Tim Blair

C'mon, Tim, that's an unfair shot. If she were as objective about the situation as everyone else it would be a reasonable assessment, but she was the one person most likely to be convinced because she wanted to be convinced. That has no bearing on her competency in the position you mention, and you know it.

I liked the observation made by one wag : "Of COURSE she talked about the Lewinsky affair. Who the hell would buy the damn book if she DIDN'T?"

Those two deserve each other, but we sure as h*ll don't deserve either one of them ever again!

Mike,

Uh-huh.

So, if she WANTS to believe that North Korea isn't going back on the 2007 de-Nuclearization accords, rather than risk a war, what then?

Or, if she WANTS to believe that her National US Health Plan will work, regardless of what those dim-bulb Republicans say, what then?

The worst part, of course, being that, as THEY THEMSELVES ADMITTED on 60 Minutes before the November '92 election, there'd been this little problem before. Why WOULDN'T she believe it?

She just wanted to give the inspectors more time.

Numerous allegations of sexual misconduct over a period of years, with striking similarities between them, and Ms. Clinton can't summon up the wit and curiousity to at least investigate the Lewinsky allegations? No, because Bill said it was all a pack of lies. Feminism triumphant...

I sweaar Hilary, it was a cigar in an ashtray and not as someone colourfully alleged, my little chickadee.
Hilary- ah, snookums, I didn't believe one word those nasty men said against you (close up, Hilary choking).

The above is an excerpt from the new Hollywood Epic,Farting in the Wind.

Dean -

You're comparing apples and oranges, and your obvious distaste for the Clintons is clouding your critical facilities (i'm assuming you have some). The point is that she, as a wife, wanted to believe her husband when he lied to her, because the alternative was too distasteful. To try to extrapolate from that very personal interaction a political mindset or competency is lazy and ignorant, at best, and scummy at worst.

Get a grip. Better yet, get a girlfriend.

Have to agree with Mike here. Believing that her husband is not cheating on her again is a matter of quite different emotional significance from believing whether North Korea has nukes. Question is what Tim means by 'wily intellect'. It's possible for people with high IQs to face emotional blocks in particular directions that affect their judgement - in fact it's *more* possible for them them because they can rationalise things away better. Another example of this is Lady Archer (Jeffrey Archer's wife) - of course she's not running for office but the fact that she stays with that sleazeball make her an inferior intellect by the usual definition? Of course if Tim s defining 'wily intellect' to include EQ (emotional intelligence) then I'd agree given the way Hilary seems to rub off wrongly on many people as well as with this conduct that she doesn't have much. However I can't doubt that she is very smart in the narrower sense.

There's always a lot of talk about George Bush bringing dignity back to the White House. How about Laura Bush bringing dignity back to being a woman with a difficult husband? Mrs Bush (along with Lady Archer) at least have the self-respect to shut up - rather than play the perpetual victim for fun, profit and political advantage. Really, don't people like Hillary Clinton profoundly embarrass feminists?

The objection Soon, Ranaipa, is, Hialry is an ambitious calculating woman. A columnist in the Speatator poited out, the Clintallary marraige was
one also of convenience, to serve their lust for power.Its just that Billary combined other lusts in the Ovular office.

I found this interesting list of "Questions for Hillary":

Do you believe Juanita Broaddrick's allegation that your husband raped her?

• White House lawyers have acknowledged in court documents that you approved efforts to trash Kathleen Willey, who accused your husband of sexually molesting her in the White House. Is that true?

• At an August 1992 American Bar Association convention, you praised Anita Hill, saying, "As women and lawyers, we must never again shy away from raising our voices against sexual harassment." Why didn't you raise you voice to help Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick?

• Author Gail Sheehy, who's generally supportive of you, says in her book "Hillary's Choice" that it was your idea to hire San Francisco private detective Jack Palladino to mount "a sub-rosa, black arts campaign against the women." Is that true?

• In her book "The Final Days," the late Barbara Olson said your husband's pardon of the Puerto Rican separatist FALN bombers encouraged terrorists like Osama bin Laden. Was she wrong?

• Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Elizabeth Ward Gracen and Juanita Broaddrick have two things in common. They all accused your husband of sexual impropriety and they were all audited by the IRS, which was run until late 1997 by your good friend Margaret Milner Richardson. If four of Richard Nixon's chief accusers were audited by his IRS, what would you have said?

• Your brother-in-law Roger Clinton can be heard on an Arkansas State police surveillance video repeatedly using the "N" word. Why have you and your husband never condemned Roger's outburst?

• If you're not running for president in 2004, why do you keep showing up at all these presidential candidate forums?

• How could a smart woman like yourself really believe that your husband, with his history of cheating, was telling the truth when he told you he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky?

• On the night of your good friend Vince Foster's death, White House phone records show that you called Harry Thomason, Maggie Williams, Susan Thomases and Bernard Nussbaum. But there was no phone call to Foster's grieving widow, Lisa. Why not?

• Why have you never apologized to Westchester County police officer Ernest Dymond, who was injured so badly he couldn't return to duty for weeks after a driver rushing you to an Oct. 14, 2001 fundraiser sped through the airport checkpoint he was manning?

