Connecting the dots on Hillary Clinton

[Acebb]

AP Fact Check: Hillary just makes shit up:

CLINTON: "Since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns. Two hundred children have been killed. This is an emergency." She said that in the same period there have been 21 mass shootings, "including one last weekend in Des Moines where three were murdered."

THE FACTS: The claim appears to be unsupported on all counts.
The Gun Violence Archive has recorded 11,485 gun deaths in the U.S. so far this year, an average of just under 1,000 per month, making Clinton's figure appear to be highly exaggerated. The archive had more detailed data for children and teenagers, showing 70 from those age groups killed by firearms since the Democratic candidates debated Oct. 13 - not 200 as she claimed.

===
If she were a Republican they wouldn't say "unsupported" they would say lie.

 

[SheriffJoe]

That's odd, no "fact checking" from The Guesser after the last Democrat debate.

 

[russ1945]

russ,
she is the worst candidate since Dukakis. I can't believe that the Dems put all their eggs in her basket.

She is all they got and if Obama was praying for a third run he blew it on ISIS. They have no leadership they all just blindly follow the same winding path.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

russ,
she is the worst candidate since Dukakis. I can't believe that the Dems put all their eggs in her basket.

What else can they do? Any competent Dem out there doesn’t want any part of trying to fix this cluster fuck Obama created. That would mean making hard choices and actually trying to lead. It’s easier to just sit at the kids table and be quiet.

 

[SheriffJoe]

Trump summed it up best: Hillary is running to stay out of jail

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Clinton Foundation Revenue Balloons Thanks to Government Grants[/h]Controversial group reports $172 million in revenue and previously undisclosed details on taxpayer support
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Hillary and Chelsea Clinton / AP​

BY: Lachlan Markay
November 17, 2015 1:15 pm

Contributions to Hillary Clinton’s family foundation grew dramatically last year to more than $170 million, a record for the group, but it gave out significantly less in grant money than the year before, according to annual tax filings.
The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation released the latest such filing on Monday night, as well as revised versions of filings for prior years that contained errors and ambiguities that the foundation agreed to correct.
It shows $172 million in contributions last year, an increase of about $30 million over 2013. The group reported cash reserves of more than $350 million.
About a third of the foundation’s increase in contributions over 2013 came in the form of grants from governments. It received $15.2 million from governments last year, compared to $4.5 million in 2013, according to an amended tax filing also posted to the foundation’s website on Monday.
“For many of the issues that the Clinton Foundation works on … governments are often the largest funders of this work worldwide,” the group said in a statement accompanying its release of its 2014 tax filings and amended filings for prior years.
It adjusted filings from 2012, 2011, and 2010 to reveal the amount of revenue it derived from such governments, figures that had not been previously disclosed. In total, those filings revealed an additional $18 million in government grants.
“The amount of government grants was included on the Foundation’s original returns as part of the aggregate amount of all contributions, but not separately broken out,” the statement explained. In other words, government grants were counted in the group’s revenue total, but were not specifically identified.
According to its 2014 filing, the foundation spent about $92 million last year. While the bulk of the funds went toward “program service expenses,” or expenses pertaining to tax-exempt charitable activities, it provided far less in grants than it spent on travel, conferences, and salary and benefits for its employees.
The $5.1 million in grant money the foundation doled out in 2014 marked a significant decline from its $8 million in grants the year before.
In comparison, the foundation reported spending $12.5 million on “conferences, conventions, and meetings,” $7.8 million on travel, and more than $30 million on salary and benefits for its employees and officers.
The 2014 filing also disclosed for the first time the amount of revenue derived from paid speeches by members of the Clinton family since 2010. Of the $9 million in speech payments reported since then, $3.6 million came last year.
The foundation pointed to its sizable increases in revenue last year as evidence that the group has thrived in the face of scrutiny resulting from Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The foundation has come under fire since Clinton Cash, a book by Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution, noted numerous occasions on which Clinton, as secretary of state, took official actions that benefitted foundation donors.
The foundation bragged last month that it was raising large amounts of money despite that criticism.
“A spokesman said there were also more sponsors this year of the foundation’s annual multi-day Clinton Global Initiative in New York in September, countering reports that corporate supporters had backed off because of a newly politicized atmosphere around the gathering,” the Washington Postreported.
However, critics of Clinton’s relationship with the foundation say that the increase underscored their point. It “helps when one of the namesakes is running for president,” a Republican National Committee spokesman said at the time.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]WHY HILLARY AND OBAMA PREFER ISLAM TO CHRISTIANITY[/h]

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by BEN SHAPIRO17 Nov 20154,918
[h=2]On Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the American woman most responsible for the current refugee crisis in the Middle East, blasted Republicans for not wanting to accept unvetted Syrian Muslim refugees in the aftermath of last week’s Paris terror attacks.[/h]She tweeted:

We’ve seen a lot of hateful rhetoric from the GOP. But the idea that we’d turn away refugees because of religion is a new low. -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 17, 2015
​

