The Anchoress

Hillary Clinton says she doesn’t like all of this individualism stuff - the rugged individuality which is the very definition of America does not appeal to her very much. She prefers the socialist collective. Resistance is futile.

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”
[…]
That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

“There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed,” she said. “Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”

We’ll skip over the fact that the middle class is doing very well in America and acknowledge that St. Benedict - whose Monastic Rule has stood for 1400 years as a perfect guideline for communal living, family building and even corporate management - would agree with Hillary that fairness requires some guidelines and policies.

I (and perhaps Benedict) would part ways from Hillary at the suggestion that “government policies” are the road to parity. The thing is, communism works in very small enclaves, in monasteries, for example, where everyone involved is entering willingly, is voluntarily looking to be denuded, is eager to “give stuff up” in an effort to attain something quite different from worldy “stuff.” Communism does not work, though, in a large-scale national situation whereby people are expected to sublimate themselves, their instincts and their ambitions for the good of the party. Socialism does not work.

There is an enormous difference between a few dozen people voluntarily giving up their worldly goods for communal living, and forcing people to participate in such a society against their will. The first brings freedom for those who choose it. The second, historically, has brought tyranny, poverty, slaughter and the gulag. When Hillary said, a few years ago,

“Many of you are well enough off that [President Bush’s] tax cuts may have helped you. We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

I and many others (and I am not a particularly materialistic person, mind you) felt that old chill wind Tim Robbins keeps warning us about blow and blow.

That quote, by the way, comes from one of the rapidly-disappearing-from-search-engines articles one can no longer find except on a few blogs who noted it, and not all of those blogs come up, either. I remember scores of blogs commenting on that remark, but in a search, today, only a few come up - mostly because of bloggers listing quotes in a book. Apparently that remark of Hillary’s is going to be taken away from us for our common good. We’re in for an interesting election year. But I digress…

Special privileges for none: A humorous note, when it peels forth from the lips of a woman who has had nothing but special privileges thrust her way for all of her life, and who is unlikely to stop living with them anytime soon…but we’ll simply smile and put that aside for a moment.

Even St. Benedict - who knew a little more about communal living than does Hillary Clinton - understood that “special privileges for none” did not work in a real world. He understood that a community, no matter how dedicated to anonymity and commonality, was still made up of individuals, that a successful monastery was built by taking into account and using each monk or nun’s individual gifts.

Rumer Godden explains it well in In This House of Brede:

“Dame Agnes, a scholar and writer, might need twenty books, while dear Dame Perpetua might need only one or, as she might say herself, none at all.”

As Benedict writes it:

Let him who hath need of less thank God and not give way to sadness, but let him who hath need of more, humble himself for his infirmity, and not be elated for the indulgence shown him; and thus all the members will be at peace.

Perhaps instead of simply lecturing the rest of us, Hillary might do well to read this commencement address from the Valedictorian of Notre Dame’s class of 2007:

The life of someone like Fr. Tom Streit, a biologist and Holy Cross priest who works in Haiti to eliminate the spread of elephantiasis, illustrates the continued need for direct service to the world’s poor…there are Notre Dame alumni in the business world who use their skills and passion to mentor nonprofit organizations. The University also sponsors the GLOBES program, which brings together a wide array of leaders to tackle environmental problems and has expanded my idea of how one can serve the world. Such diverse possibilities represent but a few among many ways to continue what has already been started in us. Just as this University’s mission doesn’t stop with who we are at this point, we have been formed – our lives have been complicated – to embark upon a lifetime of action.

Fellow graduates, as we leave this university, many of us have the enormous privilege of being able to live relatively comfortable lives when compared to the majority of the world’s population. At the same time, whether or not we live materially comfortable lives, we are ultimately called to live complicated lives. Respecting the principles of Catholic social teaching means that the lives of millions killed around the world by treatable diseases matter, just as the economic, social, and spiritual poverty that exists in our own neighborhoods deserves our attention. Such realities necessitate concern, sympathy, and action. Though the answers to these problems are not always obvious, turning the page of the newspaper and failing to ask “why” would betray what this place, with its Catholic foundation, stands for.

