’90s Scandals Threaten to Erode Hillary Clinton’s Strength With Women








This month, Lena Dunham, wearing a red, white and blue sweater dress with the word “Hillary” emblazoned across the chest, told voters how Hillary Clinton had overcome sexism in her political career.

“The way she has been treated is just more evidence of the fact that our country has so much hatred toward successful women,” Ms. Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO series “Girls,” said at a Clinton campaign event in Manchester, N.H.

But at an Upper East Side dinner party a few months back, Ms. Dunham expressed more conflicted feelings. She told the guests, at the Park Avenue apartment of Richard Plepler, the chief executive of HBO, that she was disturbed by how, in the 1990s, the Clintons and their allies discredited women who said they had had sexual encounters with or been sexually assaulted by former President Bill Clinton.

The conversation, relayed by several people with knowledge of the discussion who would speak about it only anonymously, captures the deeper debate unfolding among liberal-leaning women about how to reconcile Mrs. Clinton’s leadership on women’s issues with her past involvement in her husband’s efforts to fend off accusations of sexual misconduct.

The issue emerged last month when Mrs. Clinton accused the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump of having a “penchant for sexism” and he in turn accused her of hypocrisy, given her husband’s treatment of women. And in recent weeks, the scandals of the 1990s and Mrs. Clinton’s role in them have taken on a life of their own, delivering an unexpected headache to a campaign predicated on inspiring female voters.

Mrs. Clinton had hoped to galvanize women late last month in her critique of Mr. Trump. Instead, two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, her campaign has found itself trying to shore up support among women as discussions about past Clinton scandals have moved from conservative critics to broader public consciousness.

“She’s not a victim. She was an enabler,” Mr. Trump told Fox News last week. “Some of these women have been destroyed, and Hillary worked with” her husband.

Ms. Dunham declined a request for comment. Her spokeswoman, Cindi Berger, said that Ms. Dunham is “fully supportive of Hillary Clinton and her track record for protecting women,” and that the description of her comments at the dinner party was a “total mischaracterization.”

But the resurfacing of the scandals of the 1990s has brought about a rethinking among some feminists about how prominent women stood by Mr. Clinton and disparaged his accusers after the “bimbo eruptions,” as a close aide to the Clintons, Betsey Wright, famously called the claims of affairs and sexual assault against Mr. Clinton in his 1992 campaign.

Even some Democrats who participated in the effort to discredit the women acknowledge privately that today, when Mrs. Clinton and other women have pleaded with the authorities on college campuses and in workplaces to take any allegation of sexual assault and sexual harassment seriously, such a campaign to attack the women’s character would be unacceptable.

Back then, Mr. Clinton’s aides, having watched Gary Hart’s presidential hopes unravel over his relationship with Donna Rice in the 1988 Democratic primary race, were determined to squash any accusations against Mr. Clinton early and aggressively, former campaign aides explained. Mrs. Clinton had supported the effort to push back against the women’s stories.

Much of her involvement played out behind the scenes, and was driven, in part, by her sense that right-wing forces were using the women and salacious stories to damage her husband’s political ambitions. Her reflex was to protect him and his future, and, early on, she turned to a longtime Clinton loyalist, Ms. Wright, to defend him against the allegations, according to multiple accounts at the time, documented in books and oral histories.

“We have to destroy her story,” Mrs. Clinton said of one of the first women to come forward during her husband’s first presidential campaign, Connie Hamzy, in 1991, according to George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton administration aide who described the events in his memoir, “All Too Human.’’ (Three people signed sworn affidavits saying Ms. Hamzy’s story was false.)

When Gennifer Flowers later surfaced, claiming that she had a long affair with Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton undertook an “aggressive, explicit direction of the campaign to discredit” Ms. Flowers, according to an exhaustive biography of Mrs. Clinton, “A Woman in Charge,” by Carl Bernstein.

Mrs. Clinton referred to Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with the 42nd president, as a “narcissistic loony toon,” according to one of her closest confidantes, Diane D. Blair, whose diaries were released to the University of Arkansas after her death in 2000. Ms. Lewinsky later called the comment an example of Mrs. Clinton’s impulse to “blame the woman.”

