The Hillary Clinton thread

[Isgrimnur]

Also, a quick read doesn't indicate timing. Were these donations primarily made before speaking with her or after?

Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder.
...
The MAC AIDS fund donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, Mahon and the MAC AIDS fund made a three-year unspecified commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

That seems like a rather long con if the donations were made specifically for access to Clinton.

[Rip]

Also, a quick read doesn't indicate timing. Were these donations primarily made before speaking with her or after?

Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder.
...
The MAC AIDS fund donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, Mahon and the MAC AIDS fund made a three-year unspecified commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

That seems like a rather long con if the donations were made specifically for access to Clinton.

They were hoping for access to a POTUS, they just had to settle for SECSTATE.

Best to get in early before the price goes up.

[raydude]

Also, a quick read doesn't indicate timing. Were these donations primarily made before speaking with her or after?

Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder.
...
The MAC AIDS fund donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, Mahon and the MAC AIDS fund made a three-year unspecified commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

That seems like a rather long con if the donations were made specifically for access to Clinton.

They were hoping for access to a POTUS, they just had to settle for SECSTATE.

Best to get in early before the price goes up.

Obviously.

[Zarathud]

Rip has no clue that in certain circles, you give to everyone for respectability and for the opportunity to meet others with the same means. It's called networking for high net worth individuals. Influencing the candidate doesn't mean as much as joining the club.

I hear that former President Clinton has incredible personal charisma. Winners want to be associated with that type of person.

[Rip]

Also, a quick read doesn't indicate timing. Were these donations primarily made before speaking with her or after?

Clinton also met in June 2011 with Nancy Mahon of the MAC AIDS, the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics, which is owned by Estee Lauder.
...
The MAC AIDS fund donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2008, Mahon and the MAC AIDS fund made a three-year unspecified commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

That seems like a rather long con if the donations were made specifically for access to Clinton.

They were hoping for access to a POTUS, they just had to settle for SECSTATE.

Best to get in early before the price goes up.

Obviously.

[hepcat]

Rip runs to another topic the moment he can't find a rebuttal to something.

[El Guapo]

The AP’s big exposé on Hillary meeting with Clinton Foundation donors is a mess

The stark fact highlighted in the AP’s tweet and social share card is, for starters, totally false.

If you read that and thought to yourself that it seems wrong for the secretary of state to be spending so much time in meetings with Clinton Foundation donors rather than talking to US government officials and representatives of foreign countries, then you are in luck. To generate the 154 figure, the AP excluded from the denominator all employees of any government, whether US or foreign. Then when designing social media collateral, it just left out that part, because the truth is less striking and shareable.

Even so, the number 154 is preposterously low, as Clinton would routinely meet dozens of civil society leaders, journalists, and others on any one of her many foreign trips as secretary of state. In the campaign’s official response to the AP, they argue that the data is "cherry picked" from a "limited subset" of her schedule.

But regardless of that, the AP’s social media claims are simply false — ignoring well over 1,000 official meetings with foreign leaders and an unknown number of meetings with domestic US officials.

...

Publication bias is the name of a well-known but hard to solve problem in academic research. A paper with a striking new finding is much more likely to be accepted at a top journal than a paper that says, "I investigated an interesting hypothesis, but it turned out to be wrong." This means that spurious findings — statistical coincidences and such — make it into the published literature, while boring null results don’t. This gives a distorted picture of reality simply because everyone is trying to be interesting.

Similarly, the AP’s basic reporting project here seems like it was worth a shot and probably also fairly time-consuming. But it did not come up with anything. Clinton tried to help a Nobel Prize winner. She went to the Kennedy Center Honors. She had a meeting with the head of the charitable arm of MAC Cosmetics about a State Department charitable initiative.

There’s just nothing here. That’s the story. Braun and Sullivan looked into it, and as best they can tell, she’s clean.

Unfortunately, there’s a financial incentive to lean in the other direction. NBC News found that one major Clinton Foundation donor was a for-profit college whose interests Hillary Clinton has utterly failed to champion, so NBC turned it into a hypocrisy story.

[hepcat]

I thought 154 sounded oddly low for a Secretary of State in office for years.

[em2nought]

White lies matter. Probably not. LMAO

[hepcat]

"I got a great brain."

- Trump

[em2nought]

"I got a great brain."

