Please Don’t Run, Hillary

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Revolting, but predictable. With this, along with Obama equating TPP criticism with Palin death panels and the Koch brothers auditioning Jeb Bush, it's almost like Power coordinated a four word response this week to speak Truth to People: Fuck You , Useless Eaters!

Hillary Clinton Hires Former Monsanto Lobbyist To Run Her Campaign

April 23, 2015 by John Vibes



Hillary Clinton recently announced that she will be appointing long-time Monsanto lobbyist Jerry Crawford as adviser to her “Ready for Hillary” super PAC.

Crawford has mostly worked with Democratic politicians in the past, but has also put his support behind Republican candidates as well. Anyone who was willing to support Monsanto’s goals would receive support from Crawford.

In the past, Crawford has worked with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Bill Northey. Over the years, Crawford has been instrumental in fighting against small farmers in court and protecting Monsanto’s seed monopoly.

Just last week it was reported that Hillary Clinton is attempting to repolish her image and paint herself as a champion of the common people. She is planning to make “toppling the 1%” one of her primary campaign selling points, although she is obviously a part of the same ruling class that she is speaking against, and receives massive contributions from some of the most corrupt aristocratic organizations in the world.

In 2014, Clinton was paid to speak at the Biotechnology Industry Organization where she openly expressed her support for GMO crops.

In her speech, she said that “I stand in favor of using seeds and products that have a proven track record….And to continue to try to make the case for those who are skeptical that they may not know what they’re eating already. The question of genetically modified food or hybrids has gone on for many many years. And there is again a big gap between what the facts are and what perceptions are.”

[NeonLX]

I've changed my mind. Run, Hillary--RUN!!!

I enjoy watching the NPR liberals bend themselves into fiendish contortions when they defend their beloved neoliberal star in the Whitehouse.

[zangtang]

i don't know what neoliberal actually means.....
I suspect i may have a better idea of what it ....these days...implies
- and i don't think that that is splitting hairs - think it would have been, but not any more.

prolly wont matter much.........................in the long run

[NeonLX]

To me, "neoliberals" are pro-global capitalism and often war hawks when it comes to advancing global capitalism's goals. However, they may hold to some "liberal" values such as marriage equality and affirmative action. They are *not* populists and tend to be from the more affluent and comfortable milieus (I've always wanted to use that M word!).

I could be wrong in my assessment, however. Very likely, in fact.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Barf-inducing.

Hillary Clinton Pledges to Defend Israeli Apartheid and Fight BDS Movement in Letter to Mega-Donor
by
Kevin Gosztola
Tuesday, July 07, 2015



Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sent a letter to media mogul Haim Saban, a mega-donor, assuring him that she would make countering the global Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel a priority. She invoked a recent terrorist attack against Jews in Paris to condemn BDS and specifically sought Saban’s advice on how to fight back.

“I am writing to express my alarm over the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or ‘BDS,’ a global effort to isolate the State of Israel by ending commercial and academic exchanges,” Clinton wrote [PDF]. “I am seeking your advice on how we can work together—across party lines and with a diverse array of voices—to reverse this trend with information and advocacy, and fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.”

Clinton expressed serious concern over comparisons between Israel and South African apartheid.

“Israel is a vibrant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy, and it faces existential threats to its survival,” Clinton asserted. “Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world—especially in Europe—we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. After all, it was only six months ago that four Jews were targeted and killed in a Kosher supermarket in Paris as they did their Sabbath shopping.”

The invoking of a terrorist attack against Jews in Paris is a nasty attempt to cast the growing nonviolent BDS movement as anti-Semitic. In fact, to read Clinton’s letter in its entirety, one has to believe Israel is engaged in no acts of occupation or oppression against the Palestinians and a movement is mobilizing out of hatred or baseless assumptions about Israel.

In a column for the Los Angeles Times published in May 2014, Saree Makdisi, a UCLA professor and author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, explained that apartheid is not merely used to inflame tensions. It very specifically has legal meaning, as outlined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. (Note: The UN General Assembly adopted the convention in 1973 and most UN member states except for Israel and the United States have ratified the convention.)

From Makdisi’s column:

According to Article II of that convention, the term applies to acts “committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Denying those others the right to life and liberty, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest, expropriating their property, depriving them of the right to leave and return to their country or the right to freedom of movement and of residence, creating separate reserves and ghettos for the members of different racial groups, preventing mixed marriages — these are all examples of the crime of apartheid specifically mentioned in the convention.

Israel engages in all of these actions against Palestinians. In fact, as Gil Maguire has shown, Israel “created an apartheid system and became an apartheid state at the end of the 1967 war.”

One of Clinton’s arguments in her letter is that BDS seeks to “punish Israel and dictate how the Israelis and Palestinians should resolve the core issues of their conflict.” She indicates she supports a two-state solution and that can only be achieved through “direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians—it cannot be imposed from the outside or by unilateral actions.”

