I just got a call that Mancow Muller, the radio talk show host, got a death threat over the weekend for hosting Peter Paul on his show. I was told that Mancow was asked not to report the Peter Paul / Hillary Clinton Story, or else.
Peter Paul is the business entrepreneur who sued the Clintons for civil fraud and who hosted and paid for a $1.6 million party for Hillary Clinton and for her Senate campaign. That event was also the focus of an FEC investigation where it was found that the Clinton campaign under-reported the contributions. Paul says that the Clinton campaign continued to do that, but the FEC didn't catch the lastest error. The rest of that story is here.
Hillary Clinton the focus of a recent court case with Peter Paul as the plaintiff and that was held at the California Court of Appeals.
As for the death threat, I'll give more information as it comes in. Apparently someone connected with Hillary Clinton didn't think the story would get as far as it has, or that Peter would finally get the platform he deserves to tell the story.
Apparently, GQ writer Josh Green wrote a negative article about Hillary Clinton . According to this article in Politico.com, it was killed by the Clinton campaign, who threatened to curb access to Bill Clinton. I wonder what the article said? Something like that can only stay low for so long.
In an effort to play catch-up with the Barack Obama For President Campaign in California, Senator Hillary Clinton's staffers have launched the "HillStar" effort. Let's take a look at this information in relevant detail.
First, the HillStar document, which you can see in full with a click here , or see the video below or here , opens with a welcome and then text on the importance of winning California stating that California's important because of its early start date and of course the size of the population. For Senator Clinton "our election will really start on January 7 and run until February 5, a 29-day-long election" as the page reads.
Senator Clinton then tickets a list of answers to the question "Why Hillary?" The answers mostly point to her experience as Senator of New York and as First Lady. But the problem here is no one can get any information on her time as First Lady; it's sealed.
Finally, the set of reasons ends with the statement "Hillary's fight for universal health coverage did not succeed while President Clinton was in office, but her commitment to health care for every American has never wavered."
That last one's a big "whoops" in my view. First, Senator Clinton's known for taking money from the health care lobbyists. Second, to offer a statement that she failed in trying to create a universal health care system as First Lady, then come under scrutiny for having health care lobbyists as donors, and finally to have volunteers saying "Well, she didn't pass universal health care, but she's committed to the idea of health care" or words to that effect, does not bring confidence to voters seeking change that she can indeed alter the U.S. Health Care system.
The 1000 x 20 x 100 system
The HillStar Campaign has an interesting bit of math called the "1000 x 20 x 100" system. This is where "an elite group of volunteers" will recruit 5 Hillary Corps members, and manage 20 HillaryCorp members over a 5 month period. They will talk to a minimum of 200 voters in their district. Out of that, they expect to gain 100 new supporters and 5 new members.
The HillStar Timeline
The HillStar Timeline works like this in basic (the details are in the photo and the links provided to the report here):
Day one is now, this week.
Within two weeks, hold house parties
Within one month, hold a Bring Your Own Phone party.
Continue training
And by November have 20 fully trained Hillary Corps volunteers.
With all of this, it still pales in comparison to the hundreds of online groups and members of BarackObama.com who are in California. What HillStars is has been in place for a long time, but only recently honed by an effort called "Camp Obama" which is already in motion nationwide. With little effort, the Obama forces could clobber Hillary Clinton in California.
Oh and that Field Poll of "Democratic Voters most likely to vote" that reports Clinton's "lead" -- don't bet on any poll that has a sample size of just 419 people and talks to a small set folks who voted in the 2004 election. There are several problems with this step, amoung them, YouTube didn't exist in 2004. So all of these polls of "most likely to vote" Democrats -- including the rigged USA Today /Gallup Poll of June 17th -- totally miss the new netroots. If a person just turned 18 that year, and didn't vote, they're now 22 years old, ready to vote, and consume the majority of their information online.
According to the Huff Post, you and I could not even research Hillary Clinton's White House years as First Lady, even if we wanted to -- and we do. It's blocked!
So when she talks about her experience, the open question is "experience at what?"
At Monday's CNN / YouTube Debate, Senator Hillary Clinton stopped short of saying she would talk to Third World leaders like Hugo Chavez, explaining in a complex way that she would send diplomatic envoys to do this. By contrast, Senator Obama expained that he would send a message that he was willing to have dialog with leaders we don't currently have a great relationship with.
After the debate, some have tried to paint Senator Obama as less experienced than Senator Clinton because of the debate. While that's inaccurate, another story has emerged that paints Senator Clinton in the position of flip-flopping. In the article below, she says President Bush should talk to leaders like Hugo Chavez! Morover, she said this on April 22nd of this year.
Read!
Clinton Blasts President Bush's Foreign Policy http://wcbstv.com/us/local_story_112220939.html
(CBS/AP) DECORAH, Iowa Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday criticized President Bush's foreign policy, and said if she were president she would do things differently, including beginning diplomatic talks with supposed enemies and sending envoys throughout the world.
"I would begin diplomatic discussions with those countries with whom we have differences, to try to figure out what is the depth of those differences," said Clinton, who spoke to about 1,000 people at Luther College in Decorah in northeastern Iowa.
"I think it is a terrible mistake for our president to say he will not talk with bad people. You don't make peace with your friends -- you have to do the hard work of dealing with people you don't agree with," said Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
Opening talks with other countries doesn't mean the U.S. won't defend its interests whenever necessary, she said, "but what it means is that we should discuss other routes before we decide we're going to pursue military options.
"We cannot provide the leadership we need unless we are willing to try engage the other countries," she said,
She dished out plenty of criticism about the war in Iraq, and said when it comes to Iran, the U.S. needs to engage those with the real power -- the clerics.
Of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad she said: "He's like their front man, he's like their puppet. He goes out and gets people agitated and says things that everybody responds to, but he's not making the decisions. The decisions are being made within the alternative government of these clerics.
"We have no idea of how these people think, we have no contact with them," Clinton said, arguing that she's advocated for years to have a process of diplomacy with Iran.
"If we ever have to use force against any country, it should be seen as an action of last resort, not first resort," she said.
Hillary's Strategist By Robert D. Novak Saturday, July 7, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Hillary Clinton is facing increasing Democratic criticism for using Mark Penn as her presidential campaign's chief strategist while he also serves as CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the public relations giant with corporate clients whose policies run opposite to Clinton's.
Clients include Royal Dutch Shell (attacked by Clinton for "windfall profits"), as well as tobacco and pharmaceutical firms with records she has deplored. Penn was a key operative in President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and continued as a second-term adviser.
A footnote: Penn criticized Bloomberg News, which has reported on conflicts between Burson-Marsteller and the Clinton campaign, for obtaining "several months" of Penn's internal blogs. On June 29, a former employee who started a rival firm filed suit in New York City against Penn for monitoring his personal e-mails.
