Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed doubt Thursday over Pakistan’s failure to locate top al-Qaeda leaders in the eight years since they escaped over the border from Afghanistan, telling a group of Pakistani journalists that she found “it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.”

“So far as we know,” she said, “they’re in Pakistan.”

Can’t see that going over too well with the powers that be in Pakistan (the military and the ISI, as much as the government). And there was more:

Speaking to the Pakistani journalists, Clinton was matter-of-fact, offering an example of some of the questions the United States would like more forcefully addressed even as it strives to respond to some of Pakistan’s grievances. In a separate meeting with business executives in Lahore, Clinton contrasted the opulent conference room where they had gathered with Pakistan’s low ranking on the Human Development Index — 141 out of more than 180 countries — and suggested that the widespread failure to pay taxes here may be related to the country’s economic problems.

The Washington Post tells us that “Officials traveling with Clinton expressed overall satisfaction with the trip, which has been an exercise in message calibration.”

If you say so, boss.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she thinks President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of “his attitude toward America’s role in the world.”

“His willingness to really kind of challenge everyone … restores a kind of image and appreciation of our country,” Clinton said in an NBC “Today” show interview broadcast Monday.

So it’s not a Peace Prize, after all? More like a P.R. Prize?

When comparing Obama’s full FEC filing for June with a list of 311 “Hillraisers” — or supporters who bundled more than $100,000 in contributions for Sen. Clinton — the Huffington Post found only eight names in common between the two lists. Not all of those donors maxed out, either, making for a relatively paltry figure of $19,250 in direct, hard-money contributions from Hillraisers for the month.

It’s probably just a coincidence that the NYT reported the previous day:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lent her campaign an additional $1 million at the end of June, underscoring the difficulty she is having staying ahead of creditors and retiring a mountain of campaign debt, filings with the Federal Election Commission show.

Even though the fight for the Democratic nomination came to a close in early June, with Senator Barack Obama emerging as the presumed nominee, Mrs. Clinton’s debts to vendors increased to $12 million at the end of the month from $10.4 million at the end of May. In addition, after her latest loan on June 30, Mrs. Clinton has now lent her campaign a total of $13.2 million.
[...]
Mrs. Clinton’s unpaid bills and the degree to which Mr. Obama is working to help her tackle them has been a sensitive spot in the efforts to bring their supporters and the party together. Mr. Obama himself presented a check of $2,300 to Mrs. Clinton at the end of June as a symbolic gesture, and her campaign has continued to send out e-mail asking for help tackling its debt. But the Clinton campaign took in just $2.7 million from donors in June, less than the $5.4 million it spent.

Is Bill Clinton still fuming over the outcome of the primary contests?

Although he has yet to pick up the phone when Barack Obama calls, a close associate said Sunday that the former President is ready to make nice this week.

“This man doesn’t stay mad,” said former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, although there are a few anger issues hanging around. For Clinton, it’s not all about him, definitely not, McAuliffe said on CNN‘s “Late Edition.”

“Is he somewhat angry, as I am, and others, at some of the treatment Hillary Clinton received from the press? Sure. But, you know, that’s life,” McAuliffe said.

He’s angry at some of the treatment Hillary received from the press, and so he doesn’t pick up the phone when Barack Obama calls?

Makes perfect three-year-old sense.

The Republican party has made a lot of predictions about Iraq. Not a single one has turned out to be true. To keep that unbroken streak alive, they offered up another one yesterday to celebrate the announcement that Obama intends to visit Iraq before the elections.

Here’s Alex Conant, a Republican spokesman:

When Obama visits Iraq, he’ll see that he was wrong to oppose the surge, wrong to continue to ignore our commanders’ advice and wrong to demand premature withdrawal.

Ah yes, the scales will fall from his eyes, and the man will come to his senses, staggering under the burden of finally perceiving The Truth About Things. Stricken by remorse, he will repent his actions of the last few years. To the point that his conscience will not permit him to continue his campaign for President. He may even resign from the Senate, and retire into seclusion.

Hillary Cinton will triumphantly step forth from the sidelines, in an ecstasy of vindication. Throughout America, Clintonites will dance all night in the streets in an orgy of mad revelry. And they will, each and every one, know in their hearts that it was only the depths of their bitterness, their Obama-hatred, that cosmically precipitated this magically wonderful turn of events.