If anything, it is Israel which seeks to unilaterally impose a resolution and that resolution is protect and even expand apartheid.

Former President Bill Clinton shared in 2011 the reason why the “peace process” failed. According to Foreign Policy, Clinton claimed it was because of the reluctance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration to “accept the terms of the Camp David deal” and a “demographic shift in Israel” that made the Israeli public “less amenable to peace.”

What BDS is doing is building a worldwide consensus that seeks to force Israel to stop killing, torturing, detaining, abusing, and repressing Palestinians through its inhumane policies. It increasingly has more support than the resolution Israel seeks to impose against Palestinians.

The letter’s conclusion is rather nauseating.

…It was more than three decades ago when Bill and I took our first trip to Israel, walked the ancient streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, and fell in love with the country and its people. Israel became a special place for us, and I’m lucky to have had many opportunities to return and to make any dear friends there over the years. The Jewish state is a modern day miracle—a vibrant bloom in the middle of a desert. We must nurture and protect it. [emphasis added]

Clinton fervently expresses this belief that Israel is a “vibrant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy, and it faces existential threats to its survival.” However, being surrounded by countries with dictatorships should not insulate a government from having to address their own systematic human rights violations.

Finally, Clinton wrote this letter to help re-solidify Saban’s support for her presidential campaign. It is largely a public relations ploy against right wing groups. Saban has always been close to Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Saban supports increased exports of US military equipment to Israel. He zealously opposes statehood for Palestine and any UN Security Council resolution against illegal Israeli settlements.

In 2006, Saban declared, “When there is a terrorist attack, I am [Avigdor] Lieberman. Sometimes to the right of Lieberman. For two days I really love Lieberman. But afterward I come back to reality. Look, I don’t see a solution today.”

For those unfamiliar with Lieberman, he is Israeli foreign minister. In March, he said, “Anyone who’s with us should be given everything – up to half the kingdom. Anyone who’s against us, there’s nothing to do – we should raise an axe and cut off his head; otherwise we won’t survive here.” He also has expressly made statements in support of ethnic cleansing Palestinians.

Saban has teamed up with casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to raise millions to fight BDS. The two mega-donors hosted a closed-doors summit in June that could be used to challenge campus campaigns. Only those “willing to pledge at least $1 million over the next two years” were allowed to participate.

Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America, called for all groups to come together and “demonize the demonizers.” Everyone needs to demonize the “racists by telling the truth about the Palestinian Authority and giving examples of what it does as a racist terror organization.”

This is what Hillary Clinton’s campaign is pledging to join forces and support. However, it will be extraordinarily difficult to beat back the momentum of the BDS movement. There are increased efforts in states and the federal government to criminalize the movement yet the BDS movement continues to win victories. Recently, the United Church of Christ pledged to boycott and divest from companies involved in Israeli occupation.

“For Palestinians living under occupation or facing systematic discrimination as citizens of Israel, enduring the destruction of their homes and businesses, the theft of their land for settlements, and living under blockade and siege in Gaza, this action sends a strong signal that they are not alone, and that there are churches who still dare to speak truth to power and stand with the oppressed,” Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Christian Palestinian and Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, declared after the Church passed its divestment resolution.

This letter from Clinton is destined to become an artifact of history that will forever remind the world of which leaders were on the wrong side.

Clinton may be elected the first woman president in November 2016, but, just as President Ronald Reagan will forever be remembered as a fervent supporter of South African apartheid, Clinton is now on a path to potentially becoming a US president, who aligned herself with militant defenders of Israeli apartheid.

[Luther Blissett]

To me, "neoliberals" are pro-global capitalism and often war hawks when it comes to advancing global capitalism's goals. However, they may hold to some "liberal" values such as marriage equality and affirmative action. They are *not* populists and tend to be from the more affluent and comfortable milieus (I've always wanted to use that M word!).

I could be wrong in my assessment, however. Very likely, in fact.

Yeah that was pretty good. Gen X neoliberals are the new yuppies, and often former punk, graff, hip-hop, hardcore kids from the 80s and 90s who now are very pro-corporate, competitive, love their jobs and their lattes and Bravo, and love war and bombs and torture as a necessity. Think humans are inherently bad and violent. Trust CNN. Masturbate to NPR. "Hypercapitalist" while still believing they hate racism like the rest of decent humanity. Think the solution to the climate crisis lies in recycling, maybe even composting.

There are plenty of Boomer neoliberals but I don't really know them personally.

[Sounder]

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/201 ... -audience/

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Breaking: Clintons Got Millions from Swiss Bank Sec Clinton Shielded From IRS
by
greywolfe359

Fri Jul 31, 2015 at 11:34 AM PDT



Correlation does not prove causation.

