Let's get right to it. Have Bill and Loretta answer questions about their meeting under "oath" and let's see if Bill makes the same mistake as he did with the Monica L scandal.
A female at-large Bernie Sanders delegate meeting was assaulted by a male Hillary Clinton supporter at a heated party meeting in New York on Tuesday, wear the Vermont senator’s supporters were once again treated as unwelcome pests.
During the meeting, Sanders supporters were silenced once again as they were denied being heard on selection of the state chairman for the Democratic National Convention. Party leaders chose to make Governor Andrew Cuomo the party’s convention chair, and refused to allow Sanders delegates to submit other candidates or arguments.
Outraged, Sanders delegates began to protest and boo the decision.
“We are not recognizing Andrew Cuomo as the chair,” Kate Brezler, a Sanders delegate from White Plainssaid. “We wanted to have a democratic vote.”
Moumita Ahmed, an organizer with the People for Bernie Sanders, and co-founder of Millennials for Bernie Sanders, went up to the mic with another delegate, political commentator Nomiki Konst, to voice their dissent on behalf of Sanders delegates. Their microphone was then shut off.
“That was when I proceeded down the aisle to rally the Bernie delegates to decide on next steps, and while on my way an older, male Clinton delegate slapped me with the back of his hand from behind and told me to sit down. So I ran back and got my friend Kat Brezler, who was live streaming, to go and get Eddie Kay to come up and speak to Basil Smikle about the whole incident. On our way back, I confronted the man who assaulted me and told him ‘don’t you dare touch me ever again,’ and at that point he beat me with his cane. It was all caught on camera,” Ahmed wrote of the incident.
The FBI has a “public corruption” probe underway investigating whether Clinton used her position to benefit or recruit donors to the Clinton Foundation.
Bossie told TheDCNF that “the conflicts of interest that were made possible by the activities of Hillary Clinton’s State Department in tandem with the Clinton Foundation are of significant importance to the public and the law enforcement community.”
In addition to the Clinton Foundation, Citizens United requested communications between the four aides and Teneo Holdings, the firm created by Doug Band, Bill Clinton’s personal aide in the White House and thereafter as a former chief executive. The former President was a paid consultant to Teneo until 2012.
Huma Abedin simultaneously served as an employee for both Teneo and as deputy chief of staff to Clinton at the State Department in 2012, an issue which Congress has raised as a key conflict of interest.
Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff also worked at the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative while she served at the State Department.
It makes one cringe seeing Hillary on stage with Warren knowing that their philosophy and sense of morals are complete opposites when it comes to politics. '
It's painfully obvious that Warren is paying her dues to the Establishment by making these appearences with Hillary who desperately needs to ride on Warren's coat tails if she hopes to get the Bernie folks to sign on.
But then, there's always the possibility that Hillary will step down at the Convention and hand the batton to Warren?
MORE CLINTON EMAILS RELEASED, INCLUDING SOME SHE DELETED
As part of the probe, Clinton turned over the hard drive from her email server to the FBI. It had been wiped clean, and Clinton has said she did not keep copies of the emails she choose to withhold.
In a report released Monday by Democrats on the House select panel probing the 2012 attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, Republican congressional investigators asked questions about Clinton's use of the private email server in interviews with her close aides.
Abedin told interviewers that she was aware of Clinton's heavy use of private emails from the start and that Clinton continued a practice that she had developed as a U.S. senator for New York and as a 2008 presidential candidate. "It was a natural progression from what she was doing previously, and she continued to do so."
Asked repeatedly who serviced Clinton's private server in the basement of her New York home, Abedin identified Justin Cooper, a technology staffer at that time for former President Bill Clinton, and Bryan Pagliano, a State Department technology official who is cooperating with an FBI investigation of Clinton's private server under an immunity deal with prosecutors. Abedin was hazy about Pagliano's role at the agency and his private work overseeing Clinton's server in New York.
Pagliano, who previously worked for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination and declined to answer the committee's questions. In a sworn deposition last week, Pagliano also refused to answer questions posed by lawyers from Judicial Watch, including who paid for the system and who else at the State Department used email accounts on it. Pagliano also would not answer whether he discussed setting up a home server with Clinton prior to her tenure as secretary of state, according to a transcript.
Other State Department officials told congressional investigators that Clinton never responded to internal offers to set her up with an official State account and an agency computer. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Clinton did "not know how to use a computer to do email. So it was never set up."
Hillary once again sends the message that she is not a candidate of the "people" but rather of people that represent 1% of the population who can afford to spend what an average American family would take 5 to 10 years to earn on one ticket to a Broadway play. (The Average American Household’s Income).
Here's an idea! Why doesn't Hillary buy Hamilton tickets for the "people" that can't afford them? The people who's votes she will need to win this election.
The Hillary Clinton campaign has partnered with the hit Broadway musical for a matinee performance — Hamilton: An American Musical with special guest Hillary Rodham Clinton
General seats start at $2,700, and go as high as $100,000 — a special package that includes two premium seats, a party with Clinton and guests after the show, and an invitation to the Democratic National Convention.
Other tickets run $5,000, $10,000, and $33,400 for the July 12 performance at the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York.
People have been making a lot of hay about Bernie saying he would vote for Hillary in order to defeat Trump.
What Bernie did not say is that he would "endorse" Hillary.
Many Bernie supporters will not vote for Hillary and some are frankly undecided about Trump.
Putting aside all the bluster he projects, Trump is still an “outsider” and, as Bernie, anti-Establishment.
Hillary is a sold, bought and paid for Establishment candidate which in my book is much more dangerous than Trump.
What many people tend to lose sight of is that the office of POTUS is not all that powerful of a position given the state of the nation and all the elbow grease Obama put into the job.
In case no one noticed; the banks that destroyed us in 2008 went scott free under Obama.
Healthcare is still being orchestrated by the Insurance Industry and all Obama was actually able to influence was the number of people included in a system that is still profit driven.
The wars have not ended under Obama and, in fact, the US is involved in as many, if not more than when Obama took office.
Under Obama, privatization of the prison system has exploded. Private armies of ”military contractors” continue to proliferate.
