She Still Can't Help It

Who knows if Sen. Obama has a chance in hell with all the low-information voters already pre-disposed to vote in a primary for Sen. Clinton (or in the General for Sen. McCain), but she's having a rather bumpy weekend, luckily for her over a weekend.

First she releases the Clinton family taxes and while there's nothing particularly shameful about averaging $13,625,000/year for the past 8 years, there's questions arising about some of the income sources, particularly $15 million over 5 years from zillionaire investor Ron Burkle.

Second, her infamous Chief Campaign Strategist, Mark Penn, seems to have singlehandedly undermined her credibility on the labor front, after it was revealed that he was (until today) lobbying for a free trade deal in service of the nation of Columbia. When the news media got hold of him he called it a mistake, lost the account, but has yet to be fired by the woman in charge.

Will it affect her standing in Pennsylvania?

Would it have in Ohio?

But now today it turns out she's been telling lies again, whether she knew it, didn't know it...or just didn't vet it:



Jedreport raises the question of whether the campaign knew and had admitted it was a lie and still told it one last time:

Here's where my question comes: unless the NYT waited until after 9PM 9:45PM Eastern to contact the Clinton campaign -- just three a little over two hours before the story was published -- then even as Clinton was telling the the story again, her campaign had already admitted it was false.

This is something a reporter should follow up on -- was the Clinton campaign aware that Hillary Clinton's story was false before she told it? If so, why did she tell the story anyway?

The worst part of all this is that our health care system is in crisis. There's plenty of true health care horror stories out there -- and when a presidential candidate tells false ones, it makes it that much harder to achieve the progressive change we all seek.

At this point I think we assume she just lies so easily, you either accept the kabuki or you're revolted. If this is simply a case of weak vetting, i.e. merely cynicism on the part of her campaign, and you somehow excuse her, the head of it, you have to ask how they or Hillary herself had the gall to go so dramatic, so Oscar-baitish on the scripting and delivery:



The truth is:

Since Ms. Bachtel’s baby died at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, the story implicitly and inaccurately accuses that hospital of turning her away, said Ms. Weiss, the spokeswoman for O’Bleness Memorial said. Instead, the O’Bleness health care system treated her, both at the hospital and at the affiliated River Rose Obstetrics and Gynecology practice, Ms. Weiss said.

The hospital would not provide details about the woman’s case, citing privacy concerns; she died two weeks after the stillbirth at a medical center in Columbus.

“We reviewed the medical and patient account records of this patient,” said Mr. Castrop, the health system’s chief executive. Any implication that the system was “involved in denying care is definitely not true.”

"Ready on day one?"

"Already vetted?"

How about this for a new campaign slogan:

Hillary Clinton:
You never know just what you're going to get.