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APRIL 2008
CLINTON BITES HAND THAT HELPED HUSBAND AVOID BEING
TOSSED OUT
AMERICA BLOG - The Huffington Post has
uncovered a tape of Hillary telling some fundraisers at a private
meeting that she hates the netroots and Democratic activists,
especially MoveOn. Ironically, it was also the Huffington Post
that revealed Obama's private meeting with fundraisers that led
to the entire "bitter" debacle.
(Funny, Hillary spoke to MoveOn just last
year, and praised their work (listen to the audio, it's good).
She "personally welcomes" MoveOn's work and says "I
am grateful for your work." And let's not forget why and
how MoveOn started. They wanted [to stop] Congress from impeaching
Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinksy. This is yet another example
of the Clinton's throwing a key ally, a key defender, under the
bus when it's expedient.)
Here is what Hillary had to say:
"Moveon.org endorsed [Obama] -- which
is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,"
Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less
successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base
of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into
Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you
know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven
by their view of our positions, and It's primarily national security
and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them.
They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses
and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show
up to support me.". . .
MoveOn's Executive Director Eli Pariser
just gave the following statement to the Huffington Post:
"Senator Clinton has her facts wrong
again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set
the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim.
MARCH 2008
CLINTON JOINS VAST RIGHTWING CONSPIRACY
SEVENTH GRADERS JOIN CLINTON
IN DUCKING SNIPER FIRE ON THE RUNWAY
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WHEN HILLARY CLINTON
WENT TO BOSNIA
FEBRUARY 2008
REALITY
CHECK: CLINTON ON FOREIGN POLICY
STEPHEN ZUNES, FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS
- Senator Hillary Clinton has opposed restrictions on U.S. arms
transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross
and systematic human rights abuses. Indeed, she has supported
unconditional U.S. arms transfers and police training to such
repressive and autocratic governments as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi
Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon,
Kazakhstan, and Chad, just to name a few. She has also refused
to join many of her Democratic colleagues in signing a letter
endorsing a treaty that would limit arms transfers to countries
that engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human
rights violations.
Not only is she willing to support military
assistance to repressive regimes, she has little concern about
controlling weapons that primarily target innocent civilians.
Senator Clinton has refused to support the international treaty
to ban land mines, which are responsible for killing and maiming
thousands of civilians worldwide, a disproportionate percentage
of whom have been children.. . .
Senator Clinton also has a record of dismissing
reports by human rights monitors that highlight large-scale attacks
against civilians by allied governments. For example, in the
face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights organizations
over Israel's systematic assaults against civilian targets in
its April 2002 offensive in the West Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored
a resolution defending the Israeli actions that claimed that
they were "necessary steps to provide security to its people
by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian
areas." She opposed UN efforts to investigate alleged war
crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticized President
Bush for calling on Israel to pull back from its violent re-conquest
of Palestinian cities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
Similarly, when Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights groups issued
detailed reports regarding Israeli war crimes during that country's
assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Senator Clinton insisted
they were wrong and that Israel's attacks were legal. . . .
Senator Clinton has voted to send tens
of billions of dollars unconditionally to Baghdad to prop up
that regime, apparently unconcerned about the well-documented
reports of death squads being run from the Interior Ministry
that have killed many thousands of unarmed Sunni men. . .
In Senator Clinton's world view, if a country
is considered an important
Senator Clinton has also been one the Senate's
most outspoken critics of the United Nations, even appearing
outside the UN headquarters in New York twice during the past
four years at right-wing gatherings to denounce the world body.
She has falsely accused the UN of not taking a stand against
terrorism, even though terrorism has become - largely at the
insistence of the United States - a major UN focus in recent
years. .
WHY CLINTON DOESN'T MENTION HER EXPERIENCE ON THE
NIXON IMPEACHMENT COMMITTEE
RON ROSENBAUM, HISTORY NEWS NETWORK - I
covered the impeachment hearings to the bitter end when Nixon
resigned in August 1974. . . I have no memory of seeing young
Hillary Rodham in the hearing room, but I remember thinking at
the time of the Impeachment Committee staff as heroic seekers
of truth.
But Hillary's boss on the staff, Jerome
Zeifman, asserts now that one reason she's downplayed her Impeachment
Committee service is that she has something to hide.
He accuses her of "unethical"
conduct, says that "Hillary . . . lied to me" and that
she was a pawn in a Kennedy-orchestrated conspiracy to manipulate
the impeachment hearings. And he claims he has a witness to corroborate
this characterization: "After President Nixon's resignation,"
Zeifman writes, "a young lawyer, who shared an office with
Hillary, confided in me that he was dismayed by her erroneous
legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel
- as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon. In my diary
of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:
'John Labovitz apologized to me for the
fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me' [to conceal
rules changes and dilatory tactics]. Labovitz said, "That
came from Yale." I said, "You mean Burke Marshall [Sen.
Ted Kennedy's chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly
consulted in violation of House rules]. Labovitz said, "Yes."
His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation
but because of his contrition.' "
The "dilatory tactics" Zeifman
alleges were part of what he portrays as a Kennedy clan strategy
to stretch out the impeachment hearings (which ended in August
'74, when the so-called "smoking gun" tape - which
revealed Nixon attempting to use the CIA to cover up a White
House connection to the break-in—caused Nixon to lose even
hard-core GOP loyalist support and resign). Zeifman claims the
Kennedy strategy was to keep Richard Nixon in office so a liberal
(perhaps a Kennedy) could run in 1976 against a damaged president
Nixon rather than the relatively unblemished GOP Vice President
Gerald Ford.
Zeifman claims that to implement this strategy,
Hillary attempted to revise the procedural rules for the Impeachment
Committee, potentially opening up divisive delays. Zeifman also
asserts that a "second objective of the strategy of delay
was to avoid a Senate impeachment trial, in which as a defense
Nixon might assert that Kennedy had authorized far worse abuses
of power than Nixon's effort to 'cover up' the Watergate burglary
(which Nixon had not authorized or known about in advance). In
short, the crimes of Kennedy included the use of the Mafia to
attempt to assassinate Castro, as well as the successful assassinations
of Diem in Vietnam and Lumumba in the Congo."...
CLINTON CAMPAIGN LIES ABOUT PAST POSITION ON NAFTA
DAVID SIROTA - In response to Barack Obama's
attack on NAFTA, the Hillary Clinton campaign has gone into meltdown
mode. Here's Dow Jones' Marketwatch:
"Clinton's campaign fired back at
Obama, charging the Illinois senator with misrepresenting Clinton's
position on trade...'Recently falsely claimed that Hillary said
that NAFTA was a 'boon' to the economy. Now, Obama is resting
his argument on a single paraphrase from an article written twelve
years ago,' Clinton's campaign said in an emailed statement."
The Huffington Post has followed along
with a laugh-out-loud piece in which the chief architects of
NAFTA (many who are now wealthy corporate lawyers and lobbyists)
are now saying, no, no, Hillary Clinton was really opposed to
it. These are the same people, of course, who are looking for
jobs in the Hillary Clinton White House. . .
Hillary Clinton has made statements unequivocally
trumpeting NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The
Buffalo News reports that back in 1998, Clinton attended the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and thanked praised
corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort
in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA."
On November 1, 1996, United Press International
reported that on a trip to Brownsville, Texas, Clinton "touted
the president's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement,
saying it would reap widespread benefits in the region."
The Associated Press followed up the next
day noting that Hillary Clinton touted the fact that "the
president would continue to support economic growth in South
Texas through initiatives such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement."
In her memoir, Clinton wrote, "Senator
Dole was genuinely interested in health care reform but wanted
to run for President in 1996. He couldn't hand incumbent Bill
Clinton any more legislative victories, particularly after Bill's
successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA."
