Election 2008

Hillary Clinton caught in another lie, this one hurts an entire family!

April 6, 2008 - It seems that Hillary Rodham Clinton has again "misspoke" on the campaign trail, and a distraught Ohio family is furious about it.

Several times in recent months while talking about her plan for universal health care, Clinton told a tale of woe about a young pregnant woman who sought medical care at a local hospital and was turned away for lack of insurance - and both she and the baby died.

But the family of the 35-year-old woman - Trina Bachtel - says the story is simply not true.

"Trina had good insurance. She was a good girl, and she worked hard. That story made her look like she was a welfare bum," her 80-year-old grandmother May Mayle told The Post yesterday.

Mayle confirmed that Bachtel died last August from complications related to a late-pregnancy miscarriage, but said she was never turned away from a hospital.

"The family is real torn up about it. I can't understand why they'd make her out to look like she was so unstable," said Mayle.

As Clinton told the story during campaign rallies, the young, pregnant woman in difficulty was turned down for treatment because she was uninsured and couldn't pay $100 up front.

She didn't name Bachtel or the hospital involved, but after the Washington Post ran a story identifying her and where she worked - a Pizza Hut in Pomeroy, Ohio - local papers made it front-page news, horrifying her still-grieving family.

Election 2008

Bob Barr to announce presidential bid!

March 31, 2008 - Feeding off of conservative discontent with Republican presidential nominee John McCain, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr will announce a third party bid for the White House next week, sources tell FITSNews.

Barr, who will run as a Libertarian, is also slated to receive the endorsement of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the only Republican presidential candidate who has yet to cease campaign operations and jump on the McCain bandwagon.

Just last week, Paul threw more cold water on the notion of his supporters backing McCain, telling Newsweek, “I’m not going to tell them what to do, but I honestly can’t imagine any of them supporting him. That would be a tough sale.”

Barr, who represented Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House from 1995-2003, is perhaps best known for his role as a House Manager during impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton.

From the looks of it, Barr and Paul already seem to have something of a “mutual admiration society” going.

Last week, Barr specifically praised Paul’s campaign in discussing his own flirtation with the Presidency, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his potential Libertarian bid for the White House would be an extension of the Ron Paul movement.

“Ron Paul tapped into a great deal of that dissatisfaction and that awareness. Unfortunately, working through the Republican party structure, it became impossible for him to really move forward with his movement. But we have to have ….a rallying point out there to harness that energy, that freedom in this election cycle,” Barr told the newspaper.

Election 2008

From bad to worse for Hillary!

Girl Poet Stunned by Sniper Tale as Insulted Fellow Bosnian’s Rip Former First Lady’s Lie

SARAJEVO, Bosnia - March 31, 2008 - The Bosnian girl who famously read a poem to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 1996 visit to the war-torn country is shocked - and her countrymen infuriated - that the former first lady claimed to have dodged sniper fire that day.

Emina Bicakcic, now 20 and studying to become a doctor, told The Post she stood on the tarmac at the air base in Tuzla, greeted Clinton and even had time to share the lines of verse she'd written - all without fear of attack from an unseen enemy.

"I was surprised when I heard this," Bicakcic said, referring to Clinton's assertion that she braved snipers upon landing, ducking and sprinting to military vehicles.

Other Bosnians said they had one of two reactions to Clinton's debunked action-hero account of her visit: laughter or anger.

"It's an exaggeration," said former acting President Ejup Ganic, who was present during Clinton's visit. "No one was firing. There were no shots fired."

Sema Markovic, 22, a student, said she has long respected Hillary as a strong leader but was angered by her remarks.

"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."

Clinton has since admitted she "misspoke."

Election 2008

Missouri GOP playing machine politics with Ron Paul delegates!

ARLINGTON, Virginia - March 25, 2008 - The Ron Paul campaign has been receiving reports that Missouri GOP rules have been violated in the set-up and execution of several county Republican caucuses. Ron Paul supporters in Missouri have been attending their county caucuses and electing Ron Paul delegates to be seated at the Missouri Republican State Convention. However, there are concerns that many Ron Paul delegates to the Missouri Republican State Convention were disenfranchised and not properly seated.

On Thursday, March 20, campaign field director Debbie Hopper visited the Missouri state GOP headquarters to request a copy of the records needed to obtain the information to file challenges. She was told in front of witnesses that she could not view the report. To obtain the needed information, Ms. Hopper then used the contact information of county chairs listed on the state GOP website. On Saturday, March 22, the webpage containing their contact information had been removed.

The Paul campaign believes that a handful of GOP officials are playing machine politics and breaking their own rules to disenfranchise Paul supporters.

“The Republican party is in trouble and needs more participants in 2008, not less,” said campaign manager Lew Moore. “It makes no sense for Missouri party leaders to exclude and marginalize the new activists they badly need to work at every level this fall.”

Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s supporters have been highly successful in several Missouri counties. In St. Charles County (suburb of St. Louis), Paul supporters filled 241 of the 274 country Republican delegate slots. In Jackson County (Kansas City), Paul supporters filled 162 of 187 delegate slots. And in Greene County (Springfield), Paul supporters filled 72 of 112 delegate slots.

Election 2008

Clinton 'misspoke' about '96 Bosnia trip!

WASHINGTON - March 24, 2008 - Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said she "misspoke" last week when saying she had landed under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia as first lady in March 1996. She later characterized the episode as a "misstatement" and a "minor blip."

The Obama campaign suggested the statement was a deliberate exaggeration by Clinton, who often cites the goodwill trip with her daughter and several celebrities as an example of her foreign policy experience.

During a speech last Monday on Iraq, she said of the Bosnia trip: "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

According to an Associated Press story at the time, Clinton was placed under no extraordinary risks on the trip. And one of her companions, comedian Sinbad, told The Washington Post he has no recollection either of the threat or reality of gunfire.

When asked Monday about the New York senator's remarks about the trip, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson pointed to Clinton's written account of it in her book, "Living History," in which she described a shortened welcoming ceremony at Tuzla Air Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find," Clinton wrote.

"That is what she wrote in her book," Wolfson said. "That is what she has said many, many times and on one occasion she misspoke."

Asked about the issue during a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News' editorial board on Monday, Clinton said she "misspoke."

"I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things - millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.

Ed. Note: No, Hillary. You lied!

Election 2008

How will Hillary’s Bosnia “whopper” play in the media?

March 21, 2008 - If you're Hillary Clinton and you've just been caught in a "whopper," the only thing to be grateful for is that it's Good Friday and people are distracted. How bad could this story be for her? When you tell the American public you faced gunfire, and it turns out all you really faced was a little girl with flowers - well, that's as bad as it gets.

When you dramatically say you made a journey that was too dangerous for the president, only to have it revealed that he made the same trip two months earlier - and that your teenaged daughter was by your side - that only makes it worse.

And there's video.

If they wanted to, the networks could juxtapose video of Sen. Clinton's dramatic recitation of the battle with this clip of that sweet eight-year-old on the tarmac with a bouquet. The question is: Will they want to?

Just this week Sen. Clinton said that she landed in Bosnia under "sniper fire", adding, "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." Clinton used to tell Iowa audiences, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady."

And her 16-year-old daughter?

This latest deception is documented in detail in the Washington Post by a reporter who was there. The paper awards her statements "four Pinocchios," a rating they reserve for political misstatements they describe as "whoppers."

Ed. Note: Whopper (Merriam-Webster): "An extravagant or monstrous lie."

Election 2008