Brian Fallon, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton, said that “these are attempts to draw Hillary Clinton into decades-old allegations through recent fabrications that are unsubstantiated.” He added that Mrs. Clinton “has spent her whole life standing up for women, and charges to the contrary are grossly unfair and untrue.”

Over the years, the Clinton effort to cast doubt on the women included using words like “floozy,” “bimbo” and “stalker,” and raising questions about their motives. James Carville, a longtime strategist for Mr. Clinton, was especially cutting in attacking Ms. Flowers. “If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” Mr. Carville said of Ms. Flowers.

Now that the stories are resurfacing, they could hamper Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to connect with younger women, who are learning the details of the Clintons’ history for the first time. Several news organizations have published guides to the Clinton scandals to explain the allegations to a new generation of readers.

Alexis Isabel Moncada, the 17-year-old founder of Feminist Culture, a popular blog, was not old enough to remember the 1990s, but lately she and her thousands of young female readers have heard a lot about the scandals.

“I heard he sexually harassed people and she worked to cover it up,” Ms. Moncada said of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. “A lot of girls in my age group are huge feminists, and we don’t react well to that.”

A warning Mr. Trump issued to Mrs. Clinton on Twitter — “Be careful Hillary as you play the war on women or women being degraded card” — initially grabbed attention last month. Then, Paula Jones, who had accused Mr. Clinton of exposing himself while she was an Arkansas state employee, and Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas nursing home executive who alleged that Mr. Clinton sexually assaulted her in 1978 when he was attorney general of Arkansas, re-emerged in the news media.

Mr. Clinton maintained he was innocent but eventually paid Ms. Jones $850,000 to settle her sexual harassment case. He has denied, through his lawyer, assaulting Ms. Broaddrick.





“You have to give Trump credit,” said Jennifer Weiner, a best-selling novelist and feminist. “He’s a genius at poking and prodding his competitors until he finds their soft spots.”

By reminding voters about the jarring terms that Mr. Clinton and his advisers used to describe these women, Mr. Trump has sought to diminish one of Mrs. Clinton’s biggest strengths: her commitment to helping women.

Mr. Trump’s attacks make Mrs. Clinton look less like “a strong, self-actualized feminist leader who women can proudly get behind,” Ms. Weiner added, and more “like a craven opportunist, and an apologist for a predator.”

Mrs. Clinton’s defenders strongly object to that characterization and say there is no truth to political adversaries’ accusations that Mrs. Clinton muzzled her husband’s accusers. They note that Ms. Broaddrick, for example, has not provided any evidence to show Mrs. Clinton pressured her to stay silent about the assault accusation.

Many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters say it is the ultimate act of sexism to hold her culpable for her husband’s transgressions. “Show me the wife who, when she finds out her husband is having an affair with a much younger woman, says, ‘Oh, I feel such sisterhood with her,’” said Katha Pollitt, a feminist poet and columnist for The Nation.

After Mr. Trump’s initial Twitter post, the debate quickly spread to prominent female writers, who offered opinion columns in Cosmopolitan, Slate and New York Magazine, among other outlets. Even the women on “The View” weighed in.

“It’s not about Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes,” said Camille Paglia, a feminist author and professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a supporter of one of Mrs. Clinton’s rivals, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “It’s about Hillary Clinton’s behavior towards her husband’s accusers for all those years.”

Any threat to Mrs. Clinton’s support among women could prove problematic. A CNN/WMUR poll released Tuesday showed that Mr. Sanders had opened up a surprising 27-point lead over Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire, helped by his support among younger women.

Mrs. Clinton has devoted her campaign to prioritizing issues important to women, including protecting abortion rights, promoting equal pay and combating sexual assault on college campuses — positions that many Democratic women say transcend whatever transpired in Mr. Clinton’s campaigns more than two decades ago.

“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported,” Mrs. Clinton wrote on Twitter in November.

In the past month, two of Mrs. Clinton’s town-hall-style events in New Hampshire have been interrupted with questions about Mr. Clinton’s behavior. At one, a young woman asked Mrs. Clinton about several women who alleged her husband sexually assaulted them.

“You say that all rape victims should be believed,” the woman said. “Should we believe them as well?”

Mrs. Clinton replied, “Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”

Supporters of Mrs. Clinton say Mr. Trump’s strategy could backfire and suggested that the real estate billionaire — who frequently makes remarks about women and their attractiveness — is a poor messenger for a charge of sexism.