This, to be sure, is odd. Hillary decrying hateful rhetoric smacks of irony – she despises Republicans so much that she labeled them her enemies during the first Demoratic debate. Furthermore, Hillary is no fighter for religious freedom. In April, she told the Women in the World Summit that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed” to allow for abortion. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s egregious same-sex marriage decision in June, Hillary explicitly called for the government to force churches to sanction homosexuality, explaining, “Our work won’t be finished until every American can not only marry, but live, work, pray, learn and raise a family free from discrimination and prejudice.” Pray – as in attend church “free from discrimination and prejudice.”
But she’s sure hot and bothered about what she terms discrimination against Muslim refugees. This isn’t particularly surprising – the entire left has a peculiar soft spot for Islam.
That seems weird, given Islamic countries’ fundamental rejection of leftist values ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion to women driving. But it isn’t so weird when considered in the context of Marxist philosophy, which sees Islam not as a religious philosophy of its own, but as a sort of bizarre cultural outgrowth of poverty. Impoverished people believe weird things, say the Marxists; if we just gave ISIS jobs, they’d stop all this nonsense and start behaving like members of the ACLU. Leftists see Islam not as an ideological force converting millions, but as a knee-jerk response to lack of basic living standards.
In fact, leftists see all religion this way: as the refuge of the weakminded underclass. As Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Barack Obama agrees: as he said back in 2008, poor people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”
The view that all religious practice is essentially the domain of the exploited would cut in favor of seeing all religious practices as equally worthy of dismissal.
But the left prefers Islam to Christianity. They’ll fight against anyone drawing pictures of Mohammed, but they’ll lose their minds if Christians complain about an “artist” soaking a statue of Jesus in urine.
Why do leftists treat Christianity and Islam differently, if both are merely chimerical responses to the vicissitudes of life? Because leftists see Christianity as the creator of Islam’s rise, and Christians as the victimizers of Muslims. The Obama State Department won’t recognize Christians as victims of incipient Muslim genocide in the Middle East, but President Obama will equate ISIS violence in 2015 with the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. President Obama believes, like many on the left, that Western civilization was founded in racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bigotry – and that Christianity, as its wellspring, provided that impetus.
Furthermore, Obama believes that Western civilization has exploited the rest of the world, and that it therefore bears culpability for the poverty that gave rise to the Islamic wave. Muslims are benighted victims of poverty; Christianity made them victims of poverty in the first place. Christianity thus bears blood guilt for the sins of Islam, but Islam bears none of its own. As Dinesh D’Souza puts it, Obama is an anti-colonialist and believes “that the rich countries got rich by looting the poor countries, and that within the rich countries, plutocratic and corporate elites continue to exploit ordinary citizens.” Taken one step further, those rich countries – Christian countries – exploited non-Christian countries, impoverishing them and opening them to the opium of Islam.
How else to explain the left’s romance with Islam and simultaneous dismissal of Christianity? How else to explain the left’s preoccupation with allowing Muslim refugees into the Christianity-founded West while demanding nothing of Islamic countries which are murdering Christians en masse?
Hillary Clinton says it’s hateful for Western countries to discriminate in choosing refugees based on religious philosophy. It’s far more hateful to suggest that Christianity must bow and scrape before Islam, particularly when Islamic terrorists target non-Muslims the world over.

 

[The Guesser]

That's odd, no "fact checking" from The Guesser after the last Democrat debate.

Didn't watch it much of it, and we already know the outcome of the D race, unfortunately. Funny you would ask for Fact Checking when you don't believe in facts. But just to have some actual, unbiased facts in this pathetic thread, why not.

FactChecking the Second Democratic Debate

We found false and misleading claims from Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley in a Saturday night showdown.

• By FactCheck.org
• Posted on November 15, 2015

Summary

The three Democratic presidential candidates faced off on a Saturday night, and made several inaccurate claims:

• Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said that in President Reagan’s first term, the highest marginal income tax rate was 70 percent. But Reagan signed a bill in his first year dropping that to 50 percent, and it dropped again to 28 percent in his second term.
• Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said that the U.S. “has more income and wealth inequality than any major country on earth.” But Israel, Brazil and Chile have both greater income and wealth inequality, and more countries beat the U.S. in one of the measures.
• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrongly said that wages “haven’t risen since the turn of the last century.” Real average weekly earnings of rank-and-file workers rose 7.2 percent since 1999.
• Sanders repeated his talking point about billionaires paying “an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers.” That may be the case for some in those professions, once we factor in payroll taxes, but it’s not accurate for all.
• When Clinton cited Princeton economist Alan Krueger’s support for her minimum wage proposal, O’Malley called him a Wall Street economist. He’s not.
• O’Malley boasted that Maryland was “the only state” to freeze college tuition four years in a row. This year, Maine did so as well.

Analysis

Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley met at Drake University in Iowa for the debate, which was hosted by CBS News, KCCI-TV in Des Moines and the Des Moines Register.
O’Malley on Top Tax Rate Under Reagan

O’Malley said that in President Ronald Reagan’s first term, “the highest marginal [income tax] rate was 70 percent.” That was true only briefly. In Reagan’s first year in office, he signed a bill reducing the top rate to 50 percent. And in his second term, he reduced it again, to 28 percent.
O’Malley cited the top marginal tax rate during the debate to make the point that upper-income taxpayers should be paying more, and historically have.