That's one of the first rules you learn in any science class. It's a good rule to keep in mind. And it's just about the only argument Clinton supporters will have left by the this time next year as they still insist that Hillary Clinton is somehow a credible standard bearer for a supposedly economically progressive party.

The Atlantic does a good job of summing up just what the report from the Wall Street Journal lays bare:

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. The Wall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

Here's the long and short of it. Shortly after she became Secretary of State, Clinton went to Switzerland at the request of her Swiss counterpart. The IRS had sued UBS demanding the identities of some 50,000 account holders. A few months later, Secretary Clinton announced a deal whereby UBS provided information on only 4450 accounts. It was a bit odd that the Secretary of State (any secretary of state) would have been involved in this kind of matter at all.

This is all a bit odd and another instance of a Clinton helping out a giant financial institution. But what is really troubling is what came after. Because it seems that after this intervention, UBS became rather magnanimous toward the Clintons. How so?

1) UBS contributions to the Clinton foundation jumped from 60K prior to 2008 to 600K by 2014. That's a 1000% increase.

2) UBS partnered with the Clinton Foundation to lend $32 million to inner-city entrepreneur programs.

3) Bill Clinton was invited to have some Q & A sessions with UBS big wigs. He was paid $1.5 MILLION for these appearances. It made UBS the single biggest source of corporate speech income since he left office.

[8bitagent]

I almost feel bad for Hillary. I don't know a single liberal/Democrat/moderate/independent/progressive planning on voting for Hillary. Maybe now the Clintonistas(and I hope the Bushes) are
beginning to sweat a little over the Berninator.

[Nordic]

Does anybody really think the PTB are gonna have another 4 years of someone with a D after their name? The illusion of Democracy is paramount to them, and the notion that the "pendulum" swings back and forth, balancing things out.

[divideandconquer]

Cables Show Hillary Clinton's State Department Deeply Involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership
By David Sirota @davidsirota d.sirota@ibtimes.com on July 31 2015 9:30 AM EDT
http://www.ibtimes.com/cables-show-hillary-clintons-state-department-deeply-involved-trans-pacific-2032948
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday attempted to distance herself from the controversial 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. During her tenure as U.S. secretary of state, Clinton publicly promoted the pact 45 separate times -- but with her Democratic presidential rivals making opposition to the deal a centerpiece of their campaigns, Clinton now asserts she was never involved in the initiative.

"I did not work on TPP," she said after a meeting with leaders of labor unions who oppose the pact. "I advocated for a multinational trade agreement that would 'be the gold standard.' But that was the responsibility of the United States Trade Representative."

But at a congressional hearing in 2011, Clinton told lawmakers that "with respect to the TPP, although the State Department does not have the lead on this -- it is the United States Trade Representative -- we work closely with the USTR." Additionally, State Department cables reviewed by International Business Times show that her agency -- including her top aides -- were deeply involved in the diplomatic deliberations over the trade deal. The cables from 2009 and 2010, which were among a trove of documents disclosed by the website WikiLeaks, also show that the Clinton-run State Department advised the U.S. Trade Representative’s office on how to negotiate the deal with foreign government officials.

In recent months, labor, environmental, public health and consumer advocacy groups have campaigned against the TPP, saying the pact is a stealth attempt by corporations to tilt the rules of international commerce in their favor. They have specifically criticized provisions in the deal -- which are secret but have periodically leaked -- that they say would empower corporations to use international tribunals to attempt to overturn public interest laws. The groups represent many core Democratic Party constituencies that Clinton has been courting in her White House bid, which explains why in the lead-up to the party's primary she has suddenly depicted herself as a critic of the deal. But the cables show that the Clinton-run State Department was indeed a major player in pushing the initiative.

In one September 2009 cable, the State Department’s embassy officials in Wellington outline the New Zealand government’s desire for the United States to involve itself in the trade pact. An embassy cable from a few months later says the U.S. ambassador further discussed the TPP with New Zealand officials. In a February 2010 cable, the same embassy said that Clinton’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Frankie Reed met with New Zealand trade officials and “engaged on a wide range of topics, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

The cable notes that at the meeting, New Zealand officials told Clinton’s deputy that the country “views the TPP as a platform for future trade integration in the Asia Pacific and recognizes there will a number of sensitive issues on both sides during negotiations.” The cable says they also discussed the TPP’s effect on intellectual property rights, natural resource investment, and pharmaceuticals -- all specific issues that have raised concerns from watchdog groups in the United States.

In a separate cable, State Department officials in New Zealand request an additional employee to specifically “allow the Economics Officer to focus on preparations for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.”

steinberg1 James Steinberg, Deputy Secretary of State, prepares to testify before a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in March of 2011. Tom Williams/Roll Call

In a September 2009 cable, State Department officials report that Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg, specifically discussed the TPP with Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister.

