Hillary Clinton Is A Clear and Present Danger
September 6, 2007
By Stephen P. Rizzo
Way the hell back in 1992 I wrote a long magazine piece detailing George W. Bush's alleged business successes. (See here) The bottom line of the piece was that George was a made man – made rich through a series of incestuous deals arranged by his daddy's friends.

That article told voters and the media everything they needed to know about George W. Bush – everything they needed to know the kind of President he would be if elected.
Voters elected him anyway (well, appointed once and elected once to be precise) and the rest is history. It will take decades for the GOP to repair the damage this one man had done to their party, and the rest of us decades more to repair the damage he has done to America and and the world.
But I am not here today to beat that horse again. Instead I am hoping that the voters – this time Democratic voters – learned something about weighing a candidate's character before they vote for him – or her.
The "her," in this case, meaning Hillary Clinton. Like George W. Bush there's plenty of data out there for those paying attention, and much of it more than hints at the kind of President Hillary would be should they be foolish enough to elect her to that post.
In many ways – too many ways – Hillary is – (physiology aside) – George W. Bush.
Today I offer two pieces of evidence to support that startling claim. First this, which landed in my email box yesterday:
My encounter with Hillary's people.
Hillary’s Iraq Trouble: Is she trying to re-write history?
July 22, 2007
By Glenn Thrush & John Riley
Just after 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, a drowsy Hillary Rodham Clinton stood in the Senate chamber during the all-night debate on Iraq and declared matter-of-factly: "I have called for the strategic redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq for several years."
That surprised anti-war activists camped out near the Capitol, listening to the speech on the radio. Clinton, they knew, had supported withdrawal from Iraq for less than two years, 20 months to be exact.
"We thought it was ridiculous that she was trying to rewrite history," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, an anti-war group that has staged protests at Clinton's public appearances since she voted for the Iraq invasion in October 2002. "She's moving back her own timetable … We all let out a collective guffaw when we heard her say that."
Was Clinton's statement a verbal typo, a gaffe by a woman who desperately needed a nap? Or was she trying to backdate her record to make it seem like she's advocated withdrawal longer than she actually has?
She's said it before
Clinton opposed calls for redeployment until Nov. 15, 2005, when she voted with senators of both parties for a "phased redeployment" of troops without a specific timetable, her staff said.
A Newsday review of her speeches, press releases, votes and committee transcripts revealed no evidence that she publicly backed redeployment before the vote.
Still, Clinton has recently claimed her call for withdrawal came much earlier. On Jan. 18, 2007, she told PBS correspondent Gwen Ifill, "You know, for more than a year-and-a-half I've been in favor of phased redeployment of our troops … based on a comprehensive strategy."
She made virtually the same remark to Greta Van Susteren on Fox News a day later, suggesting she favored redeployment during the summer of 2005.
In fact, Clinton was advocating a significantly different approach at the time. In July 2005, she co-sponsored a bill with Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman to increase the Army's strength by 80,000 troops to deal with manpower shortages caused by Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clinton's language in the Democratic debates also has raised questions about the timing of her anti-war stance.
Stop Hillary Alliance Growing By The Day
July 14, 2007
There is something about Hillary that raises the blood pressure of otherwise easy-going Americans - and they don't need to be Republicans. At a 4th of July barbecue, with the band working its way through the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", I made the mistake of asking a pleasant young woman what she thought of Hillary's chances. Red white and blue fireworks were going off over Capitol Hill, as she morphed into the sort of person who goes on the Jerry Springer Show. She would "never, ever" vote for America's most famous politician, she said. More than 50 per cent of Americans agree with her.
With everyone on tenterhooks over terrorism and the looming defeat in Iraq, there is a febrile atmosphere in the US. Many are taking their anger out on Hillary as she attempts to break through the last remaining glass ceiling. Something called the "Hillary Conundrum" has emerged to cause deep unease inside her party while giving comfort to the Republican party, which by now should be in disarray.
The most seasoned political honchos are uneasy about the candidate who looks like a shoo-in as next year's Democratic nominee for the presidential elections. Hillary has the war chest, a formidable political machine and she is riding highest in the opinion polls.
She is probably the most competent in the field. Virtually everyone agrees that she should have the best chance of wresting the presidency from the Republicans in 2008 and repairing the damage from the wrecking ball (omega) of the Bush presidency. She also has Bill Clinton by her side, a formidable campaigner who took to the road for the first time in Iowa this month.
But behind the scenes, Americans are deeply worried at the prospect of having Hillary (and Bill) back in the White House. While she inspires ordinary women voters, men are not so moved and she has the highest voter-disapproval ratings of any top-tier candidate in the race. She also has a big problem with left-wing feminists.
The writer and director Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle) who describes herself as a fully signed up "Hillary resister" seems to be one of them. The resisters are people "who can't stand her position on the war. Who don't trust her as far as you can spit."
They believe, says Ephron, that Hillary "will do anything to win, who believe she doesn't really take a position unless it's completely safe". This is the same Nora Ephron who some years back exclaimed: "I love [Hillary] so completely that, honestly, she would have to burn down the White House before I would say anything bad about her." That was in 1993, when America was another country and Bill Clinton was just settling into his first term in the White House.
A couple of years later, with the Republican attacks on the Clintons in full spate, Ephron spoke to the Wellesley class of 1996 (a girls-only college that she and Hillary graduated from: "Understand," she said then, "every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you."
So how did it all go so wrong for Hillary? How did right- wing America's favourite "femi-Nazi" end up being disliked as much by "progressives" as by conservatives? It's a subject being endlessly debated
"The truth is that Senator Clinton has a woman problem," said Anna Quindlen, a Newsweek columnist. "The fantasy was that the first woman President would be someone who would turn the whole lousy system inside out and upside down. Instead the first significant woman contender is someone who seems to have the system down to a fine art."
Jane Fonda says that Hillary is a "ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina. It may be that a feminist, progressive man would do better in the White House."
For Fonda, the big disappointment was Hillary's 2002 Congressional vote giving George Bush the green light to go to war on Iraq. It turns out that Hillary didn't bother to read the top-secret intelligence report, that she as a senator was given access to before the vote. The six senators who did read it all voted against, because the still-secret report seems to have persuaded them that the case for war was flimsy.
Hillary Clinton has a problem with feminists - they don’t trust her
June 18, 2007

