It is fascinating to watch the growing controversy over the Clinton speeches and the decision of the campaign to stick with its refusal to release the transcripts in its possession. Hillary Clinton last week appeared to finish “looking into” releasing the transcripts of her speeches Wall Street and other groups. Voters and reporters have been asking to read what Clinton has said to these groups. After all, Clinton has said that she has only given Wall Street straight talk and that these firms stopped given her money. The latter statement has been called “demonstrably untrue” by the Washington Post. Clinton has thus far refused to release the transcripts and instead that she would only consider the release if everyone releases every speech ever given to any group. It had a certain Macbethian feel of guaranteeing that the final reckoning will never come “Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.” The problem is that Birnam forest did come to Dunsinane. The demand has now produced the world’s worse comparison for Clinton. It turns out that Bernie Sanders has disclosed his speeches and has only given two paid speeches for $1,867.42. That is now being compared to the estimate that Bill and Hillary Clinton have made $153 million for speeches from 2001 to her announcement for the presidency. While this is just a one year period, Sanders has a lot of room to make up to reach $153 million. That is not to say that the campaign cannot argue that Sanders in the pocket of these two groups but it is clearly a very, very small pocket.
It is also being reported that Clinton was the one who insisted that the transcripts be made by her hosts and handed over to her total control. What I honestly do not understand is why the Clinton campaign continues to fit disclosures despite the failure of that strategy in prior scandals like the email scandal. Various sites have started petitions with thousands of signatures to get Clinton to release the transcripts. It would seem inevitable that she will have to release the speeches but will now be viewed as fighting any review by the public. I am interested in whether people believe that this position will be sustainable in light of the worsening environment for Clinton in the primary.
After promising to “look into” the release of the transcripts, Clinton refused to release them or to explain why shouldn’t the public be able to read what she told such private groups. After all, polling shows this to be a major concern of voters and Clinton has characterized what she has told the groups. Clinton responded by setting this standard as the precondition to even “look into it further”:
“Let everybody who has ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them and we will all release them at the same time. I don’t mind being the subject in Republican debates, the subject in the Democratic primary. It goes with the territory. At somepoint, you know, these rules need to apply to everybody. And there are a bunch of folks, including my opponent who has given, you know has given speech, speeches to groups and people on the other side who have given speeches to groups. If this is a new standard, it should apply to everybody. Then I’ll be happy to look into it further.”
It is hard to even fathom the satisfaction of a precondition of “everybody who has ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances.” The fact is no other candidate has amassed such a fortune for such speeches in this race (with over $21 million from Wall Street alone) — most particularly her actual opponent in the Democratic race.
Sanders netted of $1,867.42 for two paid speeches and a television appearance last year. His highest paying gig? A spot on comedian Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher” in November worth $850. That leaves his highest hourly rate as $850 versus $200,000 . . . and it was public. In 2014, Sanders had a minimum net worth of $169,025 with at least $25,002 in credit card debt.
What is interesting is that I would be surprised if Clinton said anything truly horrific in such speeches given her highly controlled and careful statements. Clinton has been criticized for being incredibly scripted in her comments and it would seem highly out of character to have a Romney moment like the videotape released in the last presidential election from a private speech. Most Democrats thought it was a good thing that Romney’s 47 percent comment was captured and released as reflective of his views. The same view would seem to argue for disclosure in this case. What is interesting is that, given Clinton’s statement that her straight-talk led to Wall Street not giving her money, it would be highly damaging just to see Clinton being chummy with these groups. The campaign seems to be preparing for that disclosure through surrogates in the media saying that such speeches often involve acknowledgments of “friends” as a courtesy. The campaign may correctly view the public as less willing to dismiss such friendly exchanges from a candidate who has made a fortune from speeches with banks and firms. However, reports are trickling out that suggest that Clinton was more than chummy, including one that said that Clinton “sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.”
In the end, I believe that it would be good for all candidates for the presidency to release any transcripts to business groups and private groups as a rule. When you are campaigning for votes from the American people, there is a reasonable expectation of transparency, particularly to groups with financial interests in government policy. The question however is whether Clinton should be able to wait for all candidates to release all speeches, even those who are not running for the Democratic nomination.
Do you believe that Clinton should release the transcripts or do you agree that it is only fair that every candidate — including the Republicans — release their speeches as a precondition?
Did Bernie Sanders ever speak privately to Socialist organizations? (Whether for pay or not.) The issue (only in Bernie Sanders mind) is not who spoke to Wall Street, but rather who spoke to private organizations. It may very well be that some Republicans spoke to questionable private organizations. If we have a level playing field lets release all the records. If not, then the candidate of the Democratic Party should not be placed at a disadvantage by the petulant kvetches of Bernie.
Dr. Cohen – Bernie spoke to some group for $500. Which he donated to charity, if I remember correctly. Hillary does not have a cankle to stand on.
