# Fork Hillary 3: The Final Forking **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 18, 2008, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726 "2008-03-18T00:01:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 35
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/681 "2008-04-05T18:53:38Z")
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99] I hope this whole campaign season comes up with a different meme other than 3:00 a.m. phone calls. [/QUOTE] I agree, but I reserve the right to change my mind when the zombies and vampires finalize their treaty and begin levering open the Hellmouth. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/682 "2008-04-05T19:05:36Z")
[QUOTE=Phlosphr] Exactly, nothing against him as a human being, a damn strong human being. I give him all the respect in the world, a real all American - I just don’t think he’d be an effective president. [/QUOTE] Oh, ok. I agree. I must’ve misread your statement, I thought you meant he won’t get a chance to _run_. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/683 "2008-04-05T19:42:20Z")
I think Hillary was repeating the 3 AM adverts to save production costs. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/684 "2008-04-05T20:04:21Z")
Color me surprised at the Clinton tax returns. $109 million since 2000, mostly from Bill’s speaking fees. I actually didn’t know he was paid for those. $8 million in a couple of those years. That’s a lot of speaking. I don’t know what impact these figures will have on Hillary’s campaign, except that it puts them way out of the middle class, and some voters don’t like rich people. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/685 "2008-04-05T20:14:19Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam] Color me surprised at the Clinton tax returns. $109 million since 2000, mostly from Bill’s speaking fees. I actually didn’t know he was paid for those. $8 million in a couple of those years. That’s a lot of speaking. [/QUOTE] A-list speakers, which most certainly include former presidents, command a _high_ price for public speaking engagements. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/686 "2008-04-05T20:28:32Z")
[QUOTE=Phlosphr] Exactly, nothing against him as a human being, a damn strong human being. I give him all the respect in the world, a real all American - I just don’t think he’d be an effective president. [/QUOTE] I won’t even go that far. He was all that, 35-40 years ago. He held true to his principles under terrible duress. Now he’s flipflopping all over the place under what his onetime self would surely regard as trivial pressures. I have little respect for the person he’s become. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/687 "2008-04-05T21:47:51Z")
[QUOTE=Bosstone] A-list speakers, which most certainly include former presidents, command a _high_ price for public speaking engagements. [/QUOTE] I remember hearing David Spade on the radio one time say that he got paid $250,000 to speak at a corporate picnic. He’s probably not even considered an A-list _celebrity_, much less an anything-list public speaker. So yeah, former politicians get paid a ton to speak, especially former presidents. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2008, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/688 "2008-04-05T22:42:11Z")
So these A listers, when they get hired to speak, are they also expected to hang around afterwards and schmooze with the people who paid big bucks to hear them? ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/689 "2008-04-06T04:20:09Z")
**New wrinkle for Clinton, or just more of the same old pathology?** I was going to open a new Hillary thread with this, but I figure this is fork-worthy, so it fits just as well here. Seems another repeated [stump story has turned out to be factually inaccurate.](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4597361&page=1) > [@Eloise Harper - ABC News](#): > > For the second time in recent days, Sen. Hillary Clinton has had to drop a story from her stump speech after being challenged on its accuracy. For the past month, the New York senator liked to tell the tale of a pregnant woman who was denied health care from an Ohio hospital because she did not have $100 the hospital demanded to treat her. --more– My question is just how difficult is it to vet a story like this? And if the Clinton camp was having a problem verifying it, why use it when there’s a chance it could blow up in their faces? What are they thinking over there? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/690 "2008-04-06T04:31:39Z")
Well, give them credit for not having Hillary claim to have delivered the woman’s baby in the hospital parking lot after being denied care. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/691 "2008-04-06T11:48:25Z")
Now if she had added that Bill was the father of that baby, THAT we could have believed. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/692 "2008-04-06T16:16:59Z")