The defense budget is as big as ever and the infrastructure and social programs remain anemic.
Worse still is that Obama has fallen into the spider web of the rich and wealthy and, in order to survive and protect what legacy he can muster, he is pandering like the best of them by giving his blessing to Hillary and pulling the strings to ensure that she doesn’t drown in the mountain of corruption she is dragging around.
Trump donning the POTUS crown might actually be a plus because it would force the Establishment to do something other than protect the status quo.
Democrats have gone from the party of the New Deal to a party that is defending mass inequality.
'THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ONCE THE PARTY OF THE NEW DEAL and the ally of organized labor. But by the time of Bill Clinton's presidency, it had become the enemy of New Deal programs like welfare and Social Security and the champion of free trade deals. What explains this apparent reversal? Thomas Frank—best known for his analysis of the Republican Party base in What's the Matter with Kansas?—attempts to answer this question in his latest book, Listen Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient. Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class. In so doing, the Democratic Party radically changed the way it understood social problems and how to solve them, trading in the principle of solidarity for the principle of competitive individualism and meritocracy. The end result is that the party which created the New Deal and helped create the middle class has now become “the party of mass inequality.” In These Times spoke with Frank recently about the book via telephone.
The book is about how the Democratic Party turned its back on working people and now pursues policies that actually increase inequality. What are the policies or ideological commitments in the Democratic Party that make you think this?
The first piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then, which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever see. Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.'>>>
Secret Speeches, Private email servers, and now a meeting calendar with more holes (deleted entries) than swiss cheese.
What is Hillary hiding. Why is she determined to withhold information about her activities from the public?
It's no wonder conspiracy theorists have a field day with this lady.
What should be of greater concern to those who support Hillary is that they are supporting someone who is obviously not comfortable with being transparent and there's probably a lot about Hillary that is unknown.
Can Hillary be trusted with the keys to the White House?
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or omitted the names of those she met.
The fuller details of those meetings were included in files the State Department turned over to the AP after it sued the government in federal court.
The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure - in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror the other, more detailed records of her daily meetings.
At a time when Clinton's private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the "risk of the personal being accessible" - as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the government but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide's inbox.
The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page calendar with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day's events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.
No known federal laws were violated and some omissions could be blamed on Clinton's highly fluid schedule, which sometimes forced late cancellations. But only seven meetings in Clinton's planning schedules were replaced by substitute events on her official calendar. More than 60 other events listed in Clinton's planners were omitted entirely in her calendar, tersely noted or described only as "private meetings" - all without naming those who met with her.
Police say a Houston-area woman fatally shot her two daughters before officers shot and killed her.
The incident happened about 5 p.m. Friday in front of a home just outside the Houston suburb of Fulshear. The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office identified the mother as 42-year-old Christy Sheats and her daughters as 22-year-old Taylor Sheats and 17-year-old Madison Sheats.
Sheriff Troy Nehls says the shooting apparently climaxed a family argument, but the reason for the argument remains unclear.
Nehls says the two younger women had already been shot when a Fulshear police officer arrived and saw the mother with a gun in her hand, apparently preparing to shoot one of her daughters again. The officer shot and killed the woman.
But, what economy are they talking about? Is it the economy in which 1% of the population is hoarding around 49% of the collective wealth?
It can't be about the other 99% of the population because, for them, the economy has already been wrecked and there's very little left to hit them with.
Sen. Bernie Sanders was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and said he saw it as an indication of income inequality. “What I think this vote is about is an indication that the global economy is not working for everybody,” he said. “You know, it’s not working in the United States for everybody, and it’s not working in the U.K. for everybody.”
U.S. credit-card balances are on track to hit $1 trillion this year, as banks aggressively push their plastic and consumers grow more comfortable carrying debt.
That sum would come close to the all-time peak of $1.02 trillion set in July 2008, just before the financial crisis intensified, and could signal an easing of frugal habits ingrained by the recession.
The boom has been driven by steady economic conditions and an improving job market that have made creditworthy consumers less reluctant to take on debt. In addition, lenders have signed up millions of subprime consumers who previously weren’t able to get credit.
Consumers are taking on other forms of debt, too. Auto-loan balances surpassed $1 trillion in the first quarter, a record for the industry, according to a report Thursday from credit bureau Experian.
The United Kingdom’s “Brexit” vote may cause short-term economic pain and present long-term geopolitical risks, but it is a splash of ice water in the face of the West’s Establishment, which has grown more and more insular, elitist and unaccountable over recent decades.
The West’s powers-that-be, in both the United States and the European Union, too often display contempt for real democracy, maintaining only the façade of respecting the popular will, manipulating voters at election time with red-meat politics and empty promises – before getting back to the business of comforting the comfortable and letting the comfortable afflict the afflicted.
That has been the grim and tiresome reality with America’s two parties and with the E.U.’s bureaucrats. The average American and the average European have every reason to see themselves as a lesser concern to the politicians and the pundits than the special interests which pay the money and call the tune.
In the stunning “Brexit” vote – with 52 percent wanting to abandon the 28-nation European Union – U.K. voters rejected the West’s politics-as-usual despite dire warnings about the downsides of leaving. They voted, in effect, to assert their own nationalistic needs and aspirations over a commitment to continental unity and its more universal goals.
But, in the vote, there was also a recognition that the West’s Establishment has grown corrupt and arrogant, routinely imposing on the people “experts” who claim to be neutral technocrats or objective scholars but whose pockets are lined with fat pay checks from “prestigious” think tanks funded by the Military-Industrial Complex or by lucrative revolving-door trips to investment banks on Wall Street or The City.
Despite the Establishment’s self-image as a “meritocracy,” its corrupted experts and haughty bureaucrats don’t even demonstrate basic competence anymore. They have led Europe and the United States into catastrophe after catastrophe, both economically and geopolitically. And, there is another troubling feature of this Establishment: its lack of accountability.
In the United States, the rewards and punishments have been turned upside-down, with the benighted politicians and pundits who pushed for the Iraq War in 2003 still dominating the government and the media, from Hillary Clinton’s impending Democratic presidential nomination to the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Stephanopoulus made a comment that day that he perhaps wishes he could take back. He said the reason donors give money to the foundation is they hope that it’s going to lead to something.
