Arrogants & Scandal Rock Hillary...
Aug 26, 2016 16:13:28 #
Don G. Dinsdale
Loc: El Cajon, CA (San Diego County)
Scandals Rock the Clintons
Charles Krauthammer - Aug 26, 2016 - Newsmax
‘Epic’ Quality of Clinton Corruption Revealed
Bernie Sanders never understood the epic quality of the Clinton scandals. In his first debate, he famously dismissed the email issue, it being beneath the dignity of a great revolutionary to deal in things so tawdry and straightforward.
Sanders failed to understand that Clinton scandals are sprawling, multilayered, complex things. They defy time and space. They grow and burrow.
The central problem with Hillary Clinton's emails was not the classified material. It wasn't the headline-making charge by the FBI director of her extreme carelessness in handling it.
That's a serious offense, to be sure, and could very well have been grounds for indictment. And it did damage her politically, exposing her sense of above-the-law entitlement and —in her dodges and prevarications, her parsing and evasions — demonstrating her arm's-length relationship with the truth.
But it was always something of a sideshow. The real question wasn't classification but: Why did she have a private server in the first place? She obviously lied about the purpose. It wasn't convenience. It was concealment. What exactly was she hiding?
Was this merely the prudent paranoia of someone who habitually walks the line of legality? After all, if she controls the server, she controls the evidence, and can destroy it — as she did 30,000 emails — at will.
But destroy what? Remember: She set up the system before even taking office. It's clear what she wanted to protect from scrutiny: Clinton Foundation business.
The foundation is a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity, an opaque and elaborate mechanism for sucking money from the rich and the tyrannous to be channeled to Clinton Inc. Its purpose is to maintain the Clintons' lifestyle (offices, travel, accommodations, etc.), secure profitable connections, produce favorable publicity and reliably employ a vast entourage of retainers, ready to serve today and at the coming Clinton Restoration.
Now we learn how the whole machine operated. Two weeks ago, emails began dribbling out showing foundation officials contacting State Department counterparts to ask favors for foundation "friends." Say, a meeting with the State Department's "substance person" on Lebanon for one particularly generous Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire.
Big deal, said the Clinton defenders. Low-level stuff. No involvement of the secretary herself. Until — drip, drip — the next batch revealed foundation requests for face time with the secretary herself. Such as one from the crown prince of Bahrain.
To be sure, Bahrain, home of the Fifth Fleet, is an important Persian Gulf ally. Its crown prince shouldn't have to go through a foundation — to which his government donated at least $50,000 — to get to the secretary. The fact that he did is telling.
Now, a further drip: The Associated Press found that over half the private interests who were granted phone or personal contact with Secretary Clinton — 85 of 154 — were donors to the foundation. Total contributions? As much as $156 million.
Current Clinton response? There was no quid pro quo.
What a long way we've come. This is the very last line of defense. Yes, it's obvious that access and influence were sold. But no one has demonstrated definitively that the donors received something tangible of value — a pipeline, a permit, a waiver, a favorable regulatory ruling — in exchange.
It's hard to believe the Clinton folks would be stupid enough to commit something so blatant to writing. Nonetheless, there might be an email allusion to some such conversation. With thousands more emails to come, who knows what lies beneath.
On the face of it, it's rather odd that a visible quid pro quo is the bright line for malfeasance. Anything short of that — the country is awash with political money that buys access — is deemed acceptable. As Donald Trump says of his own donation-giving days, "when I need something from them . . . I call them, they are there for me." This is considered routine and unremarkable.
It's not until a Rolex shows up on your wrist that you get indicted. Or you are found to have dangled a Senate appointment for cash. Then, like Rod Blagojevich, you go to jail. (He got 14 years.)
Yet we are hardly bothered by the routine practice of presidents rewarding big donors with cushy ambassadorships, appointments to portentous boards or invitations to state dinners.
The bright line seems to be outright bribery. Anything short of that is considered — not just for the Clintons, for everyone — acceptable corruption.
