Hillary distorts reality again! WTF CLINTONS?!?!?

[peoli]

Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Distorting Her Words

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 13, 2008
RENO, Nev. — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday accused Senator Barack Obama’s campaign of distorting remarks she made to suggest that she had cast aspersions on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

She said she was “personally offended” by the way her statement had been portrayed, and accused Mr. Obama’s campaign of being divisive.

Mrs. Clinton made her remarks to reporters here at the end of a day of campaigning after she was asked if she had spoken to Representative James E. Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat who is the highest-ranking African-American in Congress.

Mr. Clyburn had expressed disappointment in the Clinton campaign. Mrs. Clinton said that she had; she suggested that she had told him her comments were distorted.

“I was personally offended at the approach taken that was not only misleading but unnecessarily hurtful,” said Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York. “And I have made that clear to many people in the last several days.”

Asked to whom she was referring, Mrs. Clinton responded: “I think it clearly came from Senator Obama’s campaign, and I don’t think it was the kind of debate we should be having in this campaign.”

A spokesman for Mr. Obama’s campaign, Bill Burton, did not back away from its original criticism of Mrs. Clinton.

“People were offended at her words, and she can explain them however she’d like,” Mr. Burton said. “However, I think that Congressman Clyburn and other leaders across the country would take great offense at the suggestion that their response was somehow engineered by this campaign.”

Prominent black supporters of Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, have been criticizing Mrs. Clinton over her remarks last week that some have interpreted as giving President Lyndon B. Johnson more credit than Dr. King for civil rights law. Mrs. Clinton quickly clarified her comments with effusive praise of Dr. King, but the criticism has worried her advisers because of the potential impact it might have in the Democratic presidential primary on Jan. 26 in South Carolina, where up to half of the electorate could be black.

Mr. Clyburn said he was disappointed by what Mrs. Clinton said and by former President Bill Clinton’s use of the phrase “fairy tail” in talking about Mr. Obama’s views on the war in Iraq.

Comments by Mr. Clyburn have raised concerns in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign that he might abandon a pledge of neutrality and endorse Mr. Obama later this month. Mrs. Clinton said Saturday that he had told her he would remain neutral.

This was what Mrs. Clinton said on Monday: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” At a later stop, she said that her remark had not captured what she had sought to portray.

Mrs. Clinton seemed prepared to address the question the second she stepped in front of reporters, and she went into the attack as soon as she was asked about Mr. Clyburn. The back and forth in recent days has pushed race to the front of the Democratic nomination contest in the way it has not been.

Asked what role she thought race would play in her contest with Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton responded, “I hope none.”

“I don’t think either Senator Obama or myself want to see the injection of race or gender into this campaign,” she continued. “We are each running as individuals. I think it’s absolutely extraordinary that the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president are an African-American and a woman.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke as her campaign moved this weekend to create an organizational hierarchy for its donors to accelerate fundraising to pay for increasingly expensive advertising, travel and voter-outreach efforts, with a goal of raising more than $10 million by the end of January, according to several of the donors.

That target is important because several Clinton advisers and donors now believe that the Democratic presidential fight between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama may not end on the mega-primary day of Feb. 5, as Mrs. Clinton and others had initially expected.

Advisers and donors said Saturday that they want to have enough resources — building on the $20 million or so that they currently have on hand — to advertise heavily in the expensive media markets of California, New Jersey and New York, which vote on Feb. 5, and still have money to compete aggressively in the primaries later that month.

The new Clinton donor hierarchy involves the appointment of national finance chairs — major donors who will take a lead role coordinating fundraising goals across the country and ensuring that financial pledges are delivered on time.

Among the new national finance leaders are four New Yorkers and long-time Clinton supporters: Maureen White, a former fundraising leader at the Democratic National Committee; her husband, Steve Rattner, an investment banker; Hassan Nemazee, a veteran Democratic fundraiser; and Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist. Several more leaders are expected.

The new hierarchy was discussed at concurrent meetings Friday night that Mrs. Clinton held with several dozen donors in Los Angeles and that Mr. Clinton held with a similar group in Washington. Mr. Clinton was joined by the campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, and the campaign finance director, Jonathan Mantz.

According to three donors who were at the Washington meeting, Mr. Clinton and Mr. McAuliffe said that the campaign was now national in scope, with political and advertising efforts either underway or about to begin from coast to coast. Mr. Obama has similar efforts underway as well.

