Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

Power Corrupts: A Culture of Compliance Breeds Despots and Predators, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on October 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

Predation is what our rulers and betters do. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

Power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.

For instance, 20 years ago, I took up a sexual harassment lawsuit on behalf of a young woman—a state employee—who claimed that her boss, a politically powerful man, had arranged for her to meet him in a hotel room, where he then allegedly dropped his pants, propositioned her and invited her to perform oral sex on him.

Despite the fact that this man had a well-known reputation for womanizing and this woman was merely one in a long line of women who had accused the man of groping, propositioning, and pressuring them for sexual favors in the workplace, she was denounced as white trash and subjected to a massive smear campaign by the man’s wife, friends and colleagues (including the leading women’s rights organizations of the day), while he was given lucrative book deals and paid lavish sums for speaking engagements.

William Jefferson Clinton eventually agreed to settle the case and pay Paula Jones $850,000.

Here we are 20 years later and not much has changed.

We’re still shocked by sexual harassment in the workplace, the victims of these sexual predators are still being harassed and smeared, and those who stand to gain the most by overlooking wrongdoing (all across the political spectrum) are still turning a blind eye to misconduct when it’s politically expedient to do so.

This time, it’s Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein—longtime Clinton associate and a powerhouse when it comes to raising money for Democrats—who is being accused of decades of sexual assaults, aggressively sexual overtures and harassment.

To continue reading: Power Corrupts: A Culture of Compliance Breeds Despots and Predators

 

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FOIA Dump Reveals Collusion Between Lynch, FBI And Media To Bury Bill Clinton Meeting, by Tyler Durden

Posted on August 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

The meeting between then Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on the Phoenix Airport tarmac has always stunk. Now a document disclosure is revealing just how bad it stunk. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Back on June 29, 2016, Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, tried to convince us that the following ‘impromptu’ meeting between herself and Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport, a private meeting which lasted 30 minutes on Lynch’s private plane, was mostly a “social meeting” in which Bill talked about his grandchildren and golf game.  It was not, under any circumstances, related to the statement that former FBI Director James Comey made just 6 days later clearing Hillary Clinton of any alleged crimes related to his agency’s investigation.

But, according to a new DOJ FOIA dump just released by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), it looks increasingly as if nothing reported about this “social meeting” between Lynch and Clinton was grounded in fact…shocking, we know.

First, the new FOIA documents seemingly confirm that the FBI and DOJ simply lied in response to the ACLJ’s initial FOIA request filed back in July 2016.  Here is what the ACLJ was told at the time after sending requests to both the Comey FBI and the Lynch DOJ asking for any documents related to the Clinton-Lynch plane meeting:

That said, documents released today by the ACLJ reveal several emails between FBI and DOJ officials concerning the Lynch/Clinton meeting primarily related to how they should go about explaining the train wreck that had just been unwittingly played out on live television courtesy of a local Phoenix affiliate station.  Here is a recap from ACLJ:

The documents we received today from the Department of Justice include several emails from the FBI to DOJ officials concerning the meeting.  One with the subject line “FLAG” was correspondence between FBI officials (Richard Quinn, FBI Media/Investigative Publicity, and Michael Kortan) and DOJ officials concerning “flag[ing] a story . . . about a casual, unscheduled meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the AG.” The DOJ official instructs the FBI to “let me know if you get any questions about this” and provides “[o]ur talkers [DOJ talking points] on this”. The talking points, however are redacted.

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Posted in Government, Investigations, Law, Media, Politics

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Leaked Executive Order Reveals Trump Crackdown On Immigrant Welfare, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 31, 2017 | Leave a comment

It’s about time. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Seemingly following the proposals of Bill Clinton (and Ron Paul), The Washington Post reports that a leaked document shows the Trump administration is planning to crackdown on current, and would-be, immigrants who are likely to require public assistance.

After Bill Clinton received a standing ovation for suggesting crackdown on immigrant welfare…

“We are a nation of immigrants.. but we are a nation of laws”

“Our nation is rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country…

Illegal immigrants take jobs from citizens or legal immigrants, they impose burdens on our taxpayers…

That is why we are doubling the number of border guards, deporting more illegal immigrants than ever before, cracking down on illegal hiring, barring benefits to illegal aliens, and we will do more to speed the deportation of illegal immigrants arrest for crimes…

It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws that has occurred in the last few years.. and we must do more to stop it.”