O’Malley: And may I point out that under Ronald Reagan’s first term, the highest marginal rate was 70 percent. And in talking to a lot of our neighbors who are in that super wealthy, millionaire and billionaire category, a great number of them love their country enough to do more again in order to create more opportunity for America’s middle class.
​

As a matter of history, the top marginal tax rate of 70 percent was established in 1964, when Congress passed a tax cut backed by President John F. Kennedy. In the decades before that, the top rate was much higher — hovering around 90 percent.
So 70 percent was the top rate when Reagan took office in January 1981. Eight months after taking office, Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which cut the highest marginal tax rate to 50 percent.
In his second term, Reagan signed a bill in 1986 that lowered the top marginal income tax rate to 28 percent.
Sanders Off on Inequality and Poverty

Sanders continued to peddle some false claims about U.S. inequality and child poverty:

Sanders: This country today has more income and wealth inequality than any major country on earth. … We have the highest rate of childhood poverty. …
​

Regarding income inequality, we noted back in May that World Bank statistics list at least 41 countries with greater income inequality than the U.S. — including Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
And as for wealth inequality, the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent in the U.S. puts it in 11th place among 37 nations listed in the 2015 edition of the Global Wealth Databook. The top 1 percent in Russia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, China, Czech Republic and Israel each hold a greater share of their nation’s wealth, according to that publication.
Finally, the rate of child poverty is far worse in many other countries, including several with industrialized economies. The campaign told us the senator was referring to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, but that report ranks the U.S. seventh in “relative childhood poverty” among the 38 countries listed.
Turkey, Israel, Mexico, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria all had higher rates of child poverty than the U.S., in the OECD’s ranking.
It’s also worth noting that “relative poverty” is a measure of household disposable income relative to others in that country.
Clinton Wrong on Wages

Clinton erred when she said real wages haven’t risen in nearly 15 years.

Clinton: [W]ages adjusted for inflation haven’t risen since the turn of the last century.
​

That’s not true, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Real average weekly earnings of rank-and-file workers were 7.2 percent higher in September than they were in December 1999.
Furthermore, real weekly wages have jumped 2.3 percent in the most recent 12 months alone.
Sanders on Truck Drivers’ Tax Rates

Sanders repeated one of his campaign trail talking points: “But we are going to end the absurdity, as Warren Buffet often remind us … that billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers.” That’s the case for some in those professions — compared with billionaires who earn their money through investments — but it’s not accurate for all. In fact, a truck driver would have to earn more than the median salary to pay a higher effective rate.
We previously ran the calculations for several different hypothetical nurses and truck drivers (and firefighters and police officers, who have also been part of this Sanders claim), comparing total effective tax rates, including payroll taxes, to what an investment fund manager would pay if only paying capital gains tax rates on earnings.
The billionaire fund manager would pay 23.8 percent — the top capital gains rate for income above $413,200 for individuals — and a 3.8 percent Medicare surcharge tax on investment income for those earning more than $200,000. A truck driver earning the median income for the profession ($39,520) wouldn’t pay a higher rate then the fund manager’s 23.8 percent. But if that truck driver earned a higher salary — such as the average pay in Peabody, Massachusetts ($57,250) — and was single with no dependents, he or she would pay an effective tax rate of 26 percent, higher than the fund manager. If that truck driver had one dependent child, however, the rate would drop to 21 percent.
As for nurses, the median salary is much higher — $66,640. A single nurse with no dependents would have a 28 percent effective tax rate with that salary. But once we add a dependent child, or a nonworking spouse, or both, the nurse’s rate sinks below that of the wealthy fund manager.
If the billionaire fund managers’ earnings were taxed at regular income tax rates, he or she would pay a higher rate. Most marginal income tax rates are higher than capital gains rates, with individual income between about $37,000 and $90,000 at the 25 percent rate for 2015. The top income tax rate is 39.6 percent, which starts after income surpasses $413,200.
Krueger Not a Wall Street Economist

O’Malley lumped Princeton economist Alan Krueger in with what he called “economists on Wall Street.” Krueger is not a Wall Street economist.
O’Malley made his remarks when he had a disagreement with Clinton over how much to raise the minimum wage. O’Malley supports raising it to $15 per hour. Clinton has proposed $12 per hour, and she cited Princeton economist Alan Krueger’s support for her proposal and concern for increasing the minimum to $15 per hour.

O’Malley: I think we need to stop taking our advice from economists on Wall Street …
Clinton: He’s not Wall Street.
O’Malley: … And start taking advice …
Clinton: That’s not fair. He’s a progressive economist.
​

O’Malley is wrong about Krueger’s background. It is entirely in academia and education.
Krueger graduated with a doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1987. “Since 1987 he has held a joint appointment in the Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University,” according to his biography on the university website.
Krueger also has held top positions in government, including chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama and chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Bill Clinton. His full curriculum vitae can be found here.
O’Malley’s Outdated Tuition Boast

O’Malley claimed that Maryland was the only state that went four consecutive years without an increase in college tuition. That’s no longer the case.