Donors were also told Mrs. Clinton would fight hard to win the Nevada caucuses next Saturday, despite some powerful union endorsements for Mr. Obama, and would also compete in the South Carolina primary, in spite of Mr. Obama’s strong support among black votes in that state.

Some donors at the meeting told the campaign leaders that they wanted to see more of the aggressiveness that Mrs. Clinton showed last weekend in a televised debate in New Hampshire when, for the first time, she challenged Mr. Obama over his positions on universal health care, the Patriot Act and funding for the Iraq war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/politics/13clinton.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

[jefferson_dem]

1. Hillary is uber-defensive here.

She's in deep shit and I, for one, hope she keeps digging.

[BenDavid]

21. Okay, lets just play with this for a few words. Dr King makes the

nation more aware of the problems facing its black citizens. He meets with the president and the senate majority leader and speaker of the house and presents them with his requests. He leaves feeling confident even though the president opposes this, he still feels that legislation will begin in earnest on the civil rights matter in both houses of congress. The House is presented with civil rights legislation and it passes with little opponents and the senate is presented civil rights legislation and it too passes with strong opposition. In conference they agree and finalize a a bill and it passes both houses and is presented to the president but from the start he is opposed, but he goes ahead and signs it because it is veto proof or because he is opposed lets it lay on his desk and becomes law because the president did not sign it within the 10 day period.

Now the above could be easily written and leave Dr Kings name off and substitute it with John Conyers name because he was the first representative in the house to seek a MLK Jr holiday. It took 15 years and finally with a president that opposed it,signed it and finally it became law in 1983. The leading opponent was republican Jessie Helms of North Carolina and 20 + other senators

You see that it does take a a president that knew this civil rights legislation was a righteous thing to do and from the get go LBJ spearheaded this through congress.This is no way negates the effort put forth by Dr King and others but it does show a president when he gets behind something right and true can show results and LBJ did as MLK Jr was the driving force behind the civil rights movement and made america and americans come to terms with it.

[2rth2pwr]

2. She is absolutely right. nt

[Fed_Up_Grammy]

3. Man,it's getting nasty around here. I'm goin' back to

the serene,peaceful Pats' game.

[TwilightZone]

4. There are certainly fewer personal fouls in the game...

than here on DU.

[ursi]

5. I am tired of Hillary. I want to throw things at my TV when I see her like

I want to do when I see Chimps face. It's the lying that pisses me off.

[TwilightZone]

6. Try turning off the TV.

That would solve both problems and ensure the safety of your TV.

[Kahuna]

8. Right. She's implying that the Obama camp went crying to Clyburn..

Like Clyburn didn't see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears what the Clintons have been saying. She's just a liar and I can't stand liars.

[BeyondGeography]

7. Ya take the left foot out, ya put the right foot in...

:thumbsup:

[Yael]

9. She is gettin' her scorched earth on.

[suston96]

10. Hillary has distorted nothing...but I ask again....

Ya notice how all this racism bullshit has come out AFTER Obama lost New Hampshire? Why is that?

Hillary Clinton said nothing derogatory about Martin Luther King. She did not minimize Kings activism. She said that all that ardent activism needed equally dedicated Presidents to fight for the legislation that was needed.

[ellacott]

13. But what was her point?

Is she saying that Obama is MLK and that she is LBJ?

[suston96]

18. I have already explained what she is saying.......

If you have ever been a rights activist what she says is very clear and fundamentally correct.

MLK's efforts are of historical and heroic proportions. but without the ensuing legislation, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 qnd 1965.
pressed by Presidents JFK and LBJ they would not have achieved the success they actually did.

But by all means keep digging for that racism stuff and give it the Rovian repetition wrinkle - repeating a lie over and over until people start believing it.

[earthlover]

11. But it was Hillary who brought the subject up in the campaign....

"Asked what role she thought race would play in her contest with Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton responded, “I hope none.”

“I don’t think either Senator Obama or myself want to see the injection of race or gender into this campaign,” she continued. “We are each running as individuals...."

----

Sorry, Hillary, but it was YOU who made the point that it took a president...a white Texan president by the way....to turn Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech into reality. Now you try to feign indignation if some blacks rightly object? Reality check, Hillary: Martin Luther King's speech and the crowd it was spoken to were both instrumental in pressuring Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act. Hillary's campaign theme of "it takes a president" is pretty danged condescending towards King and the crowd here. Has she forgotten that the government's role is to follow the will of the people? I surely hope not, especially if she gets the nomination.

I really wish the Hillary campaign had not led to "the injection of race or gender into this campaign".....