It’s ridiculous to compare only one year of Sanders’ speeches to 15 years of Clinton speeches.
John, I totally appreciate your commitment to the Constitution. We would be wise to take the true meaning of it and live it better than the Founding Brothers did. They would have wanted that more than anything.
Obviously, Bern believes in free(r) Speech! (Billary : BRIBE$).
Actually is was 84% of young WHITE women. The same airheads who followed their boyfriends in voting for Obama. And look where that got us…..
“Satan better clear a lotta room in hell. 84% of women 18-29 voted for Bernie. 84%!!!”
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“Highway to Hell”
Highway to Hell – 1979
AC/DC
Madeline Albright causes an historic traffic jam.
Clearly her demand that others release their speeches simultaneously is a pathetic dodge and is seen as such by everyone and that is the best it can be seen as. Most people probably see this is an admission of some sort of guilt. It is also part of a larger pattern of refusing to be open and honest as with her resistance to releasing information in past investigations whether at the Rose Law firm, travelgate, the secret healthcare group she convened so disastrously in 1993 or refusing to release emails. When your best defense is “they got nothing on me” you are in big trouble. I think the writing on the wall is now self evident that her campaign is imploding faster and with even less grace than in 2008. It is kind of sad but I do wish the Clinton’s would spare us the drama and agony and conflict they plan on putting us all through because she refuses to give up on her impossible dream. She just is not a very good candidate overall.
$153 Million? OOOO WHEEE! The particular progressive democratic flavored radio station I listen to on my way to work everyday had a show on today where the participants were not too happy with Mrs. Clinton. Even THEY are not buying her “helping Main Street against Wall St.” rhetoric. She needs to make her lies a wee bit less obvious.
bam bam,
Point of Information:
Neither of Rubio’s parents was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth in 1971 in Miami.
Rubio’s parents were Cuban citizens at the time of the candidate’s birth.
Rubio was “…born in the country of parents who are Cuban citizens.”
Oops.
The Constitutional Presidential requirement, raised from “citizen” to “natural born citizen” by the Jay/Washington letter, July, 1787, is defined in the Law of Nations as “…born in the country of parents who are citizens.”
Rubio is not eligible for the office of President.
Rubio is not eligible for the office of Vice President.
“I am not a crook.” Richard Nixon – November 17, 1973
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Newly Released Documents Prove That Hillary Sent And Received Classified Emails on Private Server
By Debra Heine February 9, 2016
With lawyerly parsing, Hillary Clinton has long denied that she sent or received classified emails on her unsecured server while secretary of state, but new emails released by Judicial Watch today tell a different story. Seventy pages of State Department records reveal that Clinton and her top aides, Deputy Chiefs of Staff Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, “received and sent classified information on their non-state.gov email accounts.” Judicial Watch obtained the documents in response to a court order from their May 2015 lawsuit after State failed to respond to a March 18 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The new documents show that Hillary Clinton used the clintonemail.com system to ask Huma Abedin (also on a non-state.gov email account) to print two March 2011 emails, which were sent from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (using the moniker “aclb”) to Jake Sullivan on Sullivan’s non-state.gov email account. The Obama State Department redacted the Blair emails under Exemption (b)(1) which allows the withholding of classified material. The material is marked as being classified as “Foreign government information” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the US, including confidential sources.”
Another email shows that Clinton wanted to know how meetings in Washington, including a four-hour meeting concerning America’s war on Libya, would impact her Hamptons vacation. Responding to an email that details the sensitive meetings in D.C., Clinton emailed Abedin on August 26, 2011, “Ok. What time would I get back to Hamptons?” Again, this email discussion takes place on non-state.gov email accounts.
The documents also include advice to Clinton on Libya from eminence grise Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton Foundation employee who, according to a Judicial Watch investigative report, also had business interests in Libya. Clinton wanted Blumenthal’s March 9, 2011, Libya memo to be printed “without any identifiers.”
Satan better clear a lotta room in hell. 84% of women 18-29 voted for Bernie. 84%!!!
Hillary Rodman is a Goldwater Republican and now also a Friend of Wall Street. Don’t need no transcripts to know what she’ll do; sell out just as her his did.
Pretty funny, bam, but a cholesterol-free and fat-free pepperoni already exists, made by Yves. Coincidentally, I tried it for the first time on a pizza just a couple of days ago and the product was remarkably tasty as well as nutritious.
A friend emailed this to me. Enjoy!
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Trump’s first day in office:
1. President Donald Trump and Vice President Marco Rubio are sworn into office.
2. In a rare event on inauguration day, Congress convenes for an emergency meeting to repeal the illegal and unconstitutional Socialist healthcare farce known as Obamacare. The new Director of Health and Social Services Dr. Ben Carson announces that an independent group of healthcare management professionals is hired to handle healthcare services for poor and low income people. They are also assigned the duty of eliminating Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Government’s costs for public healthcare are reduced by 90%. Healthcare insurance premiums for working Americans are reduced by 50%. The move saves billions of taxpayer paid dollars. Healthcare service in the U.S improves 100%.
