"Why did they start with abortion clinics? Because it begins with the letter 'A'?" asked Judge Richard Posner.

At the oral argument in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday.

The subject was Wisconsin's new law requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have access to hospitals within 30 miles, which has been temporarily blocked by the lower court.

At times appearing exasperated, Posner repeatedly interrupted [Wisconsin assistant attorney general Daniel] Lennington, asking why lawmakers — if it's true they saw the law as primarily a public health measure and not an anti-abortion bill — focused on abortion clinics and not other outpatient clinics, such as those performing laparoscopic surgeries....

Lennington professed to have no idea why. One suspects that the reason is: Because it's only abortion that we disapprove of and therefore want to encumber. If that's the real answer, Lennington wouldn't want to say it, because it lays the groundwork for finding the law to be the kind of undue burden that violates privacy rights.

Posner also cited figures that just .3 percent of abortions have medical complications. Asked if there were records of women dying in Wisconsin after abortions, Lennington said he didn't know.

At that point, Posner said about the law, "It doesn't sound reasonable. It sounds irrational."

Lennington didn't even know if there were records?! If you actually want to get away with imposing these burdens, you ought to build a foundation for showing that there are strong medical reasons for the new requirement. But then it would be less obvious that the law expresses opposition to abortion. I'm going to presume that the legislature wanted to flaunt its opposition to abortion — for political reasons — and the law is more of a gesture than a genuine health provision that can and should be upheld.

Part of the plan, perhaps, is a tempting invitation to the judges to strike it down. Can a judge resist? If not, the social conservatives will bray about "activist judges," and they'll overplay their hand, in all likelihood, and we'll be back in the throes of the "war on women" just in time for the next presidential election, which, of course, will be won by Hillary Clinton, who — through judicial appointments and federal statutory law and health-care regulations — will save The Right To Choose.

"Whatever Bill Clinton’s motives — Republicans say he is distancing his wife, Hillary Clinton, from the ObamaCare debacle in advance of a White House run..."

Says Jonathan Easley at The Hill in a piece titled "Obama is boxed in by Bill Clinton."

Do we really need Republicans to explain that Bill is out to help Hillary? How could anyone begin to analyze Bill Clinton's remarks about Obamacare without the assumption that he's positioning Hillary for 2016?

Now, Bill's main quote was: "I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, that the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they’ve got." And I think we know that it's not really possible to keep Obamacare and somehow force private insurance companies to re-activate all the plans that have been canceled. What Bill is really saying is Obama lied. Obama made promises he knew would be broken, because that's what it took to get the government's health-care machine going.

Hillarycare failed, but the up side of that is that Hillary isn't loaded with the political damage that had to happen in the process of dragging everyone into the machine. That's all on Obama. Millions feel the pain and the anger as the big machine grinds into motion and pulls them in. In retrospect, it's a benefit to Hillary that Obama got the win in '08 and that his name went on the "care" that's hurting so much.

Once Obamacare is in motion and everybody's in and the screaming at the intake point has given way to muffled groaning from inside the grinding machinery, a beneficent Hillary will sweep forward with plans for easing that pain. The competent one is here at last, now that you're all in there and can't complain to her about that nasty, deceitful intake process.

ADDED: Jonathan Cohn explains how "Bill Clinton Is Wrong" about "How Obamacare Works." But Cohn is assuming (or pretending) that Bill isn't smart, devious, and political (which I'm taking for granted).

I'm having trouble reading Ana Marie Cox's "Dear Senate women: grow up and don't pass Hillary Clinton 'secret notes.'"

I don't know. Maybe it's because she's writing in The Guardian now. This could be some British way of writing that just can't make it into my American mind. Anyway, Cox — going on about a letter 17 female Senators wrote to Hillary Clinton urging her to run for President — is working with the premise that "male representatives are boys and women are the grown-ups." That premise is not the part I'm having trouble with. I understand it. I understand it as: Feminism-as-sexism is funny; come on, give us a little room to get in some harmless girly slaps after all the millennia of suffering.

