posted March 15, 2015 09:41 PM            

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his creation and said, “It’s way too honest and forthright.” So God made a Clinton.

God said, “I need somebody willing to do anything, believe anything, say anything, no matter how false, in order to attain power.” So God made a Clinton.

“I need somebody with a finger strong enough to wag at the cameras, but gentle enough to hit the power button on an industrial strength paper shredder. Somebody to bark at Congress, threaten cantankerous committee chairs, ignore subpoenas, and hide long sought after document troves deep in the bowels of the White House residence.” So God made a Clinton.

God said, “I need somebody willing to spend decades nursing naked ambition. And then watch it die when some upstart nobody from Chicago decides he doesn’t want to wait his turn. Then dry her eyes and say, ‘Maybe in 2016.’ I need somebody who can shiv a political enemy with nothing more than a nail file and an iPhone case she swore was way too inconvenient to carry around in addition to a Blackberry. And who, in primary and general campaign season, will doggedly complete the Sunday show sweep, and then pop up on TV again later that evening to tell you, ‘The server will remain private.’” So God made a Clinton.

God had to have somebody willing to put up with endless neglect from a two hundred-timing spouse with a wandering eye and a penchant for island parties with a sex offender. All so that one day she might finally be able to take a sip from that glorious goblet marked “Madam President.” So God made a Clinton.

God said, “I need somebody strong enough to fly something like eight bajillion miles just to fill the aching emptiness of knowing that all her effort might actually end up for naught, yet gentle enough to don a pink pant suit and chastise the vast right-wing conspiracy for going after such a sweet, harmless hillbilly. It had to be somebody who could parse words, look straight in the camera, and swear she totally spent over half her time as the world’s most powerful diplomat playing Candy Crush and sending ‘you go girl’ e-mails to her BFF’s from that hot yoga place down the street.

“Somebody who’d put the family together, incorporate it as a tax-exempt non-profit, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with affirming eyes, when her daughter says she has an idea about how to secretly collect millions from Algeria, Qatar, and Oman without anyone ever being the wiser.”

posted March 17, 2015 08:02 AM            

An Open Letter to hdr22@clintonemail.com
MARCH 14, 2015
Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — SINCE open letters to secretive and duplicitous regimes are in fashion, we would like to post an Open Letter to the Leaders of the Clinton Republic of Chappaqua:

It has come to our attention while observing your machinations during your attempted restoration that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our democracy: The importance of preserving historical records and the ill-advised gluttony of an American feminist icon wallowing in regressive Middle Eastern states’ payola.

You should seriously consider these characteristics of our nation as the Campaign-That-Must-Not-Be-Named progresses.

If you, Hillary Rodham Clinton, are willing to cite your mother’s funeral to get sympathy for ill-advisedly deleting 30,000 emails, it just makes us want to sigh: O.K., just take it. If you want it that bad, go ahead and be president and leave us in peace. (Or war, if you have your hawkish way.) You’re still idling on the runway, but we’re already jet-lagged. It’s all so drearily familiar that I know we’re only moments away from James Carville writing a column in David Brock’s Media Matters, headlined, “In Private, Hillary’s Really a Hoot.”

When you grin and call out to your supporters, like at the Emily’s List anniversary gala, “Don’t you someday want to see a woman president of the United States of America?” the answer is: Yes, it would be thrilling.

But therein lies the rub.

What is the trade-off that will be exacted by the Chappaqua Republic for that yearned-for moment? When the Rogue State of Bill began demonizing Monica Lewinsky as a troubled stalker, you knew you could count on the complicity of feminists and Democratic women in Congress. Bill’s female cabinet members and feminist supporters had no choice but to accept the unappetizing quid pro quo: The Clintons would give women progressive public policies as long as the women didn’t assail Bill for his regressive private behavior with women.

Now you, Hillary, are following the same disheartening “We’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse” pattern. You started the “Guernica” press conference defending your indefensible droit du seigneur over your State Department emails by referring to women’s rights and denouncing the letter to Iran from Republican senators as “out of step with the best traditions of American leadership.”

None of what you said made any sense. Keeping a single account mingling business and personal with your own server wasn’t about “convenience.” It was about expedience. You became judge and jury on what’s relevant because you didn’t want to leave digital fingerprints for others to retrace. You could have had Huma carry two devices if you really couldn’t hoist an extra few ounces. You insisted on piggybacking on Bill’s server, even though his aides were worried about hackers, because you were gaming the system for 2016. (Or even 2012.)

Suffused with paranoia and pre-emptive defensiveness, you shrugged off The One’s high-minded call for the Most Transparent Administration in History.

It depends upon what the meaning of @ is.

The subtext of your news conference cut through the flimsy rationales like a dagger: “You can have the first woman president. You can get rid of those epically awful Republicans who have vandalized Congress, marginalized the president and jeopardized our Iran policy. You can get a more progressive American society. But, in return, you must accept our foibles and protect us.”

You exploit our better angels and our desire for a finer country and our fear of the anarchists and haters in Congress.

Because you assume that if it’s good for the Clintons, it’s good for the world, you’re always tangling up government policy with your own needs, desires, deceptions, marital bargains and gremlins.

Instead of raising us up by behaving like exemplary, sterling people, you bring us down to your own level, a place of blurred lines and fungible ethics and sleazy associates. Your family’s foundation gobbles tens of millions from Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes, whose unspoken message is: “We’re going to give you money to go improve the world. Now leave us alone to go persecute women.”