Yes, we are all expected to just forget
that, so that Hillary Clinton's campaign can manufacture supposed
"outrage" that anyone would say she supported NAFTA
- all at a time her chief strategist, Mark Penn, simultaneously
heads a firm that is right now pushing to expand NAFTA into South
America.
CLINTON THINKS 30% INTEREST RATES ARE
OKAY
HILLARY CLINTON has taken the bold step
of proposing a cap on credit care interest rates. The cap: 30%.
Beginning in the 1980s - as part of the
Reagan counter-revolution - interest rate controls began disappearing
in this country. Rates that generally were below ten percent
would rise as much as three times.
The media did not report this story, the
politicians did not deal with it, and the banks got away with
murder. This is not your average political or economic change;
it altered views of fair interest rates going back to the earliest
times. Essentially usury became legal.
A logical approach would be to return to
pre-Reagan interest rate rules. The banks would be furious, but
the rest of America would be better off. But while the exact
maximum interest rate is debatable; what is not debatable is
that today's rates are indefensible.
CANDIDATE REALITY CHECK: CLINTON'S 35
YEARS OF CHANGE
MATT STEARNS, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS - To
hear Hillary Clinton talk, she's spent her entire career putting
her Yale Law School degree to work for the common good. She routinely
tells voters that she's "been working to bring positive
change to people's lives for 35 years." She told a voter
in New Hampshire: "I've spent so much of my life in the
nonprofit sector." Speaking in South Carolina, Bill Clinton
said his wife "could have taken a job with a firm ... Instead
she went to work with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's
Defense Fund." The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless
do-gooder. The whole story is more complicated - and less flattering.
Clinton worked at the Children's Defense
Fund for less than a year, and that's the only full-time job
in the nonprofit sector she's ever had. She also worked briefly
as a law professor.
Clinton spent the bulk of her career -
15 of those 35 years - at one of Arkansas' most prestigious corporate
law firms, where she represented big companies and served on
corporate boards. Neither she nor her surrogates, however, ever
mention that on the campaign trail. Her campaign Web site biography
devotes six paragraphs to her pro bono legal work for the poor
but sums up the bulk of her experience in one sentence: "She
also continued her legal career as a partner in a law firm.".
. .
Clinton did a great deal of public service
work during her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. She
served on the board of the Legal Services Corp. during the Carter
administration and for a time was its chair. She helped found
a child advocacy system in Arkansas and took on several tasks
as the state's first lady, such as revisions of the state's education
system and rural health care delivery. She also served on the
board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund, and on the
board of a children's hospital. . .
She also served on corporate boards, including
that of retail giant Wal-Mart from 1986-1992, frozen yogurt purveyor
TCBY from 1985-1992 and cement manufacturer LaFarge from 1990-1992.
She earned tens of thousands of dollars in fees from each.
Clinton's firm represented Wal-Mart and
TCBY while she sat on their boards, a cozy practice that corporate
governance experts frown upon because of the potential for conflicts
of interest.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/26377.html
REALITY CHECK: ENVIRONMENT
[From the Daily Green]
JOHN MCCAIN - Global Warming: Has supported
cutting carbon dioxide emissions 30% below present levels by
2050 with a cap-and-trade regulation. Alternative Energy: Supports
a variety of energy technologies, including nuclear energy, but
has not spelled out a specific plan for research, development
and deployment of new energy technologies. Also Notable: McCain
co-authored the first Senate legislation designed to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions, in 2003.
BARACK OBAMA - Global Warming: Cut carbon
dioxide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 with a cap-and-trade
regulation. Alternative Energy: Spend $150 billion over 10 years
on renewable, alternative and clean energy research and development.
Also Notable: Obama would create an independent, private clean
technologies deployment venture capital fund to partner with
existing investment funds and national laboratories to invest
in new energy technologies.
HILLARY CLINTON Global Warming: Cut carbon
dioxide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 with a cap-and-trade
regulation. Alternative Energy: Start a $50 Billion Strategic
Energy Fund to pay for research, development and deployment of
renewable, alternative and clean energy technologies Also Notable:
Clinton would develop a "Connie Mae" program to help
low- and middle-income families make investments in home energy
efficiency
DALLAS NEWS - Barack
Obama says nuclear power should be explored as an energy option.
Hillary Rodham Clinton says she's "agnostic" on whether
more nuclear plants should be built. . . "They've gone from
'no' to 'yes, but,' and some even describe themselves as agnostics,
and that's a big improvement," said Derrick Freeman, senior
director of legislative programs for the Nuclear Energy Institute,
which supports the nuclear industry. . .
John Edwards opposes nuclear power. He
has said there's no safe way to dispose of the waste, and reactors
take a long time - and a lot of money - to build.
Mr. Obama is in the opposite camp. "We
should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix,"
he said during last summer's CNN-YouTube debate. Nuclear plants
can cut greenhouse gas emissions, he says.
Mrs. Clinton articulates both views. She
worries about climate change, as well as nuclear waste spills.
But American technology can address those worries, she said during
the debate last summer. She doesn't state explicitly whether
she supports building new plants
WAL-MART BOARD MEMBER CLINTON
WAS SILENT
AS FIRM FOUGHT OFF UNIONS
"She's more conservative
than he is"
ANN COULTER SAYS SHE'LL SUPPORT CLINTON
OVER MCCAIN
HR CLINTON TOLD UNTRUTH
ABOUT 1998 BOMBING
NORMAN SOLOMON, INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY
- If facts matter, then it should matter that Hillary Clinton
chose to rely on such a basic falsehood during the debate when
she flatly stated: 'We bombed them for days in 1998 because Saddam
Hussein threw out inspectors.' In fact, just prior to the Clinton
administration's several days of bombing Iraq in December 1998,
the U.N.'s UNSCOM weapons inspectors left Iraq when UNSCOM head
Richard Butler withdrew them -- because the Clinton administration
made it clear that the U.S. government was about to start bombing."
That false statement by Hillary Clinton
during the debate Thursday evening came as she was trying to
verbally navigate what were her most difficult moments of the
night: about her vote for the October 2002 congressional resolution
that authorized an invasion of Iraq. At that point in the debate,
she was arguing that she had made what she called a 'reasoned
judgment' which assumed that Saddam Hussein had a record of blocking
inspectors so they couldn't find his weapons of mass destruction.
In the process, her extreme distortion of history -- asserting
that the four-year absence of U.N. inspectors from Iraq was because
Saddam 'threw out inspectors' in December 1998 -- goes to the
core of her candor about the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq
and her rationale for voting to authorize it.
Any journalists interested in fact-checking
Senator Clinton's claim that 'We bombed them for days in 1998
because Saddam Hussein threw out inspectors' would be well-advised
to stick to relying on the original reportage of what occurred
in December 1998. Since then, a self-referential myth has developed
in retrospective news coverage of those events, with journalists
and politicians alike frequently recycling the false assertion
that the four-year absence of U.N. inspectors from Iraq began
when Saddam kicked them out of the country." More Information
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1641
JANUARY 2008
HR CLINTON: LEAVE NO CHILDREN'S
DEFENSE FUND REFERENCE BEHIND
SADDAM INITIALLY DIDN'T THINK
U.S. WOULD INVADE
EDWARDS' APPROACH TO SINGLE-PAYER:
LET THE CITIZENS CHOOSE IT
LOOK WHO ALSO CHILLED WITH REZKO
INTERESTING EXCERPT FROM SALLY
BEDELL SMIITH'S BOOK ON HR CLINTON
SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT DRUGS?
Since the Clinton campaign has twice
chosen to raise Barack Obama's past drug use as an issue, it
is only fair to check out the drug ties of the Clinton family.