But let's move on. Cox writes:

No one in the media has seen the letter, so I guess it's possible that it contains some kind of burn-book-level intel: Jeff Session (Alabama Republican senator) is a grotsy little byotch, Lindsay Graham (South Carolina Republican senator) made out with a hot dog, Ted Cruz (Tea Party Texan) is almost too conservative to be anything but a robot. 

"Grotsy" isn't even in Urban Dictionary, but I understand it. It's like "grotty," which was understandable as a variation of grotesque when the British comedian George Harrison said it in "Hard Day's Night." Grotsy is as understandable as ugsly.

(Maybe the "s" absconded from "Sessions," which she has as "Session.") [ADDED: Commenters say it should be "grotsky," and the phrase "grotsky little byotch" is from "Mean Girls."]

I understand the rest of those insults and why it's funny to just make up insults about Republicans to pad out a column and why — when you're talking about Republicans — it's okay to apply the mustard of homophobia. That's all well within the rules of American political humor.

Cox concedes that it's completely boring that a bunch of female Democrats support a Hillary candidacy. So what's to talk about? The fact that it was secret. A letter with nothing interesting to say was nevertheless written and revealed to have been written but we still can't see the text even though the text is presumably uninteresting. Well, there's your reason right there for not revealing the text. It's thuddingly dull. Cox says:

There's not much reason to make your support for something political private....

Which is why the existence of the letter and its gist was revealed. Cox concedes this as well: The secrecy label was "less about keeping the support in the note secret than making the support note-worthy." I won't get tripped up by that hyphen. That must be how they write "noteworthy" in the U.K.

So the letter functioned, dully, to give a teensy bounce to the Hillary for President beachball that no one feels like playing with right now. So what's to say? Here's where we get to the part of Cox's column that I found so hard to read:

Hillary... knows a thing or two about "inevitability", and what she knows is not likely to make her more excited to suffer through a fourth presidential campaign (I think we can safely say what she went through during Bill's campaigns counts as suffering). 

What? Hillary doesn't want to run? Excited to suffer? The meaning of suffering? There's just enough of a frisson of masochism in that to make me notice the absence of sex, which sets me off for this:

One of the maddening things about covering the Clintons is Bill's love of the dramatic reveal, the tension-filled lead-up...

Now you've got me thinking about the time "Bill Clinton Finally Just Show[ed] America His Penis."

Excuse the expression: back to Cox:

Bill Clinton is called the "The Big Dog", but he's really a tomcat (in more ways than one) – he likes to toy with his victims. He likes to play hard-to-get, though in the ends, he's almost always gotten. 

In the ends.... More Brit-talk? Does that mean the same as "in the end." The ends? Is that like the way there's an "s" on "buttocks"? (Is it the "s" that absconded from "Sessions"?)

I don't know what I'm supposed to think about here. Bill Clinton likes to play hard to get? That's not how Juanita Broaddrick describes it.

Based on that, journalists have determinedly disregarded any indication that Hillary's ambivalence is genuine. 

But Hillary is not Bill. Games are for boys; I don't think this is a game for her.

All right. I've settled down. I guess there was no call to think about sex. No sex, please, we're British. Cox was just trying to say that Bill Clinton is good at toying with us politically, so if he were to act ambivalent, it would be theater. Is Cox saying that because Hillary isn't good at that kind of theater, somehow she might actually be sincere in her ambivalence? Most of us are just ignoring the lady's coyness. We already know what she wants. If she can't do coyness as prettily as Bill, that's a reason not to look at the insipid show.

Maybe Cox is just saying the thing that is too boring to write about: We already know that Hillary is running for President. And: Just say it! Cox gets back to her feminism-as-sexism with that last line, which is trying so hard to be a zinger: "Games are for boys; I don't think this is a game for her." Games — plural — are for boys, and this particular game — the teasing roll-out of a candidacy — is not for her. If games are for boys and Hillary is not a boy, then no games are for her. To specify that one game is not for her is to imply that she is a boy. I'm just talking about logic here, not saying that's where Cox meant to go.