That’s an uncomfortable echo of a Clintonian trade-off, which goes: “We’re going to give you the first woman president who will improve the country. Now leave us alone to break any rules we please.”

Bill, your pathology is more human and interesting. It’s almost like you need to create messes to see if your extraordinary political gifts can get you out of them. It’s a fatherless boy’s “How Much Do You Love Me?” syndrome. Do you love me enough to let me get away with this?

Hillary, your syndrome is less mortal, more regal, a matter of “What Is Hillary Owed?” Ronald Reagan seemed like an ancient king, as one aide put it, gliding across the landscape. You seem like an annoyed queen, radiating irritation at anyone who tries to hold you accountable. You’re less rhetorically talented than Bill but more controlling, so it’s harder for you to navigate out of tough spots.

No Drama Obama and his advisers are clearly appalled to be drawn into your shadowy shenanigans, just as Al Gore once was. Whatever else you say about this president, he has no shadows.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as the campaign progresses.

Sincerely,

posted April 11, 2015 12:39 PM            

So, Nancy Reagan endorsed Hillary Clinton for President! Right! Check!

Not only was the story a phony lying fake but the website you linked is NOT THE DRUDGE REPORT! Another lying phony!

April 11, 2015
Bloomberg falls for fake Nancy Reagan 'endorses' Hillary story
Thomas Lifson

You don't get much more "mainstream" in the media than Bloomberg News and it's hard to be more embarassed if you're a dues paying member of the MSM to run a fake story from a fake website.

That's what happened to the august business/politics publication yesterday, when they ran a story ostensibly quoting Nancy Reagan as endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.

Politico:

Bloomberg Politics published a report about Nancy Reagan based off of fake news site NationalReport.net

The piece, headlined "Nancy Reagan gives her endorsement to... Hillary Clinton," quoted a supposed "Drudge Report" saying that the former first lady told the History Channel series "First Ladies In Their Own Words" that it's time for a female president.

"For the GOP, this is slightly awkward. Since Ronald Reagan's presidency, and especially since his death, the Gipper's legacy has been worshipfully celebrated, often claimed, by Republican candidates," the article stated.

The problem is: Reagan never said such a thing and the series was actually on C-SPAN, not The History Channel. The report seems to have come from NationalReport.net, a spoof news site that has tricked many a politician and news organization in the past. The piece was then posted to a website called DrudgeReport.com.co, which doesn't seem to be connected to the actual Drudge Report.

The piece, which was published just before 5 p.m. on Friday, was deleted within minutes.

We've reached out to a Bloomberg spokesperson for comment and will update here accordingly.

Bloomberg later published an apology, saying "This story has been retracted. We fell for a hoax. Apologies." Executive Editor Mark Nizza tweeted, "very very stupid mistake, and one we take very seriously. Simple as that."

Yes, we at AT have very occassionally been bitten by the fake story bug. It's inevitable given the time pressures in publishing a daily journal of opinion.

But I can tell you as an editor that we catch most of these stories before publication. And we do it without an army of fact checkers and copy editors that publications like Bloomberg employ. Basically, it's a question of sources. Over the nearly 10 years this publication has been in business, we have learned the hard way which sources and writers we can trust and the few we can't. It's not complicated, nor is it even very hard work. It's simply a matter of being thorough - something that Boomberg failed miserably at doing in this case.

posted April 13, 2015 09:56 AM            

Kathleen Willey

WASHINGTON – Kathleen Willey, one of the women caught in the cross-fire of alleged sexual harassment by former President Bill Clinton and what she characterizes as acts of intimidation to silence her, told Aaron Klein’s Investigative Radio Sunday she expects a “scandal a day” with Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency and proclaimed she has no accomplishments worthy of being considered for her run for the office.

As to Mrs. Clinton’s announcement emphasizing herself as a champion of women and the downtrodden, Willey called it “a joke.”

“What has she done, what has she accomplished to run for president, to become the president of the United States?” Willey asked. “I can’t find, for the life of me, one thing. And if I could find one thing, I would acknowledge that fact. But I haven’t seen one single accomplishment that would give her the credentials to be president of the United States.”

As to Mrs. Clinton’s focus on her womanhood, Willey said: “Well, that’s a joke, if that’s her one credential for running for president, then why don’t I run. I’m a woman. It makes absolutely no sense. … There are a lot more women out there way more qualified than she. The only thing Hillary has been successful on is riding in on the coattails of other men – like Obama and her husband. That’s it.”

“She took it upon herself to erase all of her emails so that none of us can see what happened in Benghazi,” the former Democrat activist said.

“Women should pay attention to what she’s done to other women, and not just the women who were unfortunate to cross paths with her husband,” Willey said.

Does she expect all of the Clinton scandals of the past to be relived through this campaign?

“Who wants to hear that anymore?” Willey asked. “I don’t want to hear it anymore. Their mere presence on the stage is going to guarantee the fact that we’re going to hear one of those scandals every single day that she’s running for the nomination. And then if she wins we’re going to hear about Travelgate and Vince Foster and Monica Lewinsky and me and all of the trouble they got themselves into in Arkansas. The thing that boggles my mind is that doesn’t seem to bother her. If she would really look at that, is that really good for the country? Nothing embarrasses these people. It’s like a scandal a week with these people.”

