Bitching about Huma Abedin’s timesheets while she worked at the State Department isn’t very interesting or consequential, although I guess I’d call it fair. I think it’s a small part of a greater strategy of death by mosquito bite.
Hillary Clinton is well known, and there aren’t going to be any screaming revelations of outrageous wrongdoing. But they’ll be able to chip away at her a little tiny bite at a time until there is a cumulative effect that shows up in her “trustworthy” and “cares about you” polling numbers.
It seems to be working fairly well already, as her numbers have come down considerably from their highs.
On the other hand, the right has so overplayed their hand in the past, accusing Hillary of murder for example, that she does enjoy some basic immunity on these types of things. I mean, when you go from accusing her of killing her lover Vince Foster to accusing her assistant of sneaking a paid vacation to Italy, you’re really dialed back your ambition.
So, all they’re really going for here is to create a little sleeze factor by raising a bunch of conflict of interest and nepotistic type of quid pro quo questions.
It’s kind a necessary exercise, but it’s not of much consequence, really. After all, the Clintons know how to turn this stuff to their advantage, and they’ll be hitting back just as hard at the eventual Republican nominee.
OT: Mission Accomplished: Planned Parenthood Attacks Coordinated by High-Ranking Republican Operatives
…They Called Themselves “Groundswell”
Just after Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, disappointed conservative thought leaders came together at the annual CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. to strategize. Demoralized but determined, they formed a plan to fight a “30-front war to fundamentally transform the nation.”
In early 2013, they formed an email group to begin the process of organizing for action and messaging coordination. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ key aide Danielle Cutrona was part of the group, as was Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Breitbart News Editor John Nolte, Family Research Council officials Jerry Boykin and Ken Blackwell, Tea Party Patriots Founder Jenny Beth Martin, Washington, D.C. attorney and public relations expert Diana Banister, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, former Congressman Allen West, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, Frank Gaffney, and Ted Cruz staffer Max Pappas rounded out the top-tier of group participants, according to David Corn’s report.
They met weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch to hone their message and action plans. One meeting was secretly recorded, getting them on the record with regard to their desire to get a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack, mostly for the purpose of obtaining unlimited subpoena power.
Their goal was not merely to function as a messaging machine, but to “sync messages and develop action from reports and information exchanged,” according to the minutes of their March 27, 2013 meeting. “Going forward there should be an action item accompanying each report,” they concluded.
The purpose of the group was to collaborate and coordinate strategy and action for their multiple “fronts.” Shadow government assignments were made, committees were formed, and strategies were developed. All of this was done with participation and input from key congressional staffers working in the House and the Senate. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), now House Majority Whip, was the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee at the time. His staff routinely dropped in to tip off the group as to upcoming votes on key issues. One of the most active participants on the email list was Danielle Cutrona, who was a key staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions.
Whenever there was a need for support or for opposition to legislation, or an investigation or opposition to a judicial nominee, these staffers would reach into the group in order to recruit members for messaging or action support.
Immigration reform, religious liberty, and judicial appointments were high on their list of priorities, and they enjoyed some successes. They got their Select Committee on Benghazi, they successfully opposed one of the president’s judicial nominees who was not sufficiently steeped in their idea of Second Amendment interpretation, and they were wildly successful with their attack on the Internal Revenue Service’s procedure for approving nonprofit organizations.
Blueprint for Activism
After David Corn broke the story of this group two years ago and audio of one of their weekly meetings became public, a blueprint for how to track coordination to advance its agenda, via messaging and action with key congressional aides, emerged.
One such example can be found in their effort to push the idea that the president was putting “politics over public safety” with regard to immigration reform.
