Clinton.com - Malware Edition

Bill Clinton’s Wall Street cash puts wife in an ethical spot

The gusher of special interest money to the Clintons since they left the White House has become a dominant storyline in the early stages of the 2016 presidential race. In addition to Bill Clinton’s speaking fees, it includes $11.7 million in speeches by Hillary Clinton in the 15 months before she announced her candidacy and more than $2 billion in donations to the Clinton Foundation. She is not required to disclose what she and her husband earned from speaking fees in 2013.

That money flow has enmeshed the former and would-be future first couple in an extraordinary web of financial entanglements: with Arab governments, Canadian mining interests, U.S. energy giants and the largest banks on Wall Street, to name a few. Republicans and Clinton’s Democratic challengers all contend she is too financially beholden to special interests to lead the nation.

The Clintons’ soaring income from speaking fees and book royalties also threatens to undermine Hillary Clinton’s attempt to cast herself as a crusader for poor and economically struggling Americans.

“The deck is still stacked for those at the top,” Hillary Clinton said at a small business round table in Cedar Falls, Iowa, last month. “People aren’t getting a fair shake. Something is wrong when CEOs earn more than 300 times more than what the typical American worker earns and when hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than truck drivers or nurses.

She said as she and her husband accepted hundreds of millions of dollars for "speaking" to and providing access for those very CEOs to government slush.

The inside story of how the Clintons built a $2 billion global empire

At its heart, the Clinton Foundation is an ingenious machine that can turn something intangible — the Clintons’ global goodwill — into something tangible: money.

For the Clintons’ charitable causes. For their aides and allies. And, indirectly, for the Clintons themselves.

But today, the very things that made the foundation work for Bill Clinton’s purposes — its mega-dollar donations and its courting of the richest and most powerful interests in the world — have proved troublesome for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

As donations have surged, particularly as her bid for the Democratic nomination grew closer, she has been forced to answer for whether those supporters have been not merely giving to a charity but also paying to curry favor with a former secretary of state and a would-be president.

She has been forced to answer? I haven't seen it. She'd actually have to take questions from independent minded reporters (the few that exist).

Hillary's Accomplishments During the 8 years of the Clinton Administration.

. . .Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood – both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration. Next she chose Janet Reno – husband Bill described her selection as “my worst mistake.” Some may not remember that Reno made the decision to gas David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas resulting in dozens of deaths of women and children.

Husband Bill allowed Hillary to make recommendations for the head of the Civil Rights Commission. Lani Guanier was her selection. When a little probing led to the discovered of Ms. Guanier’s radical views, her name had to be withdrawn from consideration.

Apparently a slow learner, husband Bill allowed Hillary to make some more recommendations. She chose former law partners Web Hubbel for the Justice Department, Vince Foster for the White House staff, and William Kennedy for the Treasury Department. Her selections went well: Hubbel went to prison, Foster (presumably) committed suicide, and Kennedy was forced to resign.

Many younger votes will have no knowledge of “Travelgate.” Hillary wanted to award unfettered travel contracts to Clinton friend Harry Thompson – and the White House Travel Office refused to comply. She managed to have them reported to the FBI and fired. This ruined their reputations, cost them their jobs, and caused a thirty-six month investigation. Only one employee, Billy Dale was charged with a crime, and that of the enormous crime of mixing personal and White House funds. A jury acquitted him of any crime in less than two hours.

Still not convinced of her ineptness, Hillary was allowed to recommend a close Clinton friend, Craig Livingstone, for the position of Director of White House security. When Livingstone was investigated for the improper access of about 900 FBI files of Clinton enemies (Filegate) and the widespread use of drugs by White House staff, suddenly Hillary and the president denied even knowing Livingstone, and of course, denied knowledge of drug use in the White House. Following this debacle, the FBI closed its White House Liaison Office after more than thirty years of service to seven presidents.

Next, when women started coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and rape by Bill Clinton, Hillary was put in charge of the “bimbo eruption” and scandal defense. Some of her more notable decisions in the debacle was:

· She urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit. After the Starr investigation they settled with Ms. Jones.

· She refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the
appointment of Ken Starr as Special Prosecutor. After $80 million
dollars of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation led to
Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting his
affairs.

· Hillary’s game plan resulted in Bill losing his license to practice law for lying under oath to a grand jury and then his subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives.

· Hillary avoided indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice during the Starr investigation by repeating, “I do not recall,” “I have no recollection,” and “I don’t know” a total of 56 times while under oath.

· After leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had taken.

It is truly an amazing list, and an indictment of the short memory of America.

The Clintons’ Favorite Way to Lie

. . . My point is that Hillary is predictable. I could have written that in 2000 when she went on her last “listening tour” in a Scooby van, or at almost any other moment of the last 30 years.

There are no “new” Hillarys. There are, on occasion, new strategies to dupe people into thinking there is a new Hillary. But these Potemkin do-overs are usually as pale, thin, and see-through as the skin of an agoraphobic Goth computer programmer. The simple fact is: This is her. There is no other her. There is no other Bill, either, by the way. They are Clintons and they are eternal, Aesopian, unchanging. The tackiness and the lying, the parsing and corner-cutting, the entitlement and fakery: This is what they do. Scandals swirl around the Clintons like the cloud of dirt surrounding Pigpen not because the Clintons are the victims of their enemies, but because the Clintons are their own worst enemies. They do this to themselves. They create these problems. They are the authors of their own torment because this is who they are.

DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN

You have been warned.

And just for fun, little more Jonah Goldberg:

Does the Media Hold Anyone to a Lower Ethical Standard than the Clintons?

Let’s say, just for kicks, you murdered your husband (or wife). Your neighbors have been suspicious ever since your nightly arguments suddenly stopped, right around the time you put something large in your trunk and drove off in the middle of the night. Now they see you driving his car and putting his suits and golf clubs up for sale on eBay. The police find your explanations implausible and contradictory, and then you tell the cops to direct all future questions to your lawyer.

The good news is that you have fans. Some neighbors think you’re the cat’s pajamas. They come to you and say they want to defend you against this terrible accusation. What should you tell them to say on your behalf?

Frankly, I don’t know what you should say, but I do have a good sense of what you shouldn’t say: “Tell them there’s no smoking gun.”

The Clintons are malware in the operating system of American politics.