DECEMBER 2007
CLINTON GETS BIGGEST ANTI VOTE
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION'S RECORD
OF WHAT'S HAPPENED TO THE POPULARITY OF THE NAME HILLARY
OCTOBER 2007
TOP AIDE TO HR CLINTON HEADS FIRM THAT
REPRESENTED BLACKWATER, INCLUDING HELPING FOUNDER DEAL WITH HOSTILE
CONGRESS
AP - Democrat John Edwards said the top strategist for presidential
rival Hillary Rodham Clinton has ties to the controversial Blackwater
security firm, and warned against installing "a group of
corporate Democrats" to replace the Bush White House. Edwards
suggested similarities between Clinton, the Democratic front-runner,
and the Republican president.
"George Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism because
Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans
and to President Bush,'' he said in an interview with The Associated
Press. "I also saw this morning that Senator Clinton's primary
adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove, his firm is representing
Blackwater.". . .
Penn, Clinton's pollster and senior strategist, is the worldwide
president of Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm. A subsidiary,
BKSH, helped prepare Blackwater founder Erik Prince for a contentious
congressional hearing this week, but Burson-Marsteller says the
relationship has ended.
Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said Penn had done no work
on the Blackwater account.
The firm represents corporate clients accused of union-busting
activity, as well as tobacco giant Philip Morris. While Penn
says he does not personally work on any accounts that could be
construed as anti-labor, labor leaders including Teamsters president
James Hoffa have publicly expressed concern about his involvement
with the campaign.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6976677,00.html
WHO MADE HILLARY CLINTON QUEEN?
GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT IN WASHINGTON POST - In no other advanced
democracy today could someone with Clinton's resume even be considered
a candidate for national leadership. It's true that wives do
sometimes inherit political reins from their husbands, but usually
in recovering dictatorships in Latin America such as Argentina.
. . or Third World countries such as Sri Lanka or the Philippines
-- and in those cases often when the husbands have been assassinated.
. .
In one democracy after another, women have been enfranchised,
entered politics and risen to the top. The United States lags
far behind in every way. A record number of women now serve in
Congress, which only makes the figures -- 71 of 435 House members
and 16 of 100 senators -- all the more unimpressive. Compare
those statistics with Norway's, where 37 percent of lawmakers
are women. In Sweden, it's 45 percent.
More to the point, women who make political careers in other
democracies do it their way, which usually means the hard way.
. .
What a contrast Hillary Clinton presents. Everyone recognizes
the nepotism or favoritism she has enjoyed: New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd has written that without her marriage, Clinton might
be a candidate for president of Vassar, but not of the United
States. And yet the truly astonishing nature of her career still
doesn't seem to have impinged on Americans. . .
No doubt she has been a diligent senator, even if the cutting
words of the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier about "the most
plodding and expedient politician in America" ring painfully
true, and no doubt her main Democratic rivals have only quite
modest experience themselves: Obama's stint in the Illinois state
legislature before entering the U.S. Senate in 2005, John Edwards's
one term in the Senate. But both men are unquestionably self-made,
and no one can say that they are where they are because of any
kin or spouse. . .
ANOTHER CLINTON
BACKER INDICTED
KII-TV, TX - It's the state of Texas
versus Mauricio Celis. The Nueces County Grand Jury returned
felony indictments today against the 36 year old. There are four
indictments: 1. falsely holding oneself as a lawyer 2. impersonating
a public servant 3. state jail felony theft 4. aggravated perjury.
. .
According to the indictment, Celis
used a business card, letterhead, and was even described as an
attorney-at-law on a business web page. The seven counts of falsely
holding himself out as a lawyer is a third degree felony.
On the one count of impersonating
a public servant, Celis is accused of displaying a badge and
requesting a Corpus Christi Police officer to allow Celis to
take with him a person being questioned. . .
If convicted, and if the counts
are tried separately, celis could face a max of 32 years in prison
plus an abundance of fines.
http://www.kiiitv.com/news/local/11492716.html
AP, NOV 6
- There was a time when
it paid to be friends with Mauricio Celis, who rustled up clients
for Texas' swaggering trial lawyers and contributed generously
to Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton. But now,
Celis' friends are running for cover.
The luxury-loving Corpus Christi
businessman is under investigation on suspicion of impersonating
a lawyer and a sheriff's deputy.
Celis, 36, has a controlling interest
in the CGT Law Group of Corpus Christi, a firm that not only
has lawyers on staff but provides a variety of auxiliary services:
Need a plane to get to a city to sign documents in your lawsuit?
Celis will get you one. Need a translator? No problem. Celis
is bilingual.
Lawyers who have worked with Celis
say he is also well known for flying to disasters around the
world and soliciting clients for either CGT lawyers or other
plaintiffs' attorneys. . .
Celis' enemies have dismissed him
as just a "runner," or worse, an ambulance-chaser,
for the state's powerful and well-connected trial lawyers, who
are considered the financial foundation of the Democratic Party
in Texas, where there are no limits on individual contributions
to state races.
The top tier of the Texas plaintiffs'
bar has made hundreds of millions of dollars suing oil companies,
breast-implant manufacturers and asbestos manufacturers. Five
Texas lawyers shared a $3.3 billion fee for negotiating the state's
settlement with the tobacco industry.
Hillary Clinton received the federal
limit of $2,300 in donations from Celis.
"I would think Mrs. Clinton
would want to spend a little bit of her vast war chest doing
a little due diligence on where all this money is coming from,"
said Andrew Wheat, research director for Texans for Public Justice.
A spokesman for Clinton's campaign
did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Celis brought in $100,000 for the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at a fundraiser earlier
this year, pitching in $28,500 of his own money. In the 2006
campaign cycle, Celis gave $119,500 to state candidates or political
action committees, making himself No. 116 in a Texans for Public
Justice ranking of individual donors in Texas.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
A VICTIM OF SEXISM AND A FRONT-RUNNING LIAR
SAM SMITH - America's major media
apparently hasn't noticed that when you are the leading candidate
for president of the United States, there's really only one more
glass ceiling to break and even a majority of Democrats, let
alone the merely religious, probably wouldn't care for Hillary
Clinton to assume the job up there.
This hasn't, however, prevented
the media from falling in a big way for HRC's poor little girl
up against all the bad boys scam. Part of this is because the
media is busy paving the way for Hillary Clinton just as it did
for her husband - two of the more brazen departures from objective
journalism - and partly it's because the media is a sucker for
any distraction that frees it from attention to issues that actually
might actually make a difference.
This is not the first time that
HR Clinton has used the gender bamboozle. During the 1992 campaign,
Hillary Clinton defended her role in the Madison Guarantee S&L
scandal by saying, "I suppose I could have stayed home and
baked cookies and had teas. But what I decided to do was pursue
my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public
life."
Forgotten, however, is what inspired
this homily: accusations that Ms. Clinton had represented Whitewater
business partner Jim McDougal's S&L before her husband's
government. Here's what the New York Times reported on March
17, 1992: "Hillary Clinton said today that she did not earn
'a penny' from state business conducted by her Little Rock law
firm and that she never intervened with state regulators on behalf
of a failed Arkansas savings and loan association. . . "
Records would show that she did,
in fact, represent Madison before the state securities department.
After the revelation, she says, "For goodness sakes, you
can't be a lawyer if you don't represent banks."
As a 1996 Chicago Tribune editorial
pointed out: "The legal issues will sort themselves out
in time. But one thing has become all too clear. Bill and Hillary
Clinton and their aides have made a concerted effort to deceive
official investigators and the American public with half truths
and outright lies . . . It's not clear what the Clintons want
to conceal, but it's clear that they have made extraordinary
efforts to do so."
Important to remember in all this
- as with her cookie baking con - is what was really going on
during the debate in question. Hillary Clinton, the front runner,
was being criticized for her position - or grossly conflicting
positions - on critical issues. To expect deferential treatment
in such a situation because one is a woman is, one might fairly
say, pretty sexist. But for Hillary Clinton, gender is the last
refuge of a scoundrel.