O’Malley: We were the only state to go four years in a row without a penny’s increase to college tuition.
​

Yes, as governor, O’Malley did sign bills implementing a tuition freeze at public universities in Maryland that lasted from 2007 until 2010. But Maine has now matched what Maryland once achieved.
In March of this year, the University of Maine System Board of Trustees again voted to freeze in-state tuition at its seven member schools. That means the school system has now gone four years without an increase in tuition at its public universities.
— by Brooks Jackson, Robert Farley, Lori Robertson, D’Angelo Gore and Eugene Kiely
Sources

Geewax, Marilyn. “JFK’s Lasting Economic Legacy: Lower Tax Rates.” NPR. 14 Nov 2013.
Tax Foundation. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library. The Second American Revolution: Reaganomics.
GovTrack.us. H.R. 3838: Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Credit Suisse Research Institute. “Global Wealth Databook.” Oct 2015.
World Bank. “GINI index (World Bank estimate).” Data accessed 15 Nov 2015.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “Chart CO2.2.A. Child income poverty rates, 2012.” Data accessed 15 Nov 2015.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National); Average Weekly Earnings of Production and Nonsupervisory Employees, 1982-1984 Dollars.” Data extracted 15 Nov 2015.
Robertson, Lori. “Hedge Fund Managers’ Tax Rates.” FactCheck.org. 8 Sep 2015.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014. 53-3032 Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers. accessed 15 Nov 2015.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2014. 29-1141 Registered Nurses. accessed 15 Nov 2015.
O’Malley for President. “Raise the Minimum Wage.” Undated.
Krueger, Alan B. “The Minimum Wage: How Much Is Too Much?” New York Times. 9 Oct 2015.
Princeton University. “Alan B. Krueger, Biography.” Undated.

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]AP: Clinton Debate Gun Claims Unsupported by Facts[/h]"The claim appears to be unsupported on all counts"
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AP​

BY: Stephen Gutowski
November 18, 2015 5:23 pm

The Associated Press fact checked Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s claims about gun violence in Saturday’s CBS News debate and found they were incorrect.
“Since we last debated in Las Vegas, nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns,” Clinton said during the debate. “Two hundred children have been killed. This is an emergency.”
She went on to claim that since the Vegas debate on Oct. 13 there had also been 21 mass shootings, including “one last weekend in Des Moines where three were murdered.”
The AP determined “the claim appears to be unsupported on all counts.” Citing data from the Gun Violence Archive, the news wire found it is likely that under 1,000 people have died in the month between the two Democratic debates. They also found that there were 70 firearms-related deaths of children in that time period, not the 200 Clinton claimed.
The archive’s numbers encompass any firearm-related death and include suicides, self-defense shootings, and police shootings. Murders likely make up less than half of the firearms related deaths in the United States between October and November.
There were no mass shootings, which must involve four fatalities to fit FBI definitions, in Iowa during the time frame Clinton cited. The AP did identify one shooting in Des Moines on Nov. 8, when four were shot in a nightclub. One person was killed during that shooting, not the three Clinton claimed.
Clinton made a number of factual errors in her gun claims during a major speech earlier this year.

This entry was posted in Issues and tagged 2nd Amendment, Gun Control, Guns, Hillary Clinton. Bookmark thepermalink.

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Clinton Foundation Running Private Equity Fund in Colombia[/h]Watchdogs criticize lack of transparency in Clinton Foundation backed effort
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AP​