Imagine that! Individual people - not “the goverment” - making a difference!

Noble behavior ennobles everyone as a rising tide lifts all boats. Restrictive behavior…simply restricts.

We are in this together, that’s true. But we are each created as individuals, each endowed with gifts meant to serve and enhance the One Body. Sublimation of the self to a secular government entity does not sound like the gig to me. As I wrote here, we are in this together, outside of time. Meaning…in God.

People often ask me why Catholics find it necessary to keep the Crucifix before them. “The victory was in the resurrection, not the death…Catholics focus on the wrong thing - the cross should be empty…”

Well, yes. The victory is the resurrection, but its gotten to through the rest of it.

While the empty cross brings us hope and promise, we are still humans living human lives with all of the pain and frailty and questions and hurt that implies…and when one looks at the Crucifix, one finds not a morbid and bloody corpse, but The God Who Knows, not because he is conveniently all-knowing, but because He actually submitted to life, lived it, endured it, went through it all, just as we do.

Jesus lost his own beloved step-father, Joseph, he knows what we know. When we look at the Crucifix we see that there is no human situation that Jesus did not come to know. Feel betrayed? Feel humiliated? Feel abandoned? Feel unjustly hurt? Feel loss? There, on that crucifix is the God who has known every one of those feelings, and has submitted to them - in order to save us, but also in order to draw us near, to gather us into a consolation, a consoling embrace that says…“I know what you’re feeling…I know what you’re thinking…we are actually all in this together, and quite outside of time.”

It’s hard to remember all that. The Crucifix is the reminder.

Meanwhile, a helpful reader finds the tough-to-find piece.

After reading this very interesting summary of an anchoress’ day, I’m bound to admit that I’m too much in politics lately and not enough in prayer.

I’ll have to work on balancing that a bit better. Lately I am certainly a very chatty, busybody sort of anchoress…even if it’s only a persona.

Meanwhile, do go read this really excellent piece based on a homily given by Deacon Greg Kandra at his Mass of Thanksgiving two weeks ago. Here’s an excerpt:

But after 9/11, I realized with a blinding clarity that the tidy life I’d established for myself could vanish at any moment. Then, one day, on the way back from picking up bagels, I passed a homeless guy on the subway, begging for money. I offered him a fresh bagel. He thanked me with so much enthusiasm, you’d have thought I’d given him a fresh cut of sirloin. When my train came, I looked over my shoulder to see where he’d gone. And there he was, at the end of the platform: he’d broken his bagel in half and was sharing it with another homeless man.

This withered old man who had next to nothing gave half of what he had to someone who had even less. Deep in the recesses of my Catholic memory, something stirred. “And they knew him in the breaking of the bread.” Something began to speak to me.

I realized: I’d been given much. What could I give back?

He will be, I believe, an abundantly fruitful blessing to the Body of Christ.

So, Cindy Sheehan’s overlong 15 minutes have come to a slightly whiney close as she realizes - finally - that the Democrats and the left only loved her as long as she was doing their bidding emotion-tapping, Bush-bashing, Jackson-hugging, insurgent-encouraging, Chavez-hugging, camera-mugging, headline-grabbing, mob-collecting tool of distraction and obfuscation thing, meant to drive down the president’s poll numbers and support for his efforts to keep terrorist attacks from our shores.

I remember when Cindy Sheehan first came on the scene. First I was sympathetic, then I wondered about her, in her suffering, then wondered some more, then grew rather horrified, and then stopped wondering at all and wrote:

The woman, who this weekend kvetched because CNN et al were spending all of their time covering Hurricane Rita, which was “just a little wind and rain,” instead of Herself climbing all over Jesse Jackson, made certain she’ll be covered on all the channels tonight - that she’ll get the Drudge coverage and the number one spot on Technorati. She sat down where she wasn’t supposed to and, after three warnings, was “arrested.”

