Remember those satirical naked statues of Donald Trump?
Someone has done this for Hillary Clinton:
A statue of a cloven-hoofed and naked Hillary Clinton barely lasted an hour in lower Manhattan Tuesday before a furious supporter pounced on it and called cops — a lifetime compared to the mock Donald Trump that drew laughing crowds to Union Square in August.
I want to go live in a cave.
I am doing the debate drinking game. It is the only way that I can tolerate listening to either of them.
Here is what I have for phrases or actions that would lead to a drink.
There is a non-zero risk of alcohol poisoning:
My live blogging will be mostly about drinking.
Keith Olbermann relates how the vast right wing conspiracy attempted to recruit him during Penisgate, and explains how that motley crew is now running the Trump campaign.
Olbermann is rather kind to Trump, and suggests that they are using Trump as a means to an end: “Getting the band back together,” to launch another anti-Clinton jihad.
I’m not sure if I agree, but it is fun as hell to watch him:
Spoiler: Keith dated Laura Ingram, which I find kind of incongruous.
In what is clearly a response to US pressure Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet access:The Ecuadorian government confirmed Tuesday that it cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s internet connection because of his anti-secrecy platform’s publication of emails allegedly stolen from Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.
“The Government of Ecuador respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states. It does not interfere in external electoral processes, nor does it favor any particular candidate,” Ecuador said in a statement.
“Accordingly, Ecuador has exercised its sovereign right to temporarily restrict access to some of its private communications network within its Embassy in the United Kingdom.”
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Despite Tuesday’s development, Ecuador will continue to provide asylum to Assange, according to the statement.
The Australian activist has been living in the embassy in London since 2012. He is avoiding a rape charge in Sweden that he claims is political and will lead to his extradition to the U.S. over previous leaks.
Assange’s internet was disconnected on Saturday, according to WikiLeaks. The organization has continued to publish daily batches of emails from Podesta’s account.
Ecuador has not confirmed that US pressure led to this, though Wikileaks has asserted that this is the case, and I’m inclined to agree.
The juxtaposition of ham-handedness, cluelessness, and incompetence is a classic hallmark of the US foreign policy and intelligence apparatus.
Assange was prepared for this, how could he NOT be prepared for this, and so the emails continue to come out, but someone in the US state security apparatus decided to lean on Ecuador, and generated more attention while influencing the flow of information not one whit.
*Using a Pringles can, you can make a directional Wi-Fi antenna with a much higher gain, getting a point to point range of over a mile.
It appears that someone hacked some of Clinton’s emails, and included in these documents were excerpts of her obscenely remunerated speeches to Wall Street:
In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks.
The tone and language of the excerpts clash with the fiery liberal approach she used later in her bitter primary battle with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and could have undermined her candidacy had they become public.
Mrs. Clinton comes across less as a firebrand than as a technocrat at home with her powerful audience, willing to be critical of large financial institutions but more inclined to view them as partners in restoring the country’s economic health.
In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences, Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues. Reflecting in 2014 on the rage against political and economic elites that swept the country after the 2008 financial crash, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that her family’s rising wealth had made her “kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class.
The passages were contained in an internal review of Mrs. Clinton’s paid speeches undertaken by her campaign, which was identifying potential land mines should the speeches become public. They offer a glimpse at one of the most sought-after troves of information in the 2016 presidential race — and an explanation, perhaps, for why Mrs. Clinton has steadfastly refused demands by Mr. Sanders and Donald J. Trump, her Republican rival, to release them.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign would not confirm the authenticity of the documents. They were released on Friday night by WikiLeaks, the hacker collective founded by the activist Julian Assange, saying that they had come from the email account of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.………
But Clinton officials did not deny that the email containing the excerpts was real.
The leaked email, dated Jan. 25, does not contain Mrs. Clinton’s full speeches to the financial firms, leaving it unclear what her overall message was to these audiences.
But in the excerpts, Ms. Clinton demonstrates her long and warm ties to some of Wall Street’s most powerful figures. In a discussion in the fall of 2013 with Lloyd Blankfein, a friend who is the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Mrs. Clinton said that the political climate had made it overly difficult for wealthy people to serve in government.
“There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” Mrs. Clinton said. The pressure on officials to sell or divest assets in order to serve, she added, had become “very onerous and unnecessary.”