Before ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton political hack, was outed for his $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation, he appeared on Comedy Central’sThe Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Stephanopoulus made a comment that day that he perhaps wishes he could take back. He said the reason donors give money to the foundation is they hope that it’s going to lead to something. Exactly. Pay to play.
Past Republican presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump made the news this past week after it was discovered that, despite attacking the Clintons for the shenanigans going on at their foundation, he himself has donated at least $100,000 to it.
Now, thanks to Politico, a new list has emerged which points out dozens of others in the media who have also donated to the Clinton Foundation. While names like Google, Twitter, and NBC may not surprise most, given their penchant for siding with progressives, a few companies on that list will come as a shock to many.
The conservative news site Newsmax has donated between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000 to the Clinton’s pay to play Foundation. Fox News’ parent company, News Corporation Foundation, is also on the list with a donation ranging from $500,000 to $1,000,000.
While some may cite philanthropic efforts by the Clinton Foundation, Schweizer makes the case that the foundation is a slush fund for the Clintons and Stephanopoulus inadvertently admitted the pay to play nature of donations.
[/vc_column_text][banner300 banner=”553157113d3ff”][vc_column_text]Here is the list, ordered by contribution level, courtesy of Politico.
$1,000,000-$5,000,000
Carlos Slim
Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder
James Murdoch
Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox
Newsmax Media
Florida-based conservative media network
Thomson Reuters
Owner of the Reuters news service
$500,00-$1,000,000
Google
News Corporation Foundation
Philanthropic arm of former Fox News parent company
$250,000-$500,000
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publisher
Richard Mellon Scaife
Owner of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
$100,000-$250,000
Abigail Disney
Documentary filmmaker
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Howard Stringer
Former CBS, CBS News and Sony executive
Intermountain West Communications Company
Local television affiliate owner (formerly Sunbelt Communications)
$50,000-$100,000
Bloomberg L.P.
Discovery Communications Inc.
George Stephanopoulos
ABC News chief anchor and chief political correspondent
Mort Zuckerman
Owner of New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report
Time Warner Inc.
Owner of CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting
$25,000-$50,000
AOL
HBO
Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Presenters of the Golden Globe Awards
Viacom
$10,000-$25,000
Knight Foundation
Non-profit foundation dedicated to supporting journalism
Public Radio International
Turner Broadcasting
Parent company of CNN
Twitter
$5,000-$10,000
Comcast
Parent copmany of NBCUniversal
NBC Universal
Parent company of NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC
Public Broadcasting Service
$1,000-$5,000
Robert Allbritton
Owner of POLITICO parent company Capitol News Group
The latest tactic Hillary and the DNC are using to discount corruption in their ranks is to claim it's all disinformation from bad guys; interestingly the Russians.
The DNC wouldn’t directly address the attacks but said in a written statement that it believes the leaks are “part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians.”
The hacking of entities connected to the U.S. presidential election went much further than previously reported. Bloomberg News reports one of the organizations targeted by hackers believed to be operating out of Russia is the Clinton Foundation:
The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation was among the organizations breached by suspected Russian hackers in a dragnet of the U.S. political apparatus ahead of the November election, according to three people familiar with the matter…
Clinton Foundation officials said the organization hadn’t been notified of the breach and declined to comment further. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said.
The recent spate of hacking is said to involve as many as 4,000 individuals and entities connected to the election. Bloomberg reports that the FBI and the NSA are now involved in identifying the scope of the attack and trying to identify who is responsible. The Russian government has denied any responsiblitly.
Hackers released some information taken from the Democratic National Committee last week, specifically an oppo-research book on Donald Trump. This week the hacker (or collective) known as Guccifer 2.0 released another set of documents from the DNC hack. It seems the Democratic Party is somewhat nervous that there is much more, and worse, yet to come. FromBloomberg:
If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations, a person familiar with the party’s thinking said.
So far the released documents have revealed little that is new or explosive, but that could change. Guccifer 2.0 has threatened to eventually release thousands of internal memos and other documents.
Guccifer is the handle of a hacker who was recently extradited to the United States where he made a plea deal, signaling possible cooperation with the FBI in an ongoing investigation. That hasn’t been confirmed but, given that Guccifer claims to have hacked Clinton’s private server, the most obvious possibility is that he is cooperating with the FBI in the ongoing Clinton email investigation.
As for the DNC data, most of Tuesday's 'Guccifer 2.0' document dump was a garden-variety mixture of the kinds of materials seasoned election operatives would expect to find on a political party's network.
Included are copies of Bill and Hillary Clinton's tax returns and Federal Election Commission financial disclosures, speaking engagement contracts for the former secretary of state, travel records and inventories of speeches.
Most of the files consist of endless summaries of news articles, categorized for easy access during a rapid-response fight.
But in one such collection, Democrats went out of their way to vet Clinton, compiling a worst-case-scenario collection of the 'vulnerabilities' posed by the controversial Clinton Foundation.
'The Wall Street Journal tied foreign government donors to the Clinton Foundation's endowment fundraising under Secretary Clinton,' one section is headed.
Another trumpeted: 'Reports that State Department lawyers did not exhaustively vet Bill Clinton's paid speeches during Secretary Clinton's tenure raised questions about the role Clinton Foundation donations may have played in organizing those speeches.'
A third read: 'The Clinton Foundation has accepted donations from individuals, some of whom had ties to foreign governments, during her tenure as secretary of state.'
That, along with a similar warning that the Clinton Foundation 'received donations from individuals tied to Saudi Arabia while Clinton served as secretary of state,' pointed to Wall Street Journal reporting that reportedly raised eyebrows inside the FBI.
Federal investigators are probing for evidence of criminality related to Clinton's own private email server arrangement, along with allegations that she sold access to the secretary of state's office in exchange for Clinton Foundation donations and speaking fees for Bill Clinton.
The former president collected $105.8 million for giving 544 speeches between the end of his White House terms and the beginning of 2012, according to the Democratic Party's accounting, also leaked Tuesday by the hacker. That averages nearly $195,000 per appearance.
