Hillary on the Daily Show (2003)

Jon Stewart's past Daily Show interviews are now all available online. The links below work, in spite of the ugly empty frames.

Part One:

Part Two:


hillary clinton

Hillary will begin Iraq withdrawal in first 60 days

In an article published in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, Hillary states:

We must withdraw from Iraq in a way that brings our troops home safely, begins to restore stability to the region, and replaces military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in securing Iraq’s future.To that end, as president, I will convene the Joint Chiefs of State, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council and direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home, starting within the first 60 days of my administration. Link.

Hillary also made remarks along the same lines in an address to the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee. She also promises to ensure that the United States’ foreign policy will reflect its own best values:

The values that our founders embraced as universal have shaped the aspirations of millions of people around the world and are the deepest source of our strength—but only as long as we live up to them ourselves. As we seek to promote the rule of law in other nations, we must accept it ourselves. As we counsel liberty and justice for all, we cannot support torture and the indefinite detention of individuals we have declared to be beyond the law. Link.

hillary clinton

The real reason why Christians (and everyone else) should not vote for Romney or Giuliani

Frank Rich has an excellent column summing up the overriding moral issue that is at stake in the next election (bolding added):

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
(snip)
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.

The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.Link.

Merle Haggard: another born-again Reagan Democrat for Hillary

We’re all familiar with those police raids on TV where the dealers flush all the drugs down the toilet.

Instead of police coming after our drugs we now have terrorists coming after our freedoms, and the response of the administration and the Republican frontrunners is: "Let's flush all our freedoms down the toilet so that the terrorists can't get them."

But, you can't prevent terrorism by panicking because to instill panic is precisely what the terrorists intend. Here’s Merle Haggard:

This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That's not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that's slipping away. Link.

Considering Hillary’s Recent Proposals

Glenn Reynolds has pointed out that Hillary’s American Retirement Accounts plan owes a lot to the thinking of Gene Sperling, one of her husband’s former advisors. Sperling offers a sort of economic middle path:

The progressive response to supply-side economics cannot simply be its mirror-image: policies so exclusively directed at redistribution and combating insecurity that they ignore private-sector growth, upward mobility, innovation, savings, and entrepreneurship. We shouldn’t replace a focus on growth regardless of equity with a focus on equity regardless of growth. The answer lies neither in following the 1990s Clinton playbook word-for-word nor in an overreaching populist reaction focused only on how to divide the 2007 economic pie. The rise in insecurity and wage pressure certainly demands a stronger public commitment to the social compact, as well as greater scrutiny of trade deals than what existed in the 1990s. Yet we must also be cautious of policies that unduly and unnecessarily deny our nation the pro-growth and pro-equity benefits that can flow from fully engaging in the global economy with a stronger social compact. Link.

Later on, he suggests:

Two ideas which promote wealth creation are a universal 401(k) and a flat 30 percent tax incentive for savings. The universal 401(k) would be offered to every working family and include matching tax credits and even greater incentives for the working poor. A refundable 30 percent flat credit would mean that both the highest-paid executive and the lowest-income workers at a firm would get 30 percent savings incentives. If such a plan were funded by freezing the estate tax at a $7 million-per-couple exemption (denying a further estate tax cut to only wealthiest three-tenths of one percent of estates), progressives could spread wealth-creation opportunities by offering effective savings incentives to over 50 million households. Lnk.

Healthcare--a Heritage Foundation official sometimes thinks the Republicans deserve to lose:

Republicans need a clear, more appealing alternative to the plan they opposed. "You can't beat something with nothing," Heritage officials argued in the closed-door congressional meeting. Heritage proposes a straight reauthorization of SCHIP, along with a child health-care tax credit for similarly needy middle-income families.

"Conservative lawmakers should rally around an alternative that enables the working poor to own their own coverage and not depend on the inferior coverage that comes with programs such as SCHIP," Mr. Franc said in a strategy critique circulated on Capitol Hill.

But Republicans apparently had not thought through the health-care fight they triggered in such strategically political terms. The Democrats did, and they appear to have the high ground in the debate, while Republicans are made to look anti-children.

