The Clinton slime machine in action, billionaire division

Bob Johnson, now sliming Obama on behalf of Clinton, was one of the prime sponsors of repealing the estate tax. He said it was “racist.”

Robert Johnson of BET, now going around South Carolina sliming Barack Obama with, and on behalf of Hillary Clinton(note that his attempt to walk his comment back makes no sense whatever &#8212 why be coy, if all he meant was community organizing &#8212 was last seen helping George W. Bush repeal the estate tax on the grounds that it was “racist.”

Tell me more about how Hillary Clinton, pal of greedhead billionaires, is the candidate of change? Oh, yeah, and tell me again that it’s just an accident that none of her surrogates can open his mouth without making some sort of coded personal attack on Obama?

As Adlai Stevenson said to Richard Nixon, if the Clintons don’t stop lying about Obama, he’s going to have to start telling the truth about them. And that won’t be pretty, at all, at all.

Here’s the text of the story; make up your own mind.

“To me, as an African American, I am frankly insulted the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues — when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood; I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in his book — when they have been involved,” Johnson said.

Obama wrote about his teenage drug use — marijuana, alcohol and sometimes cocaine — in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

Johnson later said his comments referred to Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago “and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect,” he said in a statement released by Clinton’s campaign.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com