Pathetic: Hillary Auctioning Off a Date With Bill

Really lame. Why don't these very wealthy multimillionaires just pay off their own debt? No, can't part with their own money. They need to resort to low-rent stunts like this.

Hillary Rodham Clinton fans can win a chance to hang out with Bill Clinton by giving $5 to her failed presidential campaign and helping the ex-first lady pay off her sizable election debt.

The winner will "head to New York City to attend several interesting events with President Clinton, followed by your own special New York City weekend," according to yesterday's e-mail to Hillary supporters.

Now don't worry, if you can't hook up with Slick, you can always settle for the booby prize.

Another prize is a trip to LA for the "American Idol" season finale. The booby prize? Lunch in DC with political consultant Paul Begala and Democratic strategist James Carville.

Dear God, imagine trying to keep lunch down having to look at those two. Ugh.

'Carville and Begala are Just Trying to Ride My Fame Into Their Fortune and Become Relevant Again'

Bring it on, bitches

Fighting back against the coordinated and unprecedented White House smears of a radio host, Rush Limbaugh fired back today and left nothing in doubt. He'll take Obama on if the president is man enough.

I doubt he is.

RUSH: That's the union bunch. Can you just see...? (laughing) "Call the Republican leadership and say no to Limbaugh." (laughing) Now, ladies and gentlemen, the Politico story today. I got an e-mail last night from the writer of the story, Jonathan Martin, who did not tell me the full details of what the story they were working on was. He did not tell me that they have discovered that there is a team inside the White House targeting me and that they've been doing this since last fall, when they went out and did some polling data and found out I've got very high negatives among certain groups. So they thought, "Well, this is the guy to demonize! Since Bush is leaving, we need somebody," and so this is being led from the White House. There is an orchestrated attack, daily drumbeat on me from the White House. The participants here are James Carville, Paul Begala, and Rahm Emanuel.

But make no mistake about it. Emanuel is the leader of all of this. Carville and Begala are just trying to ride my fame into their fortune and become relevant again. Begala and Carville, don't confuse them with the powerbrokers that are managing this. It all Emanuel. Begala and Carville are second-rate talking heads on CNN. CNN has no audience. Rahm Emanuel is the power behind the throne -- and don't let his effeminate nature and his ballerina past mislead you on this. He may look effeminate (he was a ballerina at one time) but he has the feral instincts of a female rat defending its young. Well, take a look. When Emanuel and Carville and Begala are together (and I've seen pictures) it looks like a reunion of the Village People. (singing) Y! M! C! A! They are really the official greeters in Roswell, New Mexico in Area 51 where Carville was born.

My point here is that these are really odious, empty, nasty people who are feasting on their own arrogance. They are power hungry. But, you know what? They've never had a serious debate over ideas. Their goal is to destroy opponents, which is what they're trying to do now. They don't want to engage opponents. Their idea of victory is the destruction of the opponent. They're not for a level playing field. They want to clear the playing field so that their ideas do not have to undergo any scrutiny. So what do they do? They leak stories to the Politico intended to create impressions about their own importance and their brilliance, when in fact they aren't even bit players on the nation's stage. This is Emanuel, and this is Obama.

But I have an idea. If these guys are so impressed with themselves, and if they are so sure of their correctness, why doesn't President Obama come on my show? We will do a one-on-one debate of ideas and policies. Now, his people in this Politico story, it's on the record. They're claiming they wanted me all along. They wanted me to be the focus of attention. So let's have the debate! I am offering President Obama to come on this program -- without staffers, without a TelePrompTer, without note cards -- to debate me on the issues. Let's talk about free markets versus government control. Let's talk about nationalizing health care and raising taxes on small business.

Let's talk about the New Deal versus Reaganomics. Let's talk about closing Guantanamo Bay, and let's talk about sending $900 million to Hamas. Let's talk about illegal immigration and the lawlessness on the borders. Let's talk about massive deficits and the destroying of opportunities of future generations. Let's talk about ACORN, community agitators, and the unions that represent the government employees which pour millions of dollars into your campaign, President Obama. Let's talk about your elimination of school choice for minority students in the District of Columbia. Let's talk about your efforts to further reduce domestic drilling and refining of oil. Let's talk about your stock market. By the way, Mr. President, I want to help. Yesterday you said you looked at the stock market as no different than a tracking poll that goes up and down.

There's no "up and down" here. We have a plunge. The president yesterday suggested "we're getting to the point where profits and earnings ratios are approaching that point where you want to invest." Uh, Mr. President? There is no "profits and earnings" ratio. It's "price and earnings" ratio. He's the president of the United States. He doesn't know anything about the stock market. He's admitted it before. Let's talk about it anyway. You want to maintain it's a tracking poll? I'd love to talk to you about that. Let's talk about all of these things, Mr. President. Let's go ahead and have a debate on this show. No limits. Now that your handlers are praising themselves for promoting me as the head of a political party -- they think that's a great thing -- then it should be a no-brainer for you to further advance this strategy by debating me on the issues and on the merits, and wipe me out once and for all!