“The Deputy Secretary acknowledged that that the U.S. was reviewing its position on TPP, adding that stronger support from Congress as a result of positive steps on issues of concern was likely needed in order to move forward on trade issues with Vietnam,” said the cable.

In a November 2009 cable, the U.S. embassy in Tokyo details TPP discussions between Japanese government officials and Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was then serving as Clinton’s undersecretary of state.

In a December 2009 cable, State Department officials in Hanoi report that the U.S. Ambassador “hosted a dinner on December 21 for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement country representatives.” The cable thanked the Clinton-run State Department for providing “regular updates" that “have been key to helping vus answer the many TPP-related inquiries we receive.”

In a January 2010 cable, State Department embassy officials in Kuala Lampur advise Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis on strategies to negotiate the TPP with the Malaysian government.

“Highlight the priority the Administration is giving to the Trans Pacific Partnership initiative, and the role that the TPP will play in promoting economic competitiveness and trade opportunities in the region,” Clinton’s State Department officials advised. “Encourage Malaysia, when it's ready, to engage TPP members about process and requirements for joining.”

The involvement of the Clinton-led State Department in the TPP is not altogether surprising: in a June, CBS News reported that “a senior administration official told CBS News Correspondent Julianna Goldman that Clinton was one of the biggest backers of TPP.” In a Bloomberg News interview that same month, President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice disputed the idea that Clinton was not involved in the TPP.

“She was integrally involved in all of the major initiatives of the first term of the administration,” said Rice, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations when Clinton was Secretary of State. “She was instrumental in formulating and implementing the rebalance to Asia, of which the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a part.”

UPDATE: In 2012 speech in Singapore, Clinton explicitly promoted the TPP as an initiative that "will lower barriers, raise standards, and drive long-term growth across the region." She also used the collective "we" in describing the work being done on the pact, saying, "we are making progress toward finalizing a far-reaching new trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership." She also said "we are offering to assist with capacity building, so that every country in ASEAN can eventually join." The video of the key part of her speech can be seen here:

[IanEye]

I almost feel bad for Hillary. I don't know a single liberal/Democrat/moderate/independent/progressive planning on voting for Hillary.

Obama is Black Reagan.

The GOP is currently bankrolling a reality show called, "Who Wants to be Mike Dukakis?"

The TeaBaggers represent a faction of White America that want nothing more than to return to the Corporate model of the 60's era show "Mad Men'. But guess what? That is not going to happen.
The Corporation I work for doesn't need a white male foreman sitting at a desk, whose only job is to take credit for the work of black men and white women. They have computers to fill that role now. White men in corporations have to realize they have to work just as hard as everyone else now or they are out the door. The computers don't let anyone slack, they don't let you shift the blame. The computers care about profit.

Alberto realizes this.
Barack realizes this.
Condi realizes this.
Sonia realizes this.

Glenn realizes this too, and he is making as much money off of these dumb fucking crackers as he can before they wake up.

Remember the Monex lady of the Bush era? She would assure you in a nice calm voice that, 'there is never been a better time to invest in gold', and she was right. You were way better off if you invested in gold then as opposed to now.
Now the gold hawker is a sweaty pin eyed white guy who is talking right to the freaked out TeaBagger.
Too late TeaBagger! if you are just getting into the game now, you are fucked.

honestly 8bit, the only thing i can't figure out yet is whether Obama is black Reagan, or Black Wilson.

The entire 2 party dichotomy is being played out in Hegelistic fashion within the Democratic Party right now, with the GOP as a bizzaro side show.
This can't last forever, but I think it will last for awhile longer. It is too soon to burn the angry white core of the GOP off of the crucible. But it will happen eventually, and then you will see young Republicans who look more like Jeb Bush's kids than Jenna or Barbara. But Michael Steele is a joke right now and that is all he is meant to be.

When Reagan said 'it's morning in America', it really wasn't for a lot of people.
But a lot of people wanted to believe it. Corporate America wants things to stabilize as quickly as possible. They want Obama to have his 'morning in America' moment.

"Don't push me 'cause I am close to the edge / I'm trying not to lose my head" -Grandmaster Flash
In the early 80's any number of people could relate to these lyrics, but in truth, few actually heard 'The Message' on their radios, but they all saw the Cosby Show on their TV sets.

Media itself is going through it's own throes right now, so it is kind of hard to find the perfect analogy, but I think MSNBC is far and away a better indicator of the Corporate talking points than Fox News. And keep in mind that this is the Comcast MSNBC we are talking about, not the GE NBC of old.

Remember those fad like early 1990's "3d posters", where you have to squint and unfocus your eyes to "See it". To "get it".
At this point, I don't know if I want to "get it"...as frankly it's a look scary.

The only way to understand Deep Politics is with Deep Focus.

Study the election of 1916.