"Democrats are going to pound Republicans on this in the campaign," a disgusted Heritage official told me. "Sometimes, I think [Republicans] deserve to lose." Successful legislative battles are the result of good policymaking and sophisticated political calculation. In the fight over SCHIP, the Republicans have neither. Link.

The Heritage Foundation’s alternative would have created a win-win situation by covering millions of additional uninsured children while also providing financial incentives for parents whose children are already insured to retain their existing private coverage:

Reauthorize SCHIP for eligible children. Congress should approve a straight reauthorization of the SCHIP program for uninsured children in families with incomes at or below 200 percent of the FPL. The legislation should include provisions to increase outreach to enroll eligible children who do not have private health insurance coverage. Congress should allow for reasonable accommodation for those states that have previously obtained waivers from the Administration to increase the income eligibility.

Enact a child health care tax credit. For families with incomes between 200 percent and 300 percent of the FPL (the core population targeted by supporters of the SCHIP expansion), Congress should provide assistance to help them purchase private health insurance or retain the private coverage they currently have. Congress should permit these families to claim a $1,200 tax credit that could be used to enroll their children in dependent coverage through an employer or the individual market. This credit would take two forms: a non-refundable tax credit for taxpaying families, and a refundable tax credit (in effect, a voucher) for families that do not pay enough in taxes to secure a credit. The credits would be paid for in two budget-neutral ways. Link.

I think the baby bond proposal is a good starting point for discussion, but I fear that it would cause an increase in college tuition costs that would largely swallow up the money. From the LA Times:

The notion of a baby bond is grounded, according to supporters, in the concept of the American ownership society, which was a tenet of President Bush's 2004 campaign (when the practical application was privatizing Social Security).

"The intellectual history of this idea is property ownership -- the Homestead Act, the GI Bill -- conscious efforts to spread property ownership through the population," said Ray Boshara, director of the Asset Building Program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, which helped craft the ASPIRE legislation and advised British officials on their program. "That has broad bipartisan support."

The idea, he said, is to put children on a path toward lifetime savings and wealth accumulation, a notion that appeals to conservatives and liberals. Link.

Republicans losing support of business leaders

An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that the Republican Party can no longer depend upon the support of the business community. One example:

Richard Cooper of Winnetka, Ill., a 67-year-old investor and former chairman of Weight Watchers Inc., hasn't just switched parties -- he is helping Sen. Clinton's campaign. An early Reaganite, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Illinois governor in 1976. He says he has been alienated in recent years by Republican policies across the board. A leader of the international "Responsibility to Protect" project for global action against humanitarian crises, he opposes Bush foreign policies. The father of a daughter with lupus, he wants funding for stem-cell research, which antiabortion Republicans oppose.

As for fiscal policy, Mr. Cooper contends that "Democrats are the new conservatives." Republicans "are still talking about tax cuts. It was one thing when Ronald Reagan was doing it and the top [income-tax] rate was about 80%. Now tax rates are reasonable. So what if I have to pay 5% more in taxes?" Link.

David Brooks, from the New York Times:

To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing. Link.

Warren Buffett explains to Hillary why he’s a Democrat:

Finally, former Republican Michael Bloomberg:

"Being a fiscal conservative is not about slashing programs that help the poor, or improve health care, or ensure a social safety net. It's about insisting services are provided efficiently, get to only the people that need them, and achieve the desired results. Fiscal conservatives have hearts too - but we also insist on using our brains, and that means demanding results and holding government accountable for producing them.

"To me, fiscal conservatism means balancing budgets - not running deficits that the next generation can't afford. It means improving the efficiency of delivering services by finding innovative ways to do more with less. It means cutting taxes when possible and prudent to do so, raising them overall only when necessary to balance the budget, and only in combination with spending cuts. It means when you run a surplus, you save it; you don't squander it. And most importantly, being a fiscal conservative means preparing for the inevitable economic downturns - and by all indications, we've got one coming. Link.

Election 2008 poll: more Whitewater or more Blackwater?

Conservatives in the know advocate universal health care

Imagine a topsy-turvy world where a conservative minority party is demanding that the socialist majority party refrain from making cuts in the nation’s universal healthcare plan. That seems to be the way things are in the UK right now.

