A few days ago, I put a post on here calling for an end to the vitriol when it came to Hillary Clinton, believing that she should be given the benefit of the doubt.  I am now forced to retract that statement in light of her comments regarding RFK.  

I was wrong.  There I said it.

The following is the entry from my personal blog regarding Sen. Clinton's latest.  Go to http://shannonlstewart.blogspot.com for more.  

Sen. Clinton  was born in Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She went to school in Massachusets and Connecticut . She then married and moved to Arkansas. Now she represents New York in the Senate.  Therefore she is from all those places. She won primaries in all these significant  states:  Massachussets, Arkansas, Connecticut and New York. Her win in PA is partly attributed to her grandparents being from there. Illinois doesn't count because Sen. Obama is from there too.

Thus,  it is clear that having roots all over the US is a distinct advantage to Sen. Clinton. It makes her a hometown girl in most of the places she has won. Even in TX  her connections date  back to the seventies when she campaigned for McGovern there. And as first lady she spent so much time in CA, everyone was surprised  when she chose New York from which to run for the Senate.

The next primary is in Guam, May 3rd. Nine delegates at stake.  Almost  the number of delegates Sen. Clinton won in her gigantic victory in PA. Guam is definitely a significant contest.

I have such fond memories of Guam!

Sen. Clinton began her Press Conference  yesterday. The reporters were skeptical.

When am I going to learn?  When I post something nice about Hillary Clinton, she quickly goes out and proves me wrong.

On Feb 23rd I posted this:

"I am very glad to say that it seems that my worst fears have not been realized and that in the end, I was wrong: Hillary Clinton did not put self above party ..."

Then On Feb 25th I had to post this:

"Less than 48 hours later, Clinton made me look the fool for discounting my worst fears and thinking she'd be selfless " {as she ramped up her Karl Rove attack tactics}

And now, she's done it again.

Yesterday I posted an arguement that said her "misstatements" were not deliberate lies but due to her campaign's ineptitude arising from her George Bush style of management.  Today's lie (that's right, I'm no longer going to use the euphemism, "misstatement"), however, has fooled me one time too many.

There are interesting posts by Susan G and HungryCoyote about another, recent "misspeaking" incident: this time Senator Clinton told a health care horror story (involving a pregnant mother denied care for lack of insurance who subsequently died) that subsequently turned out to not be true.

It seems to me that there are only two possible reasons for this repeated pattern of "misspeaking": either the Clinton campaign is lying or they are inept.

While there is some evidence that it is the former, I have argued before that they are inept at the fundamentals of campaigning (i.e., making sure you always tell the truth, or at least, don't hurt yourself with easy-to-refute lies) because of Hillary's management style which values loyalty over competence.

Sound familiar?

The story of Senator Clinton's Bosnia claims grows as we hear from more people about what her words really meant.  The media has passed it's uproar at her lies to the American people.  Everything she claimed has been debunked.  Except for her claim not to have had tea on the tarmac, that doesn't seem to have happened.  

But we still have the secondary waves.  We have reviewed many of Senator Clinton's other foreign policy claims, and found then lacking.  We have heard from Bosnia, and the insults that they feel at Hillary's comments.

A story to be told in more detail is the story of the soldiers.  Yesterday, we learned of an act of true valor by Marine Capt. John McKenna of Brooklyn who gave his life in trying to save Lance Cpl. Michael Glover of Queens who had been hit by sniper fire.  It deserves deeper consideration.

First it was the 3am little girl, now grown, speaking out for Barack Obama.  Now it's the little girl in the Bosnia video!

"It is an ugly thing for a politician to tell lies,' she said. "We had problems for years, and I don't like when someone lies about them. It makes us look bad."

Story at the NY Post.

If the use of someone else's words is Plagairism  (and, according to the Clinton Camp, a mortal sin even when the Other in question gives you permission), what should we call the use of someone else's life?

We've all chewed over Hillary's "misstatements on her trip to Bosnia. How her memory of the events doesn't quite match up with the story told by the news footage of  the same event

And if that were where it stopped it'd be bad enough, but perhaps survivable, as Hillary said, she was sleep deprived at the time (answering too many 3am phone calls perhaps-)she said it and she might have gotten this trip confused with another one.

But confused with a trip that somebody else took?

Houston, She has a Problem.

See,  the daring Sniper-dodging landing into Bosnia, actually happened-but to Senator Olympia Snowe, 6 months earlier

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

What's up with Hillary lately?  Is she still missing sleep?  Here's another misstatement.  Not as bad as Bosnia but you think that she would have learned a lesson.  If this is how she is going to govern if elected - we are in deep trouble  

Hillary claimed that she misspoke about Bosnia but then said that she was the First First Lady to fly into a combat zone.  Wrong again!

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton explained how she "misspoke" about a story she's told several times over the past four months, that of avoiding sniper fire on a 1996 trip to Bosnia. (I already mentioned how reporters were mocking the Sinbad story back in Iowa.)

But while discussing the issue at a Pennsylvania news conference, Clinton added another inaccuracy to the Bosnia story.

From today's Washington Post:

   Questioned about this speech yesterday while campaigning in Pennsylvania, Clinton said that she remembered being told by the military and the Secret Service that "we were going into a war zone," adding: "I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt.

There's a difference between 'misspeaking' and 'lying'....

It has always been extraordinary to me the language that people often resort to under stress. I really had to do a double take when Hillary, a very admirable democratic politician, to my disappointment fell back on the term "misspoke" after being caught red-handed in what appears to be some major embellishment that is threatening to "dry rot" the carefully crafted foundation of the "commander-in-chief threshold" put forth by her campaign.  I happen to agree with Keith Olbermann who said last night, in effect, that she and her campaign had missed the narrow window of opportunity of simply addressing the incident with a "whoops, you got me!" humorous moment.

It is a generally accepted rule of thumb, when you are in a hole you stop digging.

Wolfson: "Clinton 'Misspoke' In Her Tuzla Account"

Howard Wolfson, in a conference call that's still going on, just said Hillary Clinton misspoke in part of her account of her visit to Bosnia in 1996. Clinton had said she ran from the helicopter with her head down. (Fellow passengers included her daughter and the comedian Sinbad.) Photos, video footage and news accounts show her greeting a child at a welcoming ceremony.

"She misspoke about the exit from the plane," said Wolfson.

But what if that is also a lie? Follow me to the other side....