A Bad Week in Clintonville

POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY AT ITS WORST

by Paul R. Hollrah, ©2012

(May 11, 2012) — Bill Clinton is the stereotypical southern Democrat politician: smooth, personable, sly as a fox, everyman’s friend on the outside, but tough, manipulative, hard as nails, and totally corrupt on the inside.  He and his wife have been through many adventures and misadventures together, and when their final story is written a generation or two from now those who read it will shake their heads in disbelief… especially when they review the events of the week of April 30, 2012.

Unlike Barack Obama, Clinton was not corrupted by the power of the presidency; Clinton was already corrupt when he arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  In attempting to deflect charges of sexual harassment by an Arkansas state employee, Paula Corbin Jones, Clinton added a long list of offenses to his resume.  Because of his unwillingness to admit guilt, the American people found themselves led by a man who was guilty of rape, aggravated assault, perjury, subornation of perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, contempt of court, evidence tampering, witness tampering, lying to federal investigators, Pendleton Act violations, and other offenses… almost all of which he committed while serving as President of the United States.

In attempting to shield himself from the charges lodged by Ms. Jones, Clinton called upon his family, his friends, and scores of political subordinates to “fall on their swords” for him.  In doing so, 71 aides and associates engaged in criminal conspiracy, 32 were guilty of obstruction of justice, and 30 perjured themselves.  Dozens more either lied to or interfered with federal investigators, suborned the perjury of others, or engaged in evidence or witness tampering.

Like his Democratic successor, Barack Obama, Clinton was blessed with a thoroughly corrupt Attorney General.  Between January 1993 and January 2001, Attorney General Janet Reno ignored prima facie evidence of criminal offenses on the part of White House functionaries, preventing FBI Director Louis Freeh and his agents from doing the job they were paid to do.  In all, 3 corporations and 111 individuals were shown to have committed felony crimes, 56 were indicted, 58 went unindicted, and only 40 were convicted.  Three resigned rather than face indictment and three were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony.

Leaving the White House in January 2001, Clinton left behind the worst pardon-selling scandal in American history.  A cocaine smuggler from California won a Clinton pardon after paying a $200,000 fee to Hillary’s brother.  Four Hassidic Jews were pardoned after defrauding the federal government out of $11 million by applying for funds for a school that didn’t exist (The Hasidic community of New Square, NY later voted 1400 to 12 for Hillary in her New York senate race.)  When Hillary needed the Puerto Rican vote in her senate race, Clinton pardoned 14 Puerto Rican terrorists who claimed responsibility for more than 120 bombings in New York and Chicago that took 6 lives and injured some 130 people.  And, of course, everyone remembers Denise Rich and the pardon purchased for her fugitive ex-husband, financier Marc Rich.

In a March 11, 2001 op-ed column, liberal commentator Chris Matthews put the Clintons into perspective.  In discussing Hillary Clinton’s role in the blatant selling of pardons, Matthews said, “The junior senator from New York reminds me of the drug dealer’s wife in (the movie) ‘Traffic.’  She makes it her business not to know her husband’s.”

Matthews went on to remind us that Mrs. Clinton admitted to innocently “passing envelopes” from the pardon-seekers to the White House counsel’s office.  He said, “What convenience of mind!  She only ‘attended a meeting,’ only ‘heard rumors,’ only ‘passed envelopes.’  Admitting the fact of her behavior, she denies its purpose.  She admits what is provable, denies what is not.”

But Hillary Clinton was no slouch in her own right.  According to a May 27, 1994 story in the Washington Post, Mrs. Clinton deposited $1,000 in a commodity trading account in Arkansas in October 1978, during her husband’s term as Arkansas Attorney General.  She was allowed to use those funds to purchase ten cattle futures contracts which would have cost any other investor $12,000.  According to the Post, records of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange show that she was able to turn her initial ($1,000) investment into $6,300, overnight.

In just ten months of trading, Mrs. Clinton turned her $1,000 investment into nearly $100,000.   In doing so, she relied on the advice of James B. Blair, who served as outside counsel to Tyson Foods, Inc., the largest employer in Arkansas.  The Post also reported that a close examination of Mrs. Clinton’s trades “underscores Blair’s pivotal role” in her futures trading success.