Cox apparently meant to end where she began: The premise that female politicians are the adults. But the evidence is that the females have acted like children, so what are you going to do? Cox tells them to stop acting like men, because men are childish. But they're all childish! They're all acting like politicians! Cox should only be able to say wouldn't it be nice if only the males behaved like children, and then you could say the males are children and the females are grown-ups?

Really, all you can say is that they're all politicians, acting like politicians, and some are better at playing politics than others, and — clearly! — Bill is better than Hillary. Therefore: Hillary should keep it simple. Noted. In my note-book of things that are just barely note-worthy.

Charles Ferguson bails out of the planned documentary on on Hillary Clinton because "nobody, and I mean nobody, was interested in helping me make this film."

"Not Democrats, not Republicans -- and certainly nobody who works with the Clintons, wants access to the Clintons, or dreams of a position in a Hillary Clinton administration."

Not even journalists who want access, which can easily be taken away. I even sensed potential difficulty in licensing archival footage from CBN (Pat Robertson) and from Fox. After approaching well over a hundred people, only two persons who had ever dealt with Mrs. Clinton would agree to an on-camera interview, and I suspected that even they would back out.

The most stunning passage in Ferguson's essay is his description of a private conversation with Bill Clinton:

I asked him about the financial crisis. He paused and then became even more soulful, thoughtful, passionate, and articulate. And then he proceeded to tell me the most amazing lies I've heard in quite a while....

Read the whole thing, but let me summarize: Ferguson pegs the Clintons as wealthy folks protecting their financial interests and nostalgizes about the 1990s, when the Clintons "attempted courageous reforms: allowing gays to serve in the military, a carbon tax, health care reform."

I can see where Ferguson wanted to go with his documentary — Good Clintons/Bad Clintons — and it's clear why neither Republicans nor Democrats trusted him to lay down the storyline in the run-up to the 2016 election. The Republicans were averse to Hillary hagiography. The Democrats were afraid of framing Hillary as good when she's skews left and bad when she's supportive of business and finance.

Ferguson was pleased with the full control and final cut authority he had over his film. He must understand that the Clintons don't want to cede any of their control over Hillary's campaign.

"Smooth, Europhile Democrats would win over the world, ushering in an era of peace and good feeling."

That was the promise back in 2008. It seems so stupid now. And speaking of stupid, remember how stupid Bush was?

Say what you will about George W. Bush's diplomacy, but he nurtured relationships with our most important allies -- like Britain -- and managed to put together a huge multinational coalition for his own foray against an Arab dictator suspected of having chemical weapons. Obama's diplomatic efforts -- championed by Hillary Clinton and, now, John Kerry -- are looking more and more inept by comparison: So far, our only ally in the proposed Syria venture is France, maybe.

Let's give Hillary some credit for ducking out at the right moment.... hitting her own reset button... leaving Obama in the... shall we say?... lurch.

"For any non-Clinton Democrat, exploring the 2016 election is something of an exercise in perceived futility, at least for the moment."

"She looms larger over the primary landscape than any undeclared candidate since perhaps Dwight Eisenhower, and the drop-off in prominence between her and the next tier of Democrats makes it all but impossible for any less famous politician to win consideration as a credible alternative."

Writes Politico under the headline "Non-Clinton Dems ask: Why not me?"

Isn't this the key to answering that question everyone was asking yesterday about why the NYT published that exposé "Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions"? No one else has a shot at positioning himself/herself for the Democratic nomination as long as the behemoth Clinton stands. Now's the time to be lining up support, and if Hillary is going to topple, she needs to topple at the right point on the time line for the Democratic Party.

"Let’s begin with a working (and provable) premise: Women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet."

WaPo's Kathleen Parker says, arguing that the Hillary for President message should be: "She can save the world."

Even assuming women's equality is the key to world peace, what's the big connection between a female U.S. President and the condition of women around the world? Parker notices that gap in her argument:

What does this have to do with Hillary? Quite a bit.