- Trump

He's just adjusted his vocabulary to fit our current educational system brought to you by the two party system.

[GreenGoo]

White lies matter. Probably not. LMAO

I'll give'em points for the name. The rest have varying levels of controversy that are "meh" if you're not genetically disposed to hate her.

[Defiant]

"I got a great brain."

- Trump

Who's?

No, wait, I bet I can guess...

[em2nought]

"I got a great brain."

- Trump

Who's?

No, wait, I bet I can guess...

Now that's funny! Gotta give you that one.

[YellowKing]

Does any Trump supporter really want to get into a "who lies more?" battle?

[Smutly]

Not interested in battles, but Hillary has a long history of lying. Here's an New York Times article from 1996 (20 years ago) where William Safire discusses her long history of lying....20 years ago. I'll say that again. 20 years ago this article outlined how she has a long history of lying. I mean, damn.

[GreenGoo]

Can someone post the "why does everyone hate Clinton" article again (the specific, Dear Abby format one)? It should explain why there was a hit piece on Hillary 20 years ago.

In any case, as long as her hands aren't small and her dick size is "not a problem, believe me" we've got everything we need in a presidential candidate.

[Max Peck]

Here's an article from The New Yorker (also from 1996), Hating Hillary, that delves into why people were doing that back then. Things haven't changed all that much.

[Smutly]

Can someone post the "why does everyone hate Clinton" article again (the specific, Dear Abby format one)? It should explain why there was a hit piece on Hillary 20 years ago.

In any case, as long as her hands aren't small and her dick size is "not a problem, believe me" we've got everything we need in a presidential candidate.

So, she doesn't lie?

[Blackhawk]

Of course she lies. I pretty much assume that anyone that has gained that much power in Washington did so by way of whole wagonloads of lies.

Telling me that a politician has lied is neither surprising nor does it change my vote. Every president I have ever voted for has lied, the good ones and the bad ones.

[Zaxxon]

The job of a politician involves lying. Frequently and vigorously.

[TheMix]

What amazes me is that lying is touted as The Great Evil from Drumpf supporters. And yet, they seem to be completely unwilling to even acknowledge his lying.

[tgb]

As I've said before, you have to be concerned about anybody who wants to be POTUS.

[Holman]

This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest.

I would be “dead rich”, to adapt an infamous Clinton phrase, if I could bill for all the hours I’ve spent covering just about every “scandal” that has enveloped the Clintons. As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising.

Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.

[Defiant]

There's also the graph here

[Scraper]

There's also the graph here

Trump supporters will pass that off as "liberal media bias" and continue on their narrow path.

[GreenGoo]

He didn't really provide a lot of fresh insight, but I will give Cecil Adams (as if that's his real name) credit for tackling the Clinton question for his Straight Dope column last week.

Seriously — why do so many people dislike Hillary Clinton?

August 12, 2016

Dear Cecil:

Why do so many Americans dislike Hillary Clinton? It seems to predate her time as secretary of state or even as senator. Does it have something to do with her husband’s two terms in the White House?

— Jonathan Pearce

Cecil replies:

In 1964 Barry Goldwater quipped about nuking the Kremlin men’s room and equated Medicare with giving old folks free resort vacations, cigarettes, and beer. Just before Lyndon Johnson strolled to victory that November, Gallup found that 46 percent of Americans viewed his Republican opponent unfavorably, with 26 percent of respondents into the “highly unfavorable” camp. For five decades, Goldwater has been the most unpopular major-party presidential candidate ever, a record that some deemed unbreakable.

Well, they used to think nobody would ever hit 62 home runs in a season either. By Gallup’s latest reckoning, back in June, exactly half the American public views Hillary Clinton unfavorably, 33 percent highly so. But Hillary Clinton and mass unpopularity are old pals. The first major attempt to suss out the source of the antipathy, Henry Louis Gates’s “Hating Hillary,” appeared in the New Yorker in 1996 — meaning this idea is now old enough to vote.

The thing is, though, Clinton’s popularity numbers have never stayed put. She wrapped up her secretary of state gig in 2013 with a 64 percent favorability rating, and even that wasn’t peak Hillary — in 1998, at the kickoff of Bill’s impeachment, 67 percent of Americans were on her side. Now, we’re a polarized people. A third of Americans will always approve of Hillary Clinton, while another third forever will be ready to holler “Lock her up!” But what’s with that middle that can’t make up its mind?