Willey is author of the 2007 book “Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

As WND reported, Willey and her husband, Ed, were Democratic activists who founded Virginians for Clinton and helped send Bill and Hillary to the White House in 1992.

While serving as a volunteer in the White House and facing financial hard times, Willey says she met with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office to request a paying position. But instead of getting help, she says, she was subjected to “nothing short of serious sexual harassment.”

Distraught, Willey fled Clinton’s presence, only to discover that her husband Ed had committed suicide that same tragic afternoon.

Later, she was drawn “unwillingly” into the Paula Jones lawsuit, the Ken Starr investigation and impeachment proceedings.

Willey also claims the Clinton tag team was behind a string of events that can only be described as a mob-style intimidation campaign to keep her silent that even included breaking into her home to steal her memoirs of the events.

Willey wrote “Target” when Hillary Clinton was running for president the first time in 2007, and her comments are all the more relevant now that Clinton is running for the presidency in 2016.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/look-for-scandal-a-day-with-hillary-run/

posted April 16, 2015 02:33 AM            

WND (formerly WorldNetDaily or, as it was affectionately known to its fans, WingNutDaily or WhirledNutDaily) is an extremist conservative website founded by Joseph Farah in 1997 as a project of his Western Center for Journalism.[1] It espouses a fundamentalist Christian, creationist view of the world, and regularly engages in racist attacks against African-Americans. Its political leanings are right-wing, pro-"Christian right," and supposedly pro-United States, with strongly libertarian economic views. Its coverage provides multiple sides of the issues: the conservative viewpoint and the ultra-conservative viewpoint. It is far to the right of Fox News.
While they present themselves as news, WND is essentially a tabloid for radical right-wingers. Their publishing standards are rock-bottom, and they have run stories from extremely questionable sources on many, many occasions.[2][3] They are best known for distributing Ann Coulter's insipid columns, as well as articles written by noted political analysts Chuck Norris and Pat Boone. They recently added disgraced baseball bigot John Rocker as well, indicating they've decided to drop the dog whistles and go with overt racism.
The scary thing is that this bilge is actually slightly influential, with made-up bs from WND making its way out the mouths of wingnut congressmen and cable TV pundits far too often.[4]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/WND#Claims_of_objectivity

posted April 16, 2015 10:50 AM            

Well let's see!
Slick Willy was fined $96,000 and disbarred from practicing law for lying in a deposition in a federal lawsuit.

Slick Willy dethroned Richard Nixon as most corrupt president in US history...by a panel of historians and presidential watchers in a year long review of US presidents conducted by C-SPAN!

When WND talks about the most corrupt woman in America...Hillary and her corrupt husband Willy, WMD has it exactly right. There's more GATES in Hillary's past....and present than exist in any other American woman's. Each of those GATES represents a major scandal involving Hillary Clinton and the usual Clinton nonsense that...IT'S OLD NEWS isn't going to cut the mustard now that Hillary has declared as a candidate for prez.

The background of people in organizations isn't really important. It's the truth or untruth of what they say that's important.

Now, if I were judging the relative truthfulness of Joseph Farah verses Slick Willy and/or Hillary Clinton, it's no contest. Farah wins hands down!

posted April 17, 2015 02:21 AM            

I could care less about that, it is the lack of journalistic investigation and credibility. You know, the extremely questionable sources and lack of evidence.

posted April 17, 2015 09:34 AM            

Remember, I didn't bring up the Christian beliefs of Joseph Farah, you did.

But, since you did, let me educate you since you and the Wiki loons you quote here are ignorant of the facts.

Joseph Farah is dead center of American thought about religion. You and Wiki...along with the rest of the far left loon set are totally out of step with the majority of Americans on religion.

80%+ of Americans identify themselves as "Christians".

Poll: Most Americans Say They're Christian
July 18
By Gary Langer

Eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=90356&page=1

In the U.S., Christmas Not Just for Christians

While 81% identify themselves as Christians, 93% celebrate Christmas
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113566/US-Christmas-Not-Just-Christians.aspx

Is America a Christian Nation?
Huffington Post

Christianity is the religion of a substantial supermajority of the American population. According to the latest results of the Pew Research Centre's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, nearly 80 percent of Americans self-identify as Christian.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-albert/is-america-a-christian-na_b_666038.html

However, we are making progress! Even you recognize the truth about the financial, political and institutional corruption of the Clintons.

posted April 18, 2015 10:03 AM            

So, it was only natural that Hillary...in Iowa to "listen" to Iowa voters....brought in demoscat "political activists" to talk to with not a single real Iowa person from the "community" among them.

Hillary is "Astro-Turfing" Iowa!

Oh, did I mention that Hillary stopped at Chipotle in Iowa and didn't even leave the poor under-paid, over-worked, oppressed workers there a tip? Not a dime! Of course, that's understandable. Hillary's only worth a couple of hundred millions and couldn't spare it!

Jeepers! Hillary's Campaign Is Even Creepier Than You Think
Heather Wilhelm
April 16, 2015

Greetings, American humans! Hello, advanced mammalian friends! Welcome to the Week of Hillary!

