Divernan
Divernan's JournalShock: Bill Clinton offered debate advice to Romney
In September 2012, when Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, spoke at the annual Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York, Mr. Clinton gave him advice backstage about how to appear in command when facing off against Mr. Obama in their coming debates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/us/politics/to-avert-repeat-of-2008-clinton-team-hopes-to-keep-bill-at-his-best.html?_r=0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The Shock: Bill Clinton offered debate advice to Romney headline was used in the HuffPo link to the NYT story. And it IS a shock. More basically, why the hell did Bill Clinton even give Romney, the goddamned Republican candidate, pride of place and a spotlight at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting?
Other excerpts from the linked, long and worth a read, NYT article:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s advisers are once again grappling with how to deploy Mr. Clinton, a strategic imperative that was executed so poorly in 2008 that it resulted in some of the worst moments of her campaign.
Making sure Mr. Clinton has his own campaign aides is a priority: As he has aged and retained a demanding schedule, he has become more dependent on a staff. Mr. Clinton, who has lost more than 20 pounds since 2008, sends an aide to buy his dress shirts at Bergdorf Goodman, and when he steps out of his chauffeured S.U.V., he sometimes spreads his arms awaiting an aide to put his jacket on each arm.
In hopes of collaborating with Mr. Clinton better than in 2008 — if not controlling him outright — advisers to Mrs. Clinton are involving him more closely in early campaign planning, and they are discussing whether to deploy a senior aide to travel with him to keep him focused on his wife’s central message. . . He has said that if his wife wins the White House, he will maintain the family’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and continue to lead the philanthropy.
Mr. Clinton is never as enraged or unpredictable as when his wife comes under attack. He will also remain focused on the Clinton Foundation, which has come under criticism for its fund-raising practices. (While Mrs. Clinton is likely to be campaigning in the next several months, Mr. Clinton will have a packed schedule of foundation-related events, including a big trip to Africa with supporters of his charity.) He runs the risk of reinforcing a Republican argument that the Clintons are America’s baby boomer past and do not represent a generational change in leadership. And he remains a wild card: What part would he play if he returned to the White House as first gentleman?
Basically, it appears that Bill will be packed off the campaign trail and even out of the country via the boutique family foundation(the usual high profile, luxurious meeting - private jets, 5 star hotel/presidential suites/ large personal retinue of handlers); and should HRC make it to the Oval Office, he'll be staying in Chappaqua! So it wouldn't be "two for the price of one" this time around.
Old time machine Dem caught with most fraudulent petition signatures ever.
This incident is a fine example of Allegheny County's (that's Pittsburgh and its suburbs) problem - a 72 year old Machine politician who is so addicted to the perks and power of holding elective office he doesn't have the sense to frigging retire. Politicians like this turn younger generations off from voting at all, let alone registering as a Democrat. Having served 7 terms in office in the State House gets him a lifetime state pension of 2.5 x 13 years( i.e, 33%) x the annual average of his last 3 years' salary in office. Figure around $72,000 a year plus an increment for being a committee chairman to make around $75,000 a year x 33% =s $24,750 per year pension, plus lifetime full health insurance including prescription, dental ($3000 per year) and eyeglasses. Next add in his social security.
He turned in petition sheets with 358 signatures. 343 were challenged and he dropped out of the primary rather than wait to be humiliated in court and then thrown off the ballot. What were some of the names? Australian actors Russell Crowe & Naomi Watts, Pennsylvania poet laureate Sam Hazo, pioneer sports medicine physician Freddie Fu, Steeler great Jerome Bettis, county council president John De Fazio - none of whom live in Robinson's district. One might place Allegheny County Councilman Bill Robinson’s nominating petitions among the great works of political fiction were they not so unimaginative and repetitive.
For campaigners too lazy to comb the streets gathering signatures, the time-honored shortcut always has been to copy names from a list of registered voters. Maybe you switch hands as you copy the names to mask their single source, but you just hope that nobody checks back with these people and that they’re not dead. We’ve seen the occasional forgery conviction for such trickery, but at least those showed real effort.
What Mr. Robinson turned in, however, is downright embarrassing for someone with more than 40 years in politics. The Hill District Democrat has served on city council, in the state House of Representatives and on county council, so he’s a veteran of dozens of campaigns. Yet he turned in sheets, endorsed with his signature, that are so clearly fictional that one can only look at them in awe.
Do the challengers have a strong case? I don’t know. Is the Monongahela damp? Are there any deer in Mt. Lebanon?
