Tag: bill clinton

John Podesta, who headed up the Obama-Biden transition team (currently of Center for American Progress) was part of former President Bill Clinton's Korea delegation to free Current TV journalists Ling and Euna Lee. Chris Nelson, described as "a veteran Washington foreign-policy watcher who covers Asia policy" says Al Gore was not an acceptable candidate for mission:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "always wanted to send Al Gore," Nelson continued, noting the two detained journalists worked for Current TV, a media company connected to the former vice president. "And apparently that was OK with Hillary and Obama, [whose wish was to] just get this out of the goddamned way."

"But here's where it gets interesting," Nelson continued. "I do not know how it was delivered. But 10 days ago, North Korea sent the U.S. a list of acceptable names. And I am very authoritatively told that not on that list was Al Gore. And Bill was on the list."

A Senior U.S. official told a Chinese publication that the families of the detained journalists wanted Bill Clinton to go.

Here's another photo released by N. Korea of the meeting with Bill Clinton.[More...]

Former President Bill Clinton has arrived in North Korea where he will attempt to negotiate for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two Current TV reporters jailed and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

Will he succeed?

Scott Snyder, a North Korea expert for the nonprofit Asia Foundation, said Clinton's standing as a world statesman carried weight with Pyongyang.
"The North Koreans have a lot of nostalgia for the end of the Clinton administration," he said.

"The question is going to be how could he go to Pyongyang without some assurance that they would be released," Snyder said. "For someone at his level to go without a prior assurance of some kind would be to risk a huge loss of face."

I think he'll do it. He rocks.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine has a long article on how Bill Clinton is mellowing. And aging.

Clinton at 62 looks older than the boy president who dominated American politics in the 1990s, but he remains more robust than most men his age and full of intellectual energy. His left hand trembled a little bit during dinner, as it tends to do late in the day. It worried him enough at one point that he had himself tested for Parkinson’s disease, but the results came back negative; his doctor says he has just signed too many autographs over the years. When I mentioned that he had to get hearing aids during his White House tenure because of the effects of too many campaign rallies, he cheerfully pulled out the latest equipment from his ear and showed off how sleek and virtually invisible it was.

So, What's he up to now? [More...]

 We Americans dwell in a consumer plutocracy, and the plutocrats don't even bother to be cute about it any more. Barack Obama, hailed by the geniuses of new media as a populist saviour, has surrounded himself with a team that was already bought and paid for by the financial services industry before they ever walked into the White House.

Larry Summers collected $5.2 million last year from his part-time job with a hedge fund.

$5.2 million for a part-time job!

One day per week!

"And just in case you ever get a big job in Washington, Larry, remember who your friends are!"

Former President Bill Clinton is in Aspen at the Ideas Festival. Today he's playing golf, but he spoke yesterday to a crowd of 700.

Via Troy Hooper, Editor of the Aspen Daily News, in the Denver Post:

It's well-documented that Clinton is no angel either but he remains a rock star of the Democratic Party and was the headliner at the festival, hosted by the Aspen Institute.

He filled the Greenwald Pavilion with more than 700 high-powered attendees who greeted him with an extended standing ovation. Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, was seated next to Gen. Colin Powell front and center.

Much of Clinton's remarks centered on the Africa election in Zimbabwe, calling for Robert Mugabe either to step down or "form a power-sharing arrangement with his chief opponent."

He didn't mention Hillary or the Democratic nomination for President, but he had this to say about John McCain and Barack Obama on environmental policy: [More...]

Fox News has a new poll out. Full poll results are here. (pdf)

Nearly half of Democrats (48 percent) think Hillary Clinton has a better chance of beating John McCain in November — 10 percentage points higher than the 38 percent who think Barack Obama can win, according to a FOX News poll released Wednesday. This represents a significant shift from March, when Democrats said Obama was the candidate more likely to beat McCain.

Democrats continue to favor Clinton as their party’s leader, albeit narrowly: 44 percent want her to win the nomination and 41 percent want Obama. Last month Clinton was preferred by 2 percentage points.

There's also an NBC/WSJ poll out taken of all voters, not just Dems. It finds Bush is a liability to McCain and Obama's "bitter" remarks cost him in favorability, as did Rev. Wright.

More...

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will appear with Barack Obama in Oregon Friday and provide his endorsement to him.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation's only Hispanic governor, is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, calling him a "once-in-a- lifetime leader" who can unite the nation and restore America's international leadership.

