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Hillary Clinton Tag

Chelsea Clinton is a highly successful person, for reasons entirely related to the circumstances of her birth, not her qualifications or personal accomplishments. The sweetheart deal she received at NBC came to epitomize the crony political capitalism her parents so effectively turned into a megafortune, as this August 29, 2014, NY Times report reflected:
Ms. Clinton, who is vice chairwoman of the philanthropic organization her father founded, made an annual salary of $600,000 at NBC, according to Politico. She remains on the board of IAC/InterActiveCorp, the digital media company overseen by Barry Diller, a longtime Clinton supporter. In 2011, that position paid an annual retainer of $50,000 and a $250,000 grant of restricted stock.
When Chelsea was the child in The White House, and even after that when she was a private person, she was entitled to privacy and freedom from political attack so long as her political role was limited to trying to make her mother seem human to a skeptical public.

Tuesday, The Hill reported the State Department will sift through and release emails of top Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin. 29,000 pages of Adedin's emails will be scrutinized by the State Department for monthly release over the next 14 months. At least 400 pages per month (should they meet certain requirements) will be published in a similar fashion as Hillary Clinton's. From The Hill:
The State Department has agreed to comb through 29,000 pages of emails from a top aide to Hillary Clinton and release batches of those emails every month.

The US State Department is criticizing Israel's proposed "Transparency Law," suggesting that Israelis should not know when foreign governments are influencing their domestic politics. If enacted, the current version of the Transparency Law would deem an Israeli Non-Governmental Organization ("NGO") a foreign agent if it receives more than 50% of its budget from foreign government sources.  The NGO would then be required to disclose that it is a foreign agent in publications and political tracts, and to disclose foreign donors. The impetus behind the Transparency Law is Israel's increasingly hostile NGO community, such NGO's propaganda value to Israel's enemies, and their overwhelmingly non-Israeli financing.  Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University and NGO Monitor has explained the problem:

During a Fusion-hosted event at Drake, Democratic Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton was asked, "Can you tell us what the term ‘white privilege’ means to you and can you give me an example from your life or career when you think you have benefitted from it?" "Look, where do I start? It is hard when you're swimming in the ocean to know exactly what's happening around you so much as it is when you're standing on the shore, perhaps watching," Hillary began.

Bad news for Hillary Clinton as Fox News reported Monday that the FBI has expanded its investigation. What began as an investigation into Hillary's use of a personal email account during her tenure as Secretary of State due to classified information found on their home-brewed server has expanded to include examination of business conducted the The Clinton Foundation. Fox News reported:
"The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," one source said. The development follows press reports over the past year about the potential overlap of State Department and Clinton Foundation work, and questions over whether donors benefited from their contacts inside the administration. The Clinton Foundation is a public charity, known as a 501(c)(3). It had grants and contributions in excess of $144 million in 2013, the most current available data.

After years of claiming to be pro-Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton has changed her tune and is now attacking Bernie Sanders on his one weakness with progressives / socialists: guns. ABCNews reports:
Following a week in which the president outlined his planned gun control actions, Hillary Clinton is hitting her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, on his record -- and Sanders and his campaign are responding in full force, portraying the former Secretary of State as a flip-flopper. “When it really mattered, Senator Sanders voted with the gun lobby and I voted against the gun lobby,” Clinton told Chris Matthews on “Hardball” tonight.

I realize that at this point polls don't matter too much, if at all. But they still interest me, because they're the best evidence we've got about public opinion. They can also tell us something about trends, and the trend for Hillary right now appears to be down. The newest national poll is from Fox, based on phone interviews that were conducted from Jan 4-7 and featuring 1006 registered voters, the vast majority of whom said they intend to vote. For Republican respondents the margin of error was 5%, which is rather large. For the entire survey, the margin of error was 3%, which is more typical but still worthy of note when the figures are close. It's very interesting to see what's happening with the projected head-to-head battles of some of the Republican leaders against Hillary Clinton. Mostly the results seem to preserve the patterns each candidate has already established for quite some time, with Rubio doing the best of all (a +9 lead, more than he's had before). Cruz is next with a +7 lead (also bigger than he had before), and Trump has a +3 lead.

Bill Kristol, Founder and Editor of that mainstay of the Republican Establishment, The Weekly Standard, has finally come to recognize Donald Trump's contribution to the Republican candidates as a group. Kristol is not a Trump supporter and has predicted his fall for months.  After Trump derided John McCain's heroism for merely being a POW for five-plus years, Kristol said, "he's dead to me."  In the same interview he opined, "I don't think he'll stay up in the polls, incidentally. Republican primary voters are pro-respect the military. And he showed disrespect for the military." In September, Kristol said on CNN, “I doubt I’d support Donald. I doubt I’d support the Democrat.” Instead, “I think I’d support getting someone good on the ballot as a third party candidate.”  In reporting Kristol's comments, Salon referred to him as a "notorious neocon" and a "neocon prince."

A new survey shows that Donald Trump has bipartisan appeal and that some Democratic voters would abandon Hillary to vote for him in a general election match-up. If you enjoy imagining nightmare scenarios for Democrats, you'll love this. James Warren of U.S. News and World Report has the story:
Trump Could Win It All So if Donald Trump proved the political universe wrong and won the Republican presidential nomination, he would be creamed by Hillary Clinton, correct? A new survey of likely voters might at least raise momentary dyspepsia for Democrats since it suggests why it wouldn't be a cakewalk. The survey by Washington-based Mercury Analytics is a combination online questionnaire and "dial-test" of Trump's first big campaign ad among 916 self-proclaimed "likely voters" (this video shows the ad and the dial test results). It took place primarily Wednesday and Thursday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

One of the mysteries of the Hillary email scandal has been how over 1000 emails containing various levels of classified material were sent to Hillary without being "marked" as classified. It is that lack of emails being "marked" classified "at the time" that is Hillary's central defense. On September 25, 2015, Kemberlee wrote that there must have been some signal to State Department employees to send the classified material without markings; there's just no way it could be coincidence and Hillary must have known. Some dare say conspiracy: Who will be first Hillary aide to flip on her?:
Was there a concerted conspiracy to violate the law, particularly given the fact that Clinton opted for a private email on her person server? Who else knew classified information was being transmitted outside of government purview? If any of these suspicions are confirmed throughout the course of the FBI’s investigation, will aides then be offered legal concessions if they cooperate? What were once Clinton’s closest lackeys may end up being her downfall.
We may not need to wait for an aide to flip on Hillary.

Tardy for a court-ordered document dump deadline, the State Department will release more than 2,000 pages of emails from embattled former Secretary, Hillary Clinton Thursday evening. According to The Hill, forty-five of the newly published emails have been marked classified, bringing the total classified email tally to 1,319:
Thursday’s document dump is likely to be the second-to-last release of Clinton’s emails by the State Department, which has been ordered by a court to have the full 55,000 pages of emails to the public by the end of the month.

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: