Bill Clinton & The R Word

I've recently been reading the  biography of Bill Clinton by Christopher Hitchens, No One Left To Lie To. Part of this polemic deals with the repeated allegations of sexual exploitation of women who came into contact with him. I had always assumed that the more lurid accusations against Bill Clinton were probably not true although my views on that had shifted a little even before reading this.

Reading of the accusations of rape and sexual assault made by women like Juanita Broadrick* and Kathleen Willey- women who were political allies of Clinton and mostly had not profited from their allegations. Does anyone who has looked into the accusations in detail  know of  any reasons to think that Bill Clinton is not a rapist?

Whiteygate.

For the last couple of weeks a rumour has been going around about the existance of a tape of Michelle Obama in the pulpit of Jeremiah Wright's church denouncing 'whitey'. According to the story the Republicans supposedly have the tape and are preparing to use it.

This story seems like a hoax to me though, whilst Michelle Obama does appear to be a resentful moonbat the word 'whitey' doesn't sound like something an actual black racist would say, it sounds more like what someone writing a script about a black racist would have the character say. It's like whenever there is a hate crime hoax the imagined racist abuse always sounds rather cliched, unnatural and lacking any subtlety, the same is true of the supposed Michelle Obama tape.

The other reason to believe that it's fake is that the rumours initially appeared on pro Clinton websites but claimed that the Republicans had the tape. If the GOP had a tape that could derail an Obama bid like that then the absolute last thing they would do is leak it before the Democrats had made their nomination. If the Republicans had the tape then it would be leaked in November on the weekend before the election, if Clinton had it then it would have come out about two months ago.

the end result of one Democrat trying to smear another will be that the credulous will use the smear as an example of Republican dirty tricks.

Panderer Population Explodes.

It's not just on oil prices that politicians are pandering, free trade is also coming in for a battering. Strangely enough despite the USA's image as being a right wing nation support for free trade has always been much lower than in the UK.

Despite this it seems that both Obama and Clinton believe in free trade, Obama believes it is one of the things that bitter small town like to attack whilst they cling to their guns and Hillary Clinton never opposed trade whilst her husband was signing NAFTA. In fact a belief in free trade is a core belief for the Clintons as Mark Steyn once put it:

With hindsight, Clinton had two bedrock convictions: he believed oral sex didn't qualify as adultery and he believed in free trade.

Hillary only agrees with Bill on one of those points I should add.

Obama's proposal is to offer:

a “Patriot Employers” plan that would lower corporate taxes for companies that did not ship jobs overseas. …Mr Obama’s plan would lower the corporate tax rate for companies that met criteria including maintaining their headquarters in the US, maintaining or increasing their US workforce relative to their overseas workforce, holding a neutral position in union drives among their employees and providing decent healthcare

Right, aside from being unworkable shouldn't he also be demanding that foreign companies stop creating jobs in the US if he wants to be consistent? In fairness there is one exception to the list of countries that Obama wants to stop the United States trading with, Cuba.

Hillary on the other hand.... oh hang on, she's toast now so there's no need to consider her pandering at all.

Fuel Prices & Political 'Solutions'

The rising cost of oil seems to have turned US politicians into idiots, as opposed to being exponents of Solomonesque wisdom that we expect them to be. First up Hillary Clinton's ludicrous proposal, sadly also acked by McCain, for a 'tax holiday' for a couple of months which has been universally panned. Now the Senate Democrats have come up with the brilliant idea to combat fuel prices by er raising taxes on the oil companies. It is, in many ways, impressive that two contradictory can both be so idiotic, you'd imagine that by dumb luck one proposal would be a good one.

This comes down to the mistaken idea of the left that every 'problem' requires massive government intervention to provide a 'solution'. Fuel prices are rising and the only thing that will change that is increasing the supply, and the Democrats almost universally oppose oil exploration in Alaska, or lowering demand which the market is taking care of without the need for government imposed 'solutions'.

Health & Politics.

The link between autism and the MMR vaccine has been pretty comprehensively discredited. I realise that it is hard to imagine that a study published by the Lancet would turn out to be such complete crap but there you go.

In politics however the empirical reality is that facts matter much less than public perception, and seeing as the anti MMR lobby is organised and motivated whereas the supporters of MMR are generally apolitical this means that all three of the remaining candidates for US president are willing to pander to the scaremongers.

The scientific evidence here is pretty clear yet the controversy has caused levels of vaccination to fall off and by not challenging the supposed MMR autism link all the candidates have demonstrated that they are willing to endanger the citizens whom they seek to serve and lead in order to get elected.

Where the political backlash against vaccination is even greater in some parts of world than in the West, it has enabled diseases that were on the cusp of being eliminated, like Polio, to make strong resurgences and it has left a lot of children severely disabled for life. For the three main aspirants to become the most powerful person on the planet to fuel this backlash for votes is disgusting.

Competitive Victimhood.

On the subject of the Democratic primary.....

The archetypal New York Times headline it is said would be "World to end- women, minorities hardest hit". Well it seems that the 'blacks' versus 'women' victimhood competition that the Clinton-Obama fight embodies is manna from heaven for them and their columnist Maureen Dowd:

With Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts.

People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?

As it turns out, making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history. It’s all about the past. Will America’s racial past be expunged or America’s sexist past be expunged?

Leaving aside whether "America sexist past"* is in urgent need of expunging for a moment the next question is whether it makes any sense whatsoever.

If I understand it correctly in order to expunge the guilt of America's past racism against black slaves and their descendants who were heavily discriminated against up until the 1960s, Americans should vote for a guy who was conceived by a middle class Kenyan father and a white mother in 1961 and then raised in one of the most racially tolerant societies on the planet, Hawaii.

In order to expunge America's sexist past they should vote for the woman whose career has essentially depended on her being married to Bill Clinton, and in order to do this has stayed married to him even as he has conducted affairs with and sexually harassed his female subordinates. By Dowd's logic Pakistan must have really put sexism behind it when they elected Benazir Bhutto all those years ago.

This no doubt makes perfect sense to some Diversity Studies professor out there somewhere but it's baffling me.

* Does anyone really believe that the USA's past was especially sexist? Sure women had fewer rights than men until the 20th century and that is deeply regrettable but by any reasonable comparison to other societies the USA fares pretty well.

Hasta La Vista..... Oh She's Still Here.

Hillary is out there. She can't be bargained with. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever, until she is President.

Sheesh her campaign is harder to kill off than Rasputin.

Quote Of The Day.

Watching Hillary Clinton's campaign implode is tremendous fun, it is enough to make me suspect that her supposed genius is rather overstated. PJ O'Rourke noted HRC's fundamental stupidity more than a decade ago:

Mrs Clinton seems to possess the highly developed, finely attuned stupidity usually found in the upper reaches of academia. Hear her on the subject of nurseries and pre-schools: "From what experts tell us, there is a link between the cost and the quality of care." Then there is her introduction to the chapter titled "Kids Don't Come with Instructions":

There I was, lying in my hospital bed, trying desperately to figure out how to breast feed... As I looked on in horror, Chelsea started to foam at the nose. I thought she was strangling or having convulsions. Frantically, I pushed every buzzer there was to push. A nurse appeared promptly. She assessed the situation calmly... Chelsea was taking in my milk, but because of the awkward way I held her, she was breathing it out of her nose!

The woman was holding her baby upside down.

Lewinskygate 10 Years On.

Guido Fawkes has a post up about the Clinton/Lewinsky affair that became public 10 years ago today. As he points out up until then the media could still choose to cover up the scandals and misdemeanors of their favoured politicians, but when Matt Drudge broke the Lewinsky story after Newsweek had chosen to sit on the story the dynamic between the press and the public changed forever, the blogosphere is in a sense the offspring of Matt Drudge. As Dan Rather found out 4 years ago the professional media is no longer the unchallenged guardian of what the public knows.

Mark Steyn republishes an article he wrote at the time for the Wall Street Journal about the American media's role in the Clinton cover up.

On Sunday, National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" opened by wondering if we shouldn't be "putting the brakes on a rush to judgment." A rush to judgment? The American media have been enjoying a six-year crawl to judgment, and there's really no need to put the brakes on when you've only just gotten into first gear. The current "feeding frenzy" is no more than a first, belated step toward an all-you-can-eat salad bar that has been blinking invitingly at them for half a decade.

In fairness the British print press was never as craven and pompous as their US counterparts, in large part because of the competitive nature of the British market.