"This was a morning when I saw a masterful politician shut Russert up."

I, for one loved it. Go HRC!

I liked the way Bob Johnson addressed the whole race thing.

Basically said African American's are not going to fall for it.

It's one of the best performances on MTP I've ever seen. Russert continued living five to fifteen years ago and she just rolled over him. When is Russert going to start addressing the here and now and get out of GOTCHA mode. She parried brilliantly throughout, told him it was time to move on, totally poised even when he asked a very personal question which she answered brilliantly. I can tell she did good by the chorus of race bs being trotted out here by the Obamanauts. If they are not willing to admit that was a stellar performance then they don't know what a stellar performance is.  

Russert intentionally tried to embarrass her by using her husband against her (ie, "Obama-like" clips from his first Presidential campaign advocating change, his list of Presidential pardons and asking HRC her most "painful time" in public life.)

HRC is NOT Bill. She answered the questions very gracefully, and forcefully.

A friend of mine (an Obama supporter) called my up this morning to talk about Hillary Clinton on MTP. This friend has strong opinions about many things - and even likes Timmeh! (go figure). He told me, "Are you watching MTP? Hillary's beating up Tim Russert!"

Notice that the misogynist prick once again asked her about Monica Lewinsky, just like he did when he moderated a debate with Hillary Clinton.

Russert and his sidekick Matthews are two of a kind.

BTW, my college daughter watched MTP the morning and at the end said, "I am SO inspired by her."

I was really impressed watching it on the web this morning. She seems a lot more in her element lately. She's more relaxed but deft at dicing up the premise of an edited question, bringing it back to the narrative: who will be the best president?

It's so sweet that you're proud of your candidate.  You saw power, where I saw another example of the Clintons hoping you forget the real facts and stand proudly believing the facts as they have remolded them.  

Hillary continues to trumpet "inconsistencies" in Obama's Iraq position because he said he was against it from the beginning and then voted to fund it.  He has repeatedly discussed the reason for funding the war.  Our soldiers that are in Iraq didn't request to go, they were sent and funding the war is funding their protection.  So he did vote to fund the war, so the troops would have what they needed.  Now the Clintons continuing to say this again and again hoping it will stick is ridiculous.  They know what he was writing about in kindergarten, so I am positive they know his position on why he voted the way he did.  So for them to act as if this is something that hasn't been discussed already is really shameful and shows how scared they are at the fact that Obama is a really viable candidate.  

As for Mr. Clinton's "fairytale" comment, it was offensive.  The Obama campaign has raised money that this nation has never seen without using lobbyist as Mrs. Clinton has.  He won in Iowa and that's no fairytale.  To try and spin it after it blows up in your face is a bit ridiculous.  

The MLK comment is more history re-writing by the Clinton camp.  To try and say she was referring to the synergy of Dr. King and LBJ is absolutely ridiculous.  Because what she said was "it was just a dream until a president put it into action."  That comment doesn't infer synergy.  That comment was just another example of why she had been so inaccessible to voters and the press  because when she doesn't have a script memorized she says stupid things.  So to try and rewrite the comment is ridiculous.  And then when rewriting it doesn't work to make an accusation that the Obama campaign is trying to stir up racial tension is ludicrous.  Google it, Obama hasn't even commented on that dim-witted thing she said.  

I had made a choice to support Obama because I feel he is a superior candidate and really has the interest of the people at heart.  It was nothing against Hillary, I just had a preference.  But over the last week and a half, she has lost my respect.  She has resorted to dirty tricks in an effort to try and get ahead rather than just running a clean campaign and allowing the voters to pick who they like best.  She has decided to misrepresent her opponents.  This is a true sign of desperation in the Clinton campaign.  Boasting barely winning in New Hampshire when it was supposed to be a "firewall" should make her embarrassed.  

I am happy that there are a few people out there that allow the Clintons to tell them what reality is rather than looking at the actual facts.  