Rewinding the tape to 1995 at the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, then-first lady Hillary Clinton empowered women as never before with just a few words: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”...

At the time, it was a revolutionary statement and helps explain why Hillary is one of the most recognized and revered individuals in the world.

So she read a line in a speech that was an utterly standard proposition of feminism, and she did that because she was the wife of a political leader, and... voila!... recognized and revered... therefore... ????
She became recognized because of the achievements of her husband. That has nothing to do with advancing women's rights. She's revered? Has that been established?! But let's assume she's revered. What does that have to do with advancing women's rights? Like being the wife of a powerful man, a woman's being revered isn't an aspect of female empowerment. The most traditional societies embrace the idea of a woman who inspires reverence, someone who's good and worthy of respect. The Virgin Mary is revered.

Parker continues:

While Americans obsess about Hillary’s hair and married life, others have been studying her for inspiration. To millions, she is a role model and a warrior for women’s right to self-determination. 

She's applying for the job of leading Americans, and we tend to take her married life into account when deciding whether to find her inspiring or not. But Parker tells us there are "millions," apparently not American millions, who would like to model themselves on her, who are inspired in some way that doesn't have to do with achieving prominence through marriage and enduring a husband's infidelity.

As secretary of state, she continued the work of predecessors Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, who first insisted that women’s rights be part of our foreign policy, and then pushed further. Under Hillary’s watch, Obama made permanent the Office of Global Women’s Issues and appointed longtime Hillary colleague Melanne Verveer as ambassador-at-large.

So women's rights have been part of the work of the State Department for a long time, and Hillary was the third female Secretary of State.

Whether one likes or dislikes Hillary, few dispute that she has matured in her public role. Her résumé can be topped by few and the symbolic power of electing a woman president — especially this woman — can’t be overestimated. 

We just did the symbolic power of electing a black President. Did we overestimate that? I think we did. Isn't it time for substance and not mere symbolism? We've OD'd on symbolism. What are Hillary's achievements? Lines on a résumé aren't the same as accomplishments. In fact, when you've had powerful positions, the lack of specific achievements is the opposite of inspiring.

Many doubtless shudder at the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the most powerful person in the world, but we’ve done worse.

Parker's argument has gone from "She can save the world" to "We could do worse." I can't believe how bad this column is! Why can't The Washington Post do better? Perhaps millions are inspired that a Woman has written a column in The Washington Post. The symbolic power cannot be overestimated!

Parker ends with the assertion that "the world’s women are watching" the American 2016 election "closely." Parker is big on assertions!

In 2007 when I traveled through the Middle East with then-first lady Laura Bush, every woman I met was riveted by the U.S. presidential election and wanted to talk about only this question: Will Hillary win?

Every woman was riveted by the question whether Hillary would win?

In 2008, it seemed possible. In 2016, barring a Benghazi surprise, it seems probable.

Oh, wouldn't it be terrible, wouldn't hope for the world collapse, if Hillary doesn't win, which would be undermined if there were a "Benghazi surprise"? You mean if we actually found out what happened in Benghazi?!

Remember when The Washington Post made its reputation through investigative reporting, when it worked hard at uncovering what powerful people were trying to hide?

CNN's Hillary Clinton documentary is making "life more difficult" for Candy Crowley, who's keen on maintaining the separation between journalism and partisan politics.

"You can say all you want, this is a commissioned documentary from people who are not in the employ of CNN. It’s not me. It’s not Wolf Blitzer. It’s not John King. It’s an outside documentary group. But we’re with CNN and so this is not a story where the nuances are well-received, particularly by Republicans."

She ought to know about nuances that Republicans don't receive well, like that nuanced occasion when she was supposed to be moderating a debate between 2 presidential candidates and the Democrat was getting cornered so she fought on his side.

Drudge continues his Hillary-is-too-old-theme.