“Wait, wait, wait,” you might be thinking if you’re a normal American human. “It’s not the Week of Hillary. Last I checked, it was the Week the Government Steals All of My Money, Then Somehow Manages to Act Like It’s the Victim. Also, isn’t ISIS about to take over Ramadi? Also, didn’t Russian warships just enter the English Channel? And what about—”

Pffftt. Pipe down. You haven’t been paying attention, friend. It is, at least in the cloistered world of the American media, The Week of Hillary. On Sunday, the former secretary of state announced her intention to enact her final, sweet, glorious revenge on the old ball and chain, Bill “Mr. Fun” Clinton—ahem, I mean “run for president”—and the coverage has been wall-to-wall since.

So far, the Hillary Show has been consistently hilarious, complete with a bizarre RoboCop-style, bulletproof, Secret Service-driven “casual” road trip van— a van named, oddly, “Scooby,” which is the cartoon dog, and not “The Mystery Machine,” which is the actual cartoon van—and what may have been the weirdest Ohio Chipotle visit ever. (In short, Hillary wore sunglasses inside like a Vegas mobster, she didn’t talk to anyone, and then the New York Times ran a full scientific microanalysis of the nutrition content of her order.)

However, there’s also bad news: Behind the scenes, the Clinton campaign is even creepier than you might think. “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” Hillary declared in her announcement video, which looked suspiciously like a 1990’s Mentos commercial. “Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.”

There are several things wrong with this, so we’ll start with the obvious: Who in America older than the age of 12 wants a politician to be their “champion”? Moreover, if you do want a politician to be your champion—we can talk about your troubling experience-based cynicism deficit later—would you honestly choose one who has “Creature of the D.C. Foreign Donor/Big Banking/Conflict-of-Interest/Question-Dodging/General Corruption Borg” written all over her? (As an aside, I’m guessing that Elizabeth Warren is wondering this too.)

There’s a deeper question to consider: What does it really mean to be someone’s “champion”—and what do left-leaning politicians think it means? Interestingly, after a few random screenshots of a cheerfully crazed middle-aged woman yelling about her garden—“My tomatoes are legendary here in my own neighborhood!”—Hillary’s announcement video opens with a testimony from a young, single mother. “My daughter is about to start kindergarten next year,” the woman says, packing boxes and flexing Popeye muscles next to her little girl, “and so we’re moving, just so she can belong to a better school.”

Honest question: Is this meant to be uplifting? Why should someone have to pack up and move in order to go to a better school? What about the people who don’t have the resources to leave? In fact, wouldn’t it be great if the people who ran our education system would offer parents a choice, giving them access to multiple good schools, rather than walling them off in sub-par districts based on wealth or lack thereof?

Sadly, that’s not likely to happen soon: The people who run our schools are “at the top,” as Ms. Clinton would say, “and the deck is stacked in their favor.” But wait. Jeepers, zoinks, and jinkies, gang! Something doesn’t fit! Our schools are run by … they’re run by … the government! They’re run by politicians and entrenched bureaucrats! Aren’t they supposed to be our “champions”? Aren’t they supposed to free us through their growing control?

This, at its root, is the progressive paradox, and it applies to a whole slew of other issues, including health care, small business regulations, economic policy, and free speech. There’s also no one who embodies it better than Hillary Clinton, who, for the past two decades, has “championed” herself right through the highest annals of power and straight on to the bank.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Sunday was also the biennial meeting of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, which, as the Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay reports, “steers tens of millions of dollars each year” to a grab bag of left-wing causes. It’s a meeting without a hint of irony, where “flashy sports cars ferry climate crusaders to a luxury hotel, a private security company shields prying eyes from speeches on political accountability, and billionaire Democratic donors denounce money in politics.”

What they don’t denounce, of course, is growing government control, paired with creeping bureaucratic influence into an ever-expanding segment of the “everyday American’s” life. It’s control by a few, slickly packaged as the “championing” of the many. Who knows? Some progressives may honestly believe it, even though they shouldn’t. It’s like the oldest Scooby Doo episode in the book—flimsy mask and all.

posted April 20, 2015 11:39 PM            

I was hanging on to this for a retrospective of Hillary Clinton's first week, but it's too good to leave on the cutting room floor.

By now, you've no doubt heard that Hillary Clinton is doing her best to avoid interacting with any poor people, by which she means basically everyone. Just this morning, our Presidential candidate who insists that her age is not an obstacle to her abilities, avoided having to do such a common thing as walk across a parking lot by taking up a handicap space. And just yesterday, when sitting down to talk about the needs and wants to "everyday Iowans," it turned out that her staff had not only engaged the group in an intensive interview process, but had actually bussed them in from surrounding cities.

Hillary Clinton's astroturf candidacy is in full swing in Iowa.

Her Tuesday morning visit to a coffee shop in LeClaire, Iowa was staged from beginning to end, according to Austin Bird, one of the men pictured sitting at the table with Mrs. Clinton.

Bird told Daily Mail Online that campaign staffer Troy Price called and asked him and two other young people to meet him Tuesday morning at a restaurant in Davenport, a nearby city.

Price then drove them to the coffee house to meet Clinton after vetting them for about a half-hour.

The three got the lion's share of Mrs. Clinton's time and participated in what breathless news reports described as a 'roundtable'– the first of many in her brief Iowa campaign swing.

Bird himself is a frequent participant in Iowa Democratic Party events. He interned with President Obama's 2012 presidential re-election campaign, and was tapped to chauffeur Vice President Joe Biden in October 2014 when he visited Davenport.