Corn laid out the pieces:
Frank Gaffney penned a Washington Times op-ed titled “Putting Politics Over Public Safety.” Tom Fitton headlined a Judicial Watch weekly update “Politics over Public Safety: More Illegal Alien Criminals Released by Obama Administration.” Peter List, editor of LaborUnionReport.com, authored a RedState.com post called “Obama’s Machiavellian Sequestration Pain Game: Putting Politics Over Public Safety.” Matthew Boyle used the phrase in an immigration-related article for Breitbart. And Dan Bongino promoted Boyle’s story on Twitter by tweeting, “Politics over public safety?” In a message to Groundswellers, Ginni Thomas awarded “brownie points” to Fitton, Gaffney, and other members for promoting the “politics over public safety” riff…
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/07/31/mission-accomplished-planned-parenthood-attacks-coordin
ated-high-ranking-republican-operatives/
Ginni Thomas – in a better future someone will introduce legislation against what she’s done. the whole conflict of interest things must be reexamined for a 21st century where spouses work
tis true
Jimmy Carter: America Is Not A Democracy Anymore (AUDIO)
By SARA JERDE
Published JULY 31, 2015, 5:43 PM EDT
Former President Jimmy Carter called the United States an “oligarchy” with “unlimited political bribery,” on a radio program this week.
Responding to his thoughts on unlimited campaign financing, Carter told Thom Hartmann on the “Thom Harmann Program” that, “it violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system.”
“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the President,” Carter said. “And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members.”
Carter’s comments are similar to the findings of a Princeton study released last year that the United States has morphed into an oligarchy from a democracy.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jimmy-carter-us-oligarchy-bribes
Yes. Preciselyt.
Anyone who does not recognize the truth of this is media-blinded ort simply too dumb to come out of the
reign…errr, ahhh, I meant rain.I think…
Anyone who actually effectively opposes this idea in any manner whatsoever…including almost all the candidates for national office…is working for the Permanent Government.
End of story.
End of the American dream?
Could be…
Cleanhead knew, 50 years ago.
We shall soon see.
Won’t we.
AG
The relevant lyrics follow. (Big Bill Broonzy actually wrote this blues. Cleanhead just took it to other levels. Bet on it.)
Universal.
AG
Carter says it clearly, no prevaricating, no beating around the bush: oligarchy. I’d love to see Hillary Clinton respond to this. Maybe he can make her nomination speech at the convention. Also as in Israeli occupation: apatheid. He is basically shunned for his rudeness.
OT:Republicans slam brakes on voting rights bill
By Mike Lillis – 08/01/15 06:00 AM EDT
House Republican leaders are slamming the brakes on voting rights legislation, insisting that any movement on the issue go through a key Republican committee chairman who opposes the proposal.
House Democrats are pressing hard on GOP leaders to bring the new voter protections directly to the floor.
That would sidestep consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has rejected a bipartisan proposal to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a central provision of that law.
http://itk.thehill.com/homenews/house/249959-republicans-slam-brakes-on-voting-rights-bill
this is who they are. no shock in the least.
They’re also interested in keeping Huma Abedin visible to encourage Islamaphobic conspiracy theories.
Precisely. Not only is she a Mooslin, but her husband tweets his junk. It’s all a pattern, if you just know how to squint at it.
What else is the opposition and reporters assigned to cover the DEM primary to do when there is but one, inevitable, DEM candidate since well before the election cycle began?
It’s what should have and didn’t happen to GHWB in 1987-88. Did happen to Gore in 1999-00. Didn’t happen to McCain in 1987-88 because there were a whole lot of other GOP contenders.
I don’t really give a shit about stuff like that. Policy matters. Personality matters. Minor trivia about timesheets or what servers e-mail were on a load of crap.
Don’t care if she has girlfriends doing her under the desk as the Tea Party alleges, either.
IMHO conducting official business through one’s personal server is a big deal. What corporations permit such a practice for any employee including senior executives?
She might have been trying to keep the NSA from spying on her. I say “might.
I’ve sent and received official correspondence from home to my boss. It probably was against the rules. And I didn’t even have my own server. I was using my ISP’s.