Clinton’s spin on her fluctuating favorability is that she’s a wooden campaigner whose numbers dip during the election cycle, but a hard worker who forges her way back into our hearts with her sturdy competence. As she said at the Democratic convention of her career in public service, "The service part has always come easier to me than the public part." Fine, she’s no natural politician. But a charisma deficit alone isn’t enough to turn half a nation against you.

What about ethical concerns? Knowing full well the scrutiny they’re under, the Clintons have often seemed oddly unworried about appearing too chummy with big donors to their campaigns and charitable work, and a fog of impropriety clings to Hillary even when specific claims are disproven. Certainly no presidential candidate has faced so much congressional scrutiny immediately prior to an election: Republican-controlled committees have been hammering away at Clinton for three years now, first on Benghazi, then on her usage of email. And that kind of shelling from the opposition is nothing new — in the '90s, Bill and Hillary Clinton were accused of everything from real-estate shenanigans to outright murder.

Hillary might have chosen a less dramatic-sounding phrase to describe the well-financed network of conservative operatives who had coordinated their messages against the Clintons than her much-ridiculed “vast right-wing conspiracy.” But their detractors — whether politicians, news commentators, or your relatives on Facebook — have shared a singleness of purpose that’s unquestionable even if you believe its cause is righteous. And it’s come from both sides: mainstream liberals like the New York Times’ Howell Raines and Maureen Dowd were dogged critics of the Clintons’ ethical lapses, real or perceived.

And yet Bill Clinton has emerged from the battles of the past unscathed: as recently as 2014 his favorability polled at 64 percent. Meanwhile Hillary suffers the scorn of a reinvigorated left that’s retroactively critical of her support for her husband's policies — adopted in the aftermath of the Reagan years, when Democrats were stumbling over each other in their efforts not to appear too liberal. How did Hillary get stuck holding the bag?

Let’s not dance around the obvious: Hillary Clinton is a woman. Surely it’s a double standard that allows Bill to seem like a charming rapscallion who just cuts a few corners while Hillary is cast as a shady crime boss. Back in the ’90s, as the first working woman to serve as first lady, Clinton initially took a lead role in healthcare policymaking but hit massive turbulence from D.C. traditionalists who thought she’d misread her job description. Such paleo-anti-feminist rancor — and an accompanying rap as presumptuous and pushy — is something that more recently prominent female politicians, like Elizabeth Warren, have largely been spared.

None of this is to make excuses for her — politics is a tough game, and a better operator might have handled things more deftly. As that 1996 New Yorker piece suggests, Hillary’s always just rubbed plenty of people the wrong way. Then again, “Why doesn't anyone like you?” is a hell of a question for even the savviest politician to field continuously for 25 years.

However, friends, we live in wondrous times, and in 2016 Hillary’s not even our least popular presidential candidate. Gallup again: 59 percent of Americans don’t like Donald Trump, including 42 percent who can’t stand him. Fortunately, nobody's writing in to wonder why — I’d never get it all in a single column.

— Cecil Adams

OTOH, if he's lucky Ted Cruz might get to answer that same question for a quarter decade.

This was the article I was looking for. It was only 1 page back but it felt like months ago.

[Holman]

Today's powerful Clinton ad parallels a speech she's giving right now in Nevada attacking Trump's racism and his racist allies directly.

The Guardian's live blog has highlights of the speech.

“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for this group,” Hillary Clinton says of the so-called “alt-right,” a loose confederation of online conservatives who view multiculturalism as a threat to white identity. “A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican party. And this is part of a broader story - the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.”

Clinton lambastes Donald Trump for appearing with Nigel Farage in Mississippi last night, describing the former head of Ukip as someone “who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union.”

“Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are, quote, ‘worth less’ than men and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race - that’s who Trump wants by his side when speaking to Americans.”

“No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here,” Clinton says of the alt-right. “The names may have changed: Racists now call themselves ‘racialists;’ white supremacists now call themselves ‘white nationalists;’ the paranoid fringe now calls itself ‘alt-right;’ But the hate burns just as bright.”

“And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. But don’t be fooled.”

“This is not conservatism as we have known it,” she continued. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas, race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women, all key tenets making up the emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right.”