'What happened is, we were just asked to be there by Troy,' Bird said Wednesday in a phone interview.

posted April 23, 2015 09:39 AM            

Clinton rules mean they feel entitled to …well…everything.

Now that Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy, even the mainstream media has started to raise questions regarding the Clinton Foundation. In the wake of reports of pay-to-play donations made to the foundation from rogue nations and Iranian sanction busters, Reuters has investigated the disclosures made by the foundation for years and found them wanting.

From Jonathan Allen:

Hillary Clinton's family's charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.

The foundation and its list of donors have been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks. Republican critics say the foundation makes Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, vulnerable to undue influence. Her campaign team calls these claims "absurd conspiracy theories."

The charities' errors generally take the form of under-reporting or over-reporting, by millions of dollars, donations from foreign governments, or in other instances omitting to break out government donations entirely when reporting revenue, the charities confirmed to Reuters.

The errors, which have not been previously reported, appear on the form 990s that all non-profit organizations must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service to maintain their tax-exempt status. A charity must show copies of the forms to anyone who wants to see them to understand how the charity raises and spends money. (snip)

For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.

Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation's work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation's annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.

So the foundation was reasonably transparent until 2010 and then went “dark” when it came to donations from foreign governments. These types of donations have become controversial since they include donations from governments run by dictators and human rights violators -- including regimes that oppress women, gays and minorities. They also include donations from governments that are unfriendly to America -- but, apparently, friendly to the Clintons.

The fact that the disclosures stopped in 2010 suggests the foundation changed its policies reporting tax returns as Hillary Clinton approached the “start date” of announcing her campaign fro presidency.

posted April 23, 2015 01:08 PM            

Let them eat yellow cake.

A blockbuster report in the New York Times today details how Hillary Clinton’s non-profit organization raked in millions from the Russian nuclear industry while Hillary was negotiating a deal to allow the Russians to acquire Uranium One, one of the world’s largest uranium mining companies:

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

In a pattern that is becoming all too familiar, Hillary Clinton never disclosed these contributions to the White House or State Department officials.

Because Uranium One owns uranium mills and tens of thousands of acres throughout several U.S. states, the Russian acquisition had to be approved by U.S. government officials. Before they could approve the deal, those U.S. officials–who reported to Hillary Clinton–had to certify that the deal would not jeopardize American national security by giving Russia an effective global monopoly on uranium supplies:

Still, the ultimate authority to approve or reject the Russian acquisition rested with the cabinet officials on the foreign investment committee, including Mrs. Clinton — whose husband was collecting millions of dollars in donations from people associated with Uranium One.

It appears, though, that millions in undisclosed payments to Hillary’s foundation weren’t enough for the 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful. As is often the case with the Clinton, a six-figure speech by Bill Clinton was also scheduled right after the Russians agreed to buy Uranium One:

Amid this influx of Uranium One-connected money, Mr. Clinton was invited to speak in Moscow in June 2010, the same month Rosatom struck its deal for a majority stake in Uranium One.

The $500,000 fee — among Mr. Clinton’s highest — was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin that has invited world leaders, including Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, to speak at its annual investor conference.

The blockbuster NYT report doesn’t just impact Hillary’s presidential hopes; it could also affect the ongoing nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran since Russia is Iran’s primary supplier of enriched uranium. Iran’s sole operating nuclear power facility in Bushehr gets the bulk of its nuclear fuel from Russia. Rosatom, the Russian uranium supplier, also struck a deal with Iran late last year to build eight more nuclear reactors, all of which would be fueled exclusively from Rosatom enriched uranium supplies–supplies which may well have been obtained through Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One.

The former secretary of state has remained relatively silent on the proposed Iranian nuclear deal thus far, apparently for good reason. Her opposition could sink Rosatom’s 2014 deal to provide enriched uranium to eight Iranian nuclear reactors for their entire life cycles, potentially enraging the wealthy investors who funneled millions to her family’s foundation. And if she clearly endorses the deal and Iran ends up using the enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon, opponents could blame Hillary for approving the deal that enabled Russia to provide all that uranium to the Iranians.

posted April 25, 2015 01:18 PM            

MITCHELL: [A]mong [Kazakh President Nursultan] Nazarbayev's critics: Hillary Clinton, who along with other members of Congress sounded alarms about Kazakhstan's serious corruption in this letter to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. Still, even after she started running for president last year, her husband hosted Giustra and the head of Kazakhstan's uranium agency at their Chappaqua home. A week later, the State Department condemned Kazakhstan in its annual human rights report for serious abuses and even petty censorship of the website for Borat, the satirical movie about Kazakhstan. (What Mitchell left out since she had an agenda, is that this dude was there to try and buy a stake in Westinghouse and Clinton flatly refused to lobby for him, stated by both parties. What he did get was $4 million to help fight AIDS and an AIDS treatment facility in Kazakhstan.)

MITCHELL: Tonight, a spokesman for President Clinton points out that the Bush administration has hosted Kazakhstan's leader and that Clinton's praise for him was only pro forma, being polite.