Not that there was anything classified. With my other boss I would have used the phone. This particular boss was a deaf-mute so I felt it was better to use e-mail rather than call someone and ask them to relay the message.
If she had nothing to hide, why would she fear the NSA? They both worked for the same guy, after all.
If you and your boss exchanged official correspondence via both of your home computers and ISPs that would be problematical. Assuming the exchange was your home computer and your boss’ company computer, the company would have the the records if needed. (i.e. discovery in lawsuits or company investigations of employee malfeasance) Of course any such communication wouldn’t be secure.
Regardless of how secure or insecure Clinton’s server was, she could have been communicating in an official capacity with anyone in the world without leaving any government record. Once the “deal” was done, her server could have been destroyed or wiped clean.
Sigh.
So, both sides do it is a defense?
Strange that I missed all the leftie blog articles and comment that claimed it was “no big deal” when we learned that the Bush WH did it. iirc, Rove resigned shortly after that.
For the record — Clinton set up her non-governmental e-mail server AFTER the outrage over Rove skirting the law. It would be like after the disclosure that Clinton’s AG nominee had failed to file employer taxes on household help a high government official wannabe said, “Hmm, that sounds like a good idea when she/he later hired a nanny.”
Not all that burdensome to do on a quarterly basis ONCE the process is set up. Did that for three people that until then had no idea they were in violation of the law. (They all also chose to cover the employer taxes and WC costs and not reduce their employees wages, but the employee payroll taxes meant that they did see less cash.)
“If she had nothing to hide, why would she fear the NSA? “
I can’t believe you said that!
What’s so unbelievable about my comment within context?
NSA spying on US is unacceptable because we don’t fucking work for its boss, the POTUS. Technically, he works for us. Which is why demanding transparency from the POTUS is a legitimate request.
Don’t know about you, but my desk, office, files, etc. were always an open book to every boss I ever had — including the ones that I didn’t much care for. If I had accepted a position from a person that I knew had a “Stasi” operation, all the more reason why I wouldn’t attempt to hold back anything from the “boss.” Granted I wouldn’t be keen to work for anyone so paranoid that they would employ a “Stasi” operation, but that’s neither here nor there because we’re talking about someone that did choose to work for the POTUS and knew that the NSA endeavored to “collect it all.” (Also appears that his “Star Trek” digs was installed in 1998, years before his appointment.)
I see your argument. However, your comment echoed every Bushie during Bush’s administration.
iirc, that argument didn’t change with the end of the Bushie’s era. It just became more bi-partisan.
Yes. It basically says, “If you want privacy, you must have something to hide.” I guess it goes with the facebook generation.
Huma Abedin was also as part-timer on the payroll of Teneo Holdings, with Teneo Capital whose founders were Declan Kelly and Doug Band, both closely bonded to Hillary and Bill Clinton. The company’s advisory board was chaired by US President Bill Clinton and includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Teneo Holdings, the New York based consulting and merchant banking business owned by senior Clinton advisor Doug Band and former US Envoy Declan Kelly, has agreed to partner with Irish based corporate finance and stockbroking company Merrion Capital, an affiliate of the US boutique investment bank, Allen & Company Inc.
The full terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is known that Teneo’s banking subsidiary, Teneo Capital, run by former Morgan Stanley M&A Asia and Latin America head Harry van Dyke, will purchase a minority position in Merrion, and Merrion will purchase an equivalent stake in Teneo Capital.
Merrion Capital, headed by John Conroy, is one of the last remaining independent advisory firms in the Irish market. The company is known to be active as an advisor on a number of matters in Ireland resulting from the Irish fiscal debt crisis.
Declan Kelly resigns to pursue new opportunities @irishcentral July 27, 2009
Declan Kelly, the Tipperary-born entrepreneur who is a leading advisor to several of the world’s leading CEOs, has announced his decision to resign from FTI, the international consulting company that acquired his company, Financial Dynamics in 2006.