This is at the top right, below the headline, right now:



I flagged this Drudge agenda last Monday, and here it is Monday again.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both 69 years old. Hillary is 65. They've all been through a lot.

Here's the linked story "Republicans Paint Clinton as Old News for 2016 Presidential Election."

What's so momentous that Drudge is going all "It Begins" over Jeb Bush?

Drudge is linking to:

In an exclusive sit-down interview with The Brody File, Jeb Bush says that, “Hillary Clinton is a formidable force on the left.”

Video at the link:



Jeb says: "Hillary Clinton is a formidable force on the left. I wouldn't discount her um her uh her ability...." I interrupt to say out loud: "I would discount your ability to get through a sentence."

Huma Abedin: "A Wife With Powerful Ties Is an Unexpected Architect of a New York Comeback."

That's a front-page article in the NYT, illustrated by a picture of Huma and Hillary that makes them look like a single 2-headed entity. The Times, citing unnamed sources, calls Abedin "a seasoned operative well versed in the politics of redemption" and "a main architect of her husband’s rehabilitative journey, shaping his calculated comeback," who is exploiting her status as a "surrogate daughter to Bill and Hillary Clinton."

This is very interesting to me, because when I watched this video, Weiner's first in his mayoral campaign....



... I thought Anthony Weiner did a great job, presenting himself in the context of New York City, seeming to really belong to the city and its people and to care about it and to be ready to serve. And then there's Huma. She appears in a speaking role at the very end, and there's just something off and unnatural about her. Weiner comes across as a regular guy — he's got the actor skills of a politician — but she — in her seeming fakeness — betrays the reality: This is a remorseless machine of a power couple. She's the woman behind the man, and I'm sure they think that bringing her on camera should boost him. She's beautiful — or so we've been told many times — and she stood by her man. If she accepts him after what he did, that should be enough. That should cancel out his sexual misdeeds. If we hold those misdeeds against him, we're punishing her, which would make the opposite of sense, given that the wife is the official victim when the husband sexually sins.

It's like Bill and Hillary all over again, except that — unlike Hillary — Huma doesn't have the actor skills of a politician. She's a behind the scenes person, and though she can look fabulous in stills, in the video, she can't convincingly embody the Warm, Loving Wife character that Americans generally expect to see with a political husband, and that Anthony Weiner in particular needs.

The NYT article reminds us that Abedin "faced scrutiny this month about an arrangement that allowed her to earn money as a private consultant while still working as a top adviser at the State Department." We're told Abedin "fully intends to continue her work with Mrs. Clinton’s transition team" and that  "several political aides have been tempted to sign onto a Weiner mayoral campaign" because they want a connection that might get them in on the Hillary '16 presidential campaign.

The article begins with a description of how Abedin seemingly hoodwinked Chelsea Clinton into appearing in Anthony Weiner's first post-disgrace photo op: "When Chelsea Clinton wanted to make a low-key visit to the hurricane-stricken Rockaways last fall, she arranged to take a trip with her close friend Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton." Huma proceeded to exploit Chelsea's little trip for the re-introduction of Weiner. Now, I'm completely skeptical about whether Chelsea really wanted her visit to be low-key and whether she was surprised or tricked in any way by Anthony's horning in on the Female Empathy Tour of the Stricken. And I'd like to know the real truth of the interactions between the 2 power couples, Bill-and-Hillary and Huma-and-Anthony. I assume the Clintons know everything that's really going on, even as they want to look disconnected. It will be interesting to see what we will be able to figure out about all this, and I think Huma's lack of skill on video camera will be quite helpful in this regard. Bring on the Huma!

By the way, the NYT says "The couple live in a spacious Park Avenue apartment owned by a Clinton donor." But look at the kitchen in the background at the beginning of the video. Come on. That's not their kitchen, is it? I call bullshit.

On everything.

AND:  Rereading that headline... there's that word... that word that is the classic bullshit tell of our time: unexpected.

ALSO: I constantly mistype "Human" for "Huma." I can't tell you how many times I did that in the process of writing this post. But the one that I missed — and left up for 2 hours — was the one in the post title.  To err is human. To err in the post title is... superhuman.