Imagine Mitt Romney as Charles Evans Hughes and imagine Sarah Palin as TeaBagger/BullMoose Teddy. She'll probably bow out too, but it will be too late.

The Corporate goal isn't to restore White America. The Corporate goal is to get Latinos to like Corporatism.
All of the racism you quite rightly point out that you see in the M$M is too broad brush, it alienates Latinos as well as African-Americans. It's presence serves to draw out the racist white people and further isolate them.

The goal for America is a united corporate state that in the end is no more powerful than any other nation. The iconography of the future is corporate logos, not the flags of nations.

Very soon you will see a multi-colored peacock on your screen with no letters (NBC) branding it. Because to commit to letters is to commit to a language, and to commit to a language is to commit to a flag.

And there is no need for flags in the future, only logos.

A League of Logos.

It's called survival.

I still feel a deep magic about the 80's.

*****

Myth, Memory & the Politics of Pop

*


maybe together we can get somewhere
any place is better
startin' from zero got nothin' to lose
maybe we'll make somethin'
me myself I've got nothin' to prove

*


*****

.

[backtoiam]

Clinton Goes after Laugh Factory Comedians for Making Fun of Her
Posted on November 19, 2015 by Paul

Judicial Watch

In what appears to be a first for a serious presidential contender, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going after five comedians who made fun of the former Secretary of State in standup skits at a popular Hollywood comedy club.

A video http://www.laughfactory.com/channels/new-releases/1977 of the short performance, which is less than three minutes, is posted on the website of the renowned club, Laugh Factory, and the Clinton campaign has tried to censor it. Besides demanding that the video be taken down, the Clinton campaign has demanded the personal contact information of the performers that appear in the recording.

This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”

Practically all of the country’s most acclaimed comedians have performed at the Laugh Factory and undoubtedly they have offended politicians and other well-known personalities with their standup routines. Tim Allen, Jay Leno, Roseanne Bar, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, Jerry Seinfeld and George Lopez are among the big names that have headlined at the Laugh Factory. The First Amendment right to free speech is a crucial component of the operation, though Masada drew the line a few years ago banning performers—including African Americans—from using the “n-word” in their acts.

The five short performances that Clinton wants eliminated include some profanity and portions could be considered crass, but some of the lines are funny and that’s what the Laugh Factory is all about. The video features the individual acts of five comedians, four men and a woman. The skits make fun of Clinton’s wardrobe, her age, sexual orientation, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the former First Lady’s relationship with her famous husband. The Laugh Factory has appropriately titled it “Hillary vs. The First Amendment.”

Masada told Judicial Watch that, as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a “prominent” person inside Clinton’s campaign. “He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up. He insists that the comedy stage is a sanctuary for freedom of speech no matter who is offended. “Just last night we had (Emmy-award winner) Dana Carvey doing Donald Trump and it was hilarious,” Masada said.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/ ... un-of-her/

[Elvis]

Hillary Clinton is an appalling human being.

SHE LIED 06.20.147:24 AM ET
Exclusive: ‘Hillary Clinton Took Me Through Hell,’ Rape Victim Says

The woman at the center of the scandal over Hillary Clinton’s defense of an alleged child rapist speaks out in depth for the first time.

Hillary Clinton is known as a champion of women and girls, but one woman who says she was raped as a 12-year-old in Arkansas doesn’t think Hillary deserves that honor. This woman says Hillary smeared her and used dishonest tactics to successfully get her attacker off with a light sentence—even though, she claims, Clinton knew he was guilty.

The victim in the 1975 sexual abuse case that became Clinton’s first criminal defense case as a 27-year-old lawyer has only spoken to the media once since her attack, a contested, short interaction with a reporter in 2008, during Clinton’s last presidential campaign run. Now 52, she wants to speak out after hearing Clinton talk about her case on newly discovered audio recordings from the 1980s, unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon and made public this week.

In a long, emotional interview with The Daily Beast, she accused Clinton of intentionally lying about her in court documents, going to extraordinary lengths to discredit evidence of the rape, and later callously acknowledging and laughing about her attackers’ guilt on the recordings.

“Hillary Clinton took me through Hell,” the victim said. The Daily Beast agreed to withhold her name out of concern for her privacy as a victim of sexual assault.

The victim said if she saw Clinton today, she would call her out for what she sees as the hypocrisy of Clinton’s current campaign to fight for women’s rights compared to her actions regarding this rape case so long ago.

“I would say [to Clinton], ‘You took a case of mine in ’75, you lied on me… I realize the truth now, the heart of what you’ve done to me. And you are supposed to be for women? You call that [being] for women, what you done to me? And I hear you on tape laughing.”

The victim’s allegation that Clinton smeared her following her rape is based on a May 1975 court affidavit written by Clinton on behalf of Thomas Alfred Taylor, one of the two alleged attackers, whom Clinton agreed to defend after being asked by the prosecutor. Taylor had specifically requested a female attorney.