And Clinton's friend Frank Giustra tells NBC News Bill Clinton did not play a role in the uranium deal, which he says was substantially completed before they arrived in Kazakhstan. And all involved deny any quid pro quo.

posted April 25, 2015 04:51 PM            

Listen, there's between 20 and 40 corporations which gave large amounts of cash to the Clintons...immediately before or immediately after Hillary ran interference for them to receive lucrative foreign contracts. That list includes General Electric/Jeffery Immelt who donated heavily to the Clintons in return for a multi-BILLION dollar contract with a foreign government.

posted April 26, 2015 03:16 AM            

MEANWHILE direct quotes betray how happy Muchele Bachmann is at the prospect of the destruction of America .. the Second Coming is right behind!
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/25/1379546/-Michele-Bachmann-says-the-Rapture-is-coming-Rejoice?detail=facebook_sf

posted April 26, 2015 11:04 AM            

Michelle Bachmann isn't going to fly. But, you can get back to me on Michelle when:

She's Sec of State and extorting foreign governments to give her corrupt donors lucrative contracts.

When she's a partner in a global charity scam which only passes through 15% of the donations of $BILLIONS to the needy who are supposed to get helped, using the rest to pay for a lavish lifestyle for herself, her children, her friends, her political supporters, her husband...and other relatives.

Yeah, get back to me when you see Michelle Bachmann doing any of that.

In the meantime, here's more information on the Clinton corruption machine you, other usual suspects and Clinton Kool-Aid drinkers are desperate to sweep under the rug. But that's not going to happen.

April 26, 2015
The Clintons' Little Tin Box
Clarice Feldman

This week seems to spell the beginning of the end for Hillary’s campaign and two show tunes keep popping into my head unbidden: “Little Tin Box” from the musical Fiorello and “How Long Has this Been Going on?”

Every five minutes it seems the scandal deepens as it is beyond question that the Clinton family (including new to the game Chelsea) have been using their tax-exempt charity the Clinton Foundation to enrich themselves, expand their power, and sell out U.S. interests. The only questions remaining are when will she drop out of the race and can we expect a thorough investigation of the Foundation with appropriate consequence ,

In the song “A Little Tin Box”, the corrupt politicians sing where they kept the bribes paid to them:

Into a little tin box,

A little tin box

That a little tin key unlocks.

There is nothing unorthodox

About a little tin box.

In a little tin box,

A little tin box

There's a cushion for life's rude shocks.

There is faith, hope and charity,

Hard-won prosperity,

In a little tin box.

And here’s what we learned went into the Clinton Foundation’s “Little Tin Box”

1.) Millions from a Russian named Pinchuk, who trades with Iran:

Victor Pinchuk is a businessman active in Ukraine who owns the EastOne Group investing company and the Interpipe Group, Ukraine's biggest pipe manufacturer. He is the second richest man in Ukraine and is heavily involved in politics as a former member of parliament who is also married to the daughter of a former Ukrainian president. He is also the largest individual donor to the Clinton Foundation.

And not just the Foundation, but also the spinoff Clinton Global Initiative received millions from Pinchuk while Hillary was Secretary of State. He should have but was never sanctioned for these trades.

2.) Millions from Russians who sought and obtained the rights to 20% of U.S. uranium resources:

Uranium likely to find its way to Iran. Hillary approved the sale while secretary of state:

Hillary Clinton’s State Department was part of a panel that approved the sale of one of America’s largest uranium mines at the same time a foundation controlled by the seller’s chairman was making donations to a Clinton family charity, records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal show.

The $610 million sale of 51% of Uranium One to a unit of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear agency, was approved in 2010 by a U.S. federal committee that assesses the security implications of foreign investments. The State Department, which Mrs. Clinton then ran, is one of its members.

Between 2008 and 2012, the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, a project of the Clinton Foundation, received $2.35 million from the Fernwood Foundation, a family charity run by Ian Telfer, chairman of Uranium One before its sale, according to Canada Revenue Agency records.

These contributions were not publicly disclosed.

3.) Millions were paid to Bill Clinton for speeches by big Foundation donors while Hillary served as secretary of state, aspects of which were not made clear by the foundation's public filings. These payments raise numerous conflict of interest issues as do the millions paid directly to the Foundation by foreigners and foreign governments.

Bill Clinton was paid more than $100 million for speeches between 2001 and 2013, according to federal financial disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton during her years as a senator and as secretary of state.[snip] The Post analysis shows that, among the approximately 420 organizations that paid Bill Clinton to speak during those years, 67 were also foundation donors that each gave the charity at least $10,000.***Awww gee and I said 20-40! Guess I underestimated a bunch!***

Many of those funders were major financial institutions that are viewed suspiciously by liberals whom Clinton has been courting as she seeks to secure the Democratic nomination — and avoid a vigorous primary challenge from the populist left.

Four major financial firms — Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup — collectively have given between $2.75 million and $11.5 million to the charity, which is now called the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Between 2001 and 2013, their combined speech payments to Bill Clinton came to more than $3 million.

The Post analysis also revealed aspects of Bill Clinton’s paid speaking career during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department that were not clear from her public filings.”

And from Reuters:

For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.

Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation's work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation's annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.

4.) Under scrutiny the Foundation will refile “at least” 5 years of past tax returns

By its own reports, which the Foundation concedes substantially understate the contributions, it received half a billion dollars in donations -- surely that would have covered the salary of a decent accountant for the past 5 years. The only reasonable conclusion was the Foundation was trying to obscure from scrutiny what was going on.