Prior to Teneo, Mr. Kelly served as the U.S. Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland at the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Kelly was appointed Economic Envoy by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in September, 2009. Declan Kelly resigned as envoy on May 18, 2012. The word of Kelly’s resignation came more or less in tandem with the news that former senator George Mitchell, architect of the Good Friday Agreement, had resigned his post as U.S. Middle East envoy. Hillary managed to appoint Dennis Ross as envoy for Middle East affairs.
○ Obama Turncoats: CNN Facilitates UANI Advocate Anti-Iran Deal
Timeline a bit confusing … post should have opened with:
Declan Kelly resigns to pursue new opportunities
The timeline of his Teneo bio is also confusing. Reorganized it looks like this:
<2000
Mr. Kelly previously worked as a journalist for more than a decade. He was selected as the recipient of the AT Cross Business Journalist of The Year Award in 1994.
he held a number of senior management positions with other leading communications companies in Ireland.
Principal – Gallagher and Kelly Public Relations. Sold to Financial Dynamics in 2000
2000-2006
Chairman and CEO – Financial Dynamics (FD) in the United States and Chairman of Financial Dynamics in Ireland. (Sold to FTI)
2006
Executive VP – FTI Consulting.
2009
U.S. Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland at the U.S. Department of State.
2011
Chairman, CEO, co-founder Teneo
George Mitchell is a Teneo senior advisor. I guess, all part of “the club.”
Does indicate that Hillary Clinton has hired someone that knows how to create jobs. At least in Northern Ireland.
That’s part of the investigation by Congress into the private email server of Hillary Clinton …
Declan Kelly worked for a number of leading communications companies, including Fleishman Hillard, before starting his own business in 1999. He served as a Member of the Senior Management team which negotiated management buyout of FD International in July, 2003. Mr. Kelly serves as a main Board Director of FD International. Mr. Kelly serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of the American Ireland Fund and of Cooperation Ireland. He also serves as a Director of GOAL (USA) . Mr. Kelly is an Advisor of New Mountain Capital, LLC. He has been a Member of the Advisory Board of Glucksman Ireland House of New York University since 2004. He served as the Chairman of FD US and Ireland at FTI Consulting, Inc.
The American Ireland Fund has partnered with USAID, just saying .. all about bringing democracy and peace. 😉
Special Representative Kris Balderston‘s Welcoming Remarks Before the 2011 Global Diaspora Forum
“Diaspora communities can help us communicate with and relate to communities around the world in
more thoughtful and robust ways. And although diaspora engagement with home countries is sizeable,
the developmental and diplomatic potential for this group remains largely untapped.” – Special Representative Kris Balderston
“Some Clinton aides and Clinton Foundation employees began to wonder where the foundation ended and Teneo began.”
What’s the crime? We all know that there’s a political/government/business nexus that increases the power and wealth of these friends/associates, but tossing out names and inter-relationships is evidence of nothing.
Absent a quid pro quo — and these people are highly skilled enough not to leave such a track — it’s just friends doing biz with friends.
Is it sleazy? Sure. Has the appearance of wrongdoing? Yes. Unfortunately, if the nature, means, methods of suspected wrongdoing aren’t articulated/defined, requests for e-mails or documents is merely trolling. And the longer this goes on, the more convoluted it all gets and the public has no idea what anyone is looking for.
KISS – is good advice for anyone looking at the activities of public officials. (There actually was some there there in the Clinton’s Whitewater investment, but by the time multiple parties had mucked around with the issue and evidence, the “there” was lost.)
Hillary demonstrated poor judgment in using a personal e-mail server and approving her assistant’s moonlighting request. (While Abedin’s timesheets might not be technically correct — I’m sure she put in more than the number of hours require for her salary/pay grade and benefits. Casual manager and employee handling of comp time (assuming both the manager and employee are adults and not taking advantage of the system or abusing anyone) is constructive flexibility. Although I once did push the envelope far beyond that limit, but the woman’s husband was dying and I knowingly risked getting fired for reducing the financial stress for her.)