We know the content of Hillary’s speeches to Wall Street.
We know her history, we know her associates, we know what sort of support she has received from Wall Street, and we know that if she had actually talked tough to Wall Street, she would have released the speech transcripts at the beginning of the campaign, so the general shape of the contents of her speeches are known.
The contents are not a surprise, and so are not a hugely significant bit of news.
What is significant is that Clinton has had more than 2 months since the end of Democratic National Convention to release the contents on her own terms in a way that would minimize the impact on the campaign.
That she chose to continue sitting on this information IS significant though, because this sort of behavior amplifies the damage caused by the inevitable missteps that are an inevitable part of being a public figure.
While the recent Trump revelations might mitigate the impact of this particular incident, or any further outbreaks during the campaign, the furtive paranoia that characterizes Clinton’s public life might very well prove disastrous as President.
As Richard Nixon proved, “It ain’t the crime, it’s the cover-up.”
Part of me thinks that I should listen to the Presidential Debate, so that I can see how the candidates address the issues off the day.
Another part of me thinks that the debates will just be shallow reality television, as they she been since I was old enough to vote.
And finally, there is my spleen, which finds listening to either candidate skin to nails on a chalk board.
I know that my spleen is correct, but just because watching the debates will be as much fun as a home root canal kit, but that doesn’t mean l shouldn’t watch.
It turns out that the report of many multiple unauthorized charges against donor’s credit cards by the Clinton campaign was reported by the Observer, and their publisher is Jared Kushner, who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law. (Thanks Daniel)
I looked around the internet, and with one exception, all the stories come link back to the Observer.
The exception, dating from June, is a TV report about he travails of a single donor who experienced problems.
As such, this story is unsubstantiated, and I refract retract it.
I will continue to follow this though.
It appears that the Clinton Campaign has been erroneously overcharging its donors credit cards, but but only the small donors are effected, so no harm, no foul.
There is a metaphor here, but it is not yet fully formed in my mind:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stealing from her poorest supporters by purposefully and repeatedly overcharging them after they make what’s supposed to be a one-time small donation through her official campaign website, multiple sources tell the Observer.
The overcharges are occurring so often that the fraud department at one of the nation’s biggest banks receives up to 100 phone calls a day from Clinton’s small donors asking for refunds for unauthorized charges to their bankcards made by Clinton’s campaign. One elderly Clinton donor, who has been a victim of this fraud scheme, has filed a complaint with her state’s attorney general and a representative from the office told her that they had forwarded her case to the Federal Election Commission.
“We get up to a hundred calls a day from Hillary’s low-income supporters complaining about multiple unauthorized charges,” a source, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of job security, from the Wells Fargo fraud department told the Observer. The source claims that the Clinton campaign has been pulling this stunt since Spring of this year. The Hillary for America campaign will overcharge small donors by repeatedly charging small amounts such as $20 to the bankcards of donors who made a one-time donation. However, the Clinton campaign strategically doesn’t overcharge these donors $100 or more because the bank would then be obligated to investigate the fraud.
“We don’t investigate fraudulent charges unless they are over $100,” the fraud specialist explained. “The Clinton campaign knows this, that’s why we don’t see any charges over the $100 amount, they’ll stop the charges just below $100. We’ll see her campaign overcharge donors by $20, $40 or $60 but never more than $100.” The source, who has worked for Wells Fargo for over 10 years, said that the total amount they refund customers on a daily basis who have been overcharged by Clinton’s campaign “varies” but the bank usually issues refunds that total between $700 and $1,200 per day.
Here’s some more detail for the metaphor:
The source said that pornography companies often deploy a similar arrangement pull. “We see this same scheme with a lot of seedy porn companies,” the source said. The source also notes that the dozens of phone calls his department receives daily are from people who notice the fraudulent charges on their statements. “The people who call us are just the ones who catch the fraudulent charges. I can’t imagine how many more people are getting overcharged by Hillary’s campaign and they have no idea.”
I so want to go live in a cave until this f%$#ing election is over.
I’m as worried as anyone else about the possibility of Trump getting elected. But if it happens, it’s not going to be because The New York Times allowed a few reporters to investigate the Clinton Foundation. It’ll be because we’re a nation of idiots, who vote the same way we choose channels: without thinking.
I agree: The idiots who are insisting that any investigation of Clinton is akin to treason are full of crap.