Why the sudden spate of scandals?

Not only do we need to understand the various scandals individually, we need to understand the phenomenon of the sudden outbreak of multiple scandals. I'm calling this phenomenon of clustering Scandalgate and demanding an explanation for it.

Why are we hearing about so many scandals all of a sudden?
	The press finally faced up to its self-interest in looking professional and not Obamaphilic.
	The administration chose to break multiple stories at once to limit the damage.
	Congressional Democrats see self-interest in looking capable of supervising the Executive Branch.
	Only Benghazi hurts Hillary, and the Clintons are pulling some strings.
	The sheer force of so many scandals burst the dam.
	All of the above.
	Some but not all of the above. (Explain in the comments.)
	None of the above.
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"The Clintons wish Weiner would just disappear. Every time he pops up..."

"... it’s a reminder of Bill’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky, and it isn’t helpful to Hillary’s hopes for 2016."

Every time Weiner pops up, Clinton thinks of Monica.

But they love Huma...

"First question to Hillary Clinton: Where in the hell were the Marines?"

Rand Paul in — of all places — Iowa.

"ABC News, which acquired 12 different drafts of the [Benghazi] talking points, disclosed that the State Department requested that the CIA scrub references to an Al Qaeda-linked group, Ansar Al-Sharia."

"A State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, specifically asked the CIA to delete a paragraph citing warnings prior [to] attacks because that 'could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?' according to email reviewed by ABC. The paragraph was struck entirely."

Meanwhile, Elijah Cummings — the key Democrat in this week's committee hearings on Benghazi — said:

“I have not seen the e-mails... But I do know for a fact that our intelligence committee, [the] House Intelligence Committee, has seen every single one of the changes and they have concluded that there was no manipulation for political reasons.”

The political manipulations, he says, are on the other side — a premature attack on his party's presumptive 2016 candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, here's the ad the Republican National Committee made, exploiting the Benghazi story, to attack Obama before the election. Powerful, and you can say now — now that you know Mitt Romney lost — that it should have been used:



I think it's easy to see why this was not run. You can say with hindsight that you think it might have worked, now that you know that what was done did not work, but you need to picture the outcry from the Obama campaign — the ugliness, the damage to national security interests, Romney's unreadiness to play on the international stage, the disrespect for the dead and their mourning families, and — it worked against Hillary's original 3 a.m. ad — the dog-whistle racism.

A perfect display of lameness at the Washington Post.

"Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, a persistent voice of media skepticism on Benghazi" — The Washington Post puts that article under its "Style" heading — and teases it along with "Met Gala 2013 goes punk," "What to wear to a summer wedding," and "Wedding gift ideas."



This is the main front-paged story on Benghazi this morning in The Washington Post, inviting readers to admire a feisty female:

“I’m a political agnostic,” she says. “I don’t think about who’s good and who’s bad. I just go where the story leads.... People can say what they want about me, I don’t care. I just want to get the information out there.”

But Attkisson, who holds a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, takes a fighting stance when she feels she’s being stonewalled. Which is exactly what she thinks the White House has done to her on Benghazi. In particular, she is irked by the administration’s non-response to a petition for documents that she filed in November under the Freedom of Information Act.

The lady is irked! Irked! She stomps her well-shod foot and looks pretty when angry, I presume. What nonsense! Where was the WaPo's once-legendary investigative reporting? Why the hell are we looking at the Benghazi story today from the perspective of Sharyl Attkisson?

The story has made Attkisson — strong-willed, supremely confident and often controversial — a kind of Rorschach test among journalists.

Oh? She's a Rorschach test? Well, then let me unload my brain — my female and presumably wedding-fashion-gifts-ridden brain — on this WaPo article. I think they're saying hey, look at this lady so we won't look at that other lady: Hillary Clinton, whose actions in the Benghazi affair really do need looking into.