• Minutes before you accepted the nomination of your party to run for Senate at Albany's Pepsi Arena three years ago, some of your supporters spit on a state police honor guard carrying an American flag. You and then-state party chairwoman Judith Hope promised an investigation to ferret out the guilty parties. What was the result of your investigation and how were the cop-spitters punished?

• Four witnesses have accused you of using anti-Semitic slurs, which you've denied. And Dick Morris - who is Jewish by birth - said that you once responded to his request for a raise by saying, "Is that all you people think about is money?" - a charge you've never addressed. As a laywer, if you had a client who was contradicted by five witnesses, who would you tend to believe?

• In 1989, the NAACP in Arkansas sued your husband and other state officials for intimidating black voters at the polls. And other reports say that then-Gov. Clinton supported racially profiling Hispanic drug suspects during the 1980's. Why didn't you do anything to stop these practices?

• You've worked closely on a number of issues with Senator Robert Byrd, who's now head of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. As you know, he's a former Ku Klux Klansman who used the "N"-word on TV as recently as two years ago? What would you say if Republicans allowed an ex-Klansman who uses the "N"-word to continue in a leadership post?

• Do you agree with your husband that oral sex really isn't sex?

Excellent post Indole Ring.

I take it there is no mention of Hillary's batting for the other team in there?

Friend of mine had a good friend working in a law firm in the US and they were dealing with Hillary and co. Got the hard word put on her by Hillary which cannot have been a good experience. Who knows maybe she was pimping for Bill???

Mike:

I know that you are trying to be fair, but even the Clintons FAVORABLE biographers say that during campaigns Hillary was in charge of the "Bimbo Patrol," the organized campaign to destroy the Democratic women who told stories of their sexual affairs and sexual assaults at the hands of her husband.

She knew all about this sort of stuff. While Hillary was in the White House but away from Washington, she had one of her best friends stay over to keep an eye on her husband, particularly when certain women (such as Barbara Streisand) were visiting.

If Hillary was surprised, it was only because she couldn't imagine that Bill would take advantage of someone so young as Ms. Lewinsky.

If there was a correlation between intellect and political success then neither John Howard nor George W Bush would have been elected. They haven't exactly been failures!

Moreover Doc Evatt would have been the greatest politicians of all time in the whole world.

Finally finishing off Hilary's credibility : a chap in the Spectator supplied an interesting account of Clinton's Oxbridge days: he was kicked out because of what he did to an undergraduate. The parents did not press charges because they wished to save her more torment by having the case hualed through the court. The police were frustrated by that quite reasonable decision, without the girl and the parents prepared to give evidence in court, the police and prosecutor could not proceed. For the charge, it was rape.I'll look for the edition of the Spectator , also ,the Spectator has a webset, it might be in the archives section.
When Whitewater is taken into the count, the Clintons have had so many lives the proverbial cat is envious.

I'll be upfont. I'm a true believer in the vast right wing conspiracy. So when I hear "...a chap in the spectator supplied an interesting account.." the first thing that pops into my head is "I wonder how much Scaife pays for that crap"

Hillary lied? Who knew?!

Stewart Kelly, there is no Scaife who owns the Speccie. And, its fine-writing 44magnum packing writers stand on turf so hard it makes you appreciate, ABC doesn't stand on shifting sand but is up to its neck in quick sand. Taki, charmer, poor little Greek boy whose command of English makes the efforts squeakers kept alive by the Yartz council look like preppies mastering their first pencil stroke, called the Clinton's fact file long before a dribbler at ABC decided to do a Modo on the muck which floated on the surface.

Interesting account, because brilliant writing by writers who earn their own moollah off their own bats and not by sucking up to Yartz councils and other havens for communards.And bye the bye, off their own bats, many of the columnists have led heavy weight careers. Charles Moore was editor on a hefty packet while Ozzies of Ozz'z equivalent background were yet to be entrusted with anything more than writng out receipts for trivial expenses. Then there is the odd diplomat, M.P, Capitalist,Army Officer, some of the most distinguished Proffessors, the odd retired judge ...blimme, veritable a Who'sWho.
Look what ABC dishes up, obscure dribblers.

d, can I have some of those drugs you're on? That's some mighty powerful shit.

Ah, Bon Scott I only smoke cigarettes. The last was only to say, right wing conspiracy is crap. Many of the conspiracy theorists,on politics, economics, war,happen to be ... i don't believe there's any need to say but to start you of, communards and ratbags , dribblers...

If it ain't Scaife it will be some other bugger with a big wallet and a hatred of paying their taxes.

Stewart:

You have to remember that (except for the Oxford incident) the ALLEGED sexual assaults were almost all of Democratic women and most of them were revealed to others before anyone had ever heard of Scaife.

There was the woman who reported to the police that she was raped by Bill at Oxford (name revealed by the British press and incident confirmed to the press by an unnamed former Rhodes official); this was the probable reason for Clinton leaving Oxford early.