“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing,” Clinton, then named Hillary D. Rodham, wrote in the affidavit. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”

Clinton also wrote that a child psychologist told her that children in early adolescence “tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences,” especially when they come from “disorganized families, such as the complainant.”

The victim vigorously denied Clinton’s accusations and said there has never been any explanation of what Clinton was referring to in that affidavit. She claims she never accused anyone of attacking her before her rape.

“I’ve never said that about anyone. I don’t know why she said that. I have never made false allegations. I know she was lying,” she said. “I definitely didn’t see older men. I don’t know why Hillary put that in there and it makes me plumb mad.”

The victim’s second main grievance with Clinton stems from the newly revealed audio recordings, which were taped in a series of interviews of Clinton with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed, who was researching an article on the Clintons that was ultimately never published. The Free Beacon found the tapes archived at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, amidst thousands of pieces of Clinton history that are being periodically released for public consumption.

“She lied like a dog on me. I think she was trying to do whatever she could do to make herself look good at the time.”

On the tapes, Clinton, who speaks in a Southern drawl, appears to acknowledge that she was aware of her client’s guilt, brags about successfully getting the only piece of physical evidence thrown out of court, and laughs about it all whimsically.

“He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” Clinton says on the recording, failing to hold back some chuckles.

She then describes how she discovered that investigators had cut out and lost a section of the suspect’s underwear that they said contained the victim’s blood. Clinton brought the remaining underwear segment to a Nobel Prize-winning blood expert in Brooklyn, NY, she explained, in order to convince him to lend his heavyweight reputation and influence to her defense case.

“And so the, sort of the story through the grapevine was, if you get him interested in the case, then you know you had the foremost expert in the world willing to testify so that it came out the way you wanted it to come out,” Clinton said.

Clinton told the judge that the famous expert was willing to testify. Instead of the original charge of first-degree rape, the prosecutors let Taylor plead to a lesser charge: unlawful fondling of a child. According to the Free Beacon, Taylor was sentenced to one year behind bars, with two months reduced for time served. The second attacker was never charged.

“Oh, he plea bargained. Got him off with time served in the county jail, he’d been in the county jail about two months,” Clinton said on the recording, apparently not remembering the sentence accurately.

“If she becomes president, is she gonna be telling the world the truth? No.”

For the victim, the tapes prove that while Clinton was arguing in the affidavit that the victim could have some culpability in her own attack, she actually believed that her client was guilty. Taylor’s light sentence was a miscarriage of justice, the victim said.

“It’s proven fact, with all the tapes [now revealed], she lied like a dog on me. I think she was trying to do whatever she could do to make herself look good at the time…. She wanted it to look good, she didn’t care if those guys did it or not,” she said. “Them two guys should have got a lot longer time. I do not think justice was served at all.”

The office of Hillary Clinton did not respond to a request for comment. In a 2008 article in Newsday written by Glenn Thrush, now at Politico, Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson defended her conduct in the case.

“As she wrote in her book, ‘Living History,’ Senator Clinton was appointed by the Circuit Court of Washington County, Arkansas to represent Mr. Taylor in this matter,” he said. “As an attorney and an officer of the court, she had an ethical and legal obligation to defend him to the fullest extent of the law. To act otherwise would have constituted a breach of her professional responsibilities.”

In that book, Clinton gave vague details about her actions in the case and said that shortly thereafter, she helped set up Arkansas’s first rape hotline.

According to Thrush’s article, the victim didn’t fault Clinton for her defense of the attacker during their 2008 interview, which took place in the prison where the victim was serving time for drug-related offenses, in the presence of the warden. “I’m sure Hillary was just doing her job,” he quoted the victim as saying. After all, everyone has a right to be defended in court. And 1975 was a lifetime ago.

But the victim now claims she was misquoted. She didn’t even know Clinton was the lawyer who defended her attacker until Thrush showed her Clinton’s book and she had no other information about what had happened behind closed doors in that courtroom when Thrush approached her, she said. Thrush declined to comment.

“If I had known that day what I know now I would have told him exactly what I’m telling y’all today,” she said.

After she was released from prison in 2008, the victim read more about Clinton’s involvement in her case, but she never planned to confront Clinton about it.

“I started seeing where I had really been stomped in the ground. I didn’t really know what to do about it. I just figured life would have to go on and I would have to live with it,” she said.

But after hearing the newly revealed tapes of Clinton boasting about the case, the victim said she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer and wanted to tell her side of the story to the public.

“When I heard that tape I was pretty upset, I went back to the room and was talking to my two cousins and I cried a little bit. I ain’t gonna lie, some of this has got me pretty down,” she said. “But I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to stand up to her. I’m going to stand up for what I’ve got to stand up for, you know?”