5.) The Clintons even profited from the disaster in Haiti, collecting millions for earthquake relief and then enriching themselves by insuring that the big rebuilding contracts went to their supporters or donors:

Controversy surrounding the Clintons only deepened with the recent revelation, contained in an upcoming book by Peter Schweizer, that Tony Rodham — Hillary Clinton’s younger brother — serves on the advisory board of a U.S.-based company that in 2012 won one of Haiti’s first two gold-mining permits in 50 years. After objection from the Haitian Senate, the permits have been placed on hold.

“Neither Bill Clinton nor the brother of Hillary Clinton are individuals who share the interests of the Haitian people,” said Samuel Nesner, an anti-mining activist who thinks mining poses great environmental risks and will mainly benefit foreign investors. “They are part of the elite class who are operating to exploit the Haitian people.”

6.) The Clintons seem to have directly dipped into the box to sustain their lavish lifestyle, not for charitable purposes. For example reports indicated Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea together used $8 million in 2013 for their travel expenses:

Overall, the administrative expenses are mindboggling, as The Federalist reports:

Between 2009 and 2012, the Clinton Foundation raised over $500 million dollars according to a review of IRS documents by The Federalist (2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008). A measly 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went towards programmatic grants. More than $25 million went to fund travel expenses. Nearly $110 million went toward employee salaries and benefits. And a whopping $290 million during that period — nearly 60 percent of all money raised — was classified merely as “other expenses.” Official IRS forms do not list cigar or dry-cleaning expenses as a specific line item. The Clinton Foundation may well be saving lives, but it seems odd that the costs of so many life-saving activities would be classified by the organization itself as just random, miscellaneous expenses.

Even Common Cause, an outfit which was supposedly created to be a watchdog for clean government but is usually an attack dog for Democrats, is calling a foul:

The financial issues plaguing Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign have become too much even for liberal groups, and now Common Cause is calling for an independent audit of donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Amid suggestions that foreign governments donated to the foundation in hopes of getting special treatment from President Obama’s State Department when Clinton was his top diplomat, the group on Friday said a “thorough review” is needed.

7.) They used the Foundation, which taxpayers fund to the tune of $16 million through Bill’s “office expense” allowance”, to employ and further enrich their operatives:

[S]ources say that several Bill Clinton staffers who have been paid through the GSA have also been paid through the foundation or his personal office. They include Doug Band, the former White House aide who previously helped run the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, and senior foundation official Laura Graham, whose foundation salary increased from $74,000 in 2005 to more than $180,000 in 2013, according to tax filings. Another Clinton insider believed to have been on the GSA payroll is Bill Clinton’s chief of staff Tina Flournoy, a former union official who advised Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign and whose arrival on her husband’s staff in 2012 was seen by some insiders “as Hillary’s planting a sentinel,” according to a report in New York magazine.

8.) There was significant overlap between those who contributed to Hillary and those who contributed to the Foundation.

A Washington Post review of Clinton Foundation data through 2014, found “substantial overlap between the Clinton political machinery and the [F]oundation.” For example, almost half of the major donors who were supporting Ready for Hillary, an organization promoting Mrs. Clinton's anticipated 2016 presidential run, and nearly half of the bundlers from Hillary's 2008 campaign, had given $10,000 or more to the Clinton Foundation, either personally or through foundations or businesses which they themselves headed. As of early 2015, for instance, Clinton friend and fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell had given the Clinton Foundation some $10 million from her eponymous charitable fund. Another leading Clinton supporter, billionaire Haim Saban, had given an estimated $25 million to the Foundation.

Contributions to the Foundation are tax-deductible and didn’t count against campaign contribution limits. Was this a deliberate end run around campaign finance and tax laws?

9.) Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s chief of staff at the Department of State,simultaneously was employed by the Foundation in clear conflict of interest:

Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department was listed as a director at the Clinton Foundation in its corporate records for more than three years after joining the administration, highlighting concerns that Clinton’s aides were too close to the foundation during her tenure.

The “William J. Clinton Foundation Corporation” named Cheryl Mills as one its three directors when it applied for nonprofit corporate status in Florida in June 2009 -- five months after Mills began serving as Clinton’s chief of staff and counsel at the State Department.

[snip]

A spokesperson for the Clinton Foundation did not respond to request for comment on when Mills officially left the organization. Mills said in her own financial disclosures that she stepped down in March of 2009, a little more than a month after she became chief of staff. During that time, Mills was included in correspondence about the State Department’s vetting process for Bill Clinton’s consultancy gigs.

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics counsel under President George W. Bush, said that there could be legal implications if Mills’ role at the Clinton Foundation overlapped with her time at the State Department. Officials are encouraged to step down from any nonprofit boards before joining the government due to the conflict of interest statute.

“It would be highly problematic if she was a director of the foundation and she was participating in State Department decisions that could have a financial benefit to the foundation,” Painter said. “If you did do something that had a direct and predictable financial benefit for the foundation, you get into criminal statutes.”

Painter said officials who keep their roles with a nonprofit are required to recuse themselves from any decisions that could benefit the group.

Mills served as Clinton’s point person on Haiti, helping to direct U.S. funding to economic recovery projects. Bill Clinton was appointed UN envoy to Haiti in 2009, and the Clinton Foundation promoted numerous projects in the country, including ones that involved major foundation donors.

Mills, who left the State Department in 2013, is listed as a current member of the Clinton Foundation board on its website.

The Foundation contends that she resigned before going to State, but her own records say she remained on the Board for over a month after assuming the position at State.