The DNC religiously tracked news stories covering apparent conflicts of interest in Clinton's diplomatic office, including foundation donations coming from governments and moneyed interests in Germany, Bahrain, Venezuela and Canada.
The party was also aware, according to its dossier, that the Clinton Health Access Initiative, a project of the foundation, 'did not disclose donors or submit foreign donations for State Department review' during Clinton's time in office.
The project, the DNC noted, was 'bound by a disclosure agreement with the Obama administration' at the time.
The leaks set the stage for what could be a political repeat of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack of November 2014, when the dirty laundry of major studio executives and Hollywood stars was aired out in the public domain.
The Democratic National Committee was so worried about the damage Hillary Clinton's family foundation could cause to her presidential ambitions that its researchers compiled their own collection of 'vulnerabilities' that party officials would need to address.
A 42-page collection of problematic news stories, neatly categorized by crisis, is among the 261 documents released Tuesday by the hacker who claims to have broken into the DNC's computer network.
The file, as it existed on the DNC's server, is helpfully named 'Clinton Foundation Vulnerabilities Master Doc FINAL.'
The DNC was not commenting on the authenticity of the document drop, though a senior DNC official told Dailymail.com that 'Russian government hackers' were to blame.
Somewhere along the line something went wrong and the rich folks lost sight of the fact that the reason they got to where they are is because they live in a country that provides them with resources and opportunities to achieve and accumulate wealth.
More important they ignored the reality that wealth came at a price and magically convinced themselves that they were "entitled" to hold on to every last nickle and give nothing back in return for what was provided them by the millions of Americans who work and contribute to the country.
Their wealth brought out the worse in many of them and they opted to hide, dodge and avoid rather than share and give.
In essence they argued that getting something for nothing; much like what they accuse the poor of, was the way to go.
Taxes? That's for the working class to worry about. Not them.
Supporting the country that made them wealthy? In your dreams.
In fact many of them opted to spend untold amounts of money hiring armies of "tax experts" to ensure that the country that gave them so much would never get a single cent back.
While candidates bicker and Congress stagnates and the rest of us dwell on the latest shooting tragedy, the super-rich enjoy the absence of attention paid to one of our nation’s most destructive issues.
The richest Americans are takers of social benefits. Yet they complain about paying 12% to20% in taxes, even as respected researchers estimate an optimal revenue-producing rate of80% to 90%, and even with the near-certainty that higher marginal tax rates will have no adverse effects on GDP growth.
The super-rich pay little in taxes because, as Senator Lindsey Graham said, “It’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally…It’s a game we play…I see nothing wrong with playing the game because we set it up to be a game.” In reality, it’s a game of theft from the essential needs of education, infrastructure, and jobs.
The Richest Individuals Cheat the Most
According to a recent IRS report, an incredible $406 billion annual gap exists between owed and paid taxes, with individuals accounting for over three-quarters of the total, and with the most egregious misreporting coming from the highest income-takers.
That’s about $3,000 per U.S. household in annual lost revenue. Yet even though the IRSretrieves well over $100 for every dollar in salaries paid to their agents, the agency has been rapidly losing staff, making the tax avoidance game a lot easier for the biggest cheaters.
You would have to be close to brain dead to believe that the AG has "never" discussed the HRC email investigation with POTUS.
This is America folks! Politics is a game played with rules that allow (and sometimes even reward) for corruption and deception.
Even if there is the remote possibility that Obama didn't have a sit down with Lynch he did send her a loud and clear message to stand down when he endorsed Hillary and showered her with so many accolades you would think he was in love with her.
There's no denying that most Americans run on about 4 of 8 cylinders and are not the brightest bulbs on a tree, but for anyone other than a true Hillarite to buy this line of BS is nothing more than dog being wagged by their tail.
One way to nail it down is to compel the AG to answer these questions under oath; let's say at the behest of a Congressional committee.
Wallace then pressed again: “So does this create a conflict of interest for you?”
“No, this is not a conflict for me or for the department or for anyone,” Lynch responded. “We will continue to do all of our work in the same way in which we always have with the interest of the American people, first and foremost.”WATCH:
Wallace then pointed out that the same day Obama endorsed Clinton, Lynch met with Obama at the White House.
“Did you in any way, shape, or form discuss the Clinton case with the President?” Wallace asked.
Lynch claimed she has never talked with the President or anyone in the White House about the investigation.
“We’ve never discussed the Clinton case,” she said. “I’ve never spoken about it with the President or really with anyone at the White House. That’s not the kind of relationship that I have with people there and it would be inappropriate to do so.”
Looks like president Obama isn't much different that other Establishment politicians. This latest decision to let Wall Street bankers escape justice demonstrates just how entrenched big money is in American politics.
So, let's talk sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks, shall we?
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Forget Switzerland. The mother and father of all financial industry outrages are rooted in Washington, D.C. And Obama Democrats are among the biggest winners of lavish, out-of-control compensation packages from fraud-plagued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama confidante James Johnson raked in $21 million. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel "earned" at least $320,000 for a brief 14-month gig at Freddie Mac. And Clinton Fannie Mae head and Obama economic confidante Franklin Raines bagged some $90 million in pay and stock options earned during the government-sponsored institution's Enron-style accounting scandal on the public dime.
Self-appointed banking policewoman and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, uncharacteristically, kept her mouth shut about these wealthy barons.
Superior Bank. One of the Obamas' oldest Chicago friends and wealthiest billionaire bundlers, former Obama national finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, headed up this subprime lender. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over $460 million over 15 years. Obama happily accepted the nearly $800 million in campaign and inaugural funding Pritzker drummed up for him. To protect her family's multibillion dollar fortune, Pritzker's enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts her candidate is attacking Romney over.
Broadway Bank. In 2010, President and Mrs. Obama personally raised money for their Chicago friend and fundraiser Alexi Giannoulias. As I reported then, Giannoulias' Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It's the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it's the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias -- convicted Obama fundraiser and slumlord Tony Rezko -- used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos.
Chicago's former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. The cost to taxpayers after the bank was shut down two years ago: an estimated $390 million.