And from Slate:

The Clinton campaign has long been faced with the question of whether to portray Trump as a bigot or a madman, a genuine authoritarian or an unstable and ever-changing entertainer. This speech suggested that there is a way to do all of the above.

[Rip]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey- ... 11244.html

Desperate and willing to do anything to win, the Clintons resorted to a naked form of racism aimed directly at white working-class voters in the rural portions of the state. Their message: Barack Obama cannot win because he’s black.

In the early stages of the campaign, it was Clinton’s cadre who kept playing the race card. In New Hampshire, Clinton’s co-chair, Billy Shaheen, accused Obama of being a drug dealer; then there was the photograph of Sen. Barack Obama in Somali garb leaked to the press by Clinton’s staff.

In the aftermath of the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton compared Obama’s victory to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. His message was clear: Obama was a marginal, black candidate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey- ... 11244.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2008/02/o ... oto-008667

http://theweek.com/articles/567774/hill ... 8-campaign

[Holman]

I assume you're trying to imply equivalence?

Clinton tried a few small gambits around Obama's cultural identity back in 2008. The world has moved on, and Clinton obviously is clearly committed to a racially inclusive politics in every way. Look at the polls if you're wondering about that. Look at her actual record in government and advocacy.

Trump, meanwhile, has done more than any candidate since George Wallace (and even more than him) to bring white nationalists and racists into the mainstream of U.S. politics. He launched his appeal in racism and he continues it in racism. Now that his campaign is collapsing, he's trying a few inclusive gestures that don't even convince his white racist base, let alone the white non-racists and nonwhite voters any American candidate needs and should respect. Meanwhile, he has hired the head of alt-right Breitbart News to literally run the whole show.

Trying to charge racism while supporting Trump is absurd.

[Zarathud]

It MUST be worse because Hillary Clinton.

Trump officially merged with the dregs of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Breitbart gives Hillary an easier path to expose Trump.

[Scraper]

Pickle Gate is real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSCEoaIx7E8

From a pure entertainment perspective Alex Jones always delivers.

[Rip]

Was there one pop or two?

Back and to the left!

[Rip]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L65RBwrtOeQ

KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg gives Hillary his endorsement.

[Holman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L65RBwrtOeQ

KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg gives Hillary his endorsement.

Snopes. (We've been through this one already.)

In any case, the reason he gives for supporting her is that her secret agenda is identical to Trump's plans. Shouldn't you be on board, then?

[tgb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L65RBwrtOeQ

KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg gives Hillary his endorsement.

Snopes. (We've been through this one already.)

In any case, the reason he gives for supporting her is that her secret agenda is identical to Trump's plans. Shouldn't you be on board, then?

Could it be he knows the story is bullshit and is just trolling?

Never. Not our Rip.

[Moliere]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L65RBwrtOeQ

KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg gives Hillary his endorsement.

Snopes. (We've been through this one already.)

In any case, the reason he gives for supporting her is that her secret agenda is identical to Trump's plans. Shouldn't you be on board, then?

Could it be he knows the story is bullshit and is just trolling?

Never. Not our Rip.

If he didn't know it was b.s. will he ever acknowledge the mistake and admit being wrong? Two to one he moves on to posting in another thread and let's this latest claim float away onto a back page.

[Rip]

Says it is unproven. Doesn't say it isn't true.

Unproven accusation begat unproven accusations.

I think she is making a mistake trying to play guilt by association. I suspect that mistake will become more evident with the next round of wikileaks.

http://circa.com/politics/election-2016 ... -offenders

[hepcat]

Says it is unproven. Doesn't say it isn't true.

Oh, cool! That means I can continue saying that the reason Trump won't reveal his taxes is because he's afraid folks will find out he's funding the website for stormfront.org. You know, that site you like to link to for your "facts"?

Oh, and Trump is dying. That's why he had someone forge his doctor's letter.

[Rip]

Says it is unproven. Doesn't say it isn't true.

Oh, cool! That means I can continue saying that the reason Trump won't reveal his taxes is because he's afraid folks will find out he's funding the website for stormfront.org. You know, that site you like to link to for your "facts"?

Oh, and Trump is dying. That's why he had someone forge his doctor's letter.

Of course. No less true than most of the stuff said about him. Everyone is pretty used to it.