“Attention all you cameramen, I am about to be arrested, please focus!”

I can’t think of anything that seems to destroy people’s mental health faster than a few weeks or months of uncritical, gushing media hype.
[…]
And now, we see Mother Sheehan - an utter media creation who burnished her genuine tragedy with an ability to cry-on-cue, but who has long-since overplayed the “grieving mother” hand and become all about preening and performing for the camera. Yesterday people losing lives and livelihoods to a storm were mere peons interferring with her scheduled adulation. Today she got herself arrested, smiling the whole while and still quite certain that the constitution which guarentees her the right to self-destruct in an endless loop on CNN, is a constitution that is not worth dying for.

Last week, I wrote of Rosie O’ Donnell:

“…go figure out who is trying to kill you and who is actually trying to save your foolish ass.”

I commend the same advice to Sheehan, but given the text of her bitter and self-pitying missive, I don’t think she’s interested, yet, in consuming massive doses of reality. Her first does has almost done her in:

The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message…

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used…

The missive is rife with personal references and some ideas that hint of a failed messiah-complex, and there is some crazy stuff in there about the government “controlling what we think” (not yet, Cindy, that would be your good pal Hugo Chavez come back after ‘08 for the rest) but one line of hers is worth exploring:

“The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing.”

Madam, your gracious and courageous son - whose death is tragic and for whom your mourning is nothing less than appropriate - will only have died “for nothing” if his mission is left dangling and unfinished by the very people - and their minions - who exploited you, and who help to make the job of every soldier in Iraq more difficult. Your son died fighting - like the very noblest and most formidable of heroes - to free a people and a nation from tyranny, and to rid them of the nests of violent and murderous men who keep their nation - and a whole region - under the boot, under the veil and out of the marketplace of ideas and invention, progress and parity. So long as those people are so subjected, the “world peace” you rant for will never take hold, and terrorism - the killing and maiming of utter innocents - will continue, throughout the world, to be the preferred means of movement.

The truth is, Mrs. Sheehan, President Bush is not the one trying to cheapen your son’s sacrifice. I certainly am not, either. Your son’s honorable death is being cheapened by the people who would say, “I support the troops, so I want them to be pulled out of a the place where they can make a difference, and have them stop acting like the warriors they are, so we can all sing Kumbaya and pretend to be friends with the whole world…until they attack another US City, in which case we should all beg their pardon and ask them why they hate us and how we can change to be more what they’d like.” Those are the people who want to “waste” Casey Sheehan’s young life. Those are the people who gave you “absolute moral authority” to do their bidding, until you dared ask them to let their actions be consistent with their rhetoric.

Do go home, Ma’am. Do go home and be silent for a little while, because silence is so much more instructive than noise. Go home and figure out who is trying to kill you and who is actually trying to save your grieving ass. Your son had already figured it out. He knew that liberty comes through the overthrowing of tyrants.

I tend to feel as this Freeper spokesperson does:

Kristinn Taylor, spokesman for FreeRepublic.com, which has held pro-troop rallies and counter-protests of anti-war demonstrations, said dwindling crowds at Sheehan’s Crawford protests since her initial vigil may have led to her decision. But he also said he hopes she will now be able to heal.

“Her politics have hurt a lot of people, including the troops and their families, but most of us who support the war on terror understand she is hurt very deeply,” Taylor said today. “Those she got involved with in the anti-war movement realize it was to their benefit to keep her in that stage of anger.”

Note: You’ll not be surprised to note that newspaper reports are carefully editing Sheehan’s goodbye letter
to omit her criticisims of the left and the Democrats. The press is ever-vigilant to insure that no dross touches their favored ones.

Siggy gives no quarter to Sheehan and wonders how much of her resignation is tied to financial questions, as he remembers some of Sheehan’s lower moments.