In her interview with The Daily Beast, she recounted the details of her attack in 1975 at age 12 and the consequences it had for both her childhood and adult life. A virgin before the assault, she spent five days afterwards in a coma, months recovering from the beating that accompanied the rape, and over 10 years in therapy. The doctors told her she would probably never be able to have children.

The victim was put through several forensic procedures, including a lie detector test. At first, she failed the lie detector test; she said that was because she didn’t understand one of the specific sex-related questions. Once that question was explained to her, she passed, she said. The victim positively identified her two attackers through one-way glass and they were arrested. But that wasn’t the end of her ordeal.

She described being afraid of men for years and dealing with anger issues well into her adulthood. At one point, she turned to drugs, a path that ultimately led her to prison. Now 52, she has never married or had children. She said she has been sober for several years and has achieved a level of stability, although she remains unemployed and living on disability assistance.

“I’m living life in Arkansas, I go to Church sometimes, and I’m doing good… Being on disability I don’t get much income but I’m happy where I’m at. I’m doing really well,” she said. “[Clinton] owes me a big apology, [but] I’ll probably never get anything from her.”

The victim doesn’t remember ever meeting Clinton in 1975; she says her memories from that ordeal are spotty. But she does recall feeling exasperated by the law enforcement and legal proceedings to the point where she told her mother she just wanted it to be over so she could try to resume her childhood.

“I had been through so much stuff I finally told them to do whatever,” she remembered. “They had scared me so bad that I was tired of being put through it all. I finally said I was done… I thought they had both gotten long-term sentences, I didn’t realize they got off with hardly nothing.”

Whether or not Clinton was just doing her duty as a defense lawyer, for the victim, Clinton’s behavior speaks to her character, her ambition, and her suitability to be a role model for women or president of the United States.

“I think she wants to be a role model being who she is, to look good, but I don’t think she’s a role model at all… If she had have been, she would have helped me at the time, being a 12-year-old girl who was raped by two guys,” she said. “She did that to look good and she told lies on that. How many other lies has she told to get where she’s at today? If she becomes president, is she gonna be telling the world the truth? No. She’s going to be telling lies out there, what the world wants to hear.”

The victim is concerned that speaking out will make her a target for attacks, but she no longer feels she is able to stay silent.

“I’m a little scared of her… When this all comes about, I’m a little worried she might try to hurt me, I hope not,” she said. “They can lie all they want, say all they want, I know what’s true.”


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -says.html

I imagine that the victim spent more time in prison for drugs than did her sadistic rapists.

I know public defenders do this shit all the time, but check it out for yourself, here's the recording:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2f13f2awK4


And this once more...love the music...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dZukA0GgJc


Sigh. It's going to come down to SCOTUS appointments, isn't it? And I'll feel compelled to vote for this eel. Oh well, I've got another WHOLE FUCKING YEAR of this to think about it.

[Elvis]

Nov. 24, 2015 4:16 PM ET
Since '01, Clintons collected $35M from financial businesses
By LISA LERER and KEN THOMAS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to know she is no friend of Wall Street. But Wall Street has frequently been a friend to her.

In the 18 months prior to announcing her second campaign for president, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination addressed private equity investors in California and New York, delivered remarks to bankers in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and spoke to brokers at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida.

Her efforts capped a nearly 15-year period in which Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, made at least $35 million by giving 164 speeches to financial services, real estate and insurance companies after leaving the White House in 2001, according to an Associated Press analysis of public disclosure forms and records released by her campaign.

The long and lucrative relationship between the Clinton family and the nation's finance industry has emerged as a key issue in her Democratic primary race. Her rivals, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, accuse her of being too cozy with Wall Street and the industry she once represented as a senator from New York.

His criticism plays into an argument her GOP rivals have long made, that Clinton can't be trusted and will flout the rules to get ahead.

Her backers in the financial industry say they have little expectation her family's personal profits will influence her policymaking, noting their own opposition to her plan to raise taxes on hedge fund and private equity gains known as carried interest.

"She and Bill were both government servants all of their life, and there was a set period of time when they could make money," said venture capitalist Alan Patricof, a longtime Clinton fundraiser, of the Clintons' paid speechmaking. "She had to maximize her earning potential."

The Clinton campaign also points to her record, saying it shows a history of working to regulate the industry. Negative ads run by a group called Future 45, a super PAC backed by six-figure checks from hedge fund managers, demonstrate that Wall Street expects her to follow through, aides said.

"Any honest look at Hillary Clinton's record shows she spoke out early and often against Wall Street's excesses in the run-up to the financial crisis," said campaign spokesman Brian Fallon. "It's clear they believe she will take action as president to crack down on the industry's abuses."

The bulk of the Clintons' paid speeches to the financial industry came after the 2008 economic crash. From 2009 to 2014, the couple made $26 million from 109 appearances sponsored by banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity firms and real estate businesses, and at those industries' conferences and before their trade organizations.

