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Could somebody explain how Obama is uniting the Democratic party whilst Hillary is dismantling it? He's got an insignificant delegate lead. Unless one of them quits, the party political machine is going to make the decision who their candidate will be. Basically Hillary and Obama say pretty much the same things on most every issue except for Iraq. Yet Hillary is somehow the "disruptor" while Obama is the "uniter"? I don't get it. Obama's answer on what to do with Iraq was laughable--Hillary has the more realistic approach to extricate the US out of that region.

Why the Clintons have always rubbed me the wrong way... she knows she has no more experience but also knows that most people will assume she does just because they've known who she was longer.

Yet Hillary is somehow the "disruptor"

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

The Fellowship's ideas are essentially a blend of Calvinism and Norman Vincent Peale, the 1960s preacher of positive thinking. It's a cheery faith in the "elect" chosen by a single voter—God—and a devotion to Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers....The powers that be are ordained of God." Or, as Coe has put it, "we work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." According to the Fellowship's archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship's God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-2.html

You can watch his interview with Andrea Mitchell below. The most telling point for me was when Andrea said "... clearly she is involved in a religious organization that is much more right wing that she (pause) claims to be."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/msnbc-opens-the-door-on-
h_b_93556.html

The Family was founded in Seattle in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and traveling preacher who had been working with the city's poor, and who feared that "socialist" politicians were about to take over Seattle's municipal government. Prominent members of Seattle's business community recognized his success with those who were "down and out" and asked him to give spiritual direction to their group who were "up and out." He organized Christian prayer breakfasts for politicians and businessmen that included anti-Communism and anti-union discussions. He was subsequently invited to set up similar meetings among political and business leaders in San Francisco and Chicago. By 1942, the organization had moved headquarters to Washington, DC, where it helped create breakfast groups in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. In 1944, the organization's name was changed to International Christian Leadership, then in 1972, to The Fellowship Foundation. It was at this time that the group's leaders decided to lower the Fellowship's public profile by decentralizing its leadership.

The organization has been criticized for its relationships with dictators, including Brazilian dictator Marshal Artur da Costa e Silva, General Suharto of Indonesia, Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez.

Fellowship members have been active in reconciliation efforts between the warring leaders of The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.

The organization has operated under other names, including: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the National Fellowship Council.

Current operations

The Fellowship is incorporated in the United States as a tax-free 501(c)(3) organization operating under the name The Fellowship Foundation. While they conduct no fundraising operations, they reported revenues of more than $12 million in 2003 from donations. Its mission statement is:

"To develop and maintain an informal association of people banded together, to go out as "ambassadors of reconciliation," modeling the principles of Jesus, based on loving God and loving others. To work with the leaders of other nations, and as their hearts are touched, the poor, the oppressed, the widows and the youth of their country will be impacted in a positive manner. Youth groups will be developed under the thoughts of Jesus, including loving others as you want to be loved."

While The Fellowship, which strives to be "invisible," has received some media attention for allegedly having behind-the-scenes influence over political leaders, the allegations have never been proven.

Their primary activity is to develop small support groups for members of Congress, businesspersons, and anyone else who is interested in the teachings of Jesus. Prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense. Connections to the CIA have also been alleged.

The Fellowship maintains a three-story, 7,914-square-foot red brick townhouse at 133 C Street in Washington, D.C., near the United States Capitol. The townhouse used to be a convent. As many as six members of Congress, Democratic and Republican, live here while in Washington. In 2003, these men paid $600 a month to live there: U.S. Reps. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; and Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; and U.S. Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Sam Brownback, R-Kan. The house, which was valued at $1.1 million in 2003, is owned by a Fellowship sister organization called the C Street Center. IRS records show that the Center received more than $145,000 in grants from the Fellowship between 1997 and 2000.

The Fellowship operates a retreat center as an "unofficial headquarters," at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Va. Called "The Cedars," it was purchased in 1978 through donations from, among others, Tom Phillips, CEO of arms manufacturer Raytheon; and Ken Olsen of Digital Equipment Corporation.