Tammy Bruce gives Sheehan’s screed a fisking.

Ed Morrissey and Rick Moran have more thoughts.

Don Surber also rolls his eyes as he bids Sheehan adieu.

More:
Sister Toljah

Kobayashi Maru has a great post up on Byrnes, too, and a few things occur to him:

) In much of the Islamic world (to put it mildly), a 15-year-old female would not have access to the kind of intellectual cultivation, encouragement or freedom this young woman obviously has.

2) This is an interesting illustration of the value that outsiders can bring to a problem that ‘officials’ and ‘experts’ are unable or unwilling to crack. The fresh eyes of the uncredentialed, unbiased and marginalized often hold the key to new insights in science–the ultimate meritocracy. So it has been throughout history. The Internet gives legs to that dynamic. The freedoms of liberal (old meaning) Western Democracies give it staying power.
[…]
Bottom line: we don’t, can’t and shouldn’t attempt to control the climate. We should listen more carefully to fresh voices like Kristen Byrnes who are trying to understand it and who don’t (yet) have to feed at the official scientific and academic funding troughs with the biases they inevitably introduce.

UPDATE I: I just ran across this well-informed analysis of the IPCC preliminary report from a February post over at Error Theory (lots more detail in his post).

The Report acknowledges that indirect solar effects are the only candidate for powerful natural warming effects. Evidence that some kind of powerful indirect solar effects exist is acknowledged. But indirect solar effects are then omitted from both the computer models that are discussed, and from the conclusions that are drawn based upon the computer models. The result is the classic problem of the omitted variable. Warming effects get misattributed to the greenhouse/anthropogenic effects that ARE included in the model. Thus the main conclusion of the Report is based entirely on elementary errors of logic and statistics. [emphasis added]

In other words: it’s the sun, stupid.

Queen Nan, btw, has declared decisively, global warming IS manmade and it’s not Greenland’s fault. It’s ours, of course. She offers no science behind that, btw. But she is the queen.

In other news, thus far no word on whether Al Gore - who will brook neither dissent or debate on his great religion and profit-making scheme, will talk it over with this 15 year old girl.

Over time, free nations grow stronger and dictatorships grow weaker…Freedom honors and unleashes human creativity — and creativity determines the strength and wealth of nations. Liberty is both the plan of Heaven for humanity, and the best hope for progress here on Earth.”
– PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
November 6, 2003

This is the flip side of Hugo Chavez’ crackdown in Venezuela: Gateway Pundit notes that in China, a state-sponsored tv station has been hacked into, and anti-government messages were broadcast. Interesting!

What was it President Bush has been crying out, since 9/11? What has be been saying, and saying, and saying, and saying, and saying, before the press and the Dems managed to completely obfuscate his message and (sadly, with his help) his presidency?

Oh, yeah…if you read those links, you read it again and again: People will always choose LIBERTY. The human soul desires LIBERTY.

As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world.
President George W. Bush, to the Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001.

Yes…the speech he made after 9/11, before the visionary Whitehall speech, which was never even replayed on C-Span. Go back and read it. It’s easy to forget what the president, and the War on Terror is all about, when you never see or hear about these things.

More thoughts on liberty - it’s sweetness, its benefits, its costs - from Wretchard and from Vanderleun. And Bookworm and Flopping Aces both link to Christopher Hitchen’s interesting assessment of what the election of Sarko, and his appointments in France, portend. It’s all about liberty, in one way or another. Writes Hitchens:

But the initial phrase, about the relationship between duty and protection, was, I believe, coined by Bernard Kouchner, who now forces us to rethink our glib counterposition between unilateralism on the one hand and passivity and acquiescence—even complicity—on the other. I suppose there is some irony to be found in the fact that, while such a person takes command of the foreign policy of France, the only apparent test of liberalism in the United States is the speed with which it proposes to abandon the Arabs and Kurds of Iraq once again.