It’s hard to know where to begin. One is tempted to start with the Australian-born actors, Naomi Watts and Russel (sic) Crowe, whose names stand amid the muddle of signatures on Mr. Robinson’s petitions that appear to have been written by a single hand. We might also note that his own name appears at his address on four different pages.
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/brian-oneill/2015/03/22/Brian-O-Neill-It-s-hard-to-find-right-name-for-Bill-Robinson-s-petitions/stories/201503220101
Till Clinton Foundation expediter's fees brought in millions.
Funny thing - how did all these foreign nations ever manage to make any charitable contributions re national disasters (like Haiti) before Bill showed them the light?
THENARDIER & CHORUS
Servant to the poor. Butler to the great.
MME. THENARDIER
Hypocrite and toady and inebriate!
THENARDIER & CHORUS
Everybody bless the landlord!
Everybody bless his spouse!
THENARDIER
Everybody raise a glass
MME. THENARDIER
Raise it up the master's arse.
ALL
Everybody raise a glass to the master of the house!
http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/lesmiserables/masterofthehouse.htm
Clinton Foundation will broker the deal for a generous percentage!
The Clinton Foundation's theme song should be Les Miserables' Master of the House.
Master of the house
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm
Tells a saucy tale
Makes a little stir
1 percent appreciates a bon-viveur
Glad to do a friend a favor
Doesn't cost me to be nice
But nothing gets you nothing
Everything has got a little price!
Master of the house
Keeper of the zoo
Ready to relieve 'em
Of a $mil or two
Skimming off the top
Making up the weight
Pickin' up their knick-knacks
When they can't see straight
Everybody loves a landlord
Everybody's bosom friend
I do whatever pleases
Jesus! Won't I bleed 'em in the end!
Residents are more than welcome
Bridal suite is occupied
Reasonable charges
Plus some little extras on the side!
Charge 'em for the lice
Extra for the mice
Two percent for looking in the mirror twice
Here a little slice
There a little cut
Three percent for sleeping with the window shut
When it comes to fixing prices
There are a lot of tricks he knows
How it all increases
All those bits and pieces
Jesus! It's amazing how it grows!
Yup. The Clinton Global Initiative shoehorned Rodham into a sweet deal!
From the OP's link:
In interviews with The Washington Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative — an offshoot of the Clinton Foundation that critics have long alleged invites a blurring of its charitable mission with the business interests of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their corporate donors.
What next, a similar lucrative deal for Chelsea's ex-convict father in law? He still owes over $9 million to the victims of the frauds for which he was convicted and served time.
You put yourself up for president, you ask to be judged!
As you full well realize from reading my post to which you responded, I did allow for varying situations, such as financial welfare of children and/or the cheated on spouse. Anyone who puts themselves up to run for president realizes they will be judged on their past actions and the values by which they live.
Tell me, hypothetically, if you had a daughter or a sister with HRC's intelligence and superior education(Yale Law degree), and demonstrated ability to make more money than her husband, would you encourage her to stay with a serial adulterous husband who not only repeatedly cheated on her, but then lied to her about it, and set her up to be humiliated on a national and international level?
I wouldn't! The psychological abuse of decades of rejection (You're not enough woman for me, I HAD to find other women) has shaped her personality, just as surely as when a parent psychologically rejects and humiliates their child. She projects out her decades of repressed anger (at the most basic betrayal a woman can experience) onto her husband's sexual victims, her political opponents (her list keeping with the intent of wreaking revenge), and pushing bloodthirsty, but oh-so-profitable military solutions to complex political problems.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14401-hillary-clintons-legacy-as-secretary-of-state
Hillary Clinton leaves her position as Secretary of State with a legacy of supporting autocratic regimes and occupation armies, opposing enforcement of international humanitarian law, undermining arms control and defending military solutions to complex political problems(writes Truthout's Stephen Zunes, describing her complicity in the murder of thousands, most notably in Libya and Syria.)
She was appointed to her position following eight years in the US Senate, during which she became an outspoken supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, lied about Iraq's military capabilities to frighten the public into supporting the illegal war, unleashed repeated attacks against the United Nations, opposed restrictions on land mines and cluster bombs, defended war crimes by allied right-wing governments and largely embraced Bush's unilateralist agenda.
“During the Arab Spring, Clinton pushed for stronger US support for pro-Western dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, as well as the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara,” Zunes continues. “She was a major proponent of NATO’s military intervention in Libya’s civil war and has encouraged a more active US role in the Syrian conflict.”