ShoreBank. The "progressive" Chicago-based community development bank, a "green" financial institution whose mission was to "create economic equity and a healthy environment," folded in August 2010. Obama personally had endorsed the politically connected bank and appeared in a video promoting its Kenyan microlending project. But it was a doomed social justice experiment. After regulators shut it down, Obama crony companies including Bank of American and Goldman Sachs took over the mess courtesy of taxpayer subsidies.
Countrywide/Bank of America. Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on corruption-plagued Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bailed out by taxpayer-bailed-out Bank of America. The House investigation confirmed the notorious favor-trading scheme, which involved sweetheart home loan deals for members of Congress and their staff, top government officials and executives of doomed mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
"These relationships helped (Countrywide CEO and Democratic subprime loan king Angelo) Mozilo increase his own company's profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers," according to the new report. Mozilo copped a $67.5 million plea to avert a high-stakes public trial in the heat of the 2010 midterm election season. Since then, Obama's Justice Department has taken no action to prosecute Countrywide officials on federal bribery charges.
Among the influence-peddling operation's most prominent beneficiaries: the aforementioned Obama top adviser Jim Johnson, who accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate Countrywide loans, and former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, whose ill-fated 2010 re-election bid was personally endorsed by Obama. Obama stood by Dodd even as sordid details of his two discounted Countrywide loans and record Countrywide PAC donations mounted.
Bank of America, which raked in $45 billion in Obama-supported TARP bailout funds and billions more in secret emergency federal loans, footed the $50 million restitution payment bill for Mozilo and another Countrywide official. In 2008, BofA's political action committee gave its biggest contributions to Obama, totaling $421,000. And as I noted in January, Bank of America supplied the Democrats with a $15 million revolving line of credit, along with an additional $17 million loan during the 2010 midterms.
Not sure who originally hired these "career" diplomats but I have a pretty good idea. Must be the same bunch that were around for Iraq, Afghanistan, and part of the Hillary cabal that she led the "regime change" campaign against Libya.
Somebody should check their stock portfolios and see how much is invested in defense.
Over the past several decades, the U.S. State Department has deteriorated from a reasonably professional home for diplomacy and realism into a den of armchair warriors possessed of imperial delusions, a dangerous phenomenon underscored by the recent mass“dissent” in favor of blowing up more people in Syria.
Some 51 State Department “diplomats” signed a memo distributed through the official “dissent channel,” seeking military strikes against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad whose forces have been leading the pushback against Islamist extremists who are seeking control of this important Mideast nation.
The fact that such a large contingent of State Department officials would openly advocate for an expanded aggressive war in line with the neoconservative agenda, which put Syria on a hit list some two decades ago, reveals how crazy the State Department has become.
The State Department now seems to be a combination of true-believing neocons along with their liberal-interventionist followers and some careerists who realize that the smart play is to behave toward the world as global proconsuls dictating solutions or seeking “regime change” rather than as diplomats engaging foreigners respectfully and seeking genuine compromise.
Even some State Department officials, whom I personally know and who are not neocons/liberal-hawks per se, act as if they have fully swallowed the Kool-Aid. They talk tough and behave arrogantly toward inhabitants of countries under their supervision. Foreigners are treated as mindless objects to be coerced or bribed.
So, it’s not entirely surprising that several dozen U.S. “diplomats” would attack President Barack Obama’s more temperate position on Syria while positioning themselves favorably in anticipation of a Hillary Clinton administration, which is expected to authorize an illegal invasion of Syria — under the guise of establishing “no-fly zones” and “safe zones” — which will mean the slaughter of young Syrian soldiers. The “diplomats” urge the use of “stand-off and air weapons.”
These hawks are so eager for more war that they don’t mind risking a direct conflict with Russia, breezily dismissing the possibility of a clash with the nuclear power by saying they are not “advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia.” That’s reassuring to hear.
That was the question a lot of concerned government officials had when Rajiv was given a seat on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) by Hillary Clinton.
“We had no idea who he was,” one board member told ABC News.
Fernando’s lack of any known background in nuclear security caught the attention of several board members, and when ABC News first contacted the State Department in August 2011 seeking a copy of his resume, the emails show that confusion ensued among the career government officials who work with the advisory panel.
Fernando himself would not answer questions from ABC News in 2011 about what qualified him for a seat on the board or led to his appointment. When ABC News finally caught up with Fernando at the 2012 Democratic convention, he became upset and said he was "not at liberty" to speak about it. Security threatened to have the ABC News reporter arrested.
It was soon revealed that even though Rajiv was not qualified for a seat on the ISAB he was definately qualified to be labeled a crony of Hillary's as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands of dollars he pumped into Hillary's campaigns and, more importantly hundreds of thousands of dollars he "donated" to the Clinton Foundation which is more and more begining to look like nothing more than a money laundering machine for "bribes for favors" which Hillary and Bill are notorious for.
Fernando's history of campaign giving dated back at least to 2003 and was prolific -- and almost exclusively to Democrats. He was an early supporter of Hillary Clinton's 2008 bid for president, giving maximum contributions to her campaign, and to HillPAC, in 2007 and 2008. He also served as a fundraising bundler for Clinton, gathering more than $100,000 from others for her White House bid. After Barack Obama bested Clinton for the 2008 nomination, Fernando became a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign. Prior to his State Department appointment, Fernando had given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation, and another $30,000 to a political advocacy group, WomenCount, that indirectly helped Hillary Clinton retire her lingering 2008 campaign debts by renting her campaign email list.
It also goes a long way to explain why Hillary would need a private email server in order to conduct these seedy deals outside government oversight.
Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff.
The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.
Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act after more the two years of litigation with the government.
The appointment qualified Fernando for one of the highest levels of top secret access, the emails show. Among those with whom Fernando served on the International Security Advisory Board was David A. Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group and United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector; Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, a former National Security Advisor to two presidents; two former congressmen; and former Sen. Chuck Robb. William Perry, the former Secretary of Defense, chaired the panel.
“It is certainly a serious, knowledgeable and experienced group of experts,” said Bruce Blair, a Princeton professor whose principal research covers the technical and policy steps on the path toward the verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. “Much of the focus has been on questions of nuclear stability and the risks of nuclear weapons use by Russia and Pakistan.”