BY: Alana Goodman
November 18, 2015 11:00 am

The Clinton Foundation is operating a $20 million private equity firm in Colombia, raising concerns from government and consumer watchdog groups who say the practice is unusual and could pose a significant conflict of interest.
The Bogota-based company, Fondo Acceso, could also lead to uncomfortable questions for Hillary Clinton as she criticizes the private equity industry on the campaign trail.
Fondo Acceso was founded by Bill Clinton, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, and mining magnate Frank Giustra in 2010, financed with a $20 million joint contribution from the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative and the SLIM Foundation.
According to the firm’s Spanish-language website, Fondo Acceso is “a Private Equity Fund that seeks investment opportunities in the small and medium Colombian compan[ies] with the purpose of obtaining economic and social returns.”
However, the line between the firm and the Clinton’s nonprofit world is hazy. Fondo Acceso is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office and staffed by foundation employees, a representative at the office told the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday.
The firm is managed by Carolina Botero, who is also chief financial officer at the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership. It lists various Clinton Foundation and CGEP officials as directors in its corporate filings. The Clinton Foundation’s tax returns list Fondo Acceso as a related corporation in which the foundation holds a 50 percent stake.
Colombian companies that want to apply for venture funding from the Fondo Acceso must also sign a contract turning over financial and internal information to both the private equity firm and the Clinton Foundation.
“The Company acknowledges that this letter of authorization or consent is given for the benefit of the FUND and of the CLINTON FOUNDATION and, therefore, cannot be repealed, or the authorization contained herein altered or modified, without the prior and written consent of the FUND and/or the CLINTON FOUNDATION,” says the contract on the Acceso website.
Fondo Acceso’s financial entanglements are also unclear. Vanessa Jimenez, chief administrator at the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office, answered the phone number listed for the private equity fund on Tuesday. She said she was not allowed to talk about Fondo Acceso’s investments.
Jimenez said Fondo Acceso was based out of the office, but employees there technically worked for the Clinton Foundation.
“[Fondo Acceso] does not have any employees,” she said. “Nobody is hired by Acceso. … In Colombia, we work for the company, but only the Clinton Foundation is our employer.”
Jimenez directed questions to Fondo Acceso’s legal representative Monica Varela, who is also a Clinton Foundation official. Varela did not respond to request for comment.
Fondo Acceso director Christy Louth, who is also an official at the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, declined to comment and directed questions to the partnership’s press office. A spokesperson for the Clinton Foundation also directed questions to the CGEP.
CGEP is a Canadian organization founded by Clinton and Giustra. The group contracts its economic development projects to the Clinton Foundation and does not disclose its donors.
The CGEP press office declined to provide the Free Beacon with a full list of companies that Fondo Acceso has invested in.
The group has been more willing to discuss some of Fondo Acceso’s projects privately and in the Colombian media.
Fondo Acceso managerBotero laid out the company’s strategy in July 2012 and disclosed some of its investments in a presentation to the Cartagena Chamber of Commerce.
The presentation said Fondo Acceso was looking to invest in local companies in the agriculture, production, and labor industries with “high growth potential” that had annual sales between $500,000 and $10 million. In exchange for financing, the firm would become a shareholder in the companies.
According to the presentation, Fondo Acceso’s portfolio included at least two companies at the time. It gave $1.5 million to a Barranquilla-based fruit pulping company Alimentos SAS in 2011 and $250,000 to the Bogota-based telecom company Fontel in 2012, in exchange for shareholding agreements.
These investments are a small fraction of the $20 million that Clinton, Giustra, and Slim committed to Fondo Acceso in 2010, and it is unclear where the rest of the money has gone.
The Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership press office said Fondo Acceso has invested in various CGEP “enterprises” in Latin America, which are companies founded and co-owned by CGEP and the Clinton Foundation.
The lack of clear disclosure raises questions about Fondo Acceso’s transparency, according to watchdog groups.
A charitable foundation running a private equity fund is “not something one hears about commonly” and is “very concerning,” according to Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen.
“Private equity firms invest and take over various companies as social services for a period of time and its intent and its purpose is to provide a reasonable return for shareholders,” said Holman. “If you’ve got a tax-free foundation getting involved in running a private equity firm, I just find that very troubling.”
Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, said the lack of transparency was a troubling. He said the public has a right to know whether any of Fondo Acceso’s companies received U.S. government support while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
“At the minimum, the Clinton Foundation should disclose every company that received investment funds from them, because the public is entitled to know whether those companies benefited from any State Department foreign aid programs,” said Boehm.
The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]POLL: HILLARY COLLAPSES AGAINST GOP IN SWING STATE OF COLORADO[/h]

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Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

by JOHN NOLTE18 Nov 2015278
A mere four years ago, President Obama beat Mitt Romney 51.5% to 46% in the swing state of Colorado. Nine months ago, Clinton was tied or beating every Republican in Colorado. According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, to0day, every major Republican beats the former Secretary of State by double digits. In fact, the best she can poll in this vital swing state is 38%.

• Rubio over Clinton 52 – 36 percent;
• Carson leads Clinton 52 – 38 percent;
• Cruz tops Clinton 51 – 38 percent;
• Trump beats Clinton 48 – 37 percent

Only 34% of Colorado voters believes Hillary Clinton shares their values.
In their respective primaries, Carson leads the Republicans with 25% support.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

80%​

is in second place at 19%. Trump has fallen to third place with 17% support.Clinton is destroying socialist
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%​

52% to 38%.In this same poll, back in March, Clinton was polling in the mod-forties and statistically tied with her Republican opponents.

 

[russ1945]

PAPER: How Clintons raised $3 billion...


You need to check this out

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]The Prisoner of Obama[/h]Column: Hillary Clinton’s career will sink or swim with Barack Obama’s ISIS strategy
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AP​