After experiencing significant distress at a 9/11 memorial service, her doctor is saying that she was suffering from both the heat and pneumonia.
Given the regular rumors about her health, we know what the coverage is going to be for the next week:
Hillary Clinton is being treated for pneumonia and dehydration, her doctor said on Sunday, hours after she abruptly left a ceremony in New York honoring the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and had to be helped into a van by Secret Service agents.
The incident, which occurred after months of questions about her health from her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, and his campaign, is likely to increase pressure on Mrs. Clinton to address the issue and release detailed medical records, which she has so far declined to do.
Mrs. Clinton was taken from the morning event at ground zero to the Manhattan apartment of her daughter, Chelsea. About 90 minutes after arriving there, Mrs. Clinton emerged from the apartment in New York’s Flatiron district. She waved to onlookers and posed for pictures with a little girl on the sidewalk.
“I’m feeling great,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It’s a beautiful day in New York.”
Mrs. Clinton left in her motorcade without the group of reporters that is designated to travel with her in public. A campaign spokesman, Nick Merrill, indicated that she had returned to her Chappaqua, N.Y., residence sometime after 1 p.m., and Mrs. Clinton was not seen publicly the rest of the day.
Mr. Merrill initially described Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, as feeling “overheated” at the commemoration ceremony.
But just after 5 p.m., a campaign official said Mrs. Clinton’s physician, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, had examined the candidate at her home in Chappaqua, and Dr. Bardack said in a statement that Mrs. Clinton was “rehydrated and recovering nicely.”
“Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies,” Dr. Bardack’s statement said, adding that on Friday morning, after a prolonged cough, Mrs. Clinton was given a diagnosis of pneumonia.
Cue the wanktastic explosion of hysterical punditry.
Clinton Ehrlich, the, “Sole Western researcher at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations,” observes that the Russian political establishment honestly believes that Hillary Clinton wants to start a war with Russia.
I don’t have the direct exposure to the Russian foreign policy establishment, but his assessment of their position rings true to me, not the least because I see Clinton’s foreign policy record as showing her to be bellicose in general, and implacably hostile to Russia specifically:
If Hillary Clinton is elected president, the world will remember Aug. 25 as the day she began the Second Cold War.
In a speech last month nominally about Donald Trump, Clinton called Russian President Vladimir Putin the godfather of right-wing, extreme nationalism. To Kremlin-watchers, those were not random epithets. Two years earlier, in the most famous address of his career, Putin accused the West of backing an armed seizure of power in Ukraine by “extremists, nationalists, and right-wingers.” Clinton had not merely insulted Russia’s president: She had done so in his own words.
Worse, they were words originally directed at neo-Nazis. In Moscow, this was seen as a reprise of Clinton’s comments comparing Putin to Hitler. It injected an element of personal animus into an already strained relationship — but, more importantly, it set up Putin as the representative of an ideology that is fundamentally opposed to the United States.
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I have been hard-pressed to offer a more comforting explanation for Clinton’s behavior — a task that has fallen to me as the sole Western researcher at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Better known by its native acronym, MGIMO, the institute is the crown jewel of Russia’s national-security brain trust, which Henry Kissinger dubbed the “Harvard of Russia.”
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Let’s not mince words: Moscow perceives the former secretary of state as an existential threat. The Russian foreign-policy experts I consulted did not harbor even grudging respect for Clinton. The most damaging chapter of her tenure was the NATO intervention in Libya, which Russia could have prevented with its veto in the U.N. Security Council. Moscow allowed the mission to go forward only because Clinton had promised that a no-fly zone would not be used as cover for regime change.
Russia’s leaders were understandably furious when, not only was former Libyan President Muammar al-Qaddafi ousted, but a cellphone recording of his last moments showed U.S.-backed rebels sodomizing him with a bayonet. They were even more enraged by Clinton’s videotaped response to the same news: “We came, we saw, he died,” the secretary of state quipped before bursting into laughter, cementing her reputation in Moscow as a duplicitous warmonger.
As a candidate, Clinton has given Moscow déjà vu by once again demanding a humanitarian no-fly zone in the Middle East — this time in Syria. Russian analysts universally believe that this is another pretext for regime change. Putin is determined to prevent Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from meeting the same fate as Qaddafi — which is why he has deployed Russia’s air force, navy, and special operations forces to eliminate the anti-Assad