The newly released emails reveal that after ABC News started asking questions in August 2011, a State Department official who worked with the advisory board couldn’t immediately come up with a justification for Fernando serving on the panel. His and other emails make repeated references to “S”; ABC News has been told this is a common way to refer to the Secretary of State.
Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff.
The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.
Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act after more the two years of litigation with the government.
A prolific fundraiser for Democratic candidates and contributor to the Clinton Foundation, who later traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa, Rajiv K. Fernando’s only known qualification for a seat on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) was his technological know-how. The Chicago securities trader, who specialized in electronic investing, sat alongside an august collection of nuclear scientists, former cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to advise Hillary Clinton on the use of tactical nuclear weapons and on other crucial arms control issues.
“We had no idea who he was,” one board member told ABC News.
A State Department photograph shows the 2011 International Security Advisory Board. Rajiv Fernando is seated on the far left of the image.more +
Fernando’s lack of any known background in nuclear security caught the attention of several board members, and when ABC News first contacted the State Department in August 2011 seeking a copy of his resume, the emails show that confusion ensued among the career government officials who work with the advisory panel.
“I have spoken to [State Department official and ISAB Executive Director Richard Hartman] privately, and it appears there is much more to this story that we’re unaware of,” wrote Jamie Mannina, the press aide who fielded the ABC News request. “We must protect the Secretary’s and Under Secretary’s name, as well as the integrity of the Board. I think it’s important to get down to the bottom of this before there’s any response.
“As you can see from the attached, it’s natural to ask how he got onto the board when compared to the rest of the esteemed list of members,” Mannina wrote, referring to an attachment that was not included in the recent document release.
Fernando himself would not answer questions from ABC News in 2011 about what qualified him for a seat on the board or led to his appointment. When ABC News finally caught up with Fernando at the 2012 Democratic convention, he became upset and said he was "not at liberty" to speak about it. Security threatened to have the ABC News reporter arrested.more +
Fernando's expertise appeared to be in the arena of high-frequency trading -- a form of computer-generated stock trading. At the time of his appointment, he headed a firm, Chopper Trading, that was a leader in that field.
Fernando's history of campaign giving dated back at least to 2003 and was prolific -- and almost exclusively to Democrats. He was an early supporter of Hillary Clinton's 2008 bid for president, giving maximum contributions to her campaign, and to HillPAC, in 2007 and 2008. He also served as a fundraising bundler for Clinton, gathering more than $100,000 from others for her White House bid. After Barack Obama bested Clinton for the 2008 nomination, Fernando became a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign. Prior to his State Department appointment, Fernando had given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation, and another $30,000 to a political advocacy group, WomenCount, that indirectly helped Hillary Clinton retire her lingering 2008 campaign debts by renting her campaign email list.
The appointment qualified Fernando for one of the highest levels of top secret access, the emails show. Among those with whom Fernando served on the International Security Advisory Board was David A. Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group and United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector; Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, a former National Security Advisor to two presidents; two former congressmen; and former Sen. Chuck Robb. William Perry, the former Secretary of Defense, chaired the panel.
“It is certainly a serious, knowledgeable and experienced group of experts,” said Bruce Blair, a Princeton professor whose principal research covers the technical and policy steps on the path toward the verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. “Much of the focus has been on questions of nuclear stability and the risks of nuclear weapons use by Russia and Pakistan.”
The newly released emails reveal that after ABC News started asking questions in August 2011, a State Department official who worked with the advisory board couldn’t immediately come up with a justification for Fernando serving on the panel. His and other emails make repeated references to “S”; ABC News has been told this is a common way to refer to the Secretary of State.
“The true answer is simply that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him,” wrote Wade Boese, who was Chief of Staff for the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, in an email to Mannina, the press aide. “Raj was not on the list sent to S; he was added at their insistence.”
Mills, a former deputy White House counsel, was serving as Clinton’s chief of staff at the time, and has been a longtime legal and political advisor.
Four minutes later, Boese wrote to his boss, Richard Hartman, to alert him that Ellen Tauscher, who was then the Undersecretary for State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, would be meeting with Mills to devise a response to the ABC News request.
“Sorry this has become a headache,” he wrote.
Hartman wrote the next morning to say he would “come up and brief you... about where Raj Fernando stands and the ABC News investigative journalist inquiries. You do need to hear about it.” Separately, in an email to another official, Hartman noted that it was "Cheryl Mills, who added Mr. Fernando’s name to the list of ISAB nominees."
When ABC News sent a follow-up inquiry about the qualifications of another board appointee, Massachusetts state Rep. Harold P. Naughton, Jr., Boese wrote to Hartman to say the department would have a far easier time explaining Naughton’s credentials. “The case for Rep. Naughton is an easy one. We are on solid ground,” he said.
By this point, Fernando himself had been looped into the discussion. He and Hartman exchanged emails, but the entire text of Fernando’s letter was redacted by the State Department prior to its release.
Twice, Mannina was instructed to stall with ABC News, before Mills sent a public statement. It announced Fernando’s abrupt decision to step down.
“Mr. Fernando chose to resign from the Board earlier this month citing additional time needed to devote to his business,” it reads, noting that membership on the board was required to be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.”
“As President and CEO of Chopper Trading, Mr. Fernando brought a unique perspective to ISAB. He has years of experience in the private sector in implementing sophisticated risk management tools, information technology and international finance,” the statement says.
The statement was emailed to ABC News two days after Fernando’s resignation and four days after the initial ABC News inquiry.
Fernando’s letter of resignation to Clinton says he “intended to devote a substantial amount of time to the work of ISAB in furtherance of its objectives. However, the unique, unexpected, and excessive volatility in the international markets these last few weeks and months require[d him] to focus [his] energy on the operations of [his] company.”
Additional emails collected from Hillary Clinton’s personal server only hint at her possible involvement in Fernando’s selection to the board. The records request for documents about Fernando’s appointment produced a chain of correspondence from 2010 with the subject line “ISAB” -- or International Security Advisory Board. In those, Mills writes, “The secretary had two other names she wanted looked at.” The names are redacted. Mills then forwarded the response to “H,” which is the designation for Clinton’s personal account. Three minutes later Clinton forwards the email chain to another State official and says simply, “Pls print.”