But Obama never will, because he's a punk who has to have henchmen and his media buttboys fight his battles for him.

Coward.

Obama should take a page from George W. Bush, who behaved like a grown up in the White House and never whined like a little bitch about criticism.

Begala: Bush Is A "Dead Duck"

Congress approval rating just 10% as Bush goes from 'lame to dead duck'

The controversy over the failure of the Bush administration's unpopular financial bail-out is infecting every aspect of government and the presidential election campaign.

Eminent reputations lie in ruins; the august institutions of Congress, the treasury, the Federal Reserve tremble; the presidency itself is shaken. In America's year of living dangerously, few will emerge unscathed.

The consensus view, if there is one in so divided a nation, is that the US has suffered a calamitous, across-the-board failure of leadership. The bankruptcy is political as well as economic. This conclusion is widely held among both supporters and opponents of the bail-out.

"Monday's crash and burn of the Paulson plan on Capitol Hill reveals a Washington elite that has earned every bit of the disdain that Americans have for it. This crowd can't even make sausage," snarled a Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday. Black Monday's shambles marked a "historic abdication".

Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives were excoriated for political cowardice, childish disputatiousness, and a selfish desire to get re-elected next month at any cost. It's clear, whatever they do next, the public simply does not trust them to do it right.

"A political establishment held in higher regard may have been able to hold together some kind of coalition of the willing," wrote Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post. "But distrust of the nation's leaders, from the leaders of Congress to the president, foreclosed that possibility."

This was not mere rhetoric. Congress's public approval rating was down to 18% before the crisis hit. By some estimates, it is now 10% and falling. Washington has seen a "throw the bums out" mood before, notably Newt Gingrich's 1994 anti-government "Republican revolution". But this is something else. Like some others, Gingrich is calling for the resignation of Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, for presiding over a train wreck and then failing to persuade people why $700bn was needed to get back on the rails.

Other heads enthusiastically recommended for the chopping block include Democratic house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for being "too partisan" and the Republican house minority leader, John Boehner, for not being partisan enough.

An unhappy Boehner said before the vote that the bail-out was a "crap sandwich" that he and colleagues were obliged to eat. As it turned out, 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats found it too much to swallow.

Many members of Congress found themselves caught between party leadership and angry constituents and sought to explain themselves.

"We are now in the golden age of thieves. And where I come from we put thieves in jail, we don't bail them out," said Pete Visclosky, an Indiana Democrat who voted 'no'.

The signal failure, as critics see it, of President George Bush to show a lead out of the morass has provoked a new crop of political obituaries.

"No longer a lame duck, he's a dead duck," said Democratic strategist Paul Begala.

I share with Begala the same sage advice Dick Cheney gave to national security risk Loony Leahy: Go fuck yourself.

Via The Guardian

'No Way, No How, Nobama'

Despite the media gushing about unity and how much of a team player Hillary Clinton pretended to be last night, the backbiting continues. And that was just Day 1 of the Clinton-fest with the Big Ooze, Bill Clinton, scheduled for this evening.

Even as Hillary Rodham Clinton told supporters to go for "O" last night, strategists close to the Clintons yesterday trashed the convention as the "Seinfeld" of nominating fetes - a gathering about nothing.

"If this party has a message, it's done a hell of a job hiding it, I promise you that," James Carville, who was integral in Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, told CNN.

Democratic strategist Paul Begala, another former Clintonite from '92, took umbrage over former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner - the convention's keynote speaker - suggesting he would use his speech not to slam GOP candidate John McCain but call for bipartisanship.

"This isn't the Richmond Chamber of Commerce," Begala quipped.

Warner's speech did harshly criticize McCain as well as President Bush.

But Begala's comments again highlighted the simmering tensions between supporters of Hillary and those of Barack Obama, which has so far been the dominant story line of the convention.

Hillary herself has made public pleas for unity, and has said she'll release her delegates and cast her vote for Obama.

The two camps worked out a deal where both candidates' names would be placed in nomination, but there would be a truncated roll call followed by a call for unity.

More here on the simmering tensions.

A significant number of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top fund-raisers remain on the sidelines and unwilling to work for Senator Barack Obama, a nettlesome problem that appears to be contributing to the campaign’s failure to keep pace with ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the general election.

The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick.

Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech.

One of those skipping town will be Bill Clinton himself.

Maybe he's got a McCain fundraiser to attend.