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Hillary Clinton Tag

Two recent discussions lay out a path to victory for Marcio Rubio in the 2016 Presidential election.  The New York Sun's Conrad Black even writes that the presidential election is Marco Rubio's to lose. According to Black, the Republicans have an advantage in the general election, whoever wins the nomination:
a party has won three consecutive presidential elections only when the incumbent was very popular at the end of the second term or when there were unusual encumbrances to a change.
It is fair to say that Barack Obama is not very popular.  According to Gallup, his approval rating is below average for President entering their eighth year in office.  "Unusual encumbrances to a change" is an awkward formulation, but there is nothing obvious at present.  So Black gives the nod to the Republicans.

Hillary Clinton has a big problem. As a candidate, she wants to be seen as an advocate for women but her husband's past and her defense of it conflicts with that message. She simply can't have it both ways. To make matters worse, some of Bill Clinton's accusers are starting to come forward. Mark Hensch and Jonathan Easley report at The Hill:
Bill Clinton rape accuser: Hillary 'tried to silence' me A woman who publicly accused former President Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978 is resurrecting her claims on social media. “I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me,” Juanita Broaddrick tweeted Wednesday.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has made life difficult for centrist Democrats. Sanders self-identifies as a Democratic Socialist; a label most Democrats avoid like the plague. During and interview airing Tuesday, Hardball's Chris Matthews asked Hillary Clinton to explain the difference between a Democrat and a Socialist. Not once, not twice, but three times Matthews asked Hillary to explain how Democrats and Socialists are different. Clinton refused. Instead she talked about peace, love, and unity. Yes, really.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton may have shored up the Coast to Coast vote during an interview with New Hampshire's Conway Daily Sun.
she chatted with this reporter, who had asked her about UFOs in 2007 while working for the Cabinet Press in Milford, NH. She recalled that 2007 exchange with a smile and seemed to have fun discussing the topic. "Yes, I'm going to get to the bottom of it," said Clinton with enthusiasm. Back in 2007, Clinton had said that the No. 1 topic of freedom-of-information requests that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, received at his library was UFOs. Last year, Bill Clinton told late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel that he wouldn't be surprised if Earth is visited by aliens since so many planets out there may support life.

In an age when there is zero tolerance for Bill-Clinton-like behavior in the workplace or on campus, Hillary's participation in the war room against Bill's female sexual abuse accusers should be a legitimate issue. Because Hillary has made the (non-existent in fact) Republican War on Women a central focus of her campaign and justification for her candidacy, the Clinton sexual abuse legacy absolutely is and must be put in issue. I argued in early April 2015 that Republicans Job One was to Teach millennials about the real Hillary:
The reason Hillary is vulnerable on favorability is that the younger generation of voters don’t know the Hillary from the 1990s, the secretive control-freak of Hillarycare, the person who parlayed her husband’s political success into her own financial and law firm stardom, the Rose law firm record hider, the brutal White House bully of Travelgate, and so much more.

A new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails was released last night on New Year's Eve. One particularly entertaining exchange revealed that the progressive billionaire George Soros had some regrets over the 2008 election. Kristina Wong reports at The Hill:
Clinton emails: Billionaire Soros said he regretted backing Obama George Soros, a billionaire Democratic donor, told a close Hillary Clinton ally that he regretted supporting President Obama over her in the 2008 Democratic primary, according to an email released Thursday by the State Department. Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden said in a May 2012 email to Clinton that Soros made the admission to her during a dinner. "I told him I worked for you in the primaries and he said he's been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn't met with the President ever (though I thought he had)," Tanden wrote.

The Hill reports:
The State Department on Thursday afternoon released a batch of 5,500 pages of Hillary Clinton's emails online, in its second-to-last tranche of the former secretary of State's messages. Thursday's dump — coming the afternoon of New Year's Eve — is the seventh of eight court-ordered releases.... The emails released Thursday do not have "fully completed data fields on the FOIA website," the State Department said earlier in the day. This means they can't be easily sorted by subject, sender or recipient — which had been an option in previous email dumps.
In other words, not only did the State Department dump the documents on New Year's Eve, it dumped documents many of which are not accessible. The rush to get something online appears to be due to the State Department having failed to comply with court-ordered deadlines. And, via Politico, the number of "classified" emails has skyrocketed:

Donald Trump has a knack for finding the weakest spot in other candidates. Trump has eviscerated Jeb with the "low energy" line. It worked because it both fit Jeb's persona (if not reality) and also was something a lot of people were thinking but not saying. It was a weak spot for Jeb no one knew was coming. So too, Trump's zeroing in on Bill Clinton's serial abuse of women hits a weak spot for Hillary even more so than "low energy" hurt Jeb. Hillary is going all "War On Women" in her campaign. Yet her husband was the actual War on Women before Democrats reinvented the term. How do we know it's a sensitive spot for Hillary? Look at how the media is reacting. No one is saying Trump is wrong, but we get word games such as Clinton "allegedly" having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young intern under the control of the most powerful man in the United States:

Russia's Navy is growing and playing a greater role is Russia's aggressive foreign policy posture for the first time in two generations, and the US seems - still - unprepared and unwilling to push back. Russia's military capacity has been severely limited since the end of the Cold War.  It's most noteworthy events were two Chechen Wars in the 1990s and early 2000s that went poorly, and the 2000 disaster that sank and killed all 118 sailors aboard the nuclear submarine Kursk. Even Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 was poorly executed against a nominal military power. Since Georgia, Russia has done better.  The invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2009 was more or less flawless.  The Russian involvement in Ukraine today is less so, but is also hampered by having to maintain the pretense of non-involvement.