And following Ron Paul’s advice this week that the solution to really addressing the problem of illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and the threat of cross-border terrorism is clear:

Remove the welfare magnet that attracts so many to cross the border illegally, stop the 25 year US war in the Middle East, and end the drug war that incentivizes smugglers to cross the border.

The various taxpayer-funded programs that benefit illegal immigrants in the United States, such as direct financial transfers, medical benefits, food assistance, and education, cost an estimated $100 billion dollars per year. That is a significant burden on citizens and legal residents. The promise of free money, free food, free education, and free medical care if you cross the border illegally is a powerful incentive for people to do so. It especially makes no sense for the United States government to provide these services to those who are not in the US legally.

To continue reading: Leaked Executive Order Reveals Trump Crackdown On Immigrant Welfare

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He Said That? 1/30/17

Posted on January 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

There were no protests after this Bill Clinton State of the Union address:

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He Said That? 10/4/16

Posted on October 4, 2016 | 4 comments

Once every other decade or so, Bill Clinton tells the truth. He was caught in the act recently. From zerohedge:

In a staggering moment of honesty caught on tape, former President Bill Clinton admits to a group of voters in Michigan that Obamacare is a complete disaster and is wreaking havoc on the middle-class and “small-business people.” Per the video published by the NY Post, Clinton says that Obamacare is fine for those who are eligible for subsidies but admits that hardworking “people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world.”

“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world.

On the other hand, the current system works fine if you’re eligible for Medicaid, if you’re a lower-income working person. If you’re already on Medicare or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care.

But the people getting killed in this deal are the small-business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-04/bill-clinton-bashes-obamacare-craziest-thing-world

Per The Hill, the comments from Bill come at an awkward time as Obama is set to deliver a “major speech” in Florida touting the astounding success of ObamaCare. Moreover, the comments seemingly contradict Hillary on the issue as she has largely embraced Obamacare on the campaign trail while suggesting that small modifications may be needed to “fix” certain components of the legislation.

If you listen to the madness long enough, every once in a while the talking heads will slip and actually speak the truth. Though, as always, we’re sure Bill will be pulled off the campaign trail, in short order, and reprimanded for his moment of honesty before being re-released into the wild with new talking points singing the praises of Obamacare’s many “achievements.”

 

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The Bogus ‘Humanitarian’ War on Serbia, by John Pilger

Posted on August 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton and her cohorts like to wage “humanitarian” wars. Her husband waged a humanitarian war, in Serbia, and it didn’t turn out so well. It’s way past time to retrive this one from the memory hole, because that war had Hillary’s full-throated support and she’s running for president. For a look at the past that offers a view of the future if she is elected, John Pilger at consortiumnews.com:

The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing,” opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590-page judgment on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified NATO’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal.” Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by U.S. officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.

Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the Western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide,” especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler.”

Exaggerating the Death Toll

David Scheffer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, declared that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” may have been murdered by Milocevic’s forces.

This was the justification for NATO’s bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia’s economic infrastructure.

It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious “peace conference” in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Secretary of State, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it.”

Albright delivered an “offer” to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces “outside the legal process,” and to the imposition of a neo-liberal “free market,” Serbia would be bombed.

This was contained in an “Appendix B,” which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe’s last independent “socialist” state.

Once NATO began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees “fleeing a holocaust.” When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims.

The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines.”

The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-NATO Kosovo Liberation Front. There was no genocide. The NATO attack was both a fraud and a war crime.

To continue reading: The Bogus ‘Humanitarian’ War on Serbia

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Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Horseshit, War

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Judicial Watch Demands DOJ Inspector General Probe Into “Scandalous” Lynch-Clinton Meeting, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 1, 2016 | 2 comments

Regardless of what was said, the fact that Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch while an FBI investigation of his wife is still pending is unethical and unacceptable, as both these attorneys well know, and at the very least requires Ms. Lynch to recuse herself from the case entirely. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

The political scandal of the day was the news that on Monday evening (coincidentally just before the Benghazi report was released), Bill Clinton and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch just happened to meet on the tarmac at a Phoenix airport – totally unplanned of course. Clinton saw the attorney general and wanted to say hello, so Clinton boarded Lynch’s plane to talk for a bit. Sure, just a quick chat about the weather, his putting stroke, anything except oh, say, an update on what was about to be released on Benghazi, and especially not an update on the ongoing FBI investigation into Hillary.

“Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix, and he mentioned travels he’d had in West Virginia. There was no discussion of any matter pending for the department or any matter pending for any other body. There was no discussion of Benghazi, no discussion of the State Department emails, by way of example” Lynch told reporters.

While Lynch claims it was a completely random encounter with Hillary Clinton’s husband, even Barack Obama’s former advisor David Axelrod admitted that the meeting created “bad optics.”

Sensing an opportunity to drive home a point about the Clintons’ lack of judgment, Trump quickly pounced on the meeting.

“It is an amazing thing,” Trump said during an interview on the Mike Gallagher Show, noting the pair met on an airplane at the Phoenix airport. “It was really a sneak. It was something they didn’t want publicized, as I understand it,” Trump said, regarding the meeting Monday night. “I think it’s so terrible; I think it’s so horrible. I think it’s one of the big stories of this week, of this month, of this year,” Trump continued.

“How bad a judgment is it for him or for her to do this? Who would do this?” Trump asked.

It won’t end there. Moments ago, conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch today requested that the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General investigate the meeting yesterday between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with former President William J. Clinton on board a parked private plane on the west side of Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona on June 29, 2016, according to multiple press reports.

President Clinton is the spouse of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former Secretary of State, who is purportedly the subject of a national security crime investigation pertaining to the mishandling of national defense information processed by Mrs. Clinton’s personal server during her tenure as secretary.

Additionally, there are press reports that a federal public corruption investigation is on-going concerning conflicts of interest and abuse of official government office involving the financial “commitments” to the Clinton Foundation, speaking fees for President Clinton and former Secretary Clinton’s official acts. President Clinton may be a target of that investigation.

Attorney General Lynch’s meeting with President Clinton creates the appearance of a violation of law, ethical standards and good judgment. Attorney General Lynch’s decision to breach the well-defined ethical standards of the Department of Justice and the American legal profession is an outrageous abuse of the public’s trust. Her conduct and statements undermine confidence in her ability to objectively investigate and prosecute possible violations of law associated with President Clinton and Secretary Clinton. This incident undermines the public’s faith in the fair administration of justice.

Simply stated, Attorney General Lynch’s June 29, 2016 meeting with former President Clinton creates the broad public impression that “the fix is in.”

Judicial Watch requests your immediate and thorough investigation of the facts, circumstances, and appearances of ethical, regulatory and legal violations by Attorney General Lynch in connection with her meeting with former President William J. Clinton – and that you report your findings and recommendations to the American public.

To continue reading: Judicial Watch Demands DOJ Inspector General Probe Into “Scandalous” Lynch-Clinton Meeting

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Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department, by David Sirota and Andrew Perez

Posted on April 30, 2016 | 2 comments

The scale of the Clintons’ graft and corruption is breathtaking, epic, and well-documented in this story from David Sirota and Andrew Perez at ibtimes.com:

Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States’ oil-rich ally in the Middle East.

Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked disrupting the region’s fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies of the Saudi royal family.

But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At press conferences in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing — the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 — contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure — derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) — represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department between 2009 and 2012.

The State Department formally approved these arms sales even as many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.

To continue reading: Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department

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The American Disease: I Deserve to Get Away with Anything and Everything, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on September 17, 2015 | 4 comments

From Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com:

The only thing as grandiose as this sense of entitlement is the hubris it engenders.

Here’s the American Disease in a nutshell: entitlement and power means you never have to apologize for anything. Public relations might require a grudging, insincere quasi-apology, but the person with power can’t evince humility or shame–he or she doesn’t have any.

What the American with power does have in nearly limitless abundance is a grandiose yet unacknowledged sense of entitlement and a volcanic sense of indignation. For the powerful feel entitled not to be questioned, and entitled to the supreme arrogance of never apologizing for anything.

Their indignation at being pressed to account for their decisions knows no bounds–how dare anyone question my actions? It’s outrageous! I don’t deserve this!

The most entitled and indignant couple in America might well be Bill and Hillary Clinton, famously crying poor while assembling a net worth in excess of $100 million.

Their resentment at being challenged to account for their actions is palpable. When questioned about his sordid encounters in the White House, Bill Clinton’s body language and tortured, seething responses spoke of a grandiose entitlement to get away with anything and everything. We could almost hear his inner dialog: “Nobody questioned Jack Kennedy’s multiple affairs–I deserve to get away with it, too.”

To continue reading: The American Disease

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Posted on August 23, 2015 in Humor

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