It's a sorry standard. And right now it is Hillary Clinton's saving grace.
http://www.newsmax.com/CharlesKrauthammer/email-scandals/2016/08/26/id/745349/#ixzz4ITDQU8W8
Emails Finally Expose Clinton Corruption
David Limbaugh - Aug 26, 2016 - Newsmax
Hold on; we may finally be getting some fireworks in this lackluster presidential campaign — as the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be gathering steam.
Could the Clintons finally have to face the music for their adult-lifetime of corruption? Is it possible that Hillary Clinton's lifelong scheme to be America's first female president could be derailed by this power couple's wanton venality?
I've watched closely through the years the Clintons' uncanny agility at hurdling real scandals and coming out almost unscathed. Yes, Bill Clinton was impeached, but what a dud that turned out to be, with Clinton rising to the figure of beloved statesman among Democrats and his accusers being painted as petty partisans.
There has been no justice, and they have made off like bandits ever since. One might argue that it's unfair to impute Bill Clinton's misdeeds to his wife, but but it's not a matter of imputation. Hillary Clinton has been integrally involved every step of the way — from enabler to enforcer to joint participant.
Don't ever forget her complicity, such as her leading role in destroying the train of women who dared to blow the whistle on him.
From the beginning, these two have stepped all over people (Travelgate) and mutually abused .and destroyed Bill's harassment victims. But do you remember the grating mantra of the Clinton-guarding media? "These are private matters that have nothing to do with his public life. Private conduct is irrelevant to one's fitness for public office."
Well, these disgraceful hacks don't have that excuse in their arsenal of dodges this time. There is no way even a journalism school valedictorian could credibly argue that the Clinton Foundation graft didn't directly involve the public interest.
The media and Democratic Party's joint alibis for the Clintons through the years have puffed the Clintons up with a sense of invincibility. The couple have to believe there is nothing they could do that would bring them down.
When I first heard about the foundation's influence peddling, I had little doubt there was truth to it, but I had no expectation that anything would come of it. In a sense, the Clintons have benefited from the plethora of charges leveled against them over the years.
After a while, these allegations — no matter how credible — become just noise and are easily characterized as another chapter in a decades-long partisan witch hunt.
It's awfully convenient for the Clintons and their liberal hatchet men to paint every scandal as a politically motivated slander, but when the media and the Democratic Party themselves always refuse to put truth above their own ideological and political interests, it's inevitable that only Republicans would bring these charges.
But the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be different.
It is objectively true that the Clintons have become mega-millionaires since the close of Bill's second term — and they've done it through exorbitant speaking fees, which, absent other consideration, couldn't possibly benefit the payers commensurate to their payments, and bizarre contributions to their foundation by foreign interests that had unusual access to Hillary's State Department.
Bill Clinton flippantly dismissed the suggestion of any quid pro quo, saying there is no evidence that any of the donors received anything for their donations. When asked whether there is at least an appearance of impropriety, he said, "I'm not responsible for anybody else's perception."
It couldn't be more fitting that he was the first postmodern president.
He lent Oval Office credence to the demonic lie that words have no meaning apart from what people choose individually to assign to them. He's unctuously transitioned from "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is" to "I can't be held accountable for your accurate perception that my wife and I are wholly corrupt and have not only used our public positions to financially profit but also compromised and damaged the nation's interests in the process."
Just think about the charge that Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain secured a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that led to her approval of certain extremely controversial arms sales to Bahrain after his kingdom donated up to $150,000 directly to the Clinton Foundation and some $32 million to the Clinton Global Initiative.
This alone would be enough to bring down a deified Roman emperor.
The Associated Press reported that more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state donated to the Clinton Foundation either individually or through related entities. Clinton apologists are already trying to tell us there's nothing to see here, but sentient human beings know better.
No president in modern history, including Richard Nixon, has been the scandal virtuoso that both of the Clintons are in their own right.
The jig just may be up.
