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For about five years in the 1990s, the cigar industry luxuriated in a wild sales boom when celebrities and trendy 20-somethings decided that puffing imported, hand-rolled stogies was The Next Big Thing. The bubble burst when the supply of quality tobacco couldn't keep up with demand. The market became flooded with inferior but pricey cigars hastily rolled with lower grade tobacco, as many of the poseurs and neophytes moved on to something else. In the years since, the industry has enjoyed a quiet, steady climb. The bad product is mostly gone, the market settled and refined tobacco growing methods make...

Do you think Klintoon got this gig and thanked God?!? Here's a link to the event. http://girlsincomaha.org/news-detail.asp?ID=22

Each of you has undoubtedly seen the clips of Bill Clinton bushwhacking Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview last Sunday. Claiming that his interlocutor was doing “the bidding of the right wing,” Clinton lectured Wallace with the same finger-wagging intensity he unleashed on the American people back in 1998. Clinton’s now-famous Lewinsky lie makes for an instructive comparison because it reminds us that this man, this former U.S. president, is a peerless prevaricator. “Clinton’s an unusually good liar,” said former Democrat Senator and Medal of Honor recipient Bob Kerrey. “Unusually good.” Indeed. Even the New York Times once lamented...

Talk about deja vu all over again. There was something awfully familiar about Bill Clinton's hissy fit on Fox News last Sunday. What was it, exactly? The finger-pointing? The raised voice? The way he kept interrupting his interviewer? The mounting furor that threatened to reach red-in-the-face levels despite the pancake makeup? The attribution of base motives to a reporter who'd dared question him about something he'd done? Or, in this case, what he hadn't done to prevent a terrorist attack on this country. It was an operatic performance. All the Sturm und Drang was there, if not the art. But...

All you need is ubuntu You and me, me and you, lots and lots, for us to do By Sean Coughlan BBC News Magazine Bill Clinton told the Labour conference to get into ubuntu. Eh? Ubuntu. That was what Bill Clinton told the Labour party conference it needed to remember this week. "Society is important because of Ubuntu." But what is it? Left-leaning sudoku? U2's latest album? Fish-friendly sushi? No, it's a word describing an African worldview, which translates as "I am because you are," and which means that individuals need other people to be fulfilled. The former president, husky-voiced...

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Bill Clinton on Wednesday over the former president's counterterrorism efforts, saying recent criticism on preventing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is wrong. Political bickering over which president _ Clinton or George W. Bush _ missed more opportunities to prevent the attacks has been escalating since Clinton gave a combative interview on "Fox News Sunday" in which he defended his efforts to kill Osama bin Laden. "The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves...

It's just like old times. Bill Clinton delivers an impassioned speech, and within 24 hours the Web is bristling with documentation, establishing that nearly every sentence was a lie. The glassy-eyed Clinton cultists are insisting their idol's on-air breakdown during a "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace was a calculated performance, which is a bit like describing Hurricane Katrina as a "planned demolition." Like an Osama tape, they claim he was sending a signal to Democrats to show them how to treat Republicans. Listen up, Democrats: Let's energize the undecideds by throwing a hissy fit on national television! The...

Fox News chief Roger Ailes says former President Clinton's response to Chris Wallace's question about going after Osama bin Laden represents "an assault on all journalists." Ailes said Clinton had a "wild overreaction" in the interview, broadcast on "Fox News Sunday." Hundreds of thousands of people subsequently watched clips over the Internet, with Fox foes rallying behind Clinton. "If you can't sit there and answer a question from a professional, mild-mannered, respectful reporter like Chris Wallace, then the hatred for journalists is showing," Ailes said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. "All journalists need to raise their...

Fool Me Once Bill Clinton – But Don’t Wag Your Finger at Me Again Politics Joan Swirsky September 26, 2006 One of the 20th Century’s most enduring images was of Bill Clinton standing at a White House podium and responding to a reporter’s question about his affair with Monica Lewinsky with a crimson face, his neck veins on the verge of exploding, and his finger wagging furiously like an old schoolmarm’s, as he told the entire Congress, nation and world: “I did not have sex with that woman!” For nearly a year, and through depositions under oath, Clinton maintained...

Sen. Hillary Clinton has spoken up in support of her husband Bill’s defense of his anti-terror efforts, saying she’s tired of Democrats being pushed around on national security issues. "I just think that my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take this,” she said on Monday in remarks reported by Newsday. In a heated discussion with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday,” Bill Clinton said that as president, he did more than many of his conservative critics to pursue al-Qaida, and alleged that President Bush didn’t try to stop terrorism in the eight...

President Bush dismissed as "finger-pointing" criticism from his predecessor Bill Clinton of his counter-terrorism efforts in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. Clinton, angrily defending his own administration's attempts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, had accused the Bush administration of doing far less to stop the al Qaeda leader before the 2001 hijack plane attacks. Bush, who is trying to stave off a Democratic takeover of Congress in November, seemed to bristle when asked about Clinton, only to sidestep his assertions. "We'll let history judge all the different finger-pointing and all that business. I don't...

Former US President Bill Clinton has hit out at the media's treatment of his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a BBC television interview. Some snippets: Speaking on a Panorama programme to be broadcast on Tuesday night, Mr Clinton accused the press of helping the far- right and liking "to hurt people". He said the media cared more about the affair than the conflict in Bosnia. Mr Clinton reacted after presenter David Dimbleby asked him why he had an affair with Ms Lewinsky when he knew he was under investigation by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr for other matters. Wagging his finger...

I am at a loss for words

Wallace-Clinton Combat Nets Fox News Big Ratings POSTED: 5:48 pm EDT September 25, 2006 UPDATED: 5:51 pm EDT September 25, 2006 NEW YORK -- Political combat pays: "Fox News Sunday" drew its best ratings in nearly three years for this weekend's electric confrontation between former President Clinton and newsman Chris Wallace. Both men's words were being dissected in the aftermath on Monday, with a Clinton spokesman saying Fox and Wallace had attacked Clinton with "an accusation," not a question. "I think the interview speaks for itself," Wallace said. "They can spin all the conspiracy theories they want." The Sunday talk...

“I worked hard to try and kill him,” former president Bill Clinton told Fox News Sunday. “I tried. I tried and failed.” ”Him” is Osama bin Laden. And in his interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the former president based nearly his entire defense on one source: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, the book by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. “All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book,” Clinton said at one point in the interview. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s...

You did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me. . . . You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you'd spend half the time talking about . . . what we did out there to raise $7 billion-plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don't care.

Bloomberg cannot be posted to FR, so here is a link to the story:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBZvrM76tIlk&refer=worldwide_news

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>