[annie1]

14. no, it was Obama who started comparing himself to MLK. She called him on it.

[earthlover]

16. oh really.....and of course you have a quote to support such a charge?

Obama had said that there's something vaguely Un-American about dismissing hopes as false, ant that it contradicts the careers of figurfes like JFK and King....not the same thing as comparing himself to King.

It IS rather disconcerting seeing someone actually running for president so pissy about hope and dreams. Heck, would she say JFK needed a dose of reality for proposing manned landing on the moon?
I know she, like Bush, talks about "hard work" as president. But can she have dreams and aspirations for America too?

I have a dream....says Hillary...that people shut the fuck up about idealism. And who the heck is King, anyhow? It was the president who passed the Civil Rights Act....

[dkf]

15. It is like her commercial...the President gives the people healthcare and a good economy

So in her eyes LBJ gave the people civil rights.

MLK asked and LBJ giveth.

[madrchsod]

17. you just maybe right on that

a little research from the king libary states that both men were equals and they felt that way through out the fight for civil rights for years. it was their disagreement over the veitman war that split the two.

[annie1]

12. She's right.

[dailykoff]

19. wow is she ever playing the Dixie race card.

Pimping LBJ, claiming that bad black man Obama has been "unnecessarily hurtful,” etc etc etc. DISGUSTING.

[tammywammy]

20. So, is she saying that Clyburn's reaction was choreographed

by the Obama campaign?

[fightindonkey]

22. Uh, She's Right. Next Puff Piece From Obamanuts

[hayu_lol]

23. I would like to remind people that LBJ did believe in what MLK proposed...

and he was a southern politician. Two things kept LBJ from running for a 2nd term: The Civil Rights Act and his Viet Nam Policy. Of the two, it was the Civil Rights Act that really did the hatchet job.

If you all will remember, thats when Southern Dems became the Dixiecrats and pulled out of the Democratic Party. That was one nasty period in American History.

If people would not try to read so much into Hillary's comments, they wouldn't come up with so much untrue bullshit.

[ariesgem]

24. This article pretty much sums it up for me...

The Clinton's Racial Strategy

By Boo Man
January 13th, 2008

Carl Hulse and Patrick Healy's article in the New York Times, Clintons Move to Tamp Down Criticism From Blacks About Recent Comment, accomplishes precisely what the Clintons needed to happen.

It's actually even better than they had any right to expect. First, it makes absolutely no mention of comments from Fmr. Sen. Bob Kerrey, New Hampshire chairman Bill Shaheen, supporter Andrew Cuomo, or anonymous Clinton advisers.

It doesn't touch on Bill Clinton's patronizing use of the word 'kid' to describe Obama. All it addresses are two comments: Hillary's comments about MLK Jr., and Bill's comment about a fairy tale. And, it's true...Hillary's MLK comment was so stupid and self-defeating that it probably was nothing more than sloppiness.

And Bill's comment about a Fairy Tale was specifically about whether or not Barack Obama has been consistently against the war in Iraq, and not meant to be dismissive of his chances or his message. So, the article fails to address the (possible) use of surrogates to spread racial and anti-Muslim stereotypes about Obama. But the article does not fail to mention the two most harmful names for Obama's campaign...the names that instantly turn-off white voters and remind them why they don't like black complaints about racism.

In a call on Friday to Al Sharpton’s nationally syndicated talk radio show, Mr. Clinton said that his “fairy tale” comment on Monday about Senator Barack Obama’s position on the Iraq war was being misconstrued, and that he was talking only about the war, not about Mr. Obama’s overarching message or his drive to be the first black president.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Never mind that Billy Shaheen suggested that Obama was a cocaine dealer, or that an anonymous Clinton adviser was quoted in the Guardian as saying, "If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool." Never mind the rest of it.

Here is how it works. The Clintons push some racially sensitive buttons and elicit an emotional response. Then they go apologize explain themselves on the Al Sharpton radio show.

The New York Times only covers the most innocuous of their comments. The result is that they remind voters that Barack Obama is not the post-racial uniter, but a typical black candidate, supported by serial whiners Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Nothing could undermine Obama's campaign more among the white vote, and the Clintons know it. And there is nothing, nothing, that Obama can do about it. If he complains, he only makes it worse. If he doesn't complain, these subtle allegations that he is a lazy, drug-dealing Muslim do damage all on their own.

Congratulations to the Clintons. You really are good at this campaigning thing. I'm so impressed.

http://blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=4105