There may be some residual bitterness among supporters on both sides, but there’s no question the wounds will heal, and the Democratic Party will enter this election season stronger than it has been in recent years.
[...]
It’s only natural that after such a grueling campaign – which brought forth so much personal emotion – some hard feelings would linger for a while.

Of course, Rangel is busy trying to paper over the differences between the two sides. It’s pretty self-evident that the hard feelings between these two campaigns go a lot deeper than what might be considered natural after a hard-fought campaign. There have been hard-fought campaigns before. What we have never seen before is the astonishing number of hard-core Clintonites who are seething with so much anger that they are determined not to support Obama.

On the day of the Kentucky primary, exit polls showed that 71% of Obama supporters would vote for Clinton if she were the nominee, but only 33% of Clinton supporters would vote for Obama.

As Clinton herself has pointed out to her supporters, this makes absolutely no sense. If you believe in what Clinton stands for, what Clinton’s campaign was all about, how can you possibly prefer McCain as the next president? And yet, large numbers of fervent Clinton supporters still proudly proclaim that they’d rather see McCain as president than vote for Obama, let alone work for him.

Maybe, as everyone predicts, some of this bitterness will subside between now and November. Maybe most of Hillary’s supporters will eventually vote their beliefs about how this country should be run and not their Obama-bitterness.

But what baffles me is this whole phenomenon of the raging bitterness of (some) Clintonites towards Obama.

Frankly, it would be much easier to understand such bitterness if it flowed the other way. Hillary Clinton deliberately ran a deeply divisive campaign. She pulled every dirty trick she could, from shamelessly exploiting and subtly fueling Obama-is-a-Muslim rumors to covert and overt racist appeals. Long after it was clear that mathematically she simply wasn’t going to be able to close the delegate gap, she did all she possibly could do to undermine the legitimacy of Obama’s looming victory.

But when I look at the campaign Obama ran, I’m just not able to identify any rational basis for The Bitter Clintonites’ bitterness towards the Obama camp. I really wish someone would explain to me exactly what these people are supposed to be so bitter about.

*** Update, 6:49 am ***

Here’s a positive sign, from the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll:

Obama is also ahead among those who said they voted for Clinton in the Democratic primaries (61-19).

Could this bitterness I was addressing just be a lunatic fringe thing? Other than Kentucky voters messing with exit pollsters, that is.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) said she was willing to do “whatever it takes” to elect a Democrat in the fall in response to a question from Rep. Nydia Velasquez about the vice presidency during a recently completed conference call with the New York congressional delegation.

But “Hillary say” and “Hillary do” are two very different things. And so what she put on late on Tuesday night, long after it was clear that Obama had clinched the nomination, was a very different exhibition from what she had promised. Rather than give into the temptation of gracefully conceding, and beginning the long process of healing that is clearly necessary in order to elect a Democrat in the fall, she indulged in another strong dose of the me-first rabble-rousing divisiveness that has come to be the hallmark of her campaigning style of late.

So much so that one of her staunchest supporters called her out on it:

Prominent Hillary Clinton backer Charles Rangel thinks the New York senator could have been “far more generous” during her speech Tuesday night after it was clear Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination.

Rangel, the senior member of the New York congressional delegation and an early supporter of Clinton’s presidential campaign, said in an interview Wednesday Clinton should have been more clear about what her future plans are.

“I would agree that after the math was in before her speech, that she could have been far more generous in terms of being more specific and saying that she wants a Democratic victory,” Rangel said in an interview on MSNBC.

“I don’t see what they’re talking about in prolonging this,” Rangel added. “There’s nothing to prolong if you’re not going to take the fight to the convention floor…I don’t know why she could not have been more open in terms of doing up front what she intends to do later.”

Rangel also said the entire New York congressional delegation is awaiting guidance from Clinton on what to do, and could be put “on the spot” if the New York senator does not explain herself soon.

“We could be on the spot if we don’t get some answers about what does it mean when you say that you are not endorsing — or what does it mean when you say that you haven’t — you’re not out of the race. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s inconsistent with wanting a Democratic victory and not endorsing the Democratic candidate.“

Yesterday Rangel seemed to be even more frustrated with Clinton’s narcissistic self-absorption:

“We pledged to support her to the end,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate, said in an interview. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”

Instead — in another of those bizarre statements that would make an excellent Cliff’s Notes ad — she asked for more time:

I deserve some time to get this right.