[QUOTE=Onomatopoeia] Seems another repeated [stump story has turned out to be factually inaccurate.](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4597361&page=1)My question is just how difficult is it to vet a story like this? And if the Clinton camp was having a problem verifying it, why use it when there’s a chance it could blow up in their faces? What are they thinking over there? [/QUOTE] I actually have very little problem with this incident. I believe she’s right, that candidates tell second-hand and third-hand anecdotes all the time without exhaustively vetting them. The anecdotes are meant to be illustrative of problems rather than specific reasons to cast votes (it’d be absurd to vote for Clinton wholly out of a sense of vengeance for the dead mother’s lot, but not absurd to vote for Clinton out of a desire to prevent such miscarriages of justice). You might argue that candidates should spend more time vetting anecdotes, and I wouldn’t much care either way; I could get on board with such a proposal. But until that becomes the standard, I think the way Clinton handled the situation is totally fine: she used the anecdote until someone with superior knowledge corrected her, and then she immediately dropped it. This is very different from the sniper-fire incident, in which she appears to have deliberately misled voters. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/693 "2008-04-06T16:38:59Z")
**LeftHand** , while at least this time she learned to retreat as soon as called on it (unlike the sniper story which just got bigger upon the retelling once questioned) this was more than mere repeated a second-hand anecdote. She embellished it further, made it a better “story” to best fit her political needs. It is the same mind-set that justified Bush’s passing on of second-hand stories of WMDs (with embellishments) to convince Americans of the need for intervention in Iraq. It fits my goal, no need to vet, let’s sex it up a little. If she has this casual relationship to the truth on these subjects, when little is even to be gained as opposed to telling a true story, how do expect to be when she is passing on information of vital importance to major policy decisions, like going to war? Can you believe anything she says without independent verification? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/694 "2008-04-06T18:54:46Z")
I think the hospital yarn is a lot less damning than the phony Bosnian snipers. There’s a reasonable possibility that the hospital story could be true about someone, or at the very least parts of it actually happened and were woven to make one story. We could even forgive the Bosnian story if she had ever been exposed to sniper fire anywhere, but to use this story to demonstrate why you pass the “commander in chief threshold” is way over the line when not a bit of it was true. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/695 "2008-04-06T19:48:26Z")
The story may be a lot less damaging to _her_ credibility, but that doesn’t make it any less unconscionable. First of all, as **DSeid** says, it goes to the degree to which she thinks it’s necessary to vet information before passing it along. We’ve had one of those for going on eight years now – look what it’s done to our country and others! Secondly, it may not have hurt _her_, but it potentially hurt the _hospital_ and their _staff of medical professionals_, not to mention the grief-stricken family of the deceased woman and child! See [my post here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9655510&postcount=76) for a more in-depth explanation as to why. You don’t _use_ people like that for your own gain. _Especially_ grieving people. You don’t damage a hospital’s reputation with false claims of malfeasance. It’s despicable. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/696 "2008-04-06T23:09:38Z")
[Penn quits.](http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/06/clinton.campaign/index.html) When Rendell was starting to hint he should go, it was probably just a matter of time. And the effect will be? ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/697 "2008-04-06T23:20:07Z")
The news stories are indicating he’ll continue to provide polling services “and advice” to the campaign, so he can still contribute to making a mess of things. I think the effect will be more chum in the water of an already bleeding candidacy. Watch the sharks move in. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2008, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/698 "2008-04-06T23:22:17Z")
[QUOTE=DSeid] [Penn quits.](http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/06/clinton.campaign/index.html) When Rendell was starting to hint he should go, it was probably just a matter of time. And the effect will be? [/QUOTE] > [@](#): > > Mark Penn and his political consulting firm will continue [to] advise the New York senator’s Democratic presidential bid, but Penn will give up his job as chief strategist, campaign manager Maggie Williams said. In other words, he’s not gone. They just kicked him into the back office. Hehe…reading deeper into the article, it looks like the Colombian government fired Burson-Marsteller after Penn apologized for meeting with them. There’s all kind of schadenfreude going on here… ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2008, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/699 "2008-04-07T00:09:55Z")
Shorter Clinton: unionbusters are still fine with me! ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2008, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726/700 "2008-04-07T01:05:07Z")
It’s just another knotch on the belt to an already crippled campaign. Notice I didn’t say Clinton was crippled, but her campaign is…she’s a tenacious little shrew, but in the end it will be by in large her campaign errors and blunders that cost her the nomination. Amongst a flurry of other things… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726.md?page=34) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fork-hillary-3-the-final-forking/441726.md?page=36)