There is no official membership of the group. Most members of Congress who participate are from the Republican Party but some Democrats such as Hillary Clinton participate as well. Senators who have been cited as members of the organization include Don Nickles and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, John Ensign of Nevada, Bill Nelson of Florida, Conrad Burns of Montana. Members of the House who have been cited as participants include Frank Wolf of Virginia and Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(Christian_political_organization)

In the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, Mrs. Clinton has secured more earmarks than any other Democrat except for panel Chairman Sen. Carl Levin. Clinton's beneficiaries include defense giant Northrop Grumman, which secured $6 million for the AN/SPQ-9B radar; New York-based Telephonics, which won $5 million for a standardized aircraft wireless intercom system for the National Guard Black Hawk helicopter fleet; Plug Power Inc., another New York state company, which got $3 million for fuel cell power technology; and Alliant Tech Systems (ATK), which won $3.5 million for the X-51 B robust scramjet research.

The Seattle Times reported that in all, Clinton co-sponsored 66 earmarks totaling about $150 million. Clinton mostly handed out business to defense contractors with operations in New York. The Seattle Times counted more than 220 earmarks for Clinton in six other recent spending bills.

In turn, Clinton has taken approximately $60,000 from Defense lobbyists in the 2008 election cycle.

With regard to earmarks, an issue that voters of both parties respond to, Sen. Hillary Clinton is the queen of the hidden dollar. The Clinton campaign has repeatedly refused to respond to requests that she identify her earmarks. She went so far as to vote against an amendment last year which would have required public disclosure of earmark requests.

Clinton now says she plans to release her requests for 2009 but when it comes to previous years, mums the word. Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that Senator Clinton has received a little over two billion dollars in earmarks during the course of her Senate career.

Here are some of her earmarks, and other information about them, that are of particular interest.

Sen. Clinton got $18,600 in campaign contributions from Alan Gerry, a former cable television mogul and registered Republican, days after she made a million dollar earmark for his Woodstock Concert Museum. It was included in a Senate education spending bill. It's neither illegal nor unusual for contributors to benefit from congressionally directed spending. Far too often, in fact, it's business as usual. When the earmark made the news late last year the Senate finally passed an amendment to cut the funding

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rt-eby/queen-of-the-hidden-dolla_b_91860.html

Hillary Clinton was on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart for 6 years. Wal-Mart paid her $18,000 each year she was on the board and $1,500 for every meeting she attended. She accumulated at least $100,000 in Wal-Mart stock. This might be the reason she refuses to release her tax records even though Barack Obama has done so. Maybe it's time we demand that she give back this blood money? Moreover, when Hillary Clinton was with the Rose Law firm in Little Rock she defended Wal-Mart against workers who tried to organize unions making the firm, in the words of labor leader Jonathan Tasini, "one of the most active anti-union law firms in the country."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/hillary-clinton-and-walm_b_93638.html

Go to www.hillaryclinton.com and check out Bill Clinton's syrupy five minute ad for Hillary. He introduces the commercial by saying that he wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary's background. His version of her biography is about as reliable as if it appeared in Pravda!
So, I wanted to make a few corrections:

Bill says: Hillary never wanted to run for public office, but she did want to work at public service.
The true facts are: When Clinton was considering not running for another term as Governor of Arkansas in 1990, Hillary said she would run if he didn't. She and Bill even had me take two surveys to assess her chances of winning. The conclusion was that she couldn't win because people would just see her as a seat warmer for when Bill came back licking his wounds after losing for president. So she didn't run. Bill did and won. But there is no question she had her eye on public office, as opposed to service, long ago.

Bill says: In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.
The true facts are: Hillary's main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Bill says: Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children's rights project for poor kids.
The true facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

Bill says: Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers.
The true facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected Governor.

Bill says: President Carter appointed Hillary to the Legal Services Board of Directors and she became its Chairman.
The true facts are: The appointment was in exchange for Bill's support for Carter in his 1980 primary against Ted Kennedy. Hillary became chairman in a coup in which she won a majority away from Carter's choice to be chairman.

Bill says: She served on the board of the Arkansas Children's Hospital.
The true facts are: Yes she did. But her main board activity, not mentioned by Bill, was to sit on the Wal-Mart board of directors, for a substantial fee. She was silent about their labor and health care practices.

Bill says: Hillary didn't succeed at getting health care for all Americans in 1994 but she kept working at it and helped to create the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance.
The true facts are: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP. It was included in the budget deal between Bill Clinton and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott. I helped to negotiate the deal. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals' tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with either source of funds.

Bill says: Hillary was the face of America all over the world.
The true facts are: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House. Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic, and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them.

Bill says: Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children's and women's issues.
The true facts are: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she has passed only four substantive pieces of legislation. One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives through Alzheimer's or other conditions. And two were routine bills to aid 9-11 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation.