If Kelly, Abedin or anyone else was engaged in setting up a business or employment for after they left offce, that’s not illegal. Provided, they did it on their own time, didn’t use government resources to do it, and didn’t engage in any favors while in office to feather their post office activities.
Hillary Clinton had a special relationship with parties of the Muslim Brotherhood: Qatar, Turkey and Egypt under Morsi. Millions were donated to the Clinton Foundation …
Renaissance man: Gehad El Haddad works as the Islamist project’s pragmatist
Three weeks ago, Gehad El Haddad divided his time between volunteering for the Muslim Brotherhood and heading the
Cairo office of the Clinton Climate Initiative, a nongovernmental organization set up by the former American president.
○ Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad arrested
○ Khairat el-Shater — Muslim Brotherhood political strategist in Egypt
OT: A review of the GOP candidates from across the way
……………….
The Candidates
(good grief)
Chris Lehmann on the race for the Republican nomination
It is a cliché of American electioneering for candidates to advertise their humble beginnings and unstinting ascent in the face of adversity. Even George W. Bush, with his Andover and Skull-and-Bones East Coast Brahmin pedigree, offered up his own version of the log cabin myth, alluding to his drunken youth and subsequent soul-saving entry into the evangelical fold, and taking self-deprecating potshots at his tricky time as part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. The message was that these episodes were tests of the candidate’s resolve, temporary setbacks in the higher drama of his journey to the Texas governor’s mansion. (It didn’t matter that Bush’s gubernatorial track record was decidedly dismal, since the log cabin myth is about how you attain great office, not what you actually do when you get there.)
But the emerging field of Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential election is something else altogether. Of the dozen or so people who have declared or are thought likely to declare, every one can be described as a full-blown adult failure. These are people who, in most cases, have been granted virtually every imaginable advantage on the road to success, and managed nevertheless to foul things up along the way.There is, for starters, George’s younger brother Jeb: not yet a formal candidate, but already on course to raise $1 billion in campaign funds. (He has deliberately delayed his official entry into the field in order to wring every dollar he can from big-money political action committees; once he becomes a runner, the rules forbid him from dealing directly with them.) Jeb has dined out for most of his career on his image as the clever Bush brother, but as his quasi-campaign heated up and the press started to ask questions about actual policies, he immediately undermined this unearned plaudit by saying he would have followed to the letter George’s catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq. After realising that this was a position now seen as insane even by most Republicans, he tried to retreat from it with a series of flailing clarifications.
Jeb Bush’s own track record is terrible. He was elected as governor of Florida in 1998, touting his ambitious plan to `reform’ – i.e. privatise – the state’s underperforming schools. The actual returns of his `education miracle’ are equivocal at best: it’s hard to tell how individual schools are performing because the letter-grade system he instituted (from A to F) is recalibrated almost every year in an attempt to improve the figures. The unregulated charter schools are paid for with taxpayers’ money. Florida statutes require the organisations administering the schools to be non-profits, but, Florida being Florida, all that energetic for-profit concerns had to do was set up non-profit shell companies as nominal administrators. By 2002, according to the St Petersburg Times, three-quarters of all newly established charter schools were managed by for-profit companies. One such edubusiness, the Richard Milburn Academy, has been forced to close seven failing schools across the state since 2006, but is still allowed to operate two campuses in Daytona Beach with $2.8 million in tax subsidies. In all, 30 per cent of the state’s charter schools have gone under; meanwhile, the people in charge of them have often simply gone on to set up new schools under new corporate letterheads.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n12/chris-lehmann/the-candidates
A thorough demolition of the entire field; it ends however, thus:
Whoopsie.
in terms of the sleaze factor be interesting to see Walker vs. Hillary.
The Clinton Foundation OTOH is in a different category than Benghazi and Huma’s vacation.