“We came, we saw, he died,” Clinton joked in response to the barbaric murder of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of the CIA’s cutthroat (and beheading) mercenaries. Her sneering comment should not come as a surprise, however. In October, 2011, she openly called for his assassination. “This is Libya’s moment. This is Libya’s victory. The future belongs to you,” Clinton said during a visit to the embattled country. “Libya’s victory” resulted in the murder of 30,000 Libyans, most innocent men, women, and children.
And she promotes herself as a champion of women & children, NOW, but not way back.
There's that infamous case in Arkansas where she got her client whom she believed guilty of raping a 12 year old girl off for several months "time served" after the prosecution lost a piece of evidence. Specifically the lab tested a piece of the girl's underpants and matched results to the accused, but then lost the piece of cloth. Years later Hillary laughed about the case in an interview, to the effect that her client passed a lie detector test, which forever destroyed any faith she had in lie detectors.
She squandered a free clinic's limited funds to fly from Arkansas to New York,to get a letter from a hired gun medical expert to intimidate the Arkansas local yokel DA into settling the case for lesser included charges. And I repeat, later she laughed about it.
Here's an article which thoroughly details this ugly, ugly incident:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2014/06/26/hillary-rodham-clinton-and-the-ethics-of-a-rape-defense/
A few excerpts:
The victim, then a twelve year old girl, was raped by two adult men. She had had no sexual experience before the assault. She spent five days in a coma, months recovering from the beating that accompanied the rape, and over ten years in therapy. At first, she failed a polygraph test administered to her by police, because she didn’t understand a sex-related question posed to her. Once that question was explained, she passed the test. The victim then positively identified her two attackers through one-way glass, and they were arrested. A medical examination was consistent with rape, and police recovered a pair of men’s undershorts containing biological evidence at the scene of the crime.
Arkansas reporter Roy Reed, while researching an article on the Clintons for Esquire years ago (the article was never published), taped an interview with Mrs. Clinton. The Daily Beast obtained a copy. On the tapes Mrs. Clinton, who interestingly speaks with a Southern drawl, appears to acknowledge that she was aware of her client’s guilt, brags about successfully getting the only piece of physical evidence (the undershorts) ruled inadmissible, and laughs about it all whimsically. To wit:
“He [the rapist] took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” Clinton says on the recording, while chuckling;
W/ Clintons, it's always:"2 for the price of 1" & that's no bargain.
Except for their corporate/One Percent/Wall Street backers/puppet masters. - oh, and let us not forget the foreign governments which have "donated" to the boutique Clinton Family Foundation. One hand washes the other in all the Clinton entanglements.
And aside from all the critical and major policies at stake where the Clintons owe their allegiance to the aforesaid elites (like Keystone Pipeline, TPP and SCOTUS appointments), there's always that cringe one feels at the thought of Bill back in the White House - as in a new verse to an old song,
"Mothers, don't let your daughters grow up to be White House interns."
HRC's corporate donors will call in their quid pro quos on SCOTUS appointments.
HRC's supporters on DU seem to believe their strongest argument for her candidacy is:
Oh!, Oh! But what about SCOTUS?
It is precisely because SCOTUS appointments are so important that all of the quid pro quos purchased via millions and millions in corporate & Wall Street sponsorship for her speeches and the millions and millions of "donations" cough/bribes/cough to the boutique Clinton Family Foundation by aforesaid corporations and foreign countries, will be called in when it comes to SCOTUS appointments.
No way in hell would these power houses stand for HRC appointing any Justice who might agree to reverse SCOTUS's rulings in:
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) the Supreme Court of the United States held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, overruling Austin (1990) and partly overruling McConnell (2003).
Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana (2012). U.S. Supreme Court summary reversal of a decision by the Montana Supreme Court holding that Citizens United did not preclude a Montana state law prohibiting corporate spending in elections.
HRC's corporate donors will call in their quid pro quos on SCOTUS appointments.
HRC's supporters on DU seem to believe their strongest argument for her candidacy is:
Oh!, Oh! But what about SCOTUS?
It is precisely because SCOTUS appointments are so important that all of the quid pro quos purchased via millions and millions in corporate & Wall Street sponsorship for her speeches and the millions and millions of "donations" cough/bribes/cough to the boutique Clinton Family Foundation by aforesaid corporations and foreign countries, will be called in when it comes to SCOTUS appointments.
No way in hell would these power houses stand for HRC appointing any Justice who might agree to reverse SCOTUS's rulings in:
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) the Supreme Court of the United States held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, overruling Austin (1990) and partly overruling McConnell (2003).
Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana (2012). U.S. Supreme Court summary reversal of a decision by the Montana Supreme Court holding that Citizens United did not preclude a Montana state law prohibiting corporate spending in elections.
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