Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Phone’s for you Bill!




It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep but there’s a phone in the White house and it’s ringing who do you want to answer the call?

With that 30 second ad Hillary Clinton was able to drive home the point to the American people that she alone possesses the experience “tested and ready” to handle world crisis.

So that begs the question, just what duties in the non-elected and non-mandated designation of being the wife of the president gives one the experience to answer in a time of crisis? That is an important question because Sen. Clinton is using the time that she spent in the White house as first lady to bolster her claims of experience.

Since Sen. Clinton’s SNL claim that the media was being soft on Senator Obama it’s only fair that her claims of being experienced and of being tested and ready come under the same scrutiny as Sen. Obama’s campaign has recently come under.

It appears that Sen. Clinton is basing her claims of international experience, which would afford her alone the ability to take control of the reigns of government without any interruption in the transfer of power, if she were elected president, on the fact that she slept in the White house for 8 years along with the chefs, cooks, maids, personal assistants and other essential White house staff and personnel. Oh that’s right. Above all of that she was also married to the president.

So exactly what did Mrs. Clinton do as first lady that qualifies her to be the President now?

According to Nancy Benac Mrs. Clinton takes credit for the following:

‘She takes credit for helping bring peace to Northern Ireland, negotiating open borders for refugees fleeing Kosovo, standing up to the Chinese government over women's rights, and flying into Bosnia when it was too dangerous to send the president.’—Nancy Benac, AP News


However, a fact check of Sen. Clinton’s election résumé shows some résumé discrepancies with her claims. Sen. Clinton didn’t quite claim to invent the internet but she comes god-awful close to revising history to suit her political ambitions.

First her claims of helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Fact Checker says:

Northern Ireland
"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," Clinton said on CNN's American Morning on Wednesday.
Former Democratic Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who was a U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland, told CNN that while Clinton was not directly involved in negotiations, she did play a helpful role in bringing in women's groups that made a difference.

Hillary Clinton meeting with Belfast women

in 1995 and the teapot she admired



Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, was also involved in the process. He recalls one late-night meeting with former President Bill Clinton, Sen. Clinton and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

"There was a discussion of how the IRA would decommission its weapons. And I know that Sen. Clinton was part of that meeting," King said.

However according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province, Sen. Clinton’s claims are just silly!

Lord Trimble is reported as saying, Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played.



Kosovo
"I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo," she said on CNN's American Morning.
According to facts checker; In May of 1999, she was in Macedonia visiting refugee camps near the Kosovo border and meeting with Macedonia's president and prime minister.
Sources with knowledge of her visit say she discussed the refugees' plight with those leaders. It's not clear how much she helped since CNN reported at the time that Macedonia reopened its border to Kosovar refugees before Clinton's visit.

China

"I've been standing up against, you know, the Chinese government over women's rights and standing up for human rights in many different places," she said on CNN's American Morning.

During a 1995 visit to Beijing, at a time when her husband's administration was trying to press China on human rights, Sen. Clinton made a speech condemning [China’s human rights] abuses.


We all know what Sen. Clinton feels about speeches now don’t we! If that’s all that she did then even she would have to say that she didn’t do much!

While campaigning against her rival for the Democratic Nomination for the presidency Sen. Clinton has made it known under no uncertain terms that mere speeches are nothing without action.

At one point of her campaign Sen. Clinton said, "It is time to get real, to get real about how we actually win this election... It is time to move from good words to good works -- from sound bites to sound solutions."

That another time she told an audience in Ohio that the choice in the Democratic primary this year is between someone in the "speeches business" and someone in the "solutions business."

"Americans have a choice to make in this election, and that choice matters," she said.

"We need to make a choice between speeches and solutions, because while words matter greatly, the best words in the world aren't enough unless you match them with action."

Based on Sen. Clinton’s own assessment of speech making and seeing that there was absolutely no change in China’s human rights policies after first Lady Clinton’s speech I wouldn’t equate, then first Lady Clinton’s 1995 speech in China with the 1989 standing down of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen square would you?

BOSNIA


"If the place was too small, too dangerous or too poor, send Hillary." Is how Sen. Clinton is known to glorify her trip to Bosnia.

Clinton cites her March 1996 trip to Bosnia, a goodwill tour, in which she was accompanied by Chelsea. (If there where any kind of danger would she have brought Chelsea?) Her airplane met with some wind turbulence upon landing but officials said at the time she took no extraordinary risks.

In any event a much needed trip to pad a lacking résumé for a future presidential run.

Judging from this type of non-experience in addition to the failed way that she has run her bid to be president to date, if Sen. Clinton were to answer the 3 a.m. phone she would say,

Hello… (pause)…(Shouting) Somebody find Bill the red phone is ringing and I don’t know that to do!