Then there was the woman in the early 1970s who reported Bill for sexual assault to the Yale campus police, confirmed to the press by a former unnamed Yale cop.

Then there was the law student at Arkansas in the mid-1970s who claimed that she was fondled by her professor Bill. She quit school when people believed him instead of her.

Then there was the alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick. As revealed on a Sunday TV talk show at the time the story broke, the WH privately admitted to 2 reporters that Bill was in her hotel room that day, and a nurse confirmed that the fruits of Bill's alleged torture--a lip that was almost severed--was true.

Then there was Paula Jones, Miss Arkansas (who changed her story several times, first assault, then consensual), and Ms. Willey--all alleging assaults.

Why did all these women (almost all Democratic) claim AT THE TIME of their alleged assaults that they were raped or assaulted? Why do so many of these stories sound so similar, with Bill just grabbing their breasts or exposing himself without any consensual kissing or foreplay (the Arkansas student, Broaddrick, Willey, Jones)?

We know that Bill lied about Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky and Jennifer Flowers, because he admitted sort of admitted it, after successfully trashing their reputations. Are we to believe him over all these other women?

Or are you one of those sick women-haters who thinks that women are always asking to be tortured and that lots of women just make up rape stories about men and report them to the authorities--in Bill's case, even before he was famous?

Mike, Jason Soon, I understand your efforts to separate the personal from the political but you're forgetting that Hillary Clinton is an exemplar of the left, and to the left the personal is the political.

Jim, you make good points, but you're not addressing the point I made - the emotional response of a wife to a husband's behavior is not fair territory to determine political or professional performance. Whether or not Hillary was on 'bimbo patrol' at one point doesn't nullify the possibility that she believed him because, emotionally or psychologically, she needed to believe him. How that reaction bears any weight on her ability to make objective political decisions is a matter of personal taste. If we're going to start judging people on their political competencies based on personal behavior, there's a significant number of politicians that should be disqualified from public life on both sides of the political spectrum.

aelfheld - are you willing to lower your standards just to hold others to their own low standards? Or will you remain resolute in your convictions, and judge your representatives fairly and honestly? Call her on her hypocrisy, if that's how you view it (I don't), but don't ignore your own sense of fair play just to engage in demagoguery.

Mike, Jason:

This is not about whether I "hate" Hillary Clinton (or Bill, for that matter). To be frank, while I didn't support them, I don't think I ever fell into the "Satan incarnate" sort that some of the GOP viewed them (and now some Dems view Dubya as being).

That being said, my issues are two-fold.

1. Did Hillary really deny reality for six months? If this was a first time thing, maybe. But this WASN'T. Hillary (and Bill) went on "60 Minutes" in 1992 about Gennifer Flowers. You really think that it NEVER crossed her mind that Bill might've cheated, having gone through this already? Not for SIX MONTHS?

2. If you assume that she did, in fact, deny reality for six months, then, no, it is NOT merely personal. The best example of this type of paralysis is Stalin's reaction to Hitler's invasion of the USSR. For nearly a week, Stalin was effectively out of action, utterly unable to believe that Hitler was betraying him. (Hitler, of course, being the PROFESSIONAL, POLITICAL opponent of everything Stalin claimed to believe in.)

In an age of nuclear-tipped missiles and aircraft crashing into skyscrapers, are you really so certain that the ability to deny reality in one part of one's life WON'T affect other parts of her professional persona? In the Senate, MAYBE it won't affect things. But if she were running for the WH, you don't think this reflects on her judgement, her analytical abilities, and, yes, her abilities to handle a crisis?

Mike:

I understand your point, and I don't think it's impossible that Hillary believed Bill ("denial"), but I think it highly unlikely. Further, other parts of her story at the time appear to be false. She said that she was so angry at the time that she wouldn't even speak to Bill over the next few days, even on the trip to Martha's Vineyard after the speech.

But in Sid Blumenthal's recently published hagiograhic ode to Bill, Blumenthal describes being called by Bill just 10 minutes after the August speech and hearing Bill and Hillary strategizing about the spin on the speech and how it played.

She's just not very credible when people who love and support her remember her actions differently.

Her actions fit better Dick Morris's recent account that she had to help Bill stay in office to give herself any chance to be President.

Fred,

After years of investigation (not just into the assaults, but stuff like Whitewater etc), costing something like $70 million plus, and diverting a considerable portion of FBI and other resources (I heard seven hundred agents were working on Clinton investigations at one point - not sure if this is correct or not though), the assaults remain alleged. Not proven.

Cheers.

Oh, and HILLARY IN 2008!

...assuming of course it isn't Gore in 2004 :)

Hillary 2008? You are dreaming. Condi, on the other hand has my vote and, I may add, majority of VRWC.

Katherine, so you admit it exists???? :)

Fred, no I'm not a woman-hater who thinks lots of women invent rape stories. But if certain rich folk go around paying insane amounts of cash for dirt on an individual they should not be surprised if some people make shit up to get the money.

Anyway, even if Bill did rape women, after years of investigating and tens of millions of dollars spent, it remains unproven. To me, that's a pretty good sign that he is likely innocent.