Snipers

Hillary may not have actually had bullets flying over her head in Bosnia, but she was under fire big time on Tuesday. Apparently the evening news on all three broadcast networks led with her Tuzla Tale, and had even more video to show how absurd her version was. Al G. at the Field had the video for CBS and ABC.

This repeated lie opened the door wider to examination of other exaggerations and lies, such as Hillary's repeated assertion that she was against NAFTA. MSNBC demolished that one. (Again, Al has the video.)

Print press was no kinder. Why wasn't the truth good enough for Hillary Rodham Clinton? was the lead for an AP report, called "Hillary's Flight of Fancy." Dan Kennedy in the Guardian put it all in perspective, and senses that while the media bought the argument that they'd been soft on Obama before Ohio, they are feeling they've been too soft on Hillary since, and that's over. Kennedy was quotably ascerbic about some of this, like James Carville calling Gov. Richardson a "Judas" for his endorsement of Obama: a remark that caused millions to rack their brains over whether they may have missed any Jesus-like qualities in Hillary Clinton over the years. Of course, it's possible that by the time this ends she'll claim to have walked on water. "

Kennedy concludes: "By Monday evening, Clinton was saying that she "misspoke" on Bosnia, which, of course, she hadn't. The only credible explanation for her incredible remarks is that she lied and got caught. Frankly, if she really believes she and her then-teenage daughter had come under sniper fire that day in Tuzla - well, on second thought, keep the red phone away from that woman, please."

But on Tuesday, Clinton tried to change the subject and at the same time go racist in PA (you had to do it in the town where I was born, didn't you, Hillary?) by personally trying to re-ignite the Rev. Wright controversy. It looked to me that cable news bought it, but the networks didn't. But that's really the audience she wanted. She gave the interview in which she first made this Rev. Wright remarks to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the rabid right Scaife daily that was a charter member of the vast right wing conspiracy, having commissioned many stories trying to prove Vince Foster was murdered by Billary. But now, the rabid right are Hillary's allies, and the Pittsburgh Trib-to- Fox News is to be her channel to blue collar white voters in PA. And with the lovely logic of the Manchurian Candidate, she enables hate votes by condemning hate speech.

She also called her Tuzla doozy a "mistake" rather than a "misstatement." Though she of course wound up playing the victim by asserting "it proves I'm human, which for some is a revelation." Once again, she attacks without restraint, but when called to account, she plays the victim.

Unfortunately for her, she then went on to make other exaggerations, and the media--the Times in this case--was all over it immediately.

"He wouldn't have been my pastor," Hillary chides, but the pastor of the church she went to as First Lady defended Wright: "He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize."

But that's clearly also part of the Hillary strategy in PA, where her first television ad has "not a person of color" in it.

Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll shows Obama now just ten points behind Clinton in PA. And a new Public Policy Polling survey shows that Obama has jumped out to a 21 point lead in North Carolina.

Obama has been catching some rays in the Virgin Islands all this time, but he's back in North Carolina Wednesday. He begins a bus trip across PA on Friday, starting in western PA, in the vicinity where Hillary was Tuesday.