The Clinton campaign declined requests from ABC News to make Mills available for an interview. Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill deferred to the U.S. State Department, which issued a statement saying the board’s charter specifically calls for a membership that reflects “a balance of backgrounds and points of view. Furthermore, it is not unusual for the State Department Chief of Staff to be involved in personnel matters.”
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesCheryl Mills, former State Department chief of staff under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attends a House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing in Washington, Oct. 22, 2015.more +
Fernando did not respond to messages left by ABC News at home and mobile numbers listed for Fernando, nor to a letter left at the office of his current business.
Today State Department spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters that Fernando had been fully vetted, but Toner said he could not speak to his specific qualifications. When asked if he came from a security background, Toner said, “I don’t believe so.”
“I apologize, I don’t have his [resume] in front of me,” Toner said. “All I know is that the charter does lay out or stipulate that [they're] looking for a broad range of experiences. It’s not unimaginable that a businessman, an international businessman, might bring a certain level of expertise or knowledge or experience to such a job.”
The State Department’s website lists former members of the ISAB, but Fernando’s name is not among them. Toner was unable to explain why the name was missing and when asked if the list was comprehensive, said, “Apparently not.”
As is customary with a new administration, the make-up of the board changed substantially when Clinton took over the State Department, according to Amb. James Woolsey, who served on the panel from 2006 to 2009. But the seriousness of its mission remained the same.
He said the board’s primary purpose was to gather an array of experts on nuclear weapons and arms control to constantly assess and update the nation’s nuclear strategy.
“Most things that involve nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy are dealt with at a pretty sensitive basis -- top secret,” he said, noting that participants meet in a secure facility and are restricted in what materials they can discuss.
That is not typically the realm of political donors, Woolsey said. Though, he added, it would not be impossible for someone lacking a security background to make a contribution to the panel. “It would depend on how smart and dedicated this person was... I would think you would have to devote some real time to getting up to speed,” he said.
Fernando is now a board member of a private group called the American Security Project, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan organization created to educate the American public and the world about the changing nature of national security in the 21st Century.” He also identifies himself online as a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and says he's involved with a Washington think tank.
And he continued to donate to Democrats, and to Clinton. He emerged as one of the first “bundlers” to raise money for Clinton’s 2016 bid. And in July 2015, he hosted a fundraiser for Clinton at his Chicago home. Fernando has also continued to donate to the Clinton Foundation. He now is listed on the charity’s website as having given between $1 million and $5 million.
About six months after Fernando resigned from the State Department advisory board, he was invited to attend a White House State Dinner, honoring the British Prime Minister. And this summer Fernando will serve as a super delegate at the Democratic National Convention. According to Chicago media reports, he has committed to supporting Clinton.
ABC News' Andrea GonzalesPaul contributed to this report.
The following emails were obtained by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act, and were provided to ABC News. ABC News has arranged the emails in chronological order. Scroll through the emails below or CLICK HERE to open them in a new window.
If there's anyone that deserves to be trolled it's Hillary. Given her uncanny ability to dodge the facts and obsessively lie about everything and anything she is accused of being guilty of there's no way to take her on but to drop down to a level that she operates on.
An example of how nasty Hillary and the Establishment that supports is, is how Bernie has been treated; going as far as even using Obama and Warren to try and crush the movement he represents.
A recent photo on the front page of the LA Times (owned and operated by corporate goons) says it all. You know what they say about a picture being worth a 1,000 words.
A tired - beaten old man being escorted out the door by a tired and badly bruised black man who is desperate to save what little there is of a legacy battered by the Establishment; both right and left.
The media; bought and operated by the Billionaires and Millionaires Bernie scoffs at are consistently hard at work creating images that depict Sanders as a lost cause; and they are very good at it.
These insidious forces are frightened of the Bernie supporters because they are made up of the youngest and the brightest America has to offer and are way too informed and tech-savvy to be easily swayed. These pumped up Millennials want a future they can believe in an it's certainly not what Hillary and the Establishment are dishing up.
The powerful and far-reaching presence the Bernie Sanders campaign has on social media, and the enthusiasm of young Sanders supporters online, many of whom have been labeled trolls, “Bernie Bros,” “BernieBots,” and — more egregiously — sexists and racists by Democratic partisans and the corporate media over the past year. Sanders has such a passionate online base that David Brock and the Clinton campaign felt it necessary not only to pay legitimate trolls to attack them, but to make bogus generalizations intended to discredit the entire movement.
Throughout the primary season, a narrative has formed — thanks in large part to an uncritical media’s willingness to accept unsubstantiated reports (like chair-throwing and other violence in Nevada) — that Sanders supporters are a bunch of sexist, brutish, violent, and even racist white male trolls and serial harassers (the last charge, which has been exploited by influential journalists and establishment figures to evade any substantive criticisms, is perhaps the most troubling, for the very reason that it undermines people who are genuinely harassed online — which is a very real problem, especially for women and people of color).
Of course, there are indeed anti-Clinton/pro-Bernie trolls on social media — you’d be hard pressed to find any political movement that doesn’t have its share of trolls and assholes, and anyone who thinks their side is troll-free is either naive or self-absorbed. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald recently put it on Twitter: “Self-centered people always think their own group is free of trolls because they’re never targeted by them.”
Interestingly enough, polling data indicates that Clinton supporters have been more aggressive than Sanders supporters on social media and the internet, while — not surprisingly — Trump supporters have been the most aggressive by a long shot. A poll supported by Craigslist.com founder Craig Newmark found that 57 percent of Americans say Trump supporters are very aggressive and/or threatening online, 30 percent say the same for Clinton supporters, and 16 percent for Sanders supporters (while 68 percent say Sanders supporters are not that aggressive, 52 percent for Clinton supporters, and 30 percent for Trump supporters).
Unfortunately, “troll” and “harassment” have become terms that are now impulsively hurled by Democratic partisans at anyone who criticizes or disputes their opinion or a claim they’ve made, whether on social media or in a publication. Accusing someone of harassment — even when the person is making a valid argument (admittedly, sometimes substantive arguments can be made in a rude or condescending manner, but is being rude or impolite harassment?) — is an easy way to avoid their argument and discredit them in the future.