BY: Matthew Continetti
November 20, 2015 5:00 am

They’re not kidding when they say it’s difficult to hold the White House for three terms in a row. So much depends on the incumbent: Is he deemed a success or a failure? Is he loved or derided? The candidate seeking to replace a president of his own party is betting the country doesn’t want to change. Bush 41 bet correctly. Al Gore and John McCain did not.
Hillary Clinton? Her problem was on display Thursday when she presented her anti-ISIS war plan to the Council on Foreign Relations. For ideological and political reasons, she is unable or unwilling to distinguish herself from Obama. If the war against ISIS were going well, her decision would be smart politics. But the war is not going well. The war is a disaster. A growing one, as the Paris attack made clear.
The president is quite the neoliberal—mugged by reality yet refusing to press charges. His approval rating on foreign policy is consistently underwater. Two-thirds of the country says it’s headed in thewrong direction. And yet Clinton’s ISIS strategy is essentially the same as Obama’s. Fierce airstrikes. An “intelligence surge.” Special forces. Pressure the Iraqi government to be nice to its Sunnis. Agree on a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian Civil War. “Increased support from our Arab and European partners.” Accept Syrian refugees. Above all, no major deployment of U.S. troops. On ISIS, Clinton is Obama’s prisoner. A willing captive to his strategy. Where it goes, she’ll go.
The subtleties intended to convince us that Clinton’s plan is more aggressive than Obama’s are laughable. Obama, you see, wants to “degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS” whereas Clinton wants to “defeat and destroy ISIS.” Obama is “intensifying” the fight against ISIS whereas Clinton is not only intensifying but also accelerating it. Intensify and accelerate a bad policy all you want. It will remain bad.
Where does Clinton differ from the president? “I thought we needed to do more to try to identify indigenous Syrian fighters, so-called ‘moderates’—and I do think there were some early on—that we could have done more to help them in their fight against Assad.” Dude, that was like four years ago!
Clinton won’t even say Obama was wrong to call ISIS the “JV team”: “I don’t think it’s useful to go back in and re-plow old ground.” Criticizing Obama for the junior varsity comment is political free money. No one but the president and Susan Rice would be annoyed if Clinton said he should’ve taken the threat more seriously.
But she can’t bring herself to do it. Not just because she needs the president and his coalition to support her a year from now. Because she also approves of policies most of us see as failed or failing or counterproductive.
The Afghanistan surge, the Libya war, the Iran deal—Clinton embraces all of Obama’s foreign policy legacy, with the exception of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She touts Libya in particular. “We had the UAE, Qatar, Jordan involved in what we were doing on the ground” in Libya, she said Thursday. In response to a question skeptical of the Libya war, she said, “The Libyan people have voted twice in free and fair elections for the kind of leadership they want.”
She offered Libya as an example of successful diplomacy. “The Europeans were the ones who wanted American support, and we did not agree to do so until we had a very clear idea what they were willing to do. And then we reached out and worked with the Arab League so that there would be Arab partners as well, and that took weeks.” Who besides Clinton now judges the Libya intervention a success?
When President Obama took office, Iraq was stable. Now there are four failed states in the Middle East—Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen—and the potential for many more. This is the foreign policy legacy to which Hillary Clinton is committed.
President Obama is very good at advocating and implementing policies of which the public disapproves. Obamacare, the Bergdahl trade, the phony war on ISIS, the executive amnesty, gun control, the Iran deal, no changes to the Syrian refugee program—he’s been persistent in his flouting of majority wishes and constitutional norms. But Clinton doesn’t have his talent. She doesn’t have his fan boys.
Clinton must assume, as most Democrats do, that changes in our population and culture allow liberals to be much more dismissive and contemptuous of opposing viewpoints than they have been in the past. Clinton must assume, as most Democrats do, that the electorate will find the alternative to Democratic rule so repulsive that it will support whomever John Oliver tells it to. Clinton must assume, as many Democrats do, that the economy will be good enough, that Obama will be popular enough, that the world will be stable enough in November 2016 to ensure that the Clintons return to the White House.
That’s her bet. Did I mention it’s a risky one?

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Hillary Clinton Scolds Major Clinton Foundation Donors for Also Donating to Terrorists[/h]BY: Andrew Stiles
November 19, 2015 3:58 pm

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AP​

Hillary Clinton gave a speech Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relation, where she outlined hergenius plan to defeat ISIS. (Step 1: Defeat ISIS.) She also offered a few more specific proposals [emphasis added]:

When it comes to terrorist financing, we have to go after the nodes that facilitate illicit trade and transactions. The U.N. Security Council should update its terrorism sanctions. They have a resolution that does try to block terrorist financing and other enabling activities, but we have to place more obligations on countries to police their own banks, and the United States, which has quite a record of success in this area, can share more intelligence to help other countries.And once and for all, the Saudis, the Qataris and others need to stop their citizens from directly funding extremist organizations as well as the schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path to radicalization.
​

Clinton is right about the fact that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have for years funneled money to terrorist groups, essentially bribing them to ensure that they don’t cause trouble in their incestual oligarchies. She is certainly right that these oil-rich countries have made a habit of giving away money to powerful interest groups in an effort to curry favor. Some of those groups happen to be comprised of terrorists, while others are charitable foundations founded by a former United States president whose wife is currently seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the same position in 2016.
Here’s how much those three countries and their affiliated entities have donated to the Clinton Foundation:

• Qatar — Up to $5.8 million
• United Arab Emirates — Up to $11.5 million
• Saudi Arabia — Up to $50 million

The gulf nations represent three of the largest donors to the foundation, but that is hardly the extent of their ties to the Clintons. Qatari, UAE, and Saudi firms paid Bill Clinton millions of dollars for speechesduring the time Hillary served as secretary of state, when she also approved weapons deals with all three countries worth billions of dollars to U.S. defense firms, many of which are also Clinton Foundation donors.
Bill Clinton has praised the Qataris as “intelligent, forward looking” investment partners for their collaboration on Clinton Foundation projects. One of Hillary’s top advisers, Cheryl Mills, served on the board of the New York University campus in Abu Dhabi. Bill Clinton is the friend and former classmate of Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, who recently attended a lavish Clinton Foundation conference in Marrakech, hosted by the King of Morocco. The Bill Clinton presidential library in Little Rock was funded in part by a $10 million from the Saudi Royal family.
Hillary is right, the time has come for Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia to stop using their oil wealth to buy influence and protection from special interests.