Brits At Their Best recalls an encounter with tyranny and says it succinctly:

Hearing my grandmother whisper about the government in the dark, walking through once-beautiful crumbling towns, meeting the anxious, envious, hopeless eyes of everyone I met on the street, I gained a different impression of those “workers’ paradises” where everyone had free health care but no one wanted to live.

Meanwhile, SnappedShot provides us with pictures of an “election” only a tyrant could love.

Related: Bush Dances with Free People; Albright Danced with Kim Jong Il

The initial headlines are either unclear or they’re working at happy spin:

Chavez launches new Venezuela TV station.

That sounds merry, doesn’t it - as though Hugo Chavez is happily launching a new enterprise and celebrating! The story is a bit different, though:

CARACAS, Venezuela –Venezuela’s oldest private television station was pushed off the air as President Hugo Chavez’s government replaced the popular opposition-aligned network with a new state-funded channel on Monday. Radio Caracas Television shut down just before midnight Sunday as its broadcast license expired. Chavez refused to renew its license, accusing the channel of “subversive” activities. The new channel, TVES, launched its transmissions with artists singing pro-Chavez music…

This headline could be about anything:

Troops fire upon protesters in Venezuela

As with the first headline, it says nothing of Chavez shutting down a popular opposition television station and implanting his own propaganda machine - if you’re only reading the headline, you have no idea what’s really happening:

National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday into a crowd of protesters angry over a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a critical television station off the air.

Madonne! Talk about yer chill winds! Here is Hugo Chavez doing precisely what the his admirers on the left daily accuse President Bush (“The Devil” per Chavez) of doing: suppressing dissent, suppressing human liberty.

Another rather innocuous-sounding headline: Venezuela to Launch TV Channel, Replacing Private Station.

Good Lord, that sounds downright dry and humdrum. Reads that way, too. Another: Venezuela TV station to shut at midnight

Honestly, if you were scanning headlines, would you - unless you have a specific interest in that country - even bother reading the story? And the story is pre-tty interesting.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Television personalities embraced, wept and broke into chants of “freedom!” before the cameras Sunday as Venezuela’s most widely watched channel prepared to go off the air at midnight under a decision by President Hugo Chavez that opponents called an assault on free speech.

This is a little better: Venezuela moves against second opposition TV channel:

Hours after President Hugo Chavez shut down Venezuela’s main opposition broadcaster, his government demanded an investigation of news network Globovision on Monday for allegedly inciting an assassination attempt on the leftist leader.

Chavez took Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV, off the air at midnight on Sunday and replaced it with a state-run channel to promote his socialist programs. The move sparked international condemnation and accusations from the opposition that he was undermining democracy in the OPEC nation.

More: Venezuela TV station says troops seized equipment

Anti-Chavez TV station forced off the air in Venezuela

Fausta and Gateway Pundit are the absolute go-to blogs on this story. They’re following closely, updating frequently, and linking heavily. Who else is going to tell you that Chavez sent in tanks?

Venezuelans are saying, how do we get to America - to freedom? I guess they haven’t heard about Bush being the Devil.

And Glenn Reynolds links to video.

And how is the “voice” of the American Left spinning this? Aw, c’mon…take a guess! You don’t have to be a seer to predict it, but go see the bit My Pet Jawa has excerpted. “Wow…just wow,” indeed.

Reading Jawa’s excerpt from Kos,Snarky Bastards notes:

If President Bush forced CNN off the air, I’d guess that the university types would take to the streets—and they would be right to. But if a President Obama reenacted the Fairness Doctrine and forced all talk radio to be silent, I’d guess there’d be very few street protestors.

A reasonable world would cry out against this true “chill wind,” like these protest babes in Venezuela. The world is increasingly unreasonable, however, and friend Larwyn, monitoring the channels, wrote a few hours ago that - up until then, at least - only FOX News is reporting on the story. Perhaps because FOX is wondering if they’ll face their own “chill wind” come ‘08.