Said Eleanor Smeal, longtime Clinton
shill (including excusing Bill Clinton's serial abuse of women),
"It was just so visceral - that panel was all male. It didn't
matter almost what was being said."
It didn't matter what was being
said; what was wrong in Smeal's mind was that they were treating
Hillary Clinton the way any bunch of also-rans would treat the
front runner. . . even though she was a woman and entitled to
something better.
Clinton's campaign strategist Patti
Solis Doyle continued the ploy in a fundraising letter: "On
that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one. Candidates
who had pledged the politics of hope practiced the politics of
pile-on instead. Her opponents tried a whole host of attacks
on Hillary. She is one strong woman."
And Geraldine Ferraro concocted
this fraudulent figment: "John Edwards, specifically, as
well as the press, would never attack Barack Obama for two hours
they way they attacked her. It's O.K. in this country to be sexist.
"It's certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack
Obama had been attacked for two hours - well, I don't think Barack
Obama would have been attacked for two hours." She added,
"It's discrimination against her as a candidate because
she is a woman."
But then, as we have noted before,
adapting a line from Dr Johnson, the Clintons are not only corrupt,
they are the cause of corruption in others.
For those few hardy souls who would
like relief from Hillary Clinton's personal affirmative action
program in order to return to trivial matters such as Iran and
Iraq, we refer you to a story in the NY Sun that as much as any
we've seen this campaign reveals who HRC really is - not a victim
of sexism, but a front running major league liar:
"Senator Clinton is describing
her opposition to the war in Iraq as an extension of Eugene McCarthy's
position in the 1960s movement against the war in Vietnam. .
. She drew a parallel between her candidacy and that of Senator
McCarthy of Minnesota."
When you're dealing with that big
a fabricator with as much media and money backing, there's only
one thing to do: keep piling on.
CLINTON PLANNED TO
USE GENDER CARD ALL ALONG
RON FOURNIER, AP - Clinton's advisers,
speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized
to discuss internal matters, said there is a clear and long-planned
strategy to fend off attacks by accusing her male rivals of gathering
against her. The idea is to change the subject while making Clinton
a sympathetic figure, especially among female voters who often
feel outnumbered and bullied on the job. As one adviser put it,
Clinton is not the first presidential candidate to play the "woe-is-me
card" but she's the first major female presidential candidate
to do it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/ap_po/on_deadline_clinton_1
THE REALLY
BIG DEBATE:
HIILLARY CLINTON VS. HILLARY CLINTON
SEPTEMBER 2007
CLINTON: HAWK IN DOVE'S CLOTHING
DAVID SWANSON, AFTER DOWNING STREET - This
past Sunday, crime thriller author John Grisham hosted a fundraiser
for Hillary Clinton in my town. I talked with a lot of the people
attending. Some said they supported Clinton because they wanted
to keep troops in Iraq. But most were there because they opposed
Bush and Cheney's policies on Iraq. Who was confused, and who
was not? Or could they both be right?. . .
Earlier that day, Clinton had appeared
on every single Sunday morning television talk show. She had
announced that she would vote against any more money for the
occupation of Iraq. Surely the peace movement should chalk up
a victory, and anybody backing Clinton because they like the
war is going to have to "change course," right?
But let's look a little more closely. Clinton
said she will vote against funding unless she sees Bush change
direction in Iraq. That's vague enough to allow her to vote for
funding again if it's needed. In fact, there is substantial evidence
that Clinton plans to vote Nay on war funding only if she's sure
the bill will pass. She has never yet talked about ending the
occupation in 2007 or 2008. She only talks about ending it in
2009 as president, as if only presidents can end wars, as if
Congress has no role. Even so, she is always very careful to
talk only of "starting" to end it in 2009. She says
she'll "bring the troops home," but very carefully
avoids ever saying "all the troops."
Ted Koppel reported on NPR several weeks
back that Senator Clinton's military advisor said she plans to
still occupy Iraq at the end of her second term, should she be
elected. She has never disputed this. As far as I know no member
of our intrepid journalistic community has ever asked her about
it. . .
Rahm Emanuel has told the Washington Post
that the Democrats are best off keeping the war around until
November 2008. Numerous congressional staffers have told me that
the Democrats are best off keeping the war and Bush and Cheney
around until November 2008. Several have told me that the major
influence on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discouraging her from
taking up impeachment is Senator Clinton. Others have told me
that the reason the National Organization for Women flipped from
backing impeachment to opposing it was the influence of Clinton
and Pelosi on NOW president Kim Gandy. I've not seen NOW joining
in any anti-war events this year, as in previous years, either.
Even Code Pink has taken a step back from protesting Clinton,
arguing that she now opposes the war - although a local Code
Pink chapter led Sunday's protest.
Let's look at the record. Clinton voted
for the invasion of Iraq and then voted many times to fund the
occupation. She raised money last week by charging war industry
lobbyists $1,000 each to dine with her and the congress members
and congressional committee chairmen who handle their issues.
Even MSNBC's Chris Matthews referred to this as "pimping."
When Clinton attempted to speak to progressives about Iraq at
the 2007 Take Back America conference, she blamed the Iraqis
for our occupation of their country and was completely shocked
when people booed her, yet she still this week referred to the
occupation as a civil war, and to the civil war as the reason
to leave. She has been unable to identify a single item she would
cut from the Pentagon's budget. And her position on Iran indicates
that the reason she's never apologized for her votes on Iraq
is that she hasn't learned anything yet. Clinton refuses to take
any option "off the table" with regard to Iran, including
launching another illegal aggressive war, and including using
nuclear weapons. That would seem to me to be setting the bar
outrageously low and having her still fail to clear it.
And, yes, Clinton has raised money at a
fundraiser hosted by leading war promoter and Fox News owner
Rupert Murdoch - perhaps the single individual who has done the
most damage to our public communications other than Clinton's
husband Bill who gave us the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Murdoch clearly sees Clinton as the Democrat most friendly to
big media's dreams of further consolidation, as the Democrat
most friendly to war, and as a ratings boon because of the hatred
the right has for her.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27099
THE EVOLUTION OF HILLARY CLINTON
[From Slate]
HRC, UNIVISION DEBATE - Question: Senator
Clinton, the negative tone of the immigration debate has left
the country polarized and has created certain racist and discriminatory
attitudes toward Hispanics.
Clinton: Well, I think this is a very serious
problem. And, as I said earlier, there are many in the political,
and, frankly, in the broadcast world today, who take a particular
aim at our Latino population and I think it's very destructive.
INTERVIEW, 2004, WABC NEW YORK - I am,
you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants. Clearly, we have
to make some tough decisions as a country, and one of them ought
to be coming up with a much better entry-and-exit system so that
if we're going to let people in for the work that otherwise would
not be done, let's have a system that keeps track of them. .
. People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come
up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on
the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to
see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work
and construction work and domestic work."
http://www.slate.com/id/2173645/
CLINTON FORESEES HEALTH INSURANCE GREEN CARD REQUIRED
BEFORE EMPLOYMENT
AP - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said
Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health
insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but
she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals
into the health care system. "At this point, we don't have
anything punitive that we have proposed," the presidential
candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're
providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very
attractive to the vast majority of Americans."
She said she could envision a day when
"you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured
as a part of the job interview -like when your kid goes to school
and has to show proof of vaccination," but said such details
would be worked out through negotiations with Congress.
HILLARY CLINTON ACTIVE IN RIGHTWING
RELIGIOUS CULT
KATHRYN JOYCE AND JEFF SHARLET, MOTHER JONES - Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton
has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and
prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group
known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers
such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick
Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. . .
When Clinton first came to Washington in
1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group.
For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian
"cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of
Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative
icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader
in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson,
the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.
