Thuvia or Dejah Thoris for my comfort or titulation.

All joking aside, Mr. Huckabee seemed sincere about advancing the space program and cited many of the practical advances in materials, technology and medicine that have resulted from our effort to date.

Source: CNN’s Adam P. Levy

Senator Hillary Clinton with the apparent collusion of CNN managed to get one her campaign staffers insinuated into the November 28, 2007 The CNN/YouTube Republican Debate. Brigadier General (Ret) Keith Kerr, a member of Hillary’s LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee, was allowed by CNN to pose questions regarding homosexuals in the US military to the Republican candidates without it ever being declared that he was a member of a Democratic candidate’s political engine.

You can say one thing about Sen. Clinton – she has a brutally firm grasp of realpolitiks. It just has to take balls of solid brass to infiltrate one the opposition’s debates. I seriously doubt than anyone since Pres. Richard Nixon has had the unmitigated gall and temerity to interfere with the US Presidential Campaign and the operation of the Press and Media to this overt degree.

Huzzah Hillary! Huzzah! Only the Dread Lord Cthulhu has more tentacles than thou!

Clinton’s campaign spokesman Phil Singer has of course denied that her campaign had any knowledge ahead of time that Kerr was going to participate in the debate, and Kerr said he did not inform the campaign of his plans. Much as President Ronald Reagan “couldn’t recollect” and Colonel Oliver North never informed the Oval Office about anything involving the Iran-Contra affair.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the debate and panel moderator for the CNN/YouTube Republican Debate, also denied having any prior knowledge of Gen. Kerr’s political ties to Clinton. Mr. Cooper claims that CNN did not know that Gen. Kerr held a position within the Clinton presidential campaign and that had they known, CNN would have either disclosed the association prior to allowing Ge. Kerr to speak or would have not used Kerr’s question at all.

Hmm…Out magazine recently ranked Cooper as the 2nd most powerful homosexual in America and Gen. Kerr has been a long time, vocal gay rights advocate who appeared on CNN twice in 2003 discussing his opposition to the policy that says service men and women will be dismissed from service for revealing their gay orientation.

I suppose there could be no connection whatsoever, but it seems to me that it wouldn’t be that hard for Hillary or her campaign office to convince Cooper that CNN shouldn’t look to closely into Kerr’s affiliations and background.

For himself Gen. Kerr claims that this was all done under his own initiative and that it had nothing to do with his involvement in Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign. He has been a staunch supporter of Sen. Kerry in the past and has remained active in improving the situation of the LGBT community in the US Military. He has been vehement when denouncing the US military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Yet when questioned by FOX News, Kerr said that CNN “Never Asked” him if he is a Clinton supporter so he “Never Told!”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how the game of politics is supposed to be played 😉 This is realpolitik in its most nakedly brazen form. Sen. Clinton doesn’t have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s advantage of the Council of Guardians who could veto any presidential candidate they don’t approve of. What she has is the firmest grasp of Machiavellian politics I’ve heard of in decades and huge political and economic engine gifted to her by her husband Bill.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Hillary R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Both the Republicans and her Democrat opponents need to wake up and be prepared. This election isn’t part of the political process; it’s part of the realpolitikal process. The gloves are off, and everyone had better be prepared to play the game the Hillary does or be prepared to lose.

Can’t choose a candidate for the US 2008 Presidential elections?

None of the candidates look like they could get the job done?

Looking to bring back Old School government?