I’ll tell you what…reading news like this makes me appreciate the Merton quote in my header all the more.

Read Dr. Sanity on the left’s nuanced sympathies for Chavez’s thuggery.

See also: Choosing liberty, a sort of continuation on this theme.

WELCOME: American Thinker readers! While you’re here, please look around. Today we’re also (or, still) talking about Cindy Sheehan’s off-key swansong, the fakery and hoo-hah of Al Gore’s “manmade” Global Warming, why Bill Clinton needs twice as much money as the next-most-expensive ex-president (guess who that is), we’re thinking about consumerism and maturity, Hillary’s debts, how a soldier feels about the press, and why we should impeach Bush, after all, plus a thumping good read, for the ladies.

Several times before I have recommended Georgette Heyer to my female readers (although a fella who likes Jane Austen might be interested, as well). I admit, I am an unabashed fool for The Convenient Marriage - one of the funniest and best-written books I’ve ever read into the night while giggling enough to awaken my husband. Now, I have a second “favorite.”

So, on Friday, I began reading one of Heyer’s earliest books, These Old Shades - a book I’d avoided because I generally don’t like stories set in France - all those French names and airs! But quickly I became completely swept up by this writer’s incredible gift for character and historical accuracy. In this book Heyer manages to create a bright and chirping heroine and match her to a dark, truly dark, hero one nevertheless wants to trust, and to write a story that is - at its core - rather harrowing, while still managing to make you smile. That’s no small feat.

I admit, this one is not a laugh-out-loud sort of book. Although the hero’s sister and brother are blithe and perfect comic creations, one’s urge to snigger is tempered by the ghastly background story of Leon…and Leonie. At one point I was surprised to find myself wiping away tears - I do not usually weep over a bit of fiction - and yesterday afternoon, trying to gobble down the book before an evening engagement, I watched Heyer go to an astounding place, and I slapped the book down, flabbergasted.

“I can’t believe she wrote that!” I said to my husband.

“What,” he said, completely disinterested.

“What she wrote; I can’t believe she went there - that she took her hero to that place - and she made it heroic!”

“This is a bad thing?”

“I would never have the guts to do it! I’d never be able to write it! It’s such a moral conundrum!”

“Is this the heroine we’re talking about?”

“No, the writer! And the hero!”

“I thought the writer was a woman,” he said. “That would make her a heroine.”

“Bah!” I said, channeling the heroine, “you don’t understand! The hero…he did something so reprehensible - very, very bad, indeed!”

“So, it’s bad, the book,” he wondered.

I sighed. “It’s freaking glorious! It’s phenomenal! I can’t believe she went there, though! What a read this is! What a thumping good read! A triumph! Absolument!”

Sadly, I had to wait until we’d returned, rather late, to get back into and finally finish the story. And tonight…I begin to read it again, because a book this good deserves a second read. You’ll love it. What a read!

Reposted for Memorial Day.

An Englishman decides that it is a sentiment not worthy of mockery, after all.

The Americans are more old-fashioned than us, and what is equally admirable, they are not ashamed of being old-fashioned. They know Churchill was a great man, so they put his house on the map. There is a kind of Englishman to whom this sort of behaviour seems painfully unsophisticated.
[…]
But lest these impressions of the United States seem unduly favourable, it should be added that the Americans have not remained in happy possession of their free constitution without cost. Thomas Jefferson warned that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots. To the Americans, the idea that freedom and democracy exact a cost in blood is second nature.
[…]
We stood at Gettysburg, scene of the bloodiest battle of all, on a field covered with memorials to the fallen. Here Abraham Lincoln gave his great and sublimely brief address, ending with the hope “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

Again some Europeans will give an unkind smile. All this sounds so Puritan, so naïve and so self-righteous. We cannot help feeling that the Americans ought to have been able to settle their quarrel without killing each other, and, while we cannot defend the institution of slavery, we wonder whether the North had the right to impose its will by force.
[…]
The Americans are prepared to use force in pursuit of what they regard as noble aims. It is yet another respect in which they are rather old-fashioned. They are patriots who venerate their nation and their flag.
[…]
But when the Americans speak of freedom, we should not imagine, in our cynical and worldly-wise way, that they are merely using that word as a cloak for realpolitik. They are not above realpolitik, but they also mean what they say.