“I love [Hillary Clinton] so completely that, honestly, she would have to burn down the White House before I would say anything bad about her!” exclaimed Nora Ephron in a 1993 Newsday interview. Three years later, she told the Wellesley class of 1996, “Understand: Every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you.” Come late 2006, however, Ephron was the one on the attack as one of the self-described “Hillary resisters” — those who believe that “she will do anything to win, who believe she doesn’t really take a position unless it’s completely safe,” as she wrote on her Huffington Post blog, “who believe she has taken the concept of triangulation and pushed it to a geometric level never achieved by anyone including her own husband, who can’t stand her position on the war, who don’t trust her as far as you can spit.”
This rather dramatic change of heart encapsulates one of the great ironies of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency. Many of the very same feminists who were her most ardent supporters as First Lady are now fiercely opposed to her historic bid to become the first female President of the United States. The woman once described by Susan Faludi as a symbol of “the joy of female independence” now evokes ambivalence, disdain and, sometimes, outright vitriol. The right wing’s favorite “femi-nazi” now has to contend with Jane Fonda comparing her to “a ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina.”
So what’s up with the Hillary-bashing? “Women don’t trust Hillary. They see her as an opportunist; many feel betrayed by her,” wrote Susan Douglas in a May In These Times article titled “Why Women Hate Hillary.” A month later, in her Newsweek column, Anna Quindlen declared, “The truth is that Senator Clinton has a woman problem.”
Not exactly true, as it turns out. Hillary Clinton was the number-one choice of 42 percent of likely Democratic primary women voters in a recent Zogby survey, compared with 19 percent for Barack Obama and 15 percent for John Edwards. And her favorable rating among independent women is a whopping twenty-one points higher than among independent men.
Let’s be clear: Hillary has a “feminist problem,” and more so with those who lean left.
At first glance, the fault line dividing feminists in their view of Hillary Clinton is merely a matter of ideology. On one side are the mainstream moderate women’s organizations such as NOW and EMILY’s List, facing off against more radical progressive feminists, especially those opposed to the Iraq War. Some of her supporters claim that much of the anger is inspired by her now-infamous 2002 Congressional vote. “It’s about this one vote, which was not to invade Iraq but to authorize the President to wage war. I can’t understand how this can be held up against a lifetime of important political work,” says NOW president Kim Gandy.
Antiwar sentiments run high indeed, but when it comes to feminism and feminists, the “Hillary divide” also mirrors a deeper debate over the relationship between gender and political power. The ambivalence over Hillary’s candidacy has just as much to do with increasing skepticism about the value of making it to the top.
NOW & Code Pink Once Friends, Now Foes Over Hillary Clinton
March 28, 2007

Two women’s groups, traditionally friends and both advocates of ending U.S. military presence in Iraq, find themselves at odds over the endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.
The National Organization for Women — arguably the Goliath of women’s groups at half a million members strong —endorsed Clinton’s White House run Wednesday, pitting them against the anti-war group Code Pink, which has long made Clinton a top target.