“It strains credulity for me to feel like Donald Trump is deeply concerned about the nefarious and terrible effects of slut shaming,” said Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s advocacy group. But, she added, the way Mr. Clinton’s accusers were treated “was a big ball of ugly.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/us/politics/90s-scandals-threaten-to-erode-hillary-clintons-strength-with-women.html

Not bad
 

I see a boat living to an unknown destination. I see two people, passionately arguing on a pier, its chance to come back safe and sound. With riches and treasures. A paradigm shift, or forever be devoured by sea monsters.

They decide their position will never reach a compromise.
The date? Aug. 3, 1492.



Fast forward to 2016.
I see Bitcoin living to an unknown destination. I see two people on a forum...

 

Simply put: No.

Facebook begins Europe-wide campaign against extremist posts


BERLIN Facebook Inc (FB.O) began a Europe-wide campaign on Monday to thwart extremist posts on social media, after German politicians in particular raised concerns about a rise in xenophobic comments linked to an influx of refugees.

The U.S.-based group launched its "Initiative for Civil Courage Online" in Berlin, pledging over 1 million euros (1 million pounds) to support non-governmental organisations in their efforts to counter racist and xenophobic posts.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said hate speech "has no place in our society", including in the Internet.

Facebook's ground rules forbid bullying, harassment and threatening language, but critics say it does not enforce them properly.

On Friday, the firm said it had hired a unit of the publisher Bertelsmann to monitor and delete racist posts on its platform in Germany.

In November, prosecutors in Hamburg launched an investigation into Facebook on suspicion of not doing enough to prevent the dissemination of hate speech.

Top German politicians and celebrities have voiced concern about the rise of anti-foreigner comments on Facebook and other social media as the country struggles to cope with a tide of new migrants that amounted to 1.1 million last year alone.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Facebook to do more, and the Justice Ministry set up a task force with Facebook and other social networks and Internet service providers with the aim of identifying criminal posts more quickly and taking them down.



http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-germany-facebook-idUKKCN0UW25E

Clinton Cash Still Rolling in for Bill’s Pardon of Fugitive Marc Rich





Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”

Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”

Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.

Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile.






What bothered so many was that Clinton’s clemency to Rich reeked of payoff. In the run-up to the presidential pardon, the financier’s ex-wife Denise had donated $450,000 to the fledgling Clinton Library and “over $1 million to Democratic campaigns in the Clinton era.”

Judge Abner Mikva, a counsel in the Clinton White House and mentor to President Obama, noted that even Obama “was very, very dismayed by the Marc Rich pardon and the basis on which it appears to have been granted.”

But does the story end there? Is it possible the payoffs continued after he left office?






The stench of the scandal in early 2001 sent people scurrying. Days after it was revealed that a senior UBS executive named Pierre de Weck had written a letter to Clinton “to support his request for a pardon,” the Swiss banking giant canceled its discussions with Clinton about a lucrative post-White House speech, apparently “worried that a large speaking fee would create an appearance of impropriety.”

Even Bill Clinton eventually admitted that the pardon had been “terrible politics.” “It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation,” he said.

But while the pardon was a political mistake, it certainly was not a financial one. In the years following the scandal, the flow of funds from those connected to Marc Rich or the pardon scandal have continued to the Clintons.

    Rich’s business partners, lawyers, advisers and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Rich died in 2013. But his business partners, lawyers, advisers and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury is well known as a close ally and business associate of Rich. The Nigerian media declared in 1999 that the “Gilbert Chagoury-Marc Rich alliance remains a formidable foe.” They sold oil on international markets together. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva of money laundering and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the reign of dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

As part of a plea deal, the conviction was later expunged.

Chagoury has been very generous to the Clintons in the years following the Rich pardon. He has organized an event at which Bill was paid $100,000 to speak (in 2003), donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and in 2009 pledged a cool $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. The Chagourys were also active in Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid. Michel Chaghouri, a relative in Los Angeles, was a bundler and served on her campaign staff. Numerous other relatives gave the maximum $4,600 each to her campaign.



Read it here:
http://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/

Inspector General: Clinton emails had intel from most secretive, classified programs






EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton's emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government's most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers.