These formidable people think freedom is so valuable that it is worth dying for.

A very moving piece this American was grateful to read.

Check out Chris Muir’s dose of reality.

This 86 year old Vet honors his comrades.

Shauna Fleming, meanwhile has organized A Million Thanks.

President salutes the troops. Literally.

Meanwhile, AJ brings successes in Iraq you might not have read about.

More for Memorial Day:

Flopping Aces says Remember
Ubiquitous Fred Thompson says I Remember
Me Delivering a Message to my Milreaders
A soldier writes a letter to the press
Old Broad says Honor Them
Neo-neocon on honoring and mourning
Thoughts on the hell that is war

WELCOME: Jules Crittenden readers. This weekend we’re also still rallying to impeach President Bush, looking at just how beholden Hillary is to rich people and countries; we’re wondering whether Al Gore has the stones to debate this 15-year old and we’re stunned, as usual, at Bill Clinton’s chutzpah. Happy reading!

I noted in this post about all the folks to whom Hillary is beholden - all those folks to whom Bill and Hillary will owe something more than a night in the Lincoln bedroom, should they make it back to the White House - that the Clintons, while no longer as impoverished as they once were, are not exactly known for spending their own money when friends have vacation homes, Manhattan penthouses and private jets for their use. As Marty Peretz once wrote:

All about money. Imagine if you are a friend of the Clintons. First of all you are rich, very rich. Simply because they don’t have friends other than ones with spare and bigger than big amounts of cash. Here are the purposes for which you have been asked contributions: twice for Bill Clinton for President (and all of the skeletal extensions of the local and national Democratic Party), the 727s, the White House refurbishing fund, the Clinton Defense Fund, the Clinton Library, twice for Hillary for Senate, annual contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative, each of his and her birthdays. Was there a Chappaqua remodeling project? If you have a private jet you’d have been expected to hand it over for a day, a weekend. If you have a house in Martha’s Vineyard or in East Hampton or in Aspen or in Palm Springs, why don’t you visit your in-laws? And it isn’t as if the Clintons are asking you directly. Some underling is doing it, and you’re afraid to say “no.” Or even “boo.” $1 million here, $1 million there. Pretty soon, it’s a heck of a lot of money. You could have named a building at your alma mater after yourself with that money.

Lots of people seem to have lots of claims on the Clintons, and certainly if you have contributed millions to a man and woman of peculiar influence, you want your payback. Meanwhile, the Clintons - Bill, at least - continue to make startlingly large claims on the American taxpayer, and by the way, he wants you to know you’re getting a bargain!

The globe-trotting former president with the New York office and a worldwide charitable enterprise is seeking $1.16 million in taxpayer money for fiscal 2008. That is more than double the amount requested by fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter and substantially more than that by Republican George H.W. Bush.

Clinton’s office makes no apologies, saying taxpayers are getting a bargain.

“Given his tireless work on behalf of the U.S. government abroad with the tsunami and state funerals, including leading the U.S. delegation to Boris Yeltsin’s recent funeral, his work at home with Hurricane Katrina recovery, and his vigorous charitable foundation work to fight AIDS, climate change and childhood obesity, I’d say the American people are getting more than their money’s worth from President Clinton,” spokesman Jay Carson said.