With Hillary Clinton serving as secretary of state for most of that period, her husband brought in the bulk of the money, nearly $17 million. That included $250,000 Bill Clinton earned for mingling with investment managers in New York on May 12 — thirty days after she released a video announcing her second bid for the White House.

Advocates for boosting financial regulation say the large personal payouts underscore a political imperative for Clinton to take tough policy positions.

"She needs to show that she is not too cozy with the banks, and that makes it even more important for her to draw a clear line and propose very tough measures," said Robert Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration who has advised Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Exactly what the Clintons said in their speeches is hard to find. Although many of the remarks were given to large groups, reporters were typically barred. Often, Hillary Clinton's contract expressly prohibited the remarks from being broadcast, transcribed or "otherwise reproduced," according a copy of her agreement for one speech with the University of Buffalo.

Still, some details have trickled out.

When she addressed the National Multifamily Housing Council in April 2013, she focused on foreign affairs, including the Arab Spring and North Korea, and deflected questions about whether she would run for president, according to a post on the organization's website that has since been taken down.

A reporter from the real estate blog The Real Deal was at her October 2014 speech to the annual convention of the Commercial Real Estate Women Network in Miami Beach. Clinton focused her remarks on boosting the number of women in their field, telling more than 1,200 attendees that industry groups must work to "achieve parity."

"Bold choices (offer) big return," she said, according to the blog. "It's so important for women like us to get out of our comfort zones and be willing to fail. I've done that, too, on a very large stage."

Beyond the personal income, Clinton also has close political ties to the finance industry. Over the course of her career, from her 2000 run for the Senate to the two presidential campaigns, people working in the finance, insurance and real estate industries have given her campaigns about $35 million — more than donors from any other lines of work, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Her top two contributors over those years were employees from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the center found.

Since her husband left the White House, the family's charity, the Clinton Foundation, has collected millions more from the industry, with companies such as Barclay's, Citigroup, Fidelity, HSBC and Goldman Sachs listed as donating as much as $5 million each.

In public remarks, Clinton casts herself as having offered a major rebuke of the industry in 2007, before the economic downturn that led to the Great Recession. "I went to Wall Street in December of 2007 — before the big crash that we had — and I basically said, 'Cut it out!'" she said in this year's first Democratic primary debate.

But while she suggested steps to regulate the industry in that 2007 speech, she was careful to strike a more balanced tone, saying "there's plenty of blame to go around."

Less than a year later, she backed the $700 billion bank stabilization plan, known as TARP, to bail out the industry in the midst of the financial crisis — a bill Sanders voted against.

"In fairness, not many in politics were on top of the issue," said Brad Miller, a Democratic former North Carolina congressman and an advocate of tougher financial regulation. "No one knew the effects of the bad mortgages on the financial system. I certainly didn't."

Both Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, another Democratic rival, support reinstating the law that once separated commercial and investment banking. Known as Glass-Steagall, it was repealed in 1999 during her husband's administration.

While Clinton doesn't rule out breaking up the big banks, she argues that restoring Glass-Steagall wouldn't go far enough to curb risk. Instead, she would impose a graduated fee on large financial firms that would increase as companies hold greater amounts of debt, to discourage excessive risk.

A separate tax would be levied on high-frequency trading, and she has vowed tougher criminal penalties for individuals who break the rules. She would also raise taxes on the wealthy, including closing the so-called carried interest loophole that allows some Wall Street profits to be taxed at a lower rate.

"I go after not just the banks," Clinton told Democrats in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday. "I go after the hedge funds, big insurance companies, shadow banking."

Dennis Kelleher, president and chief executive of Better Markets, a financial watchdog group, said that while financial reformers are wary of her family's relationships on Wall Street, her agenda includes "some very tough things that no one else is talking about."

Those proposals aren't worrying her backers on Wall Street, who argue that her time representing New York gives Clinton a deep understanding of how their industry works. They note that she's avoided vilifying their industry as has Sanders, who recent described their business model as "fraud" or even President Barack Obama, who angered some of his donors when he called Wall Street investors as "a bunch of fat cat bankers" in a 2009 interview.

Her proposals also don't do much to win some who feel the better choice for the industry will be found among the GOP's candidates.

Donors working in the finance and insurance industry have given $22 million to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and $21 million to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and their affiliated super PACs — roughly three times as much as to Clinton and the outside group supporting her, according to Crowdpac.com, a nonpartisan political research company.

"People on Wall Street view her with a level of caution that they didn't view President Clinton with," said Anthony Scaramucci, a major Republican donor and founder of SkyBridge Capital, which paid Clinton $175,000 to address its annual investment conference in 2010. "It's this progressive nonsense."

___

Associated Press writer Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report from Washington.

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c1 ... 75805bac1c