In 2008, after being absent from the White House for eight years, Mrs. Clinton decided to fulfill her destiny by running for the Democratic presidential nomination.  And while she was initially seen as a shoo-in for the nomination, she could not have foreseen that she would be opposed by a charismatic young black man from the streets of Chicago… a totally inexperienced candidate, backed by the most corrupt, most ruthless, political operatives in American political history.

A documentary titled We will Not Be Silenced, produced by former Steven Spielberg associate Bettina Viviano, tells the story of how the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination was stolen by the Obama organization.  Viviano tells of a telephone conference call with Bill Clinton during which Clinton referred to Obama as being “ineligible for the presidency,” and as the “non-citizen.”  She recalls Clinton saying, “He’s not legit.  That’s the end of it, period, end of story.”

Viviano reports that it was well known within the Clinton organization that, at the appropriate time, Clinton would publicly disclose Obama’s lack of “natural born” eligibility.

But then, on Wednesday, August 13, 2008, a man named Timothy Dale Johnson walked into the  Democratic Party state headquarters in Little Rock and shot the State Chairman, Bill Gwatney, to death.  Gwatney was one of Bill Clinton’s closest friends and political allies.  This occurred just one day after Gwatney, a Clinton super-delegate, announced that the Arkansas delegation would cast all of their votes for Hillary on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, thus denying Barack Obama the 2008 nomination by acclamation.

Viviano is quoted as saying that she was told by a campaign staffer close to Hillary that the Gwatney assassination was a message: “Shut up, Bill, or you’re next.”  However, the campaign staffer insisted that Clinton was still prepared to speak out about Obama’s lack of Article II, Section 1 eligibility.  “And then,” Viviano said, paraphrasing the staffer, “they went in and said, ‘OK, it’s your daughter.  Now we’ll go after her…’ And then Bill never said anything.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been dutiful Obama supporters ever since… but in recent days things have begun to turn a bit sour.

On the day that Hillary Clinton, now Obama’s Secretary of State, arrived in Beijing for high level talks with the Chinese, it was learned that a blind Chinese dissident, Cheng Guangcheng, had escaped house arrest and had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy.  What would Hillary do?  What grand strategy would the foreign policy geniuses at the White House devise to unravel the embarrassing situation in Beijing?  Would the Obama administration grant asylum, as has been long-standing practice, or would they push Cheng out the front door to an uncertain fate?

On Wednesday, May 2, Cheng Guangcheng left the American embassy in the custody of Chinese authorities.  Cheng has said that he wished to leave China to study in the United States.  Will he be allowed to do so?  If not, what will be his fate?  Will his wife be beaten to death?  If he and his family are harmed, their blood will be on the hands of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But the diplomatic difficulties in Beijing were not the worst to befall the Clintons in what must have been one of the worst weeks in their political lives.  As Bill Clinton reveled in his role as “elder statesman” of the Democrat Party, the impeached former president was called upon to play a major role in a tasteless campaign ad in which Obama shamelessly “spiked the football,” taking personal credit for the killing of al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden.

In the ad, Clinton is seen complimenting Obama for approving the military raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  Then, looking straight into the camera, Clinton said, solemnly, “Suppose the Navy SEALs had gone in there, and it hadn’t been bin Laden.  Suppose they’d been captured or killed.  The downside would have been horrible for him…”

The downside would have been horrible for Obama?  What about the SEALS who put their lives on the line, and their superior officer, Admiral Bill McRaven, who put his long Navy career on the line?  In Obama’s world, they were only secondary players in the drama.  If the Obama ad is to be believed, the only real hero in the killing of Usama bin Laden was Barack Obama.

It is a political faux pas of major proportions and it will not soon be forgotten.  If there is one event or one line of dialogue that Obama will remember as he slinks out of the White House on January 20, 2013, it will be Bill Clinton’s words: “The downside would have been horrible for him…”

We may never know what was running through Clinton’s mind as he uttered those words.  Was he fully aware that they could drive the final nail in the coffin of the Obama presidency?  Did he relish the occasion as pay-back time for what had been done to Hillary?  Whatever the truth of the matter, that simple 8-word sentence will forever be seen as a game-changer for both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.  All in all, it was a very bad week in Clintonville.