He could lead the Democratic Party to ruin if he doesn't step down and give Clinton the chance to be our next president.

There are some people who are saying, you know, 'We really ought to end this primary; we ought to just shut down,' " There was a poll the other day that said ... let people vote."

- Hillary Clinton

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

http://belowthebeltway.com/2008/03/22/hillary-clinton-has-no-chance/

A senior strategist for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign says that Sen. Barack Obama can't win the general election in the fall. Mark Penn, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, told reporters that if Obama can't win the primary in the battleground state of Pennsylvania then he can't win in November.

"We believe fundamentally it provides a very test of who can really win the general election," Penn was quoted by ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper. "We believe this will again show Hillary is ready to win and Senator Obama really can't win a general election."

The Clinton campaign reportedly tried to deny that Penn had made the statement, but the audio was posted on the USA Today web site. "He doesn't seem to be passing the commander-in-chief test. He's not passing the steward of the economy test. And it looks like he's saying that he won't pass the keystone test," Penn says in the audio, pointing to Ohio, Florida and Michigan as other states that are "critical" to a Democrat's chance of success in November. "Sen. Obama really can't win the general election," he says.

Penn later issued a clarification, saying: "I think if you can't win Pennsylvania, it raises serious questions about whether he can win a general election."

ABC quoted Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor in response: "It can't inspire too much confidence in the Clinton campaign when their pollster ignores both polls and math by making comments as divorced from reality as this one," Vietor said. "Senator Obama is leading in delegates, states won, the popular vote, and fares better than Senator Clinton against John McCain in poll after poll, including critical swing states like Iowa, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin," he told ABC

http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2008/03/clinton-strategist-says-obama-000329.php
.

All of that hesitance ended Wednesday. As Obama watched the Wright storm settle down enough to enjoy a couple days of relaxation on the beach, Clinton re-sparked the maelstrom in an interview with a newspaper long considered one of the main organs of the "vast right-wing conspiracy."

If Clinton believes she needs to use the "Tonya Harding option" to take the Democratic nomination, it appears Richard Mellon Scaife is her Shane Stant and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review editorial board is his metal baton.

For an hour-and-a-half Tuesday afternoon, Clinton sat down with editors and reporters from the paper that spent endless hours investigating her husband's presidential administration. Scaife, the scion to the Mellon fortune who poured millions of his own dollars into Clinton conspiracy-mongering, sat directly to the right of the former first lady during the meeting.

Asked about the fact that Scaife's newspaper was the forum for her first comments on the Wright issue, Clinton laughed and said "it was actually very pleasant," although she recognized it was a "somewhat counterintuitive" place to sit down for an interview.

While Scaife hasn't fully hopped on board the Hillary Clinton express -- he donated $2,300 to GOP nominee John McCain's campaign this year -- Obama seems to be taking the brunt of attacks from his organizations.

Conservative magazine NewsMax, which is partially funded by Scaife, has focused heavily on Wright's speeches, even before the issue bubbled into the mainstream in recent weeks. "Obama's Pastor Slurs Italians" is its most recent offering on the subject. An inaccurate NewsMax article about Obama attending one of Wright's sermons made its way into a column by conservative New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, who later had to issue a correction.

The Clinton campaign also has used onetime Scaife organ the American Spectator, which the billionaire used to investigate conspiracy theories, to distribute dirt on Obama. Clinton's campaign distributed an article from the arch-conservative journal, with which Scaife has since severed ties, to highlight comments from Obama adviser Gen. Tony McPeak.

"It's obviously a little Ironic that the Clintonites have been embracing all sorts of Clinton conspiracy-theorists lately," observers The New Republic's Noam Scheiber. "The Spectator was home to the notorious "Arkansas Project," which was mostly funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the once rabid Clinton-basher whom Hillary sat down with yesterday in Pittsburgh."

The reaction elsewhere to Clinton's cozying up to the "vast right-wing conspiracy" has been even more pronounced.

"Hell Has Officially Frozen Over," reads the headline on conservative National Review blog The Corner, highlighting the photo of Clinton and Scaife.

Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall question's Clinton's contention that her Wright condemnation was simply a response to a question she had to answer.

"This is sort of like, 'Hey, I go on Hannity and next thing you know he's asking me about Wright and Farrakhan. How was I supposed to see that coming?'" he writes.

