Clinton Argues For Obama Re-election

President Barack Obama inherited a wreck of an economy, "put a floor under the crash" and laid the foundation for millions of good new jobs, former President Bill Clinton declared Wednesday night in a Democratic National Convention.

Bill: McCain not ‘afraid’ of Obama debate

By ANDY BARR

Former President Bill Clinton believes John McCain’s move to suspend his campaign and push back Friday’s scheduled debate was made in “good faith” and not “because he’s afraid” to debate Barack Obama.

“I presume he did that in good faith,” Clinton said on Good Morning America, recalling that McCain had “asked for more debates to go all around the country.”

“I don't think we ought to overly parse that. Just let's deal with this issue,” the former president said. “We know he didn't do it because he's afraid, because Senator McCain wanted more debates.”

Bill: McCain not ‘afraid’ of Obama debate....

Clinton Praises Obama’s Readiness, Judgment While Joe Biden Shows His Mettle as V.P. Pick

By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb

Call it the Redeem Speech.

Instead of basking in the glow of a nomination that could usher him and his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, back into the White House, former President Bill Clinton stood before the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night urging Americans to vote for someone else – Barack Obama.

And he did it without hesitation.

“I am here to support Barack Obama,” Clinton began his speech after a long and enthusiastic welcome from the crowd.

“You heard Hillary last night say that she would do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us. Actually, that makes 18 million of because, like Hillary, I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November,” Clinton said, referring to the 18 million people who voted for Clinton in the primaries.

Clinton’s enthusiastic support of Clinton even drove the crowd to chant Obama’s slogan: “Yes We Can!”

“Yes, he can,” Clinton said. “But first, we have to elect him.”

It was a speech that may have finally laid to rest suggestions that Clinton would be unable to let go of the disappointment that his wife did not win the Democratic nomination for president and fully, wholeheartedly embrace Obama.

“If the goal is big enough, sure, he can work with Obama and I think Bill Clinton wants a Democrat elected,” said Michael Frisby, a public relations executive who covered the Clinton White House as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

The Clintons came under fire during the primary contests because of the Clinton’s campaign’s dismissiveness of Obama’s candidacy; the suggestion that voters in the caucus states didn’t really represent the will of the people or that black voters were voting solely on the basis of race and that his wins didn’t matter because previous black candidates Rev. Jesse Jackson and/or Rev. Al Sharpton fared well in some of the same states – particularly South Carolina – and didn’t win the nomination; calling Obama’s position on the war a “fairy tale;” to some, diminishing the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., by saying it took a president for his efforts to reap benefits and, near the end of the campaign, Hillary Clinton calling herself the candidate of “hardworking white people” left both the Clintons with a long row to hoe with some black people.

But several people were ready to bury that story line.

Clinton Praises Obama’s Readiness....

Does Her Conciliatory, Unifying Talk Square Hillary – and Bill – with the Black Community?

By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb

If there was a question whether Sen. Hillary Clinton would strongly endorse Barack Obama for president, she sought to put that to rest immediately in her address to the Democratic National Convention.

“I am here as a proud mother, a proud Democrat, a proud senator from New York and I am a proud supporter of Barack Obama. Whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack Obama, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” Clinton said.

There had been questions right up to the moment Clinton stepped on the stage that she may not be able to convince Democrats that she truly embraced Obama’s candidacy and, more importantly, persuade others to do so.

“Hillary Clinton touched every chord and gave an unequivocal, unqualified endorsement of Obama's candidacy. Talking about women's rights and quoting Sojourner Truth was apt on the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment," said Mary Frances Berry, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Her suppporters should get the message and forget their discontent and start working."

COMMENTARY....

Clinton Excluded Nearly $24 Million of Husband’s Earnings from Senate Financial Statements

By: Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Clinton excluded nearly $24 million of her husband's earnings from Senate financial statements from 2004 through 2006, capitalizing on rules that permit senators to limit disclosures of some of their spouses' income.

Her decision, while fully consistent with Senate rules and norms, delayed the release of financial information about former President Clinton's soaring income until the couple released their tax returns in early April, under pressure from Democratic presidential rival Sen. Barack Obama. By then, about 40 states had completed their Democratic primaries and caucuses, meaning that those voters didn't get a clear look at Bill Clinton's finances.

Like Clinton, Obama listed his wife Michelle's salary and directors' fees only as "over $1,000," which complies with Senate rules. Obama and his wife, a Chicago lawyer, aren't as wealthy as the Clintons, however, and their finances are less murky.