Did the Foundation expend funds to others connected to Hillary in ways not apparent from the late, sloppily prepared filings? We still have no idea who funded Sidney Blumenthal’s private intelligence service Hillary utilized at State, for example.

10.) Fraud and Corrupt Practices Characterize the Foundation’s and the Clintons’ Operations

Financial reporter Charles Ortel has examined the Foundation reports contends there is fraud involved:

1.) What do Clinton Foundation disclosures tell informed readers about the stewardship of billions of dollars in “charitable contributions” sent to Little Rock, to New York City, to Boston, to London, and to Stockholm from numerous donors with modest means, from wealthy and powerful donors, and from a host of governments and government-connected benefactors?

2 .) Did management exercise vigilance to ensure that the Clinton Foundation actually carried out its original and its amended tax-exempt purposes?

3.) Did directors take reasonable care, as fiduciaries, under applicable state, federal, and foreign laws to operate this charity serving, at all times, a public interest?

4) Are all business arrangements with material “related” parties fully and adequately disclosed in annual, publicly available filings that comparable charities regularly complete on time?

Or, do the Clintons, and others who operate the Clinton Foundation, function as Robin Hood in reverse? Do they dupe small, modest income donors to enrich themselves and cronies?

Headline Conclusions of the First Foundation Report

The truth is that it is difficult to perform penetrating analysis of publicly available financial information pertaining to the Clinton Foundation because, so far, it is not technically complete in numerous material respects.

The numbers that the Clinton Foundation supplies to the public in its legally mandated filings do not add up, are frequently incorrect, and appear to be materially misleading. In numerous cases, the Clinton Foundation appears to have followed inconsistent policies adding in appropriate portions of the various activities it pursued around the world to create “consolidated” financial statements.

As the attached report notes, in several instances portions were added only for some of the years in which the entities remained in operation, artificially enhancing purported financial results. In other cases, important elements of activity were improperly characterized and combined.

Meanwhile the Foundation solicits donations even though its informational filings are not in compliance with applicable law. Regulators at Federal, State, Local, and international levels are not doing what they should do to protect the public.

Much has been made of the media’s slow acknowledgement of the Foundation’s corrupt practices. True, in August of 2013, the New York Times did raise some questions about what was going on:

But overall, it and the major media made little of what was obvious to anyone who was paying attention: the Foundation was operating outside the law in numerous respects and the Clintons were profiting mightily from it. Aside from ignoring their filing obligations, noted by Ortel, other conflicts with the law are obvious -- among them:

Their lavish travel and payoffs to friends and operatives employed by the Foundation should have raised eyebrows as being in conflict with the inurement prohibitions of the tax exemption under which the Foundation was operating:

A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization.

Then there’s the question of whether the Foundation’s activities violated the Federal Corrupt Practices Act signed into law by, you guessed it, Bill Clinton.

I seem to recall that her evasive, ever-changing testimony and document expropriation and destruction almost resulted in an indictment against her in the Whitewater investigation but the prosecution declined to seek her indictment then, undoubtedly because it would have been a futile exercise to try the then First Lady before a D.C. jury. Will anyone take action against the Clintons now?

Will this corruption knock her out of the presidential contest? Who on the shallow Democrat bench could the Democrats call on to replace her? Why are the major media suddenly giving this the attention it really deserved while she was secretary of state? Surely, they could have spent a fraction of the time they spent investigating Palin’s emails and Romney’s high school pranks to find out about this big time graftorama?

And when will Congress put some real clamps on tax-exempt corporations -- things like requiring they pay out the trillions of dollars they sit on in ten years’ time unless the corporations are designed to aid a particular, defined charitable institution like a church, hospital, or school. The broader the stated purpose of these outfits, the more likely they exist without scrutiny in perpetuity, fattening their administrators’ pay and doing no good -- like the Ford Foundation, today a big source of anti-American and anti-Israeli funding around the world.

posted April 26, 2015 02:45 PM            

April 26, 2015
Bill Clinton bails out from for-profit college company as Schweizer book highlights hijinks
Thomas Lifson

Laureate Education, Inc., and its subsidiary Laureate International University, are very profitable companies, successfully competing with the higher education cartel. Nonprofit higher education does not like the competition (which doesn’t offer tenure, hire bloated administrative staffs, or focus on obscure and politically correct topics, among other competitiveness-enhancing policies), of course. So what’s a clever and politically sophisticated operation to do? Joshua Green and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg write:

Laureate, which runs for-profit colleges, hired Clinton just as the Obama administration began drafting tougher regulations for federal financial aid that goes to students who attend for-profit colleges. Around the same time, the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions launched an investigation into the industry. In his book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, Schweizer writes that after Bill Clinton accepted the position at Laureate in 2010 in exchange for unspecified payment, his wife “made Laureate part of her State Department Global Partnership.” The State Department subsequently provided tens of millions of dollars to a nonprofit chaired by Becker, the International Youth Foundation.

And now that copies of the Schweizer book are circulating, by sheer coincidence (or so the Clinton campaign would have us believe), it was announced Friday that Bill Clinton would be leaving his position as “honorary chancellor,” with the claim that he all along intended to spend five years there, something that was not announced at the time he took the position, and Laureate started promoting him as affiliated with the organization.

So far, we know only the bare bones of the story. How much Bill was paid, what those State Department grants were used for, what business, if any, there is between the IYF and Laureate itself, and the mechanics of the surge of State department funding for the IYF.