Although many US conservatives have a knee-jerk reaction against universal healthcare, British conservatives have actual experience of the phenomenon and ought therefore have greater insight into the subject. The British Conservative Party (the party of Margaret Thatcher) is just as far to the right as the US Republican Party, yet it is currently lamenting that its socialist Labour Party rivals are planning cuts in the British National Health Service (NHS):

"People used to say Conservatives didn't care or know about public services," Mr Lansley said in a speech which earned a standing ovation. "I come from a public service family ... [Conservatives] work in public services. We depend on them. We care about them. Don't let anyone say that we don't. Labour has lost the trust and support of NHS staff ... The Conservative party is the NHS," he said. Link.

And, from the Conservative Party website:

David Cameron's Conservatives are backing a new, national campaign to underline our support for the staff of our NHS and the patients they serve. The NHS ended the last financial year with deficits amounting to £1.3 billion. Gordon Brown has now ordered drastic and short-sighted NHS cuts.

We want everyone to show their support for the NHS and those who work in it by signing our petition calling on Gordon Brown to end his financial mismanagement of the NHS – and Stop Brown's NHS Cuts. Link.

Hillary Clinton Quotes

“I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat, but I think my underlying values have remained pretty constant; individual responsibility and community. I do not see those as being mutually inconsistent.” Link.

“Torture violates the fundamental rule of law and the institutions of justice, it does not bear reliable fruit in intelligence gathering, and it undermines our moral strength in a conflict that cannot be won solely with military might. It should never be the policy of the United States to torture.” Link.

“The costs of a middle class life, education, healthcare, transportation, retirement are all increasing. It's the first time since we've been keeping records that we've had four years of rising productivity and falling wages.

Our essential bargains with the middle class is breaking down. People who work hard and contribute should feel that they're not just running in place, that they and their children can get ahead.

We should not in a globalized world face a choice between profits and pensions. Now, I understand that the world has changed and what used to work 50 years ago doesn't work today.

But that's why we need to rethink our industrial age bargain and come up with a new one that really keeps faith with the American middle class.” Link.

“At the end of the day, the Iraqis are responsible for Iraq's future. And if we have learned anything these past four years, it's that we cannot successfully police a civil war. Therefore, keeping our troops in the crossfire of sectarian violence is not the answer. Bringing them home swiftly and responsibly is.” Link.

“When science is politicized, when the truth is subjugated by ideology, it's worse than wrong -- it's dangerous. Ending the war on science and once again valuing the ever-skeptical but always hopeful scientific enterprise is about more than our economy. It's about more than our security. It is about our democracy.” Link.

“We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor? To someone who can't take the job of his dreams because it doesn't offer health care? To a family filing for bankruptcy or losing their home because their medical bills were just too high?” Link.

“At the Department of Defense, I will take steps to ensure that abuses like those that took place at Abu Ghraib never take place again, and I will hold accountable anyone who has violated the law.” Link.

“Finally it comes down to whether we can win the war on terror, not just the battles, and that requires we face squarely our longer-term challenge of putting the US on the side of dignity and progress and making it clear we do oppose tyranny and violations of human rights. And in that fight, our only realistic weapons are our values and ideals.” Link.

“Now I'm hoping that we're getting to a point where the quality of our health care is not a partisan issue. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, a liberal or a conservative, none of us wants to rush our child to an emergency room only to receive the wrong treatment. None of us wants to bring our spouse in for surgery only to see them next in the ICU with a preventable infection. None of us wants our loved one cared for by nurses who are juggling too many patients and too many medications with too little support.” Link.

“No government can love a child, and no policy can substitute for a family's care. But at the same time, government can either support or undermine families as they cope with moral, social and economic stresses of caring for children. Link.”

McCain camp releases McCain anti-Hillary speech without letting McCain read it

Senator John McCain has removed anti-Hillary remarks from a speech that his campaign had announced that he would be making to the kids at a military academy. Apparently, the McCain campaign released his so-called speech to the press without even telling Senator McCain what was in it:

Late Tuesday, McCain said he had not yet seen the remarks. "But I will look at them very carefully," he said.

Buchanan said while McCain had not seen the language in the speech about Clinton, he still planned to deliver the critique. She said Wednesday that he would not. Link.

Meanwhile, it emerges that Rudy Giuliani has performed his famous spousal phone call routine over forty times.