Hillary, Dick, Gail & Bill

Last month I read Dick Morris's rebuttal to Hillary Clinton's Living History. The Morris book is called Rewriting History. Basically he goes through Hillary's book bit by bit setting the record straight. Hillary does leave out some significant pieces of her history which Mr. Morris seemingly gleefully details. Things like all the Hillary scandals, everything from Travelgate to how she bungled the Paula Jones problem. And how she hauled off a fortune in gifts just prior to being booted from the White House. Hillary returned some of the loot and paid for some of what she kept.

So when reading the Morris book about Hillary he frequently refers to Gail Sheehy's Hillary's Choice book. So, now I'm reading that one. I'm about 100 pages in. Miss Sheehy so far is causing me to like Hillary more than Mr. Morris did. She is painting quite an interesting picture of Hillary's formative years. The taskmaster dad, the constant drive to be the best she could be, the Republican upbringing that the early 60s and a meeting with Martin Luther King slowly started Hillary on her evolution to becoming a liberal democrat. Her first boyfriend. No, it wasn't Bill.

And speaking of Bill, I had no idea he was such a chunky little butterball when he was a kid.

I am Woman Hear Me Roar

After a long cold tiring day, I decided to succumb once again to my cathode ray addiction and sit down for some TV viewing, intending to watch my favorite nonsensical show, Prison Break, and then catch the last half the South Carolina Democrat Presidential Primary Debate.

But, before I get to the debate, and what a debate it was, I must mention Prison Break. For the most part the show is filmed here in the D/FW zone of Texas. Currently most of the show takes place in a prison in Panama. I discovered after going for Tex-Mex for lunch at Esperanza's in the Stockyards that a part of Fort Worth's history was being used as a prison. I was surprised I had not read mention of this in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram because that paper never misses a chance to brag about anything remotely brag-worthy. Like if at any point in their life a person somehow touched Fort Worth or its environs that newspaper will say something like "Fort Worth Native, Bill Paxton", or like yesterday the Seattle band Foo Fighters was in town. One of the band members lived in Fort Worth for a short time when he was a toddler. The article labeled the guy (I can't remember his name) a Fort Worth native. They actually interviewed him and asked what he remembered of Fort Worth. "Nothing" was his reply.

So, it was surprising to me that the Star-Telegram did not have a big article talking about Fort Worth becoming a mecca for major Hollywood productions, with cities far and wide Green with Envy. Ironically, the one and only reference to the Stockyard Ruins being used as a TV set was a little blurb that said something like "The Fox TV Show, Prison Break, is using an abandoned Dallas area meat processing plant as a prison." Now if you knew how obsessed many Fort Worthers are over Dallas, referring to something taking place in Fort Worth as being in the "Dallas area" is pretty much a misdemeanor here, maybe a felony.

I remember reading the reference to the show using a Dallas area abandoned meat processing plant and wondering where it was. So, I was quite surprised to be driving in the Stockyards zone, driving by the old Swift-Armor meat plant that I call the Stockyard Ruins and seeing a guard tower where none existed before. And then it dawned on me what it might be. I Parked and made my way to a viewing point through a gate and was looking right at the Sona Prison in Panama, complete with palm trees that died in our first freeze here of the year.

Speaking of dying in a big freeze, back to last night's debate. So, I was watching Prison Break, came to the first commercial, switched over to CNN to see if the debate was being interesting. I never went back to Prison Break. I got to the debate right when Hillary and Barack started their now infamous verbal battle. I believe this was the wildest debate I've ever seen and I pretty much watch them all. Usually the crowd is told to be quiet, not to applaud, not to boo, warned that violators of this policy might be removed.

Well, last night apparently there was no such warning, that, or the moderator, Wolf Blitzer, realized that what started as a debate had turned into a World Federation of Wrestling Match and crowd participation only helped with the spectacle. So we had loud cheering, clapping, booing, hissing. And a lot of laughing.