Clinton's prayer group was part of the
Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated
cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated
to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them
recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National
Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made
a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator
William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the
elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes.
Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in
God's plan. . .
The Fellowship's ideas are essentially
a blend of Calvinism and Norman Vincent Peale, the 1960s preacher
of positive thinking. It's a cheery faith in the "elect"
chosen by a single voter - God . . .
When Time put together a list of the nation's
25 most powerful evangelicals in 2005, the heading for Coe's
entry was "The Stealth Persuader." . . .
Coe's friends include former Attorney General
John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative
Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted
weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and
diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values
Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups
and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding
Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protege, Brownback,
who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into
a regular study of Jesus' teachings. . .
The Fellowship's God-led men have also
included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death
squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official
disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre
of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton,
says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington,
Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members
of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.
JOSHUA GREEN, THE ATLANTIC, 2006 - Clinton's
proficiency in this innermost sanctum has unnerved some of the
capital's most exalted religious conservatives. "You're
not talking about some tree-hugging, Jesus-is-my-Buddha sort
of stuff," says David Kuo, a former Bush official in the
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who worked with
Clinton to promote joint legislation and who, like Brownback,
has apologized to her for past misdeeds. "These are powerful
evangelicals she's meeting with."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200611/green-hillary
JON STEWART'S TAKE ON THE CLINTON
CACKLE
BUT BILL CLINTON IS BETTER AT
CRYING ON CUE
AT LEFT, CLINTON AT RON
BROWN FUNERAL JUST SPOTTING MEDIA
AT RIGHT, SECONDS LATER, HE STARTS CRYING
CLINTON: NOTHING WRONG WITH LOBBYIST
MONEY
THE HILL - Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said during the 90-minute Presidential
Leadership Forum on Saturday at the YearlyKos Convention that
she would not stop accepting K Street money and defended lobbyists'
participation in the political process.
Former vice presidential nominee and Sen.
John Edwards (D-N.C.) scored the biggest hit of the day when
he challenged his competitors to stop accepting contributions
from lobbyists. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) does not accept donations
from lobbyists, which Edwards acknowledged.
The most heated exchanges - and really
the only time during the debate that the candidates addressed
and challenged each other - came when each candidate was asked
whether they would accept Edwards' challenge.
"In 35 years of public service, nobody
seriously thinks I could be influenced by a lobbyist," Clinton
said, defending her decision to continue to accept contributions.
"Lobbyists represent real interests,
nurses, social workers…somehow the idea that a contribution
is going to influence my record," is not rooted in reality,
Clinton added. . .
Clinton's campaign defended her statement
by noting that lobbyists help Obama and Edwards raise money,
and that lobbyists from Illinois give to Obama.
AUGUST 2007
CLINTON II GETS CURIOUS BIG BUCKS FROM MAIL
CARRIER AND FAMILY
JULY 2007
HIDING HILLARY CLINTON'S THESIS
BILL DEDMAN, MSNBC, MAR 2007 - It was early
1993, in the first days of the Clinton administration, when Hillary
Clinton's friend and former thesis adviser at Wellesley College
took the phone call that would land him in the middle of a political
intrigue. "I got a call from someone at the White House
--- I don't remember who --- shortly after the inauguration,
saying the Clintons had decided not to release her thesis,"
professor Alan H. Schechter told MSNBC.com.
"I said, 'Why? It's a good thesis.'
I got some mumbo jumbo about how they were beginning to work
on health care and she had criticized Sen. Moynihan in the thesis,
and didn't want to alienate him. In fact, the thesis from 1969
contains not a negative word about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the
late Democratic senator from New York, and Schechter allows that
the real source of fear must have been the subject of the academic
paper: Chicago radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
"I argued with them that they should
release it," the emeritus professor said in the telephone
interview from North Carolina, one stop on his tour of Wellesley
alumnae groups to discuss their favorite topic these days, the
political development of Hillary Clinton. "The more you
hide something, the more people will want it," Schechter
said. "It was a stupid political decision, obviously, at
the time.". . .
After the call from the White House, Wellesley's
president, Nannerl Overholser Keohane, consulted with lawyers
and closed access to any thesis written by a U.S. president or
first lady, a rule affecting only Hillary D. Rodham's thesis.
Keohane moved on later that year to be president of Duke University,
and now is a visiting professor at Princeton, where she teaches
political philosophy, leadership and feminist theory. An Arkansan
who was eight years ahead of Hillary Rodham at Wellesley, Keohane
is a regular contributor to Democratic candidates and to a congressional
PAC that gives exclusively to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.
When MSNBC.com called Keohane last week
at Princeton to ask about the thesis, she replied, "I have
no memory of this," and hung up the phone. To give her time
to gather her thoughts, MSNBC.com e-mailed questions to her,
and she replied, "I do not recall this situation, and cannot
help you with this issue. You will need to rely on the people
at Wellesley who are more current on this issue than I am.".
. .
MSNBC.com asked Sen. Clinton, through her
office and presidential campaign staff, whether she would consent
to an interview to discuss the thesis and whether she would give
permission for MSNBC.com to publish the paper in full. Her Senate
staff declined the interview request, and her presidential campaign
staff did not reply.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388394/
HILLARY CLINTON OUTSPENT EDWARDS ON
HAIR STYLING
IAN BISHOP NY POST, JUL 24 2006 - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign army has
increased its ranks to 50 staffers and more than 20 consultants,
specialists in everything from fund-raising to speech-writing
to hairstyling and makeup. Clinton, the likely 2008 Democratic
White House front-runner, ponied up nearly $3,000 in campaign
cash for her blond tresses to get some presidential pampering
from acclaimed D.C. stylist Isabelle Goetz. Recently released
federal fund-raising records show Clinton shelled out $1,500
in April for Goetz to carefully craft her coiffure and another
$1,000 for a camera-ready clip in May. She passed off both styling
sessions as "media production" expenses.
Clinton was so desperate for Goetz to style
her gilded mane, she picked up the scissor siren's $405 travel
tab in April and a $38 expenses tab in May. Goetz, a fixture
at the swank Cristophe salon and the favored stylist of John
Kerry, has been clipping the former first lady's locks for years
- she's credited for updating Clinton's coif from country to
chic.
To complement the touch-up of her tresses,
Clinton invested another $3,000 for makeup maestro Barbara Lacy
to brush on some blush. . . Clinton paid Lacy an eye-popping
$1,600 for some eye-lining in mid-May and another mind-boggling
$1,300 for some makeup two weeks later. Again, Clinton justified
the makeovers as a media production expense.
JUNE 2007
BOOK ACCUSES HILLARY CLINTON OF INVOLVEMENT
IN PHONE TAPPING
MICKEY KAUS - On page 93 of the new Gerth-Van
Natta Hillary Clinton book, a sentence describes how, during
the '92 campaign, Hillary herself "listened to a secretly
recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics
plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of
another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair
with Bill. Bill's supporters monitored frequencies used by cell
phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring
sessions."
http://www.slate.com/id/2167180/&#clintoncell
LAW COVERING THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR
SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER
- Rep. Jim McDermott has had the luxury of winning big and cheaply
in recent elections, facing only token opposition. But that fortunate
history could pose a problem for McDermott if the Seattle Democrat
is forced to pay more than $1 million in legal fees and penalties
to settle his long-running legal battle with House Minority Leader
John Boehner. Unlike colleagues who have been able to tap into
campaign funds for legal costs, McDermott doesn't have enough
cash in his coffers to cover his bills.
The prospect that McDermott soon will be
liable for a huge payout became a real possibility earlier this
month after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
ruled 5-4 against him. The defeat leaves him with one remaining
legal recourse -- an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. McDermott
and his lawyers have until July to decide, but legal observers
say it's highly unlikely an appeal would be successful.