"I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America's moral leadership in the world," Richardson said in a statement obtained by the AP. "As a presidential candidate, I know full well Sen. Obama's unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation."

Richardson could be angling for the V.P. Spot. He could also take Hispanic votes from Hillary. [More...]

Friday night, every cable news show I watched, mostly on MSNBC, took former President Bill Clinton to task for reverting to attacks on Barack Obama, much like he did before the South Carolina primary.

Now comes the Dallas Morning News, with just the opposite story.

Headline: "Bill Clinton avoids attacks on Obama in East Texas."

The story:

On a campaign swing through East Texas on Friday, Bill Clinton said over and over that he has nothing against Barack Obama.

"I'm not against anybody," he told an overflow crowd in the student center at Tyler Junior College. "I'm for Hillary." Later, he added: "If you disagree, you have another very attractive choice."

The former president, admitting that Texas looms as a make-or-break state for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential hopes, scrupulously avoided attacks on Mr. Obama – attacks of the type for which he was roundly criticized after the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary.

Go figure.

[More...]

Just back from Bill Clinton's appearance at the historic Stock Pavilion on the University of Wisconsin Campus. When Gary Storck and I approached, we were directed across the street by the most polite pair of Secret Service agents I've ever dealt with, but, as it's a narrow street, not an unreasonable "Free Speech Zone."

Our signs referred to Bill's encounter, as a Candidate, with Jacki Rickert of Mondovi, Wisconsin in 1992. Jacki had been approved for the federal medical marijuana program, but not yet admitted when Bush I closed the program to new admissions in 1989. She caught up with Bill in Osseo on his post-Convention Mississippi River bus tour. After she explained her odyssey through the federal bureaucracy, Bill "I feel your pain" promised "When I'm President, you'll get your medicine."

Come the Inaugural, Jacki sent letters, made calls seeking fulfillment of that commitment, but got back only form letters. "If drugs were legal, my brother Roger would be dead."

(Cross-posted from Executed Today)

Four presidential cycles ago today, Hillary's husband dropped a syringe plunger in the old Democratic party.

Here's a short video of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee sharing a pew and singing today at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Here's a live-stream of the service which is still going on. Clinton acknowledged Huckabee in his remarks:

He acknowledged a litany of people, before beginning his remarks on MLK, including his “fellow Arkansan, and a competitor for the presidential nomination. Governor Huckabee welcome.”

” We worked together for several years on something that concerns everybody in this church: trying to turn the tide on childhood obesity, and childhood diabetes,”Clinton said.”A good man.”But he also said that they didn’t agree much on anything.

Bill Clinton was the hour-long guest on the Charlie Rose show last night. Video should be up on the site soon, but Marc Ambinder has some quotes:

Bill Clinton said Americans who are prepared to choose someone with less experience, are prepared to "roll the dice" about the future of America. "It's less predictable, isn't it? When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service before he's running?"

On John Edwards: "He is great, Edwards is really good..."

On who else has the experience to be President: Richardson, Biden, Dodd. What Obama has: good skills.

On change, he adds (from the transcript on Lexis.com, not Ambinder):

I think by far the most important question in this day and age for the next American president is, who is the best agent of change, not the best symbol but the best agent? Who has proven the ability to make positive change?

Hillary starts her five day, 99 Iowa county "hill-a-copter" blitz Sunday.

Bill Clinton spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival Saturday night, suggesting that if Hillary is elected President, an appropriate title for him would be "First Laddy."

He also spoke of terrorists and made a point that too few acknowledge:

Terrorism highlights the problem of identity, Clinton said. The suspects in the Britain bombing plot did not feel like they belonged in the world they were in, he said.

An appropriate foreign policy to address those issues, he said, includes a security policy and a policy "to make more partners and fewer terrorists." The world's poor and disenfranchised are "just as good as we are and need to be given a chance to feel that life has more meaning," Clinton said.

And yes, Bill Clinton is enough of a celebrity that even those in star-jaded Aspen gawk when he passes by.

Ed Kilgore writes an interesting post about Netroots attitudes towards Bill Clinton. Only problem - it is based on a false premise:

Chris [Bowers] and others didn't come to grips with Scott [Winship]'s underlying argument about the anti-Clinton worldview of the Netroots Left. And that's a shame.

Sorry Ed. Indeed, I think that is part of the whole problem of the discussion at TPMCAfe - the idea that the Netroots has some type of New New Left ideology. That simply is wrong. More.