There has been sniping between the Clinton and Obama camps for a couple weeks now. Last night was the first time the pair directly shot barbs at each other, rather than through their surrogates, like Mr. Bill. The best zingers where when Barack accused Hillary of being a lackey for Wal-Mart to which Hillary accused Barack of working for Chicago slumlords.

All in all, I think John Edwards won this debate. Obama seemed a bit shell-shocked, like he was being hen-pecked. Hillary once more seemed to be the toughest of the three. And not in a good way.

This morning I finished Dick Morris's book "Because He Could" where he pretty much shreds Bill and Hillary. One part of the book details the Clinton's epic fights that many witnessed over the years. Another part pretty much made a real good case that it was Hillary who caused the worst of the Clinton scandals, the worse being refusing to let Bill settle the Paula Jones case out of court, which then led to Bill committing perjury, which then led to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Hillary was completely the cause of Travelgate, as well, despite the Clinton denials. Anyway, it is a good book. I recommend it.

Update: I liked the Morris book I finished this morning so much that this afternoon I got his latest book, the one where he counters Hillary's "Living History" book. His is called "Rewriting History". So far I'm only a few pages in and there's some good stuff. Like a section of Hillary's more bizarre bouts of getting caught in really weird lies. Like when she claimed to be named after Sir Edmund Hillary, he being the recently deceased first climber of Mount Everest. Trouble is Sir Edmund became a known name well after Hillary Clinton was born. And then there was the incident where Hillary made up a bizarre story on the Today Show, telling Katie Couric that Chelsea had been jogging around the Twin Towers when they were struck on 9/11. Trouble is Chelsea said later that she was miles away on the other side of Manhattan watching the nightmare unfold on TV, just like most of us experienced it.

High Noon for Hillary?

The voting shuts down in about an hour in New Hampshire. It is looking bleak for Hillary. At least according to the latest polls. Maybe this is not a bad thing. I mean, isn't there something a bit disturbing about the idea of another 4 or 8 years of a Clinton being president? That would make it so 2 families controlled the presidency of the U.S. for up to 28 years, if Hillary got 2 terms. That means someone who is 30 years old would have no memory of anyone but a Clinton or a Bush being president. That's like something that would happen in a banana republic, not here.

I heard on the radio today that Hillary has fired some key advisers and is bringing in some old helpers, like James Carville. I'm wondering if she is secretly calling Dick Morris, the Clintons go to guy for decades in times of political trouble. Last week I read Morris's book about helping Clinton called 'Behind the Oval Office'. In that book he makes himself seem like the brains behind the Clinton operation and he makes Hillary look good. After that he turned on the Clintons and wrote 2 more books, one countering Bill's long-winded 'My Life' and the other countering Hillary's 'Living History'. I'm currently reading the book where he turns on Bill, called 'Because I Could'. It is not a flattering portrait of the Clintons.

At the same time I'm reading 'Because I Could' I'm reading a book called 'Bad Boy from Rosebud'. Not that there is any connection between the two books. I like the true crime genre with my favorite author being Ann Rule. One of the reasons I like Ann Rule's books is because so many of them tell of crimes that occurred in the Pacific Northwest and I will often either remember the crime or know exactly the location she is describing.

So, unbeknownst to me 'Bad Boy from Rosebud' is also about locations of which I am familiar. The surprising wrinkle being it is Texas locations. I'd barely begun the book when I realized I remembered the scandal of this criminal. Kenneth McDuff. He committed brutal murders in the 60s, sent to death row. Somehow got paroled by the early 90s. And began to kill again. Texas had been emptying prisons due to over crowding, letting thousands of bad guys out. Due to the public outrage in Texas over McDuff, laws were passed called the McDuff laws that hopefully prevent such a thing from re-occurring.

Anyway, McDuff's murders in the 60s took place just south of where I live, in the town of Everman. His hometown was down near Waco. He was all over this area, often in Fort Worth. So, it was sort of a surprise to accidentally pick up a true crime book and find that it was once more describing places with which I was familiar.

Well, it is coming up on 7pm Central Time, that is 8pm New Hampshire time, when the polls close.