Fox News exclusively obtained the text of the unclassified letter, sent Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III. It laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified "several dozen" additional classified emails -- including specific intelligence known as "special access programs" (SAP). 

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels,” said the IG letter to lawmakers with oversight of the intelligence community and State Department. “According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.”

Intelligence from a "special access program,” or SAP, is even more sensitive than that designated as "top secret" – as were two emails identified last summer in a random sample pulled from Clinton's private server she used as secretary of state. Access to a SAP is restricted to those with a "need-to-know" because exposure of the intelligence would likely reveal the source, putting a method of intelligence collection -- or a human asset -- at risk. Currently, some 1,340 emails designated “classified” have been found on Clinton’s server, though the Democratic presidential candidate insists the information was not classified at the time.

“There is absolutely no way that one could not recognize SAP material,” a former senior law enforcement with decades of experience investigating violations of SAP procedures told Fox News. “It is the most sensitive of the sensitive.”

Executive Order 13526 -- called "Classified National Security Information" and signed Dec. 29, 2009 -- sets out the legal framework for establishing special access programs. The order says the programs can only be authorized by the president, "the Secretaries of State, Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, and the Director of National Intelligence, or the principal deputy of each."

The programs are created when "the vulnerability of, or threat to, specific information is exceptional,” and “the number of persons who ordinarily will have access will be reasonably small and commensurate with the objective of providing enhanced protection for the information involved," it states.

According to court documents, former CIA Director David Petraeus was prosecuted for sharing intelligence from special access programs with his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. At the heart of his prosecution was a non-disclosure agreement where Petraeus agreed to protect these closely held government programs, with the understanding “unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention or negligent handling … could cause irreparable injury to the United States or be used to advantage by a foreign nation.” Clinton signed an identical non-disclosure agreement Jan. 22, 2009.

Fox News is told that the recent IG letter was sent to the leadership of the House and Senate intelligence committees and leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and State Department inspector general.

Fox News has asked the committees to make the letter public because its findings are unclassified.

Representatives for the ODNI and intelligence community inspector general had no comment, but did not dispute the findings.

The intelligence community IG was responding in his message to a November letter from the Republican chairmen of the Senate intelligence and foreign relations committees that questioned the State Department email review process after it was wrongly reported the intelligence community was retreating from the “top secret” designation.

As Fox News first reported, those two emails were “top secret” when they hit the server, and it is now considered a settled matter.

The intelligence agencies now have their own reviewers embedded at the State Department as part of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. The reviewers are identifying intelligence of a potentially classified nature, and referring it to the relevant intelligence agency for further review.

There is no formal appeals process for classification, and the agency that generates the intelligence has final say. The State Department only has control over the fraction of emails that pertain to their own intelligence.

While the State Department and Clinton campaign have said the emails in questions were “retroactively classified” or “upgraded” – to justify the more than 1,300 classified emails on her server – those terms are meaningless under federal law.

The former federal law enforcement official said the finding in the January IG letter represents a potential violation of USC 18 Section 793, “gross negligence” in the handling of secure information under the Espionage Act.


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/19/inspector-general-clinton-emails-had-intel-from-most-secretive-classified-programs.html

I am a fun and lovely guy. We would argue for years and you would anticipate our next meeting every time, religiously...
We love the concept of bitcoin. That is why we are here. Do I know Trump loves bitcoin? He may try to ban it. Who knows, but I will be sure to create a thread about him if this happens

And no, I will never wish anything bad to happen to you and your loved ones, not even a paper cut.

You dying from an aneurysm because of a Willikon Killer K.O. (WKKO) would be just mother nature doing its stuff, nothing else...
 
Enjoy the ride, we are all on top of the food chain here.


 

In a nutshell:
When you have a car insurance it works perfectly across state lines in the US. Healthcare should be the same and let the free market and competition bring the price down to everyone, but the lobby does not want this to happen. 0bamacare did not fix this, made it worse to everyone.

That is why clinton is loved by the 0bamacare lobby and the wall street lobby.

 

So you see? That is all I was trying to make you understand, a strong image may sometime trigger a simple reality.


 

You are a great friend.

My natives?
You've used the word "civilized" in your description of the USA lacking healthcare, without describing how much good and positiveness some of your civilized countrymen (I assume you are an aussie?) brought with them to your natives. I wasn't trying to criticize, I was just curious as, I am sure, the 3% (left) of your native population gets the best healthcare in the world... 