Yes, she held her own.  

And the amazing fact of the matter is that there was not one kind word from Russert about the triumph of the Clinton campaign, particularly concering her amazing success in New Hampshire, in which the entire MSM had her buried in a landslide loss on the very morning of the primary!

Now, the racism slant--the Obama partisans' latest effort to shore up additional support in South Carolina--has reached beyond hysterical.  

So even Bill Clinton cannot honestly call the Obama efforts to compare himself with JFK and MLK as "fantasy."  Well, it surely is.

As a Greek-American, with Greek extraction from both sides of my family, I am reminded of how so many of my fellow Greek-Americans actually supported Spiro T. Agnew as vice-president under Richard Nixon when I was only in my teens.

It did not matter to them that Mr. Agnew was even then corrupt, or that one half of his lineage was not of Greek extraction at all.  They were only too happy to dismiss his bizarre history just to say that the nation had at least a "half Greek-American" Vice-President!

When, five years later, Mr. Agnew resigned in disgrace, I struggled in vain to find any Greek-Americans who would state that they had voted for him on the Nixon ticket!

Then, in 1988, when then Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis became the Democratic Party standard-bearer (and for whom then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton provided a very long-winded keynote address), I knew, whatever the Greek-American sense that "they had arrived," that Dukakis simply would never become President.

I understood that a) the nation was not ready to have an ethnic, with a very ethnic name, at the top of the helm; b) Dukakis had none of the political skills necessary to get to the presidency; and c) he would not have been a particularly gifted leader even if miraculously he had made it to the presidency.

Dukakis' loss paved the way for Bill Clinton's gain in 1992.

And from the moment Clinton was an also-ran in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and, by his amazing resilence, any observer would have thought that he had triumphed instead--I knew, that hands down, this would be the finest politician--certainly since JFK and RFK--of my lifetime.

The media simply couldn't get him down.  So many in the MSM had badgered, ceaselessly criticized, and outright dismissed him, through the entire campaign of 1992, that his eventual presidential win seemed beyond miraculous.

Of course, with the MSM having been proven badly wrong, there would be no honeymoon for the Clinton administration.  Thus, Bill Clinton was held personally responsible for the disastrous military maneuver in Somalia, even though he was only then a week into his presidency.  

And he was even held responsible for holding up a plane mission while receiving a haircut--even though even the MSM later admitted that nothing was held up at all.  But there would be no apology from the MSM.

Yes, Hillary tackled the bold initiative of complete health care reform--unprecedented for a First Lady--and from the outset was met with derision by the insurance lobbyists whose "Harry and Louise" commercials sealed its fate, before the program had been earnestly thought through.

Then, of course, came the Bill Clinton economic stimulus package--which bearly eked its way through Congress, and for which many a Democratic congressperson met a dire fate at the polls in 1994.  Yet the tragedy of their defeats made them the ultimate matryrs.  

For as we all know now, that plan was nothing short of brilliant.  

Lifelong Republican and longest reigning Federal Reserve Board Chairperson Alan Greenspan, credits it as the beginning of the golden booming 1990s, which resulted in the nation's fiscal solvency--after many long years of deficits--and huge surplus at the conclusion of the Bill Clinton presidency.

There were no panegyrics for Bill Clinton in 1996; the electorate, heavily influenced by Right-Wing diatribes, denied him an absolute majority in his reelection that year.

Of course, in the years ensuring, there were the ceasless Whitewater investigations, in which every aspect of both Bill's and Hillary's personal and professional lives were disssected with microscope precision.  

Talk about being vetted!  No politicians in either party were ever investigated this exhaustively and for so very long.  Almost any other politician, however skilled, would have withered under that form of scrutiny.

So with a malevolent Congress and Right-Wing zealots flourishing and fostering Impeachment--which much of the MSM also encouraged--Bill Clinton still left his two presidential terms with sky-high approval ratings and having earned the status of being the most popular political figure on earth.