That would mean by midsummer, McDermott
would have to ramp up a fundraising effort that has been gathering
dust for nearly a decade. He must pay a court-ordered $60,000
fine and Boehner's legal fees, which attorneys estimate are $880,000
and counting. . .
Boehner sued McDermott in 1998, accusing
him of violating his right to privacy for making public a telephone
conversation involving Boehner, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich
and other senior Republicans who were discussing ethics allegations
against Gingrich. The cell phone conference call was recorded
by a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, who stumbled onto
the conversation while listening to a police scanner. The Martins
gave the tape to McDermott, who at the time was a member of the
House Ethics Committee. McDermott provided the tape to reporters
for The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
HILLARY CLINTON NAMES IMPEACHED FEDERAL
JUDGE AS CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR
SUN SENTINEL, FL -
U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Weston, and Alcee Hastings,
of Miramar, were appointed national campaign co-chairs on Thursday
for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic presidential
effort. "We need a leader with a clear vision and sound
judgment, who can work with a Democratic Congress to renew the
promise of America. Hillary is that leader," Wasserman Schultz
said in a statement.
WIKIPEDIA - In 1981 Judge Hastings was
charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient
sentence and a return of seized assets for 21 counts of racketeering
by Frank and Thomas Romano, and of perjury in his testimony about
the case. He was acquitted by a jury after his alleged co-conspirator,
William Borders, refused to testify in court (resulting in a
jail sentence for Borders).
In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S.
House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached
for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. Voters to impeach
included Democratic Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer,
John Conyers and Charles Rangel. He was then convicted in 1989
by the United States Senate, becoming the sixth federal judge
in the history of the United States to be removed from office
by the Senate. The vote on the first article was 69 for and 26
opposed, providing five votes more than the two-thirds of those
present that were needed to convict. The first article accused
the judge of conspiracy. . .
Alleged co-conspirator William Borders
went to jail again for refusing to testify in the impeachment
proceedings, but was later given a full pardon by Bill Clinton
on his last day in office.
Hastings filed suit in federal court claiming
that his impeachment trial was invalid because he was tried by
a Senate committee, not in front of the full Senate, and that
he had been acquitted in a criminal trial. Judge Stanley Sporkin
ruled in favor of Hastings, remanding the case back to the Senate.
. . The Supreme Court, however, ruled in Nixon v. United States
that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over Senate impeachment
matters, so Sporkin's ruling was vacated and Hastings' conviction
and removal were upheld.
WIKIPEDIA - After the 2006 United States
House of Representatives elections, Hastings attracted controversy
after it was reported that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
might appoint him as head of the House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence. Pelosi reportedly favored Hastings instead of
the ranking Democrat Jane Harman due to political differences
and support for Hastings by the Congressional Black Caucus. However,
Hastings' impeachment led to accusations that Democrats, who
had campaigned against a Republican "culture of corruption,"
were themselves elevating a corrupt official to a committee chair.
On November 28, 2006, Pelosi announced that Hastings would not
be the next chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcee_Hastings
HEAD OF CONTROVERSIAL FIRM SAYS CLINTON
NAME AND CONTACTS WORTH OVER $40 MILLION
SARAH BAXTER, TIMES, UK - The frontrunner
for the Democrats in the 2008 presidential election, Hillary
Clinton, has been hit by a legal dispute in which one of her
fundraisers is accused of trying to "ingratiate" himself
with powerful friends at the expense of his company. The row
has revived accusations of the influence peddling and favors
for donors that marred Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s.
For years the Clintons flew on Vinod Gupta's
corporate plane, introduced him to world leaders - including
Tony Blair - and received donations for their political campaigns
and charitable foundations. They relaxed at his holiday home
in Hawaii - next door to Pierce Brosnan, the former James Bond
star - and jetted to Acapulco, the Mexican resort, while Gupta
once spent the night as a favored guest in the Lincoln bedroom
at the White House.
"If we're negotiating with a company,
it helps if Bill Clinton says, 'Oh Vin, he's a good guy',"
said Gupta in a frank interview with The Sunday Times. Hillary's
other man
The lawsuit, by company shareholders, accuses
Gupta of squandering millions of dollars on his high-profile
friends, including $900,000 worth of travel on the Clintons.
Bill Clinton has a $3.3m consulting deal
with the company, which the shareholders allege is a "waste
of corporate assets". He has already received $2.1m, with
another $1.2m to come.
Interviewed at his office, not far from
the White House, Gupta said Bill Clinton's name and contacts
were worth "over $40m" for the company. "We've
met chief executives, billionaires, government people - it helps
us to make connections and do deals. It's a very competitive
world and who you know and which circles you belong to is a big
thing.". . .
Hillary Clinton used to use Gupta's private
plane - leased through NetJets, which sells shares in private
business aircraft - to fly to campaign stops as a senator. Her
office would frequently ring to borrow it, he said.
"If we got five requests, maybe we'd
say yes once, and the other four times we'd say no," Gupta
said. The company would be reimbursed with the cost of a first-class
ticket, far less than the cost of chartering the plane
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1910124.ece
VIDEO TAPE SUGGESTS HILLARY CLINTON'S
DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN FUNDRAISING SCANDAL
CNS - A videotape shows New York Sen. Hillary
Clinton. . . should be admitted as new evidence in a California
civil case, a forthcoming legal brief to be filed by argues.
The tape shows Clinton speaking in 2000 with Peter Paul, a Hollywood
mogul, and comic book icon Stan Lee about a massive fundraising
event for her 2000 Senate race. Paul spent about $2 million of
his own money to produce the event. The legal contribution limit
to a candidate then was $2,000. . .
A portion of the videotape captures the
closing words of a lengthy conversation in which Paul was present.
The voice of Hillary Clinton is heard telling Lee that Paul and
her chief campaign aide "talk all the time, so she'll be
the person to convey whatever I need." She is then heard
adding, "I wanted to call and personally thank all of you
... [and] tell you how much this means to me. It's going to mean
a lot to the president, too."
Clinton and her supporters have maintained
that she had no direct knowledge that the event violated campaign
finance rules. In a written declaration for the California court
filed on April 7, 2006, the senator said only that she didn't
remember discussions with Paul about the fundraiser.
"I have no recollection whatsoever
of discussing any arrangement with him whereby he would support
my campaign for the United States Senate in exchange for anything
from me or then-President Clinton," Clinton said in the
declaration. "I do not believe I would make such a statement
because I believe I would remember such a discussion if it had
occurred," she added.
The Federal Elections Commission already
ruled that Clinton's 2000 campaign committee underreported cash
it received at the fundraising event Paul sponsored. The FEC
slapped the campaign committee with a $35,000 fine.
The fallout from Paul's Hollywood fundraising
event also led to the federal indictment of David Rosen, the
senator's campaign finance director, who was acquitted on charges
of lying to the FEC.
Paul alleges this tape proves Clinton and
her campaign were not truthful to either the FEC or the grand
jury investigation that led to Rosen's indictment.
Neither Clinton's presidential campaign
nor her Senate office returned phone calls regarding this story
Tuesday. Likewise, Clinton's attorney David Kendall did not respond.
In recent briefs in the case, Clinton's
attorneys point out that Paul pleaded guilty to manipulating
the company's stock price. He has a previous felony conviction,
pleading guilty to fraud in the 1970s and to a drug charge in
the 1980s.
The U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern
District of New York gave copies of 90 tapes to Paul on April
11. The office had taken possession of the tapes six years ago
during an investigation of a securities case against Paul in
2001. . .
Paul contends that President Clinton had
agreed to work as a rainmaker for the company after he left the
White House in exchange for the massive star-studded fundraising
event in Hollywood which Paul produced that included Cher, Whoopi
Goldberg, John Travolta, Brad Pitt, Sugar Ray, and Queen Latifah.