3. Newly appointed Department of Homeland Security Chief Ted Cruz announces the immediate deployment of troops to the U.S. Mexico border to control illegal immigration and the immediate deportation of illegals with criminal records or links to terrorist groups. New bio-encrypted Social Security IDs are required by every American citizen. Birthright is abolished. All immigration from countries that represent a threat to the safety of American citizens is terminated indefinitely. The move saves American taxpayers billions of dollars. Several prisons are closed.
4. Newly appointed Secretary of Business and Economic Development Carly Fiorina eliminates more than half of the Government agencies operating under the Obama administration saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Stocks rise 100%.
5. Newly appointed Director of Government Finance Rand Paul announces the abolition of the IRS and displays a copy of the new Federal Tax Return form. It consists of one page. The instructions consist of two pages. The Federal Reserve is audited. The move saves American Taxpayers billions of dollars and increases tax revenue.
6. Hillary Clinton is in prison. Her cell is directly across from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who are serving time for ‘Hate Crimes”. She bitches at them constantly from behind the bars of her cell in what some might call cruel and unusual punishment.
7. Bernie Sanders is in the nuthouse, where he belongs. His room is directly across from Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chris Matthews and Al Franken. They meet for tea every day at 10 AM and discuss the success and benefits of Communism and Socialism throughout the world. They also wonder when the Mothership” is going to pick them up and return them to their home planets.
8. Windows 12 is released. It is designed for humans, doesn’t try to satisfy the needs of every person on the planet, doesn’t require a degree in nuclear physics to operate and looks just like Windows 7 except it is easier to use.
9. Barack Obama flees the United States under cover of darkness and returns to his homeland of Kenya before his trial for treason begins. He deplanes on a remote jungle airstrip. It was reported that he was last seen wandering through the jungle singing “Hakuna Matata” with a chimp named Commie.
10. Oscar Meyer announces the introduction of a new cholesterol and fat free pepperoni that tastes just like regular pepperoni.
11. Not to be outdone, Kraft Foods announces the introduction of several varieties of cholesterol and fat free cheeses that taste just like regular cheese.
12. A committee is not established to determine what is causing global cooling. Billions of taxpayer dollars are saved.
13. Dead people are no longer allowed to vote in Chicago, a huge blow for the Democrat Party in the State of Illinois.
bam bam – I am on board with all of these but I think Windows 12 should be DOS based.
Public service for private power. I’d like to see the speeches, yes. Why should they be private?
I will do half of Bernie’s work. Here is the transcript from Bill Maher’s show
For all of you die-hard Bernie the Bolshevik supporters, here is a very illuminating and interesting article which reveals the fraud that is The Bern. You really think that he has spent his Socialist lifetime actually shunning the evil, multinational corporations or the huge, despicable banks that he now rails against? Think again. Seems like his tendency to wheeze out, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, is a relatively new tactic, carefully scripted for all of the fools who are easily deceived by the bad haircut, rumpled suit and the calls for a RE-VAHH-LOO-TION. I’m only curious as to why Hillybilly hasn’t whipped out the below-referenced info during a debate, as The Bern gently and mildly admonishes her for being involved in the same activities–activities in which he engaged for YEARS. Perhaps it is some sort of tit-for-tat–yeah, that must be it. Hillary remains mum on his background, replete with instances of courting big business and huge corporations, and he, in return, and, under the guise of wanting to remain above the fray, plays softball by refusing to address, question or mention her email scandal or any of the other, assorted scandals throughout her lifetime.
No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. 🙁
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Bernie Sanders Really Hated All That Fundraising w/Big Banks He Used to Do
Bernie Sanders 2016: There’s a Socialist sucker born every minute.
February 8, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
If you listen to one of Bernie Sanders’ rants about campaign finance, you get the idea that he’s just a little guy raising money from ordinary people. As he likes to yell, “$27 dollars”, who is a world away from the high finance world of campaign fundraising and big donors, and wants to tear it all down. But Bernie’s authenticity is a scam. Politicians cultivate a particular image. Bernie Sanders is a successful politician who cultivates the image of an eccentric grass roots politician who has nothing to do with big time fundraising. The truth is he has always been a big part of that world.
In recent years, Sanders has been billed as one of the hosts for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s retreats for the “Majority Trust” — an elite group of top donors who give more than $30,000 per year — at Martha’s Vineyard in the summer and Palm Beach, Florida, in the winter. CNN has obtained invitations that listed Sanders as a host for at least one Majority Trust event in each year since 2011.