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Hillary Clinton Bundlers Bankroll Ted Strickland’s Campaign[/h]Wealthy fundraisers from D.C., New York send money to Ohio Senate candidate
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Ted Strickland / AP​

BY: Morgan Chalfant
November 19, 2015 12:05 pm

Twenty-eight of Hillary Clinton’s top bundlers have donated to Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Ted Strickland, with only one of the donations coming from Ohio.
Since Strickland, a longtime Clinton ally, launched his Senate campaign in February, he has received nearly $60,000 in contributions from individuals listed on Hillary Clinton’s “Hillblazers” list, according to aWashington Free Beacon analysis of Federal Election Commission records.
Clinton’s “Hillblazers” are credited with raising $100,000 or more in primary election contributions for the former secretary of state as she pursues the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.
The majority of the 28 Clinton bundlers funneling money to Strickland have contributed at least $1,000 to his campaign. Eleven have donated the maximum $2,700 to his primary ambitions, and five have contributed $2,700 each to his primary and general election campaigns. If he loses the primary race to Democratic opponent P.G. Sittenfeld, a 31-year-old Cincinnati city councilman, Strickland will be forced to return the general election funds.
The donations from Clinton fundraisers backing Strickland come primarily from the Washington, D.C., metro area. The Free Beacon previously reported that Strickland has had success fundraising in the nation’s capital, netting nearly $170,000 from individuals based there. Several also come from New York City, Chicago, Dallas, and other major cities across the country. Only one donation, from a top Democratic activist and fundraiser, came from Ohio, the state Strickland is running to represent.
Strickland, a former governor of Ohio, has previously touted days-long fundraising trips to New York, Washington, and other cities.
If successful in the Democratic primary, Strickland will face incumbent Republican Sen. Rob Portman in the general race. Strickland has cast Portman as a senator who caters to the interests of billionaires in Washington and has attempted to pose himself as someone who cares about Ohio voters, particularly those in the middle class.
“I think my ideas, my values, my experience is a better fit for Ohio than Rob Portman. I say that the Senate should not be a place where the millionaires go to take care of the billionaires, and I really think that’s been the history of Rob Portman in public life,” Strickland told local Ohio outlet WDTN last week.
“I just think he’s looking out for those who are already well taken care of, and I want to work and advocate for the middle class.”
Of the Clinton bundlers that have contributed to Strickland’s campaign, six are attorneys, five work for consulting firms, five work in investments, and three at lobbying firms. The group includes several prominent professionals, including D.C. lobbyists Heather and Tony Podesta and billionaire Wall Street executive and former Obama “auto czar” Steven Rattner.
Clinton has offered her support for Strickland as he pursues the Senate seat, telling supporters at a Cincinnati rally in August that they should “help Ted get elected to the United States Senate.”
“I’m personally delighted to be here with my friend, and your governor, Ted Strickland,” Clinton stated at her campaign event. “Nobody cares more deeply and profoundly about what happens to people. He did a great job as your governor, and he will be an important voice in the Senate.”
President Bill Clinton has formally endorsed Strickland. An invitation for a Strickland fundraiser in Washington, D.C., last week advertised the former president as one of Strickland’s prominent backers.
Even with the contributions from Clinton bundlers, Strickland has raised only a fraction of the $20 million his advisers projected he would need by next November to beat Portman. Currently, Strickland has just over $1.5 million cash on hand after expenses following three-quarters of fundraising.
A representative for the Strickland campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Ted Strickland is the only candidate in the country endorsed by Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he continues to follow her lead on issues like the Iran deal and the Keystone pipeline. It’s clear that Strickland puts what President Obama and the Clintons want over what is best for Ohio and our country,” Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges told the Free Beacon in a statement.
Before Strickland can compete against Portman, he will have to defeat Sittenfeld for the Democratic nomination. While the Ohio Democratic Party has formally endorsed Strickland, several prominent Ohio Democrats have formed a Super PAC to support his opponent in the primary race.
“We’re proud that the overwhelming majority of our campaign money is coming from small donors. In the third quarter, nearly three-quarters of the over 500 contributions we received from 44 states were for $50 or less,” Dale Butland, a spokesman for the Sittenfeld campaign, said in a statement.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]Clinton Campaign Allegedly Threatened to Shut Down Comedy Club That Mocked Her[/h]

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Reuters/BN Edit

by KIPP JONES19 Nov 2015Chicago, IL1,021
[h=2]Hillary Clinton’s campaign allegedly threatened to run a well known comedy club out of business after the club posted a video to its website showing five comedians mocking the Democratic presidential frontrunner.[/h]Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada told Judicial Watch on Wednesday that he received a call from a “prominent” Clinton staffer telling him to take down a video posted on the club’s website and YouTube channel.
“They threatened me.” Masada said. Though he declined to give the name of the Clinton aide, Masada said the point of contention was a short video that shows five comedians roasting the former First Lady and Secretary of State over her fashion choices, her age, her husband’s alleged numerous extra-marital affairs, and her sexual orientation.
“He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said about the staffer.
You can watch the video, which the Laugh Factory has titled “Hillary Clinton vs. the First Amendment at The Laugh Factory,” below:
***Explicit Language Warning***