The mainstream media is having a lot of fun reporting that Hillary is this year's Gallup "Most Admired Woman" for a "record 20th time." What they are leaving out, however, is that it appears that the long list of scandals and controversies that have plagued her since leaving her position as Secretary of State in early 2013 may be catching up with her (read LI's Hillary coverage here). When one looks more closely at the Gallup poll, it becomes clear that while still topping the list, Hillary has fallen quite sharply since December 2012. Take a look at the following:

Jim Webb dropped out of the 2016 Democrat primary in October due to low polling, low fundraising, and low voter enthusiasm, but as Amy noted at the time, his team was even then making noises about an independent run. Those noises have become much more noticeable as Webb has launched direct attacks on Hillary regarding her tenure as Secretary of State and her specific mishandling of Libya (not, however, anything about #Benghazi) and the "Arab Spring" debacle. https://twitter.com/JimWebbUSA/status/680750510236897280 Writing on Facebook, Webb railed against Hillary's "inept" mismanagement and "nonsensical" comments; he even takes a shot at the lapdog media for not holding her to account.

Hillary Clinton is already playing the sexism card against Donald Trump but he responded quickly by implying that if she persists in that line of attack, he's going to start bringing up her husband's checkered past. And her treatment of the women. Robert Fowler reports at Opposing Views:
Donald Trump To Hillary Clinton: 'Be Careful' When Playing 'War On Women Card' Hitting back at Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s charge that he is a sexist, Donald Trump has responded with a vague threat, telling her to “be careful!” Trump sparked outrage during a Dec. 21 campaign rally when he mocked Clinton for using the restroom during the Dec. 19 Democratic debate, calling it “too disgusting.” The business mogul then used a slang term that many found to be a crude, derogatory slur against women, saying that President Barack Obama “schlonged” Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary.

Just before Christmas, it was quietly announced that the Obama administration is going to deport a significant number of illegal immigrants after the holidays. That presents a political problem for Hillary Clinton, who will have to choose a side in a no-win scenario. The Washington Post reported:
U.S. plans raids to deport families who surged across border The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation. The nationwide campaign, to be carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as soon as early January, would be the first large-scale effort to deport families who have fled violence in Central America, those familiar with the plan said. More than 100,000 families with both adults and children have made the journey across the southwest border since last year, though this migration has largely been overshadowed by a related surge of unaccompanied minors.

While the Friday afternoon data dump is a hallmark of the Obama Administration, the release of heavily redacted Benghazi emails from Hillary Clinton on Christmas days scores points for sheer audacity.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Thursday released 16 pages of sensitive documents related to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack. The documents, released ahead of the Christmas holiday, include mostly blacked-out emails and some press clippings about events in Libya after the attack on the U.S. embassy, which left four Americans dead. The event has become a central part of Republican criticism of Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State as she runs for president. A few of the heavily redacted emails discuss the drafting of an assessment of the threat level before the attack occurred. Congress had requested the assessment in the months after the attack.
The emails are redacted so much that they are as black as lumps of coal. Via Mediaite:

Trump has now scandalized people by using a Yiddish expression to describe what happened to Hillary Clinton at the hands of the Obama forces back in 2008:
She was favored to win and she got schlonged, she lost.
Now, for those of you who aren't especially up on Yiddish, "schlong" is one of the many Yiddish words used to describe the male member, as in genitalia. I won't bother to list the others; you can probably do it yourself. But, even as an ex-New Yorker, although I'm familiar with the word, I can't ever recall it being used as a verb before---which is the way Trump is using it here, as an equivalent of "screwed."

I was astonished that Hillary Clinton wept as she decried bullying, after Donald Trump's used of the word "schlong". A woman who is seeking the office of "Commander-in-Chief" should really show a little more intestinal fortitude. The act is laughable, because her own use of profanity is so notorious that there are whole books on the subject! A California friend, Bill Monroe, offers this example.
Hillary's vulgar and nasty language is well documented. To directly quote her: 'F**k off! It's enough that I have to see you ****-kickers every day, I'm not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut.'

Hillary lives with Bill Clinton. It's doubtful there is ANYTHING that could truly shock or dismay her when it comes to frat-boy-like behavior. Or sexual innuendo. Donald Trump said Hillary got "schlonged" in the 2008 election. Trump's explanation is that it means to be beaten badly: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/679506175239532545 Regardless, whether a slang word to be beaten badly, or a Yiddish term for a schlong, there is zero chance Hillary was actually offended or upset. Zero. SHE LIVES WITH BILL CLINTON. She has covered for Bill Clinton's sexual antics and went after his female victims. Yet Hillary got teary eyed when talking about campaign bullying later that same day, an obvious reference to Trump's comment.

Hillary Clinton flat-out lied when she claimed during the Democratic Debate on December 19, 2015, that ISIS was showing videos of Donald Trump's immigration comments as a recruiting tool. Despite the lack of any proof of the video claim, Team Hillary is refusing to apologize, and instead has fallen back on the more general claim that Trump still is ISIS's best recruiting tool:
“He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter,” she said. “They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”… When asked if Mrs. Clinton would apologize, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said, “Hell no. Hillary Clinton will not be apologizing to Donald Trump for correctly pointing out how his hateful rhetoric only helps ISIS recruit more terrorists.”
Really? One can disagree with Trump's comments AND acknowledge that Hillary lied and Team Clinton is distracting from Clinton's own failures as Secretary of State.