VIDEO EXCERPT
http://www.hillcap.org/default.php?page_id=2
MORE ON THE FIRM THAT HAS BEEN KEEPING
THE CLINTONS GOING
DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN, NEWSMAX
- Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton
has been paid by $3.3 million by Info USA, an Omaha, Nebraska
company that has been identified as a key provider of specially
designed databases that have been sold to criminals who use the
detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly. . .
According to the New York Times, Info USA compiled and sold lists
that disclosed the names of elderly men and women who would be
likely to respond to unscrupulous scams.
The lists left no doubt about the vulnerability
of the elderly targets. The Times reported, for example, that
Info USA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers,"
3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money,"
and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer
or Alzheimer's disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained
500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One
list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe
that their luck can change."
Info USA sold lists to companies that were
under investigation or closed down by courts because of their
criminal activity. The company's internal emails show that employees
were aware that the investigation for elderly fraud involved
their customers, but sold the lists anyway.
The Times profiled one unfortunate 92-year-old
man who entered a sweepstakes sponsored by Info USA. The information
that he innocently provided was then sold to the predator marketers.
After responding to their telemarketing calls seeking financial
information, his entire life savings was stolen from his bank
account at Wachovia Bank. These practices, using lists supplied
by Info USA, were repeated all over the country.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/5/28/203543.shtml
BERNSTEIN MISLEADS ON TRAVEL OFFICE
SCANDAL
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - Today's award goes
to Carl Bernstein given in memory the late New York columnist
who, as AJ Liebling put it, never permitted "facts to interfere
with the exercise of his imagination."
We had been waiting for the excerpts from
Bernstein's new book on Hillary Clinton to get through the mushy
parts and move on to the facts; instead the mush turned into
spin.
Two cases in point: Vince Foster's weight
before he committed suicide and the White House Travel Office
scandal .
The former is only significant because
it was used by the Clintonistas to defect inquiries concerning
the death of Vincent Foster, about which (and about the investigation
that followed) there remain numerous unresolved questions. The
idea was that Foster had been depressed and had lost a lot of
weight before his death.
Bernstein contributes to this myth by writing:
"There is a photograph taken by one of the White House photographers
in mid-May 1993 and never publicly released that speaks volumes.
Hillary, Foster and Bill Clinton could look no glummer. . . The
most distressed-looking person in the picture is Hillary. Foster
is gaunt, sad, empty."
Clintonista Sidney Blumenthal wrote in
the New Yorker shortly after Foster's death that he had lost
15 pounds. That same month David Von Drehle in the Washington
Post reported that Foster had lost 15 pounds since coming to
Washington. His doctor claimed that his weight loss was "obvious
to many."
Now 15 pounds isn't that much for someone
weighing over 200 pounds - especially since by BMI standards
he'd have to go down to 155 to be underweight - but independent
investigator Hugh Sprunt looked into the matter and found something
else: the stories weren't true.
In August 1990, according to his medical
records, Foster weighed 207 pounds. These record also show him
down to 194 pounds in December 1992 thanks to diet and exercising
according to his doctor's notes. On his security form of January
27, 1993 - right after the inauguration of Clinton - he listed
his weight as 195 pounds.
His lunch on the day of this death consisted
of cheeseburger, fries, Coke and M&Ms. He ate everything
but his M&Ms.
The autopsy weighed him in at 197 pounds.
In other words, even with loss of blood, the dead Foster weighed
more than the live one just before Inauguration Day.
A minor fiction to be sure, but typical
of the work of the Clinton White House.
Bernstein causes more serious mischief
with his handling of the White House travel office matter, a
scandal which led to the malicious prosecution of the office's
head, a prosecution rejected in less than two hours by the jury.
It seems likely that the purpose of the travel office purge was
to reward the private travel agency that had subsidized the cash-hungry
Clinton campaign by non-billing around a million dollars until
after the election. Beyond simple issues of patronage, the case
raises questions about unreported campaign contributions (of
a variety that still plague Hillary Clinton) and a cruel mind
that was willing to send someone to prison to pay off a campaign
obligation. Nothing so illustrates the mean soul of Hillary Clinton
than the travel office incident.
Bernstein, of course, is far from alone.
We have yet to see a serious journalistic look this campaign
of the scandals with which HRC was involved. In fact, in a review
of the Bernstein book for Reuters, Ellen Wulfhorst reveals a
stunning media perspective:
"The book also describes her deep
fears that she would be indicted in the scandals involving her
Whitewater land deal in Arkansas or the missing billing records
from the law firm where she worked. Juicy tidbits aside, the
book outlines a journey that took the former first lady from
being a passionate advocate of deeply held causes to an insincere,
soulless politician."
We have never had a First Lady before who
came close to being indicted and the Democrats have never run
for president a candidate who came close to being indicted. But
to Wulfhorst and many other media types, this is just a "juicy
tidbit."
CARL BERNSTEIN, TIMES, UK
- The question of what exactly transpired in regard to the firings
of seven employees of the White House Travel Office preoccupied
the special prosecutor for more than seven years, despite its
relative insignificance. The "Travel Office problem"
came to acquire huge symbolic importance, not least because of
what George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director,
came to describe to some of his colleagues as Hillary's "Jesuitical
lying".
The Travel Office difficulties for the
Clintons could be traced to Bill's authorization of their friend
Harry Thomason to be given a White House pass, an office in the
East Wing and a vague charter to continue shaping the public
images of the president and first lady.
Thomason and other Arkansans in the White
House claimed that the Travel Office, which handled the multi-million-dollar
business of arranging flights and hotels for members of the White
House press corps, was haphazardly managed and more than likely
a semi-legitimate operation in which fraud or embezzlement might
be occurring.
Because the Travel Office served the press
corps directly, Hillary - inspired by Thomason's assurance, according
to her aides - became convinced that a spate of favorable stories
would result from the disclosure that it was operated dishonestly,
its employees fired, and new procedures and people put in place.
In urging these changes, Hillary had failed
to take into account the close relationship between Travel Office
employees and members of the press who traveled with the president.
The Travel Office performed numerous favors for reporters, including
making it easy for them to clear customs and ship gifts back
home.
Without any opportunity for Travel Office
employees to defend themselves, all seven were fired. There had
been moments when some officials - including, perhaps, Foster
- had wondered whether Hillary wasn't moving too fast. But they
had felt her ire before and were disinclined to be reprimanded
by her again.
Neither Hillary nor Bill was prepared for
the firestorm of press fury that struck the White House. Many
reporters concluded that the firings were a cover-up for the
Clintons' cronyism, especially after the White House confirmed
that the beneficiaries of the firings might include Thomason.
THOMAS DEFRANK, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 2001:
Washington resident Bush makes his first trip abroad as America's
leader next month, but Gary Wright couldn't care less - thanks,
he says bitterly, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. For 32 years, circling
the globe with Presidents was Wright's livelihood. Assigned to
the White House Travel Office, he logged millions of miles on
press charters, accompanying seven Presidents to every continent
and scores of world capitals. These days, Wright, now 58, pulls
12-hour shifts as a $22,000-a-year correction officer at a North
Carolina state prison. "It helps pay the mortgage,"
says Wright, one of the seven civil servants summarily sacked
eight years ago in the first scandal of the Clinton era. To this
day, he's convinced that now-Sen. Clinton masterminded the Travelgate
firings to turn the lucrative White House travel business over
to Arkansas cronies. [Billy] Dale, his deputy Wright and their
entire staff were sacked in May 1993 after charged of financial
mismanagement - charges that proved bogus. The firings triggered
a firestorm of media and congressional scrutiny implicating Clinton
and her pal Harry Thomason in the coup . . . In June, independent
counsel Robert Ray declined to file charges, but cited "substantial
evidence she had a 'role'" in the ousters and that her concerns
"ultimately influenced" the decision.