“I’m an Independent voter. I have a preference towards Hillary at this point but I’m undecided,” said a middle-aged government worker who was attending the event with his 14-year old son, Ryan.
“If I could vote, I would vote for Jill Stein [from the Green Party],” said Ryan. “I think the mainstream media and the DNC [Democratic National Committee] have done a very unfair job” of covering the Democratic primaries.
“I’m still undecided,” said a 22-year old man. “I think the media has not been fair towards Sanders. They showed a preference towards Clinton and Trump.”
Still others completely rejected the idea of voting for Clinton in November. “I would rather eat my own hand than cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, and you can quote me on that,” said Nikki Diamantopoulos from Baltimore County, Maryland.
A socialist since she was 17, Diamantopoulos said this was her first time getting actively involved in a presidential campaign. She started a Facebook group called Forward Movement to facilitate a nonpartisan civil discussion about political and social issues. She also designed a Bernie Sanders T-shirt which she gave away to people who made a donation to the Sanders campaign. Through this exchange, she helped raise $2,000-$3,000 in donations to Sanders.
Diamantopoulos said she has been verbally advocating for Sanders in her rural part of Baltimore County, where a number of her neighbors and family members are Republicans and Libertarians. Through open and civil conversations, she said she shared Sanders’s platform and many of her neighbors have switched to supporting him. If he were to get the nomination, her lifelong Republican mother has pledged she would vote for Sanders.
Although rejecting Clinton, Diamantopolous did not indicate whom she might favor in the fall, but she did not seem to support Trump either.
Revolutionary Change
One young man named Adam, who recently moved to D.C. from Virginia, told me that he would vote for Trump if Clinton becomes the nominee: “The way I see it, either Bernie fixes it, or Trump breaks it. I’d rather it be broken than continue on with the status quo under Hillary. … We need a change so people realize the system is broken.”
“My game plan in November is exactly the same as before [if Clinton takes the nomination] — I’m voting for Bernie Sanders,” said Sean Simmons, 27. “We fought to protect a democracy that isn’t even a democracy. … Maybe I’m being stubborn, but I couldn’t vote for any candidate who thinks it’s perfectly okay to cheat in elections. I know people who died for that.”
American and District of Columbia flags at a Bernie Sanders rally on June 9, 2016, in Washington D.C. (Photo credit: Chelsea Gilmour)
Sean said he would write in Sanders. He said he wouldn’t be badgered into voting for the so-called lesser-of-two evils, adding: “The American spirit is not one run by fear. This is a revolution — I’m not afraid.”
Rest assured that Donald Trump is salivating with delight at having Hillary Clinton rather than Bernie to take on in this election.
To anyone in politics Hillary would be a gift that keeps on giving when it comes to scandals; petty and serious ones are abundant.
Now that POTUS has thrown his endorsement at Hillary; a favor that he surely promised to get her support with his election, we can be assured that the Obama run DOJ and it's minions will do whatever it takes to protect, rather than prosecute her for the crimes we all know she committed.
It's unlikely, however, that all the kings horses and all the kings men will be able to protect Hillary from the fly in the ointment; Trump.
There's no doubt that Trump is a master at destroying opponents as he so eloquently demonstrated in the Republican primaries. All the money and brand names were ground into dust and in the end only the Donald was left standing.
No one else has going for them what Trump has; angry voters who want change more than anything else. Unlike Bernie, who to a fault at times, refused to play dirty pool with Hillary, Trump relishes it.
The tragedy is that Democrats had the opportunity to nominate a candidate that all indicators showed would defeat Trump but failed to take advantage of it and opted for the worse of 2 choices.
You don't need to be a fortune teller to know that Trump will bring out the worse in Hillary and is almost certain to end her political career.
To all those gullible Hillary fans out there who think otherwise let's remind them that Trump received over a million votes in the California primary where he ran unopposed. Ask yourself; self - why would all these people come out to vote if for no other reason that to show their support for Trump?
Young Democrats, Independents, coming out for Hillary? Not so sure.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in a legal pickle over her careless email practices – in that she appears to have endangered national security secrets including the identity of covert CIA officers and done so for selfish reasons (personal convenience or keeping her documents out of reach of transparency laws).
The facts of the case would seem to merit criminal charges against her, since Clinton’s situation is analogous to problems faced by other senior officials, including former CIA directors John Deutch and David Petraeus who were accused of mishandling classified information, Deutch by having secret material on his home computer and Petraeus for giving notebooks with highly sensitive information to his lover/biographer.
Deutch agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor but was preemptively pardoned by President Bill Clinton; Petraeus pled guilty to a misdemeanor in a plea deal that spared him from jail time and was widely criticized as excessively lenient, especially since the Obama administration had jailed lower-level officials, such as former CIA officer John Kiriakou, for similar violations.
In 2012, faced with a multiple count indictment, Kiriakou agreed to plead guilty to one count of violating the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act for giving a reporter the phone number of a former CIA officer whose work for the spy agency was still classified. Though the reporter did not publish the ex-officer’s name, Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act was also a factor in the “Plame-gate affair” in 2003 when officials of George W. Bush’s administration disclosed the CIA identity of Valerie Plame as part of a campaign to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had challenged Bush’s claims about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium for a nuclear program, one of the falsehoods that was used to justify invading Iraq.
Right-wing columnist Robert Novak blew Plame’s undercover identity but a special prosecutor chose not to indict anyone, including Bush’s aides, under the 1982 law. He did, however, convict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, of obstructing justice. However, Bush commuted Libby’s sentence so he avoided jail time.
The recent State Department Inspector General report makes clear that Clinton blithely disregarded safeguards designed to protect the most highly classified national security information and that she included on her unprotected email server the names of U.S. intelligence agents under cover.
In other words, there is legal precedent for Hillary Clinton to be charged in connection with her decision to handle her State Department emails through a personal server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, rather than through official government servers. But there’s political precedent as well for the well-connected to be either slapped on the wrist or let off the hook.