The retreats are typically attended by 100 or more donors who have either contributed the annual legal maximum of $33,400 to the DSCC, raised more than $100,000 for the party or both.
Sanders has based his presidential campaign on a fire-and-brimstone critique of a broken campaign finance system — and of Hillary Clinton for her reliance on big-dollar Wall Street donors. But Sanders is part of that system, and has helped Democrats court many of the same donors.
He is indeed. At the last Dem debate, he admitted that he had considered setting up a SuperPAC. Despite his rants about SuperPACs. (But then again Obama claimed to hate SuperPACs until he literally became one.)
A Democratic lobbyist and donor who has attended the retreats told CNN that about 25% of the attendees there represent the financial sector — and that Sanders and his wife, Jane, are always present.
“At each of the events all the senators speak. And I don’t recall him ever giving a speech attacking us,” the donor said. “While progressive, his remarks were always in the mainstream of what you hear from senators.”
Of course he did. Bernie Sanders doesn’t speak truth to power. He speaks applause lines to audiences. And his wife has certainly benefited from certain financial arrangements back in Vermont.
Sanders’ political leanings were well known by the donors who attended the retreats. “Nobody was more surprised that Bernie was there than the donors were,” said another Democrat who attended the retreats.
Bernie Gotta Eat.
But Sanders maintains that members of Congress now spend far too much time making calls seeking campaign contributions — or “dialing for dollars,” he said during a speech at the New England Council’s “Politics and Eggs” event Friday morning.
“That’s what they do. And not only should members who are elected be working for the people, not raising money — if you think you could simply divide your brain in half, if you’re working on unemployment or health care and think, now I’ve gotta go out and raise money, it affects your entire being,” he said.
Yeah, it diverts Bernie Sanders from the two of the three bills he actually cosponsored that got passed, to rename Vermont post offices. But really the fake authenticity that Bernie Sanders brings to the table aids the fundraising.
Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said Sanders has “raised more money for the Senate Democrats than almost any other member of the Senate Democratic caucus” because he sees helping the party regain the majority as critical.
So the Independent thing is also a scam.
In 2006, when Sanders ran for the Senate, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pumped $37,300 into his race and included him in fundraising efforts for the party’s Senate candidates.
The party also spent $60,000 on ads for Sanders, and contributed $100,000 to the Vermont Democratic Party — which was behind Sanders even as he ran as an independent.
Among the DSCC’s top contributors that year: Goldman Sachs at $685,000, Citigroup at $326,000, Morgan Stanley at $260,000 and JPMorgan Chase & Co. at $207,000.
Sanders was among the senators who met with Sen. Chuck Schumer’s “Legacy Circle” donors who had given the legal maximum to the DSCC five years in a row or $500,000 over their lifetimes.
He paid dues to the DSCC, too, with his Progressive Voters of America political action committee cutting checks for $30,000 to the group during the 2014 election cycle.
Oh tell us more.
The 2007 Martha’s Vineyard fundraiser guest list included professional lobbyists, corporate executives, trade association heads, labor union brass and wealthy individual donors.
Some are government relations executives directly employed by corporations such as the financial firms Blackrock and Prudential Financial, or the defense contractor Raytheon. Others represent large Washington law and lobbying firms, such as DLA Piper, Patton Boggs, and Akin Gump.
Some names stand out, like John Breaux, the former Democratic senator from Louisiana turned mega-lobbyist who has worked for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Chevron, ExxonMobil and more. Then there’s former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, who has represented many petrochemical and pipeline companies as well as Stanford Financial, the now defunct financial firm felled by an alleged Ponzi scheme.
Other guests included a lobbyist for the private equity firm Blackstone Group as well as those who have represented pipeline company Kinder Morgan, the American Petroleum Institute, pharmaceutical giants such as Merck and Allergan (now involved in a controversial inversion deal), and the pharmaceutical trade association, among others.
Translation, every word you hear coming out of the Bernie Sanders liehole is a lie. He’s not some independent insurgent who is outside the system. He’s what the system was built on. And he’s lying to his supporters while pumping them for money, telling them what they want to hear, exactly the way he told the big donors what they wanted to hear while pumping them for cash.
Bernie Sanders 2016. Because there’s a Socialist sucker born every minute.
While I want to see the transcripts of her speeches, the fact that she gives such speeches and gets a huge speaking fee is not out of the norm for such high profile people. There is no question that she will be a friend to Wall Street, as was Obama. That is also why I am for Sanders. He is the only candidate who is serious about trying to work for the ordinary American. IF Clinton is the nominee, I will still vote for her since she is FAR better than the GOP candidates.
Maybe Hillary’s transcripts are to be found on Wikileaks, along with her assurances to Monsanto et al that their control of the world’s seed supply will be protected by the full force of US military…uh, trade office.