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2000 - Former White
House travel director Billy Dale says that he was never contacted
by Independent Counsel Robert Ray regarding his knowledge of
the Travelgate scandal. Ray, similar to his actions in Filegate,
has closed the investigation without interviewing key players.
Also learned from Dale: former bar bouncer and Chief of White
House Personnel Security, Craig Livingstone, personally escorted
him out his office after he was fired. The incident occurred
one week before Dale's planned retirement. . .
In 1993 Hillary Clinton and David Watkins
moved to oust the White House travel office in favor of World
Wide Travel, Clinton's source of $1 million in fly-now-pay-later
campaign trips that essentially financed the last stages of the
campaign without the bother of reporting a de facto contribution.
The White House fired seven long-term employees for alleged mismanagement
and kickbacks. The director, Billy Dale, charged with embezzlement,
was acquitted in less than two hours by the jury. An FBI agent
involved in the case, IC Smith, wrote later, "The White
House Travel Office matter sent a clear message to the Congress
. . . Lying, withholding evidence, and considering - even expecting
- underlings to be expendable so the Clintons could avoid accountability
for their actins would become the norm."
LARRY KLAYMAN, JUDICIAL WATCH IN WASHINGTON
WEEKLY - One of the things Linda Tripp revealed under oath is
that Ken Starr has not asked her one question about either Filegate
or Travelgate, informally or before a grand jury. She mentioned
it in passing once when she was talking about why she felt threatened.
She said, "Here's what I saw, that is why I think I'm in
jeopardy." But Ken Starr never followed up on it. He said,
"We'll get back to it later." But later never came.
Why are the Republicans focusing only on Lewinsky? Is it because
at the time they made that decision they felt this was a scandal
that would not touch them? . . . They made a tactical error.
They have a tendency, because they are part of the establishment,
to accept the establishment. And Ken Starr is part of the establishment.
And if Ken Starr is not completely candid before their committee,
because he has not done a thorough investigation, they are the
kind of people who will accept that. They are part of the giant
club here in Washington. The facts are clear. The FBI files controversy
and the Travelgate controversy have not been thoroughly investigated.
And Congress is shirking its responsibility by only looking at
the Lewinsky affair.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE REPORT - Travelgate
is a story about the failure of the Clinton White House to live
up to the ethical standards expected of the highest office in
the land. The wrongdoing of this administration lies not in the
firings of the seven Travel Office employees. They served at
the pleasure of the President. If the President chose to fire
them to reward political cronies, that was his prerogative.
Rather, the wrongdoing occurred after the
firings. It resulted from a desire to hide the truth about who
actually fired them and why. The committee spent 3 1/2 years
investigating not just who fired them and why, but the wrongdoing
that followed. The resulting mosaic pieced together from the
facts uncovered reveals the answers the White House refused to
disclose. . .
The committee has found that the motive
for the firings was political cronyism: the President sought
to reward his friend, Harry Thomason, with the spoils of the
White House travel business. A pretext for the firings was created,
and the trigger was pulled.
When the public reacted to the firing with
outrage, the roles of the President, First Lady and Thomason
were minimized as the White House staff engaged in a colossal
damage-control effort. First, it had to portray the victims of
the firings as the wrongdoers. This was achieved by White House
officials unleashing the full powers of the Federal Government
against the seven former workers. The extraordinary might of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service
and the Department of Justice- not to mention the prestige of
the White House itself -all were brought to bear. These actions
constitute a gross abuse of the rights of seven American citizens
and their families. Second, an enormous and elaborate cover-up
operation, housed in the White House Counsel's Office, sought
to prevent numerous investigations from discovering not only
the roles of who fired the workers and why, but also their efforts
to persecute the victims. In the process. . . it obstructed and
frustrated all investigations. . .
PAUL GREENBERG, JEWISH WORLD REVIEW - As
for what she became, well, there is a simple test of honesty
in any memoir by a Clinton: Look in the index for Dale, Billy.
Remember that name? He was the victim-in-chief of the Travelgate
caper.
Not only does Miss Hillary minimize her
role in that affair, she minimizes the affair itself. It was
no small thing in the life of Billy Dale, who had worked in the
White House travel office since the Kennedy administration. Travelgate
cost him his job, his life savings, his good name, two years
of legal Hell and, until a jury acquitted him within two hours
of hearing the hoked-up charges against him, his peace.
After all that, Hillary Clinton is still
smearing the guy, and implying his guilt. After his acquittal.
How's that for fair? And this she calls history.
Our author doesn't try to square her version
of Travelgate with the soul-cleansing account of it from David
Watkins. He was one of the White House aides who had to take
the blame for it, and afterward he wrote his boss, Mack McLarty:
"Once this made it onto the First
Lady's agenda, Vince Foster became involved, and he and Harry
Thomason regularly informed me of her attention to the Travel
Office situation -- as well as her insistence that the situation
be resolved immediately by replacing the Travel Office staff.
. At that meeting you (Mr. McLarty) explained that this was on
the First Lady's 'radar screen.' . We both knew that there would
be hell to pay if, after our failure in the Secret Service situation
earlier, we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity
with the First Lady's wishes."
All of this Hillary Clinton just blows
off. She can't even bring herself to mention Billy Dale by name
even as she assassinates his character once again. She does note
that he tried to reach a plea bargain with the prosecution --
as if that proved his guilt.
That poodle won't hunt. As an experienced
attorney herself, Hillary Clinton knows very well why an innocent
man would be tempted to reach a plea bargain -- to avoid the
harassment of prosecution, the ordeal of a trial and the immense
legal costs involved in both.
In the end, Billy Dale went through it
all and emerged vindicated. But Hillary Clinton is still out
to get him. So when you hear her refer to the politics of personal
destruction, you can believe she knows whereof she speaks. And
so, alas, does Billy Dale.
RICHARD L. BERKE, NY TIME, MAY 22 1993 - After a third day of embarrassing disclosures
about the ouster of its travel office, the White House tonight
abruptly announced the withdrawal of the Arkansas travel agency
with close ties to President Clinton that it had selected to
take over the operation.
The White House also confirmed that a partner
of Mr. Clinton's Hollywood friend Harry Thomason had inquired
about doing business with the travel office. The White House
press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, said today that she initially
gave the partner some encouragement at the time but that he was
later rebuffed by the travel office. . .
In another disclosure today, the White
House said a 25-year-old cousin of Mr. Clinton, Catherine Cornelius,
proposed three months ago that the travel office be restructured
and that she run the service. In her memo, released by the White
House, Ms. Cornelius also called for the White House to select
World Wide Travel of Little Rock, Ark., for the accounts.
George Stephanopoulos, the White House
communications director, released a statement tonight saying
that World Wide had voluntarily withdrawn from providing service
to the White House. He said the operation would be temporarily
taken over by the American Express Travel Office, a vendor that
has been approved by the General Services Administration.
"World Wide's decision to withdraw
should end any possible perception that their selection to provide
interim White House services was based on a prior personal or
business relationship with members of the campaign staff who
now work at the White House," Mr. Stephanopoulos said.
The decision to sever ties with World Wide,
which handled Mr. Clinton's travel arrangements last year and
had contributed to his campaigns, capped a harried day at the
White House as officials struggled to counter growing criticism
of the dismissals on Wednesday. White House officials spent much
of the day closeted from the press.
Late today, they took the unusual step
of releasing a statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
asserting that a criminal investigation of the seven-member travel
office was warranted.
Employees from World Wide, which was to
have handled travel until bidding for a new agency was completed,
had already begun setting up shop in the White House. . .
The White House took the unusual step of
making public the F.B.I.'s statement, which said that a review
by an outside accounting firm brought in by the White House had
shown that there was "sufficien |