A truly unfortunate time for Hillary to be invoking the language of entitlement. What’s so difficult about offering a graceful concession speech? And hasn’t she had weeks if not months to plan for this moment already? Weeks or months in which it has been perfectly clear to innocent bystanders that this was not just a very real possibility, but the likely outcome. And even if the basis of her campaign for weeks now has been the determined denial of this looming reality, shouldn’t she still have been planning for this moment, even if she chose to label it in her mind as a remote contingency?

So she’s standing there with her fingers jammed into her ears, her eyes screwed tightly shut, repeating to herself over and over again: “I can’t hear you. And even if I can, I can’t see you. So how do I know you’re a fat lady?”

Trees are crashing to the ground all over the forest with bone-rattling thuds, and Hillary Clinton is still denying that there’s a forest at all.

The funny part is how hard-core Clintonites are cheering and applauding her denial of reality every step of the way.

The sad part is that nobody is surprised. Not at Hillary’s pathetic play-acting. Not at the behavior of the Cult of Clintonites.

It was foretold these seven days ago that 1115 would turn into a poetry-and-cooking-and-snorkeling-and- skiing blog.

Today we begin that transition, by bringing you one of my favorite recipes. This one is for balancing the budget, and is evidently a great favorite of the McCain family.

• Take one budget deficit, of $400 billion per year, give or take
• Make Bush’s tax cuts permanent
• Cut taxes by another $300 billion per year on top of that
• (To those who may have nodded off: at this point there’s a $700 billion gap to be bridged)
• Claim to cut earmark spending by $100 billion per year
• Beat two eggs, apply on your face, and admit that earmark spending will be cut by $18 billion tops
• Wave your hands, and claim that there will be other unspecified spending cuts (to unspecified programs, by unspecified amounts)
• Step back from the kitchen sink, wait for the chorus of trumpets, wave your hands again, and go “Voila! The budget is balanced!”
• Refer all questions to Doug Holtz-Eakin, who will defer all questions to an unspecified future date

It’s that easy to balance the budget. McCain can do it for sure. I have no doubt that Hillary can do it too. Obama may not quite be man enough, though.

(2)
Next week, we hope to bring you McCain’s recipe for cutting government spending by “a $1 trillion or so”. This one is not a family favorite. In fact, it is widely rumored that McCain has yet to come up with the recipe, even though he announced the dish on April 20:

So why would you not think that if we stopped that increase in the size of government, in the form of a $1 trillion or so, that we can’t balance the budget?

Total discretionary federal spending is $1.2 trillion. McCain will put on a large white apron, and take an industrial strength chainsaw to the federal budget. That is to say, to the federal government. Tickets will be sold to the public, all receipts going to reduce the deficit. Be patriotic; buy front row tickets.

By ABC News‘ calculation, Obama only needs 47.5 more delegates to reach what he considers to be the magic number of 2,118 delegates to wrap up the nomination.

It’s just what he considers to be the magic number. And you can’t be going by what candidates choose to believe, can you? If that number of 2,118 had any real validity, any responsible journalist would have told us so. So it certainly couldn’t be the official target as per today’s edition of the Democratic Party rules.

And not only is that target of 2,118 totally suspect, but Hillary Clinton is still ahead by every metric that matters.*

She is ahead in terms of the popular vote — if you count the popular vote exactly as she tells you to — and everyone knows that the popular vote is much more important than the number of delegates, or the number of electoral votes, or anything like that.

We are also about to learn in the next few days — the Clinton campaign is going to wait till late in the evening on June 3 to break this bombshell — that even if Obama has more delegates, if you take all the delegates and lay them end to end, Clinton’s candidates will stretch 265 feet longer than Obama’s. So no one can any longer say that Hillary is not winning, not by a long stretch. But more importantly, since the average height of delegates is 5′ 9.6″, Hillary is incontrovertibly ahead by 45.7 delegates.

Not only that, but delegates pledged to Clinton have so many more vowels in their first and last names than delegates pledged to Obama that it’s not even close. Which is why Hillary will claim a landslide victory tomorrow evening, and call on Obama to gracefully concede the nomination, and start working to heal the deep rifts he has caused in the party.

* Definition of metrics that matter: those by which Clinton leads, or can be said to be leading, or can be made to lead by squinting just so.