The Devastating Silence From Labour ‘Feminists’ On Cologne







On the night of the Oldham West and Royton by-election result I accused the Labour Party of engaging in “dangerous identity politics.” The result of me uttering this sentence on TV was that the political journalists both local and national went into a spin. Labour politicians were also horrified and tried to suggest I was being racist, which of course I wasn’t, and they knew it. Indeed, calling someone is a “racist” is the fall back tactic for Labour politicians when they know they’ve been rumbled.



By “dangerous identity politics”, I meant ditching one’s own values and pandering to the prejudices of others. And the Labour Party is doing this on an increasingly regular basis, which I maintain is dangerous politics.

They did this on a minor scale in Oldham when Labour politicians (both Oldham MPs and local councillors) attended a meeting that was segregated on the basis of gender.

This meeting was organised by the Labour Friends of Bangladesh and was a political meeting, not a religious one. Labour of course denied the meeting was gender segregated, but it was obvious to anyone who saw the photos that men and women were sitting on opposite sides of the room. More evidence then came to light that the Labour leader, hard left London luvvie Jeremy Corbyn, had also been addressing gender segregated meetings.

Now one would think such gatherings would vex Labour feminists like Harriet Harman, but she has never publicly said a thing. Maybe this was because her husband, Labour MP Jack Dromey, was also caught addressing a gender segregated rally in Birmingham last year.

The question surely must be: Why do Labour politicians agree to address such meetings? The answer is simple: votes.

They cast aside their so-called profoundly long held beliefs and values to appeal to the Muslim community in areas like Oldham and Birmingham because they are reliant on their votes.

They need the community leaders to sign people up in large numbers to postal votes and they need the Imams to tell those who attend the mosques to vote Labour. It is an unholy alliance of the Left and Muslim community, but interestingly it is only the Left that panders, making it an uneven relationship.

But gender segregated meetings in Oldham are only the thin end of wedge of “identity politics”.

We’ve already witnessed the thick end in towns like Rotherham where a Labour-run council turned a blind eye to the rape and molestation of up to 1,400 girls (some as young as 12) by men from within the Pakistani community. And why did the council and the police ignore what was going on? Because they did not want to “rock the boat” and upset “community cohesion”

And one does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the Muslim votes mattered too to the local Labour Party. It is disgusting and embarrassing to think that things like this happen in 21st century Britain.

We heard very little from the Labour feminists regarding the Rotherham grooming scandal, but we should not be surprised as they have form for this. Note their lack of condemnation of polygamy, forced marriage, the oppressive burqa and female genital mutilation. Their silence on these subjects has been deafening for years. Barbara Castle would be turning in her grave.         

And now they have done it again in 2016. Last week I decided to look at the social media accounts of the self-professed Labour feminists to see what their reaction was to the New Year’s Eve sexual attacks in Cologne. Let’s not forget that up to 250 women were sexually assaulted so you would think that the Labour feminists would be up in arms speaking up on behalf of their beleaguered German sisters. But no, not a peep.

I scoured through the social media accounts of London Labour MPs Harriet Harman, Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry and leader Jeremy Corbyn and there was not even a mention of these grotesque assaults.

Now, I wonder why the Left wing feminists have refused to say anything? Perhaps it’s because the attacks were committed by more than one thousand men of “Arabic or North African” appearance who were undoubtedly Muslim “refugees”? It’s just a hunch. I also have a sneaky suspicion that these same people would have been at the forefront of the condemnation if these attacks were committed by white, Christian, German men.

This is just another in a long line of examples of Labour politicians turning a blind eye to unacceptable behaviour because it is coming from a certain section of the community. This is what I meant when I accused the Labour Party of engaging in “dangerous identity politics” and I can assure you now, it will only get worse.   


http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/18/where-are-labours-feminists-on-cologne/

Thirteen Year-Old German Girl Kidnapped and Serially Gangraped for 30 Hours (Video)



A 13 year-old German girl recently went missing.
Her family posted many messages on Facebook.

The girl was kidnapped and raped for by foreign nationals for 30 hours.

Now the family is speaking out. At a weekend rally the girl’s cousin told the crowd the horrific story.


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=620_1453080519