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange promises more email dumps that will bring Hillary Clinton down. Wouldn't it be the profoundest poetic justice if the Clintons were done in by the very emails Hillary thought she had deep-sixed months ago?
http://www.newsmax.com/Limbaugh/bill-emails-foundation/2016/08/26/id/745317/#ixzz4ITEZunCx
Charles Krauthammer - Aug 26, 2016 - Newsmax
‘Epic’ Quality of Clinton Corruption Revealed
Bernie Sanders never understood the epic quality of the Clinton scandals. In his first debate, he famously dismissed the email issue, it being beneath the dignity of a great revolutionary to deal in things so tawdry and straightforward.
Sanders failed to understand that Clinton scandals are sprawling, multilayered, complex things. They defy time and space. They grow and burrow.
The central problem with Hillary Clinton's emails was not the classified material. It wasn't the headline-making charge by the FBI director of her extreme carelessness in handling it.
That's a serious offense, to be sure, and could very well have been grounds for indictment. And it did damage her politically, exposing her sense of above-the-law entitlement and —in her dodges and prevarications, her parsing and evasions — demonstrating her arm's-length relationship with the truth.
But it was always something of a sideshow. The real question wasn't classification but: Why did she have a private server in the first place? She obviously lied about the purpose. It wasn't convenience. It was concealment. What exactly was she hiding?
Was this merely the prudent paranoia of someone who habitually walks the line of legality? After all, if she controls the server, she controls the evidence, and can destroy it — as she did 30,000 emails — at will.
But destroy what? Remember: She set up the system before even taking office. It's clear what she wanted to protect from scrutiny: Clinton Foundation business.
The foundation is a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity, an opaque and elaborate mechanism for sucking money from the rich and the tyrannous to be channeled to Clinton Inc. Its purpose is to maintain the Clintons' lifestyle (offices, travel, accommodations, etc.), secure profitable connections, produce favorable publicity and reliably employ a vast entourage of retainers, ready to serve today and at the coming Clinton Restoration.
Now we learn how the whole machine operated. Two weeks ago, emails began dribbling out showing foundation officials contacting State Department counterparts to ask favors for foundation "friends." Say, a meeting with the State Department's "substance person" on Lebanon for one particularly generous Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire.
Big deal, said the Clinton defenders. Low-level stuff. No involvement of the secretary herself. Until — drip, drip — the next batch revealed foundation requests for face time with the secretary herself. Such as one from the crown prince of Bahrain.
To be sure, Bahrain, home of the Fifth Fleet, is an important Persian Gulf ally. Its crown prince shouldn't have to go through a foundation — to which his government donated at least $50,000 — to get to the secretary. The fact that he did is telling.
Now, a further drip: The Associated Press found that over half the private interests who were granted phone or personal contact with Secretary Clinton — 85 of 154 — were donors to the foundation. Total contributions? As much as $156 million.
Current Clinton response? There was no quid pro quo.
What a long way we've come. This is the very last line of defense. Yes, it's obvious that access and influence were sold. But no one has demonstrated definitively that the donors received something tangible of value — a pipeline, a permit, a waiver, a favorable regulatory ruling — in exchange.
It's hard to believe the Clinton folks would be stupid enough to commit something so blatant to writing. Nonetheless, there might be an email allusion to some such conversation. With thousands more emails to come, who knows what lies beneath.
On the face of it, it's rather odd that a visible quid pro quo is the bright line for malfeasance. Anything short of that — the country is awash with political money that buys access — is deemed acceptable. As Donald Trump says of his own donation-giving days, "when I need something from them . . . I call them, they are there for me." This is considered routine and unremarkable.
It's not until a Rolex shows up on your wrist that you get indicted. Or you are found to have dangled a Senate appointment for cash. Then, like Rod Blagojevich, you go to jail. (He got 14 years.)
Yet we are hardly bothered by the routine practice of presidents rewarding big donors with cushy ambassadorships, appointments to portentous boards or invitations to state dinners.
The bright line seems to be outright bribery. Anything short of that is considered — not just for the Clintons, for everyone — acceptable corruption.
It's a sorry standard. And right now it is Hillary Clinton's saving grace.
http://www.newsmax.com/CharlesKrauthammer/email-scandals/2016/08/26/id/745349/#ixzz4ITDQU8W8
Emails Finally Expose Clinton Corruption
David Limbaugh - Aug 26, 2016 - Newsmax
Hold on; we may finally be getting some fireworks in this lackluster presidential campaign — as the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be gathering steam.