"I don't know just how this went down. But the idea Sen. Clinton and her staff went into an editorial board meeting with Scaife and his lackey reporters without a clear sense that they were going to get at least one choice Jeremiah Wright question just somehow doesn't ring true to me."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Clinton_disses_Obamas_pastor_to_organ_0326.html

Opposition to Bill Clinton

Scaife's publications were substantially involved in coverage against then-President Bill Clinton.

* Scaife was the major backer of The American Spectator, whose Arkansas Project set out to find facts about Clinton and in which Paula Jones' accusations of sexual harassment against Clinton were first widely publicized.

* In a 1999 series of articles on Scaife and foundations that support conservative causes, the Washington Post named a close Scaife associate, Richard Larry, and not Scaife himself as the man who drove the Arkansas Project.

Regardless of his role, the project not only accused Clinton of financial and sexual indiscretions (some later verified, others not), but also gave root to hyperbolic conspiracist notions that the Clintons collaborated with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation out of the town of Mena, Arkansas and that Clinton had arranged for the murder of White House aide Vince Foster as part of a coverup of the Whitewater scandal. The possibility that money from the project had been given to former Clinton associate David Hale, a witness in the Whitewater investigation, led to the appointment of Michael J. Shaheen as a special investigator. Shaheen subpoenaed Scaife, who testified before a federal grand jury in the matter.

So involved was Scaife in efforts against Clinton that many Democrats believed Hillary Clinton's statement condemning a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband was a direct reference to Scaife himself. President Clinton later admitted to sexual indiscretions, but the other allegations that came out of the Arkansas Project were never proven.

Coincidental to the Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's impeachment, Scaife endowed a new school of public policy at Pepperdine University. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was named the first dean of this school, although Pepperdine denies any connection. Starr accepted the post in 1996, but in the ensuing controversy, Starr gave up the appointment in 1998 before ever having started at Pepperdine.

That same year Scaife's friend and Pittsburgh attorney, H. Yale Gutnick, denied that there was any connection between Scaife and Starr:

I can tell you unequivocally that there is absolutely no linkage between Scaife and Starr in any way, shape or form. Had Ken Starr's picture not been all over the television and newspapers in recent weeks, I don't think****Scaife would recognize him at a social event. They have never communicated, they have never seen each other personally, and there's no relationship whatsoever.

****Scaife has been involved with Pepperdine I think before Clinton became governor of Arkansas, and clearly long before he was president and before the special prosecutor ever was even a dream in anybody's imagination. His giving to Pepperdine has been consistent over the years and it's been generous.

However, once the investigation was behind him, Starr was appointed to head Pepperdine's law school in 2004.

In the fall of 2007, however, Ruddy published a positive interview with former President Clinton on Newsmax.com, followed by a positive cover story in the magazine. The New York Times noted with reference to the event that politics had made "strange bedfellows". Newsweek reported that Ruddy praised Clinton for his Foundation's global work, and explained that the interview, as well as a private lunch he and Scaife had had with Clinton (which Ruddy says was orchestrated by Ed Koch), were due to the shared view of himself and Scaife that Clinton was doing important work representing the U.S. globally while America was the target of criticism. He also said that he and Scaife had never suggested Clinton was involved in Foster's death, nor had they spread allegations about Bill Clinton's sex scandals, although their work may have encouraged others. It has been suggested that Scaife is motivated by a desire to improve his public image in regard to his divorce, or even that he may be motivated by a desire to oppose his ex-wife's support for Barrack Obama.

Political donations

According to campaignmoney.com, from 1999 through 2006, Scaife has, under the name "R. Scaife," made 10 contributions of over $200 to political campaigns, for a total of $19,000. Under the name "R.M. Scaife" he made 4 donations, for a total of $22,000. Under the name Richard Scaife, he made 23 donations over this period, for a total of $142,904. Besides donations to the Republican National Committee and various political campaigns such as Santorum 2000 and the Santorum Victory Committee for Rick Santorum, he has also supported Political Action Committees such as the Pro-Growth Action Team, the Free Congress PAC (formerly: Committee For the Survival Of a Free Congress), and the Club For Growth Inc. PAC.

Scaife also funded the Western Journalism Center, headed by Joseph Farah. Farah has been connected to reconstructionism, a movement to replace judicial law with Christian Old Testament law. The organization is antigay, and would move to punish "practicing homosexuals" by sentencing them to death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife

only Hillary Clinton is a decent human being who wants to do the right thing.