The MSM remained thoroughly anti-Clinton, of course, so it was necessary for them to serve as cheerleaders for the wholly incompetent GWB in 2000.  Like Obama today, GWB was the "folksy" one, could connect with crowds (unlike the stone-like Al Gore)--GWB was "anti-Washington," and most importantly "anti-Clinton."  

If GWB was not truly ready for the presidency (although he was in his second term as Texas Governor; compare that to Obama's scant three years in the US Senate), well, what of it?  Washington needed a shake-up!

And so, after a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court which in effect chose to pick its ideological successors, the LOSER of the popular vote was thrust into the presidency.  

GWB had promised to "be a uniter and not a divider" (rather like Obama today) between political groups.

Instead, he became the most divisive president in US history--and the least liked.  And today the nation is in shambles, both fiscally and on the world stage.

So we find ourselves currently at a cross-roads.  

Americans can choose the 35-year history of Senator Clinton or the neophyte Senator Obama.  

Perhaps rhetoric is enough for some who naturally feel an affinity for what is in fact half of his racial make-up.

But it is, for all of that, quite amusing.  The man Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison aptly named "the first black president," whom virtually every African-American leader has taken to his or her heart for nearly two decades, is being challenged by the Obama camp on his sincerity with black voters!

Which is why I am reminded of my own ethnicity.  I knew that the half Greek-American Spiro Agnew wasn't the real thing.  

And I knew that Michael Dukakis would never be United States President.  Having even the look or the name of a Greek-American doesn't mean that Greek-Americans should embrace you, much less believe in you.

The Clintons are both ultimate survivors.  They earned their positive status with most African-Americans the hard way, through work and dedication.  

And like most African-Americans, the Clintons came through a political baptism of fire, with enmity and absolute hate from all manner of established figure.

Contrast their record to that of the neophyte Senator Obama, who beleves that his three-year Senate term--his entire period on the national stage--alone qualifies him for the highest office.

And unlike both of the Clintons, Obama has had no adversarial press or RIght Wing fanatics digging into every aspect of his past, personal and political.  

Heretofore Senator Obama has been given a free pass, by Messrs. Russert, Williams, Matthews, Ms. Huffington and their fellow MSM talking-heads gang.

I believe even a cursory inquiry by the national media into his bizarre business contacts alone would give most of the country pause.  Of course, that isn't meant to occur until somehow the MSM can convince the Democrats to disavow the Clintons and go with the neophyte Obama as their nominee.

Then, of course, like Dukakis before him, Obama is instant history.  His presidency isn't going to happen--and that is a certainty.

With Senator Clinton the case is entirely different.  Her negatives may be etched as granite in the minds of most Americans--the natural result of fifteen years of constant hits.

But it is also true that both Clintons have long histories to prove that they can overcome the worst of odds.  The harder the punches on them, the more motivated they become--the more they endure and triumph.

I believe, in the end, the efforts of the MSM to force a rift between African-Americans and the Clintons won't work either.  

Unlike Agnew, and even Dukakis, which in hindsight rather foolishly swayed Greek-Americans, African-Americans are not nearly so easily deceived.

Senator Obama's qualities--intellect and rhetoric--and not unto themselves aspects which qualify him for the presidency.

The Clintons have another connection, a much more accomplished one.  From Toni Morrison to Maya Angelou to John Lewis to Charley Rangel, Bill and Hillary Clinton are the real thing.

It is, in the end, a real record versus rhetoric.

And at this country's cross-roads either experience and competence will out, or the nation--having withstood eight years of a president who went to the White House clueless and will leave clueless--will not survive at all.

For if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, she will be the next President.  Any future general election rivals, and any future salvos fired her way, are just so much old news to the Clintons.

For despite the MSM, the Clintons have more life in them than an army of Ever-Ready Rabbits.

In the end, Hillary will get to the Presidency, like her husband before her, both because, and in spite of, the Clinton-hating MSM.