Wait a second, WAIT a second - that’s a fast bit of razzle-dazzle and footwork but does anyone think that the ex-president, (working “tirelessly” on behalf of the US Government even - I suppose - when he is in overseas and comparing our government unfavorably to another’s and or badmouthing the current Commander-in-Chief) is actually being billed for anything while he’s attending functions at the request of the POTUS, (as with the tsunami relief, or attending a state funeral?) Please. Ex-president George H.W. Bush also went on OTUS-assigned tsumani-relief business, and he’s not asking for 1.16 million bucks! Are we paying for the expenses for Clinton’s private charity - if not why did his spokesperson bring it up, simply to tell us how grateful we should be to pay his bills? I mean, how much chutzpah do you have to have to say that to a nation?

I suspect we’re paying for his most recent photo ops with Racheal Ray as he decides childhood obesity is the next “most important crisis” in the world, after global warming, but still before terrorism (on his radar, terrorism was never very important.) Ugh…this man tires me. I know I have praised him here and there, but mostly, he just makes me so tired…it’s all-flim-flam all-the-time, even down to his expense reports; I just wish he’d find a way off the damn stage, already.

Writes Bookworm:

… turns out that President Clinton’s almost compulsive globe trotting costs American taxpayers a lot of money — this year, he’s trying to stick the people for $1.16 million in expenses. His spokespeople justify the cost on the ground that he’s simply a spiffy, wonderful goodwill ambassador for the world, (forget the fact that nobody asked him to take on that job on our dime).

The other little tidbit was the fact that Clinton has earned nearly $40 million in six and a half years. That’s not Hillary’s money. Just Bill’s. And that doesn’t even count the $191,000 pension the American taxpayers give him annually (money that I’m okay about)…it appears that he’s booked some of those [private speaking] engagements using phones he’s now trying to charge to the American taxpayers. Oh, and did I mention that he wants to have us pay an extra $10,000 a year for added health insurance, a surprising overlay given his wife’s superb Senatorial coverage?

…I guess he’s happy to join John Edwards, John Kerry and the other members of the millionaire and billionaire club that increasingly make up the “ruling class” of the Democratic party. (A point I throw in because I’m just sick of Leno jokes about the Republican’s being the party of the rich.)

If I watched Leno, I suppose I’d be tired of those jokes, too.

Look, a former president should have some of his expenses covered, absolutely, but why does Clinton need $10,000 in supplemental health insurance when his wife - as a Senator - has perhaps the best health insurance available in the United States? Why must we pay costs and expenses connected to private speaking engagements? When does either Clinton stop suckling at the taxpayers teet for whatever he/she can get?

It’s pretty damn bad when you start fleecing the elderly, too, and worse when the NYT accidentally leaks it and then goes into spin cycle.

So Rosie O’ Donnell’s cheif writer (she has a writer?) was escorted from the building after drawing mustaches on promotional pictures of Elizabeth Hasselbeck, because O’ Donnell and Hasselbeck had a verbal tussle. Very grown-up behavior.

Yesterday, Rosie’s chief writer, Janette Barber, was allegedly escorted from the building after she was caught drawing moustaches on photographs of Hasselbeck that hang in the “View” studios.

The Post’s Adam Buckman reports ABC confirmed in a statement only that “photographs at ‘The View’s’ offices were defaced. Rosie O’Donnell was not in the building. ABC Legal and Human Resources are investigating the matter.” Barber is an old friend of O’Donnell who worked with her years ago on “The Rosie O’Donnell Show.”

Reminds me of when the Clinton’s took all the W’s off the keyboards as they left the White House. Yeah…these are the folks who should be in charge, these miserable, spoiled perpetual adolescents.

UPDATE: Apparently O’ Donnell will not be returning back to The View. She was happy, there, as long as she could carry on, making outlandish charges with impunity - “the first time in the history of the world that fire ever melted steel!” - but when called on to actually explain her own remarks and insinuations, without willing apologists ready to give her cover, she didn’t like it so much.

Ah, well…my Auntie Lillie had an old saying:

“if you can’t stand the melting steel, then get outta here and go figure out who is trying to kill you and who is actually trying to save your foolish ass.”

Also writing: Joe Gandleman