On the home page, WaPo does tease a second Benghazi-related story. It's tucked under the Sharyl Attkisson!!! thing and in fine print: "Republican probe of Benghazi attacks turns to Hillary Clinton."

To Democrats, the efforts amount to a baseless and less-than-subtle crusade to tarnish the credentials of Clinton, one of the country’s most popular political figures and the overwhelming favorite for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination....

Clinton also emerged largely unscathed in January when she testified before Congress about Benghazi.

“She was very smart — at some level because she’s been through so many of these kinds of situations in the past — not to say or do anything that was inaccurate or would in any way be inconsistent with the enormous credibility she earned as secretary of state,” Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said. “Because she protected her credibility, their ability to make a bigger issue out of it is very limited.”

Nothing to see here. Just those terrible Republicans being terrible again, trying to get the jump on 2016, and as for what happened in 2012, well, what difference, at this point, does it make? And take a look: Sharyl Attkisson!!!!

The sex and the presidency analogy.

"Running for president is like sex... No one ever did it once and forgot about it," says James Carville, talking to Maureen Dowd, who inserts a few paragraphs — for decency's sake? — before getting to this additional Carville quote:

"[Hillary]’s gone to hell and back trying to be president. She’s paid her dues, to say the least. The old cliché is that Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. But now Republicans want a lot of people to run and they want to fall in love. And Democrats don’t want to fight; they just want to get behind Hillary and go on from there."

What's with all this love and sex analogizing? I hear in it echoes of Barack Obama's crushing "You're likeable enough, Hillary."



Going back into my own old "likeable enough" posts, I find this 2010 link to Instapundit:

ELIZABETH WURTZEL: “I suppose I should confess: I like Sarah Palin. I like her because she is such a problem for all these political men, Republicans and Democrats alike, with their polls, and their Walter Dean Burnham theories of transformative elections, and their economy this and their values that–and here comes Palin, and logic just doesn’t apply. . . . The Democrats are total morons for not finding their own hot mama before the Republicans did so first, or maybe I should have left off the qualifiers and called it straight: the Democrats are just plain morons, at least where women are concerned.”

... But the very essence of old-line Democratic feminism is to reject feminine appeal. It’s Bella Abzug and Hillary Clinton as role models.

Politics is like sex, and people want to fall in love, but it gets complicated when it's women in politics. Think about sex/don't think about sex. A paradox. A quandary.

Hillary Clinton — at long last — endorses same-sex marriage.

She's been quite the laggard. Why today? Can't let Portman get out in front of her?

Monday’s announcement marks something of a gradual evolution for the former Secretary of State. Mrs. Clinton supported civil unions but opposed same-sex marriage during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination back in 2008. But she lauded New York State back in the summer of 2011 for passing an “historic” measure to legalize gay marriage. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, joined with the Human Rights Campaign to help pass the New York law. Earlier this month, he said the 1996 law is incompatible with the Constitution and should be overturned... 

“Like so many others, my personal views have been shaped over time by people I have known and loved, by my experience representing our nation on the world stage, my devotion to law and human rights and the guiding principles of my faith,” she said. “Marriage, after all, is a fundamental building block of our society, a great joy and, yes, a great responsibility.”

A great joy and also, sometimes — isn't it, Hillary? — a great pain. If joyful heterosexuals are permitted to undertake this tremendous responsibility, it's only fair that adulterous heterosexuals be permitted to shirk it... I mean, it's only fair that homosexuals have access to equivalent pain and suffering, don't you think?

"Hillary Clinton’s new website keeps speculators guessing about 2016 plans."

Oh, really?

I went to it. Here. Doesn't look ambiguous at all to me. Game on!

Hillary: "I do want to see more women compete for the highest positions in their countries."

"... and I will do what I can, whether or not it is up to me to make a decision on my own future. I right now am not inclined to do that, but I will do everything I can to make sure that women compete at the highest levels not only in the United States but around the world."

Assess the degree of bullshit.
	0%
	1-40%
	41-75%
	76-95%
	96-99%
	100%
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