Could the Clintons finally have to face the music for their adult-lifetime of corruption? Is it possible that Hillary Clinton's lifelong scheme to be America's first female president could be derailed by this power couple's wanton venality?
I've watched closely through the years the Clintons' uncanny agility at hurdling real scandals and coming out almost unscathed. Yes, Bill Clinton was impeached, but what a dud that turned out to be, with Clinton rising to the figure of beloved statesman among Democrats and his accusers being painted as petty partisans.
There has been no justice, and they have made off like bandits ever since. One might argue that it's unfair to impute Bill Clinton's misdeeds to his wife, but but it's not a matter of imputation. Hillary Clinton has been integrally involved every step of the way — from enabler to enforcer to joint participant.
Don't ever forget her complicity, such as her leading role in destroying the train of women who dared to blow the whistle on him.
From the beginning, these two have stepped all over people (Travelgate) and mutually abused .and destroyed Bill's harassment victims. But do you remember the grating mantra of the Clinton-guarding media? "These are private matters that have nothing to do with his public life. Private conduct is irrelevant to one's fitness for public office."
Well, these disgraceful hacks don't have that excuse in their arsenal of dodges this time. There is no way even a journalism school valedictorian could credibly argue that the Clinton Foundation graft didn't directly involve the public interest.
The media and Democratic Party's joint alibis for the Clintons through the years have puffed the Clintons up with a sense of invincibility. The couple have to believe there is nothing they could do that would bring them down.
When I first heard about the foundation's influence peddling, I had little doubt there was truth to it, but I had no expectation that anything would come of it. In a sense, the Clintons have benefited from the plethora of charges leveled against them over the years.
After a while, these allegations — no matter how credible — become just noise and are easily characterized as another chapter in a decades-long partisan witch hunt.
It's awfully convenient for the Clintons and their liberal hatchet men to paint every scandal as a politically motivated slander, but when the media and the Democratic Party themselves always refuse to put truth above their own ideological and political interests, it's inevitable that only Republicans would bring these charges.
But the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be different.
It is objectively true that the Clintons have become mega-millionaires since the close of Bill's second term — and they've done it through exorbitant speaking fees, which, absent other consideration, couldn't possibly benefit the payers commensurate to their payments, and bizarre contributions to their foundation by foreign interests that had unusual access to Hillary's State Department.
Bill Clinton flippantly dismissed the suggestion of any quid pro quo, saying there is no evidence that any of the donors received anything for their donations. When asked whether there is at least an appearance of impropriety, he said, "I'm not responsible for anybody else's perception."
It couldn't be more fitting that he was the first postmodern president.
He lent Oval Office credence to the demonic lie that words have no meaning apart from what people choose individually to assign to them. He's unctuously transitioned from "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is" to "I can't be held accountable for your accurate perception that my wife and I are wholly corrupt and have not only used our public positions to financially profit but also compromised and damaged the nation's interests in the process."
Just think about the charge that Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain secured a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that led to her approval of certain extremely controversial arms sales to Bahrain after his kingdom donated up to $150,000 directly to the Clinton Foundation and some $32 million to the Clinton Global Initiative.
This alone would be enough to bring down a deified Roman emperor.
The Associated Press reported that more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state donated to the Clinton Foundation either individually or through related entities. Clinton apologists are already trying to tell us there's nothing to see here, but sentient human beings know better.
No president in modern history, including Richard Nixon, has been the scandal virtuoso that both of the Clintons are in their own right.
The jig just may be up.
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange promises more email dumps that will bring Hillary Clinton down. Wouldn't it be the profoundest poetic justice if the Clintons were done in by the very emails Hillary thought she had deep-sixed months ago?
http://www.newsmax.com/Limbaugh/bill-emails-foundation/2016/08/26/id/745317/#ixzz4ITEZunCx
Aug 26, 2016 18:00:11 #
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