It would perhaps be helpful if the liberal media, led by the NY Times, didn’t keep putting execrable right wing hit jobs against Hillary on the front page of the paper, but they do. It is very blatant, and it is harmful to her image and her campaign. As Josh Marshall noted yesterday: “The Times has a checkered past reporting on the Clintons, to put it generously. If this had been about a Republican campaign, there would already been some sort of internal probe or review – at a minimum.
Is the Times a generally liberal paper? Of course it is. But that doesn’t have a direct or obvious effect in a situation like this. It can actually lead to sloppy and unethical reporting, as it did in the Whitewater Era.
The Times has a problem covering the Clintons. There’s no getting around that conclusion. It’s a longstanding problem. It’s institutional. I am really baffled as to why they can’t simply come clean on this one.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/highly-instructive
Don’t blame the Messenger … it’s the Republican garde that does the political hit job on adversaries they fear.
The New York Times also has a chequered past, institutional, covering all aspects of the Middle East and not in the least treating Israel with kids gloves. Even abides by IDF censorship and government gag orders … hailing democracy and freedom of the press.
The only thing that even remotely interests me about Abedin is why she is still with Weiner. The only thong that remotely interests me about Clinton finances is…. not much really.
Everyone can be bought, especially politicians are quite vulnerable… except with the Clintons they make it so obvious. Her negative poll numbers are entirely the way voters draw their conclusions. A politician has to recognize that, the voters will be the deciders in the voting booth in November 2016. Friend Biden is waiting for Hillary to implode.
everyone? not true. many examples, most of them not in the news, but for one, jimmy carter?
It depends how you define the term “bought”.
Was Dennis Kucinich “bought” for voting in favor of the ACA? Many people would argue that he was. I think that’s nonsense, but it is what it is.
And then there’s the fact that many people actually believe their own shit so they’re not bought at all, but paid because of their views. So when the oil executives give Joe Barton campaign contributions, are they buying him, or giving him money to ensure he stays there because he agrees with them?
I know what you’re saying. somethings ppl’s strongly held principles do not seem very thought out [or ethical] and often ppl seem to be deluding themselves about whether it’s principles or benefits that are motivating them; but be that as it may, there are a whole lot of people who endeavor to act on principle, flawed though they be. and imo one of the great problems of our age of greed is the assertion that “everyone can be bought” and acting on that assertion.
the big problem with Clinton Foundation imo is that it functions primarily as a means of networking among the world’s movers and shakers, not as a charity agency or whatever the term might be for it’s expressed purpose. So it’s not any specific deal that is a smoking gun but the overall pattern of activity, including the % kept for admin expenses, huge speaking fees, little given for Haiti relief so far, etc. Each item perhaps small bore, but the overall picture is problematic.
Not quite. It functions primarily as a means for Bill Clinton to remain relevant and high profile in the world.
do I understand this to mean you’re giving me a B+ for my comment? Be still, my heart!
Or an A-; your choice.
Have I not been giving you enough tips?
no, it’s the tone of your comment, like marking up a paper with red pencil rather than “this is my pov” kind of thing. [I actually replied yesterday, reply lost in cyberspace?]
First impression of presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1991 … through adept polling he was able to change his message to the people in the state he was canvassing. Not political honesty, although nearly 25 years later it seems just a minor inconvenience as today the billionaires have all the political power. The lobbyists follow suit and write the legislation for our members of Congress … tell me how you want this new law so it won’t inconvenience you, your company or your profits. Yes, We The People!!
As Jimmy Carter rightly concludes, the United States and its democracy is held hostage by the oligarchs.
○ Jimmy Carter Uses The Oligarchy Word: Blasts U.S. ‘Political Bribery’
○ Jimmy Carter’s Book – Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Excellent article by Phil Weiss @Mondoweiss – Why is DNC chair Wasserman Schultz holding out on Iran deal?.
or how about our own Booman?