GOP candidate John McCain's wife, Cindy, is the heiress to a beer distributorship and has owned stock in oil and pharmaceutical companies, but the specifics are elusive. McCain has declined to release his wife's tax returns, saying they keep their finances separately.

Watchdogs say these scenarios not only raise issues about the candidates' openness but that they also point to shortcomings in government ethics requirements.

Bill Buzenberg, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, said that the disclosures by the Clintons and McCain were "inadequate."

"There's no other way to sugarcoat it," he said. "It's not transparent. It needs to be because it does potentially involve all kinds of entangling things we don't know."

The Clintons' tax returns show that Bill Clinton earned nearly $51 million from 2004 through 2006. His wife informed the Senate of about $27 million of it, consisting almost entirely of fees from his globe-trotting speaking tours, from which he has fetched as much as $400,000 for a single appearance.

Reporting rules for senators and presidential candidates allowed Hillary Clinton to describe the amounts of her husband's other income sources as "over $1,000." These included his more than $10 million in advances and royalties from two book deals, as much as $11.5 million from offshore partnerships that invested in a Chinese media company and more than $2 million from a Nebraska firm whose chairman reportedly spent $900,000 flying the Clintons aboard corporate jets for personal, business and campaign trips.

The sketchy disclosures on Clinton's statements might help explain why many Americans were surprised to learn, upon release of the couple's tax returns and a summary of their 2007 income, that they earned $109 million over the last eight years after leaving the White House buried in debt in 2001.

Jay Carson, a spokesman for Clinton's presidential campaign, said that like Obama, Clinton "reported all of her spouse's income in accordance with Senate ethics requirements, which are clearly spelled out." The rules require less information about spouses' income.

On at least three occasions in February, however, Clinton campaign officials reassured the public that her Senate disclosure forms offered a sufficient look into her finances.

"She has released, as part of the financial disclosure process as a senator, sources of her revenue every year she has been in office," Phil Singer, a campaign spokesman, told the Christian Science Monitor.

Obama was the first candidate to release a tax return, making public his 2006 filing early last year and stating that he wanted to set a new standard for openness.

In March he released full returns for the years 2000 to 2006 and beckoned Clinton to do the same. Obama's 2005 return revealed that his wife was paid $33,000 in directors' fees for Bay Valley Foods and $12,000 for serving on the board of Treehouse Foods.

In his Senate financial statements from 2004-2006, Obama reported that he and his wife earned about $1.4 million, mostly from his two books. In contrast, the couple's tax returns for those years, which include their salaries, listed gross income of about $2.9 million.

McCain didn't release his 2006 and 2007 tax returns until last month, after he had essentially locked up the Republican presidential nomination.

The returns don't mention his wife, but in a disclosure statement required of presidential candidates, McCain reported last year that his wife and their children had 2006 income of $2.3 million to $7.1 million from land in Arizona and California, family trusts and securities.

McCain's returns show that he earned $358,414 in 2006 and $386,527 in 2007. But his Senate statement put his 2006 income at $150,000 to $1.1 million, underscoring the vagueness of government financial statements, which list income and asset values in wide ranges.

Hillary Clinton's financial statements for the years 2001 through 2003 were more consistent with the couple's tax returns because her husband's income in his first years outside the White House came mostly from speaking fees that senators must disclose.

The financial gap between her Senate reporting and her husband's 2004-2006 earnings coincided with a period in which Bill Clinton began to enter private business deals that caused the couple's wealth to mushroom.

Watchdogs said this suggests the need to strengthen Senate reporting requirements aimed at guarding against conflicts of interest.

David Epstein, a Columbia University political science professor who specializes in congressional ethics, said he thinks that politicians shouldn't be compelled to release their tax returns every year, but "that's the way things work" because government disclosure rules are so weak that there's a clamor for further disclosure.

"My understanding was that Hillary was following the norms of the day in what she had to release," he said. "But does that say something about how easy it is for politicians to do favors and get away with it? Sure. ... There may be something wrong with the reporting requirements. The Congress is notoriously lax about policing itself."

The Center for Public Integrity's Buzenberg called the 1984 flap over the business activities of Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro's husband, New York real estate mogul John Zaccaro, "small potatoes compared to the millions and millions (of dollars) we're talking about with the former president."

He noted that Bill Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas, has refused to identify many of its donors.

