Sleazy Clinton Ads In Both Texas And Ohio

It should come as no surprise that in order to desperately rejuvenate their faltering power grab, the Bill and Hillary Clinton campaign for a co-presidency would start in the last three days to launch dirty, grossly misleading advertisements against Obama on television in both Texas and Ohio.

In an ad reminiscent of Lyndon B. Johnson's "nuclear bomb" ad against Barry Goldwater, suggesting that Johnson (who was about to rev up the Vietnam war and send thousands of American soldiers to their deaths uselessly) was less dangerous than Goldwater. The ad falsely suggested that it was Goldwater, not Johnson, who would go to war. It turned out to be a lie, and Americans paid for it with their lives.

Now, in Texas, Hillary Clinton -- who is no more qualified to become President of the United States than Lurline Wallace was to become governor of Alabama -- is claiming she would be safer for Americans to have in the White House than Barack Obama. If it's 3 a.m. and a call about a terrorist attack arrives in the White House, who would you want in the White House answering it, Clinton or Obama, the ad asks.

That's a question that may come up in a Obama campaign this fall against John McCain. But McCain is much more entitled to ask it than a ditsy woman who cries for political advantage, who voted for the Iraq war in the first place, when Obama did not, and now at last has called her vote a mistake. Her unsteady hand would certainly not be safer for the American people than Barack Obama's .

McCain can run sincerely on the security issue, and it would be up to Obama to answer him. Hillary Clinton cannot, because she has already shown countless times her unreliability, her changeability. The woman whose husband took a payoff in dealings over a mining concession with the dictator of Kazakhstan, who could not even stand up against her husband's philandering in the White House, cannot now try to fool the American people into thinking that she and that same morally-stained husband would be safer for them again in the White House.

In a firm, principled statement Friday, Obama declared, "We've seen these ads before. They're the kind that play on peoples' fears to scare up votes. Well, it won't work this time. Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is -- what kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We've just had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer."

Meanwhile, in Ohio, the Clintons, who brought the unfair NAFTA to the United States, giving away hundreds of thousands of workers jobs to foreign interests, today have the gall to suggest that Obama is less sincere in his questioning of NAFTA than they are.

This, in its own way, is just as sleazy an ad. It seeks to take advantage of the perceived gullibility of millions of honest Ohio workers and their families.

The Clinton ads in Ohio and Texas are reminiscent of the ads of other Southern demagogues -- the Watsons, the Bilbos, the Faubuses and the Wallaces -- who behaved so disgracefully over the years. Figuratively, they have joined the lynch mob who will do anything to prevent the advent of a just America. At the same time, they have established, far more than their critics ever could, just how divisive another Clinton presidency would be. There is a Southern term for the Clintons: White trash.

Also, it is reported today that the Clinton campaign has raised questions about the fairness of voting procedures in Texas, where the primary will be followed by caucuses that will select some of the delegates. The Clinton complaints, carrying an implicit threat of legal action or a credentials fight at the Democratic national convention, were immediately denounced by Texas Democratic party officials.

And now the question is whether the voters of Texas and Ohio will ignore this manure and vote intelligently next Tuesday for Obama and a higher, more moral form of American politics.

When some of his backers were peddling nonsense this week, calling Obama by his middle name, Hussein, and suggesting falsely he is a Muslim, McCain apologized for it and pledged to try to see it wouldn't happen again.

This showed once again that McCain is an honorable man. The Clintons are anything but honorable, and it is time to sweep them into the trashcan of history.

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Tom Mulligan and Jim Rainey have an excellent story in the L.A. Times today on the layoffs in American newspapers, and, specifically, the threatening nature of Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell's visit this week to the L.A. Times Washington bureau, in which he infamously said that the Times staff in Orange County should be increased to numbers bigger than the Washington bureau. The implication was that the Washington bureau would be decreased.

Kudos to them for having the courage and integrity to stand up to the beast from Chicago.