“I have received complaints before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video,” Masada told Judicial Watch.
The comedy owner also alleges the Clinton staffer demanded the names and phone numbers of all the comedians on the video.
According to Masada, who owns clubs in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Chicago, the Laugh Factory is a safe haven for free speech.
The owner said Saturday Night Live alum Dana Carvey took the stage of one of his clubs this Tuesday to lampoon Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
“It was hilarious,” said Masada.
Breitbart News is awaiting comment from Masada regarding the allegations.

 

[SheriffJoe]

MUST WATCH: Hillary Clinton’s Pro-Jihadist Political Fundraiser

Posted on November 20, 2015 by DCWhispers

It has already been proven Hillary Clinton will take money from Muslim nations with long histories of brutality against women, minorities, and homosexuals. Now it is being proven she is taking money from anti-American pro-Jihadist legal rights groups as well who have actively sought to defend figures responsible for direct threats to the United States – including for the bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden.

Even by Clinton standards this is bizarre…

“A serious breach of security.”

WATCH. LISTEN. SHARE.

Read more at http://dcwhispers.com/must-watch-hi...ist-political-fundraiser/#uSwSo928xQqiYQlO.99

 

[vitterd]

Every one of these 92 pages contains a story that has the word allegedly in it.

More coward journalism in the conservative media than anywhere else.

Ive busted Russ for this many times.....these stories always turn out to be false but he just moves to the next bullshit. That's why he has yet to connect a dot.

 

[SheriffJoe]

[h=1]Even Democrats That Like Clinton “Think She’s A Liar”[/h]

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Clinton Foundation’s Colombian ‘Private Equity Fund’ Was Unregistered[/h]Company’s website removed from internet after Thursday report
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AP​

BY: Alana Goodman
November 23, 2015 5:00 am

The Clinton Foundation’s Colombia-based investment company was not registered as a private equity fund in the country, which may have allowed it to avoid certain industry regulations and oversight from the Colombian government.
Although Fondo Acceso described itself as a “Private Equity Fund” in company promotional materials and business presentations, it is not listed in a database of current or previously registered private equity funds maintained by the Colombian government.
Colombian legal experts consulted by the Free Beacon said that Fondo Acceso did not appear to have violated any laws by calling itself a private equity fund, as long as it was not doing so while trying to raise capital.
According to its corporate records, Fondo Acceso is registered in Colombia as a “simplified stock corporation,” which legal experts said precludes it from doing business as a private equity fund.
Fondo Acceso’s website was also removed from the internet this week, shortly after the Washington Free Beacon reported that the $20 million investment firm was owned by the Clinton Foundation and was run out of the foundation’s office in Bogota.
The website had previously described Acceso as “a Private Equity Fund that seeks investment opportunities in small and medium Colombian compan[ies] with the purpose of obtaining economic and social returns.”
Its website also included a contract for companies seeking investment to fill out, which authorized the release of financial and other internal information to Fondo Acceso and the Clinton Foundation.
The Fondo Acceso website was still inaccessible as of Sunday evening.
The website had been registered to Monika Kellner, a Clinton Foundation official, and was created in 2010, according to online records.
Fondo Acceso’s manager, Carolina Botero, who is also chief financial officer at the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, called the firm a “Private Equity Fund” in a presentation to the Cartagena Chamber of Commerce in July 2012.
The presentation appeared to be geared toward companies that were seeking funding, as opposed to potential investors, which legal experts said was permissible.
Hernando Padilla, a partner at Philippi, Prietocarrizosa & Uría, a top Colombian law firm, said it would be unusual in Colombia for a company to identify itself as a private equity fund when it was actually a simplified stock corporation. He said a company might do this to avoid government regulations and oversight of the private equity industry.
“They don’t want to be under the surveillance and regulation of the Superintendency of Finance,” he said. “That’s the reason.”
A spokesperson for the Clinton Foundation directed inquiries about Fondo Acceso’s website and private equity status to the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership. The partnership did not respond to request for comment.
Christy Louth, a Fondo Acceso director and an official at the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, did not respond to requests for comment about whether Fondo Acceso attempted to register as a private equity fund.
Fondo Acceso was founded in 2010 by Bill Clinton, the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, and the Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra. The Clinton Foundation and the SLIM Foundation committed $10 million each to the fund.
The Clinton Foundation is a 50 percent shareholder in the company, according to its tax records. Numerous Clinton Foundation and Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership officials are listed as Fondo Acceso directors in Colombian corporate filings.
The fund has reportedly distributed $1.5 million to Alimentos SAS, a fruit-pulping company, and $250,000 to the telecommunications firm Fontel SA in exchange for shareholding agreements. The Clinton Foundation and CGEP have declined to release a full list of Fondo Acceso’s investments.