The Clintons have taken other steps to comply with ethics standards, such as putting their investments into blind trusts and then selling their stocks -- including shares in oil, chemical and pharmaceutical firms -- last year as Hillary Clinton formally launched her presidential candidacy.

BILL SAYS OBAMA CAMP 'PLAYED RACE CARD: Then he denies it to MSNBC reporter. Obama responds.

Bill Clinton told a Philadelphia radio station Barack Obama's campaign played the race card to turn black voters against him after he marginalized an Obama win in South Carolina by comparing it to Jesse Jackson's wins there in 1984 and 88.


The day after the interview, as Pennsylvanians headed to the polls, Clinton denied that he ever said it.


In Monday's phone interview with Philadelphia's WHYY radio, Clinton's South Carolina comments were brought up and he was asked if it was a mistake to play the race card.

"No. I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the [Obama] campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along," Clinton responded.

He went on to explain that his words comparing Obama to Jackson had been twisted and he has been unfairly labeled as a racist. To defend himself, he cited his own appointment of blacks, Hispanics and women to top administration posts during his presidency, his work worldwide to combat AIDS, and reminded the reporter of his office space Harlem.

The next morning in Pittsburgh, Clinton was shaking hands with supporters at the Jewish Community Center when an "embedded reporter" from NBC asked the former President about his WHYY interview the day before. His response is detailed in the transcript below:


NBC: “Sir, what did you mean yesterday when you said that the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”
CLINTON: “When did I say that, and to whom did I say that?”
NBC: “On WHYY radio yesterday”
CLINTON: “No, no, no. That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today. Have a nice day.”
NBC: “Respectfully sir, though, you did say …”
CLINTON: “Have a nice day.” [continues shaking hands with supporters]. I said what I said, you can go and look at the interview. And if you’ll be real honest, you’ll also report what the question was and what the answer was.”
NBC: “They asked you if you regretted your comparing Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama on the day after the South Carolina primary.”
CLINTON: “And I pointed out that I did not do that, and that I complimented them both. And that Jesse Jackson took no offense. And I called him myself, I said, ‘Did you find that offensive?’ And he said no.

Later Tuesday, Obama was asked to respond about Clinton's accusations that his camp used the race card.


"Hold on a second, so former president Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he's suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it? Ok, well then you better ask him about it," Obama said.

The Illinois senator was then asked if, as Clinton said, his campaign had a secret plan to use race.

"Was there something that we had a plan to get him to say that my campaign was like Jesse Jackson's? I don't know what he is referring to unfortunately," he said, laughing.

Meanwhile, Clinton is also making news about comments he made immediately after the WHYY interview when he thought the microphone was off. Once the interview was over, he turned to someone next to him and said: “I don’t think I should take any sh** from anybody on that, do you?”

OBAMA UPDATE

Reports out of New York City say Illinois Senator Barack Obama's primary night results were greatly undercounted in several areas ... in some cases leaving him with zero votes when, in fact, he had pulled in hundreds, said the Board of Elections.

Unofficial primary results gave Obama no votes in nearly 80 districts, including Harlem's 94th and other historically black areas - but many of those initial tallies proved to be wildly off the mark, the board said.


Because of recounts, in some districts, Obama may end up in a tie or even defeating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York.


"Outrageous" is what Brooklyn City Councilman Charles Barron called the understated figures


"I think this is an all-out effort to stop a campaign that is about to make history and render America's first black president," he said. "We need some kind of independent or federal agency to investigate this."


In other Obama news, the Democratic presidential candidate met in secret with John Edwards on Sunday. The meeting was confirmed by his campaign managers, but wouldn't say if won an endorsement.


Edwards dropped out of the presidential race after failing to win any of the earlier state races. Both Obama & Clinton are actively seeking his support because of his appeal to working-class Democrats who are heavily represented in Ohio's primary and Pennsylvania's April 22 contest.


Finally, it appears that Obama's winning ways are causing Bill Clinton to come apart at the seams. He's starting to lose his cool - in public - more and more. The latest case was in Canton, Ohio when the former US President got in the face of Robert Holeman an Obama supporter.


"I think he even hit me in the face with his hand," Holeman said. "He did give me a little pop. It was okay, because I understand his tenacity for his wife."


Some staffers from the Clinton camp expressed to reporters that Holeman was an Obama plant, however that was categorically denied by the Obama spokesperson Ben LaBolt. Also, a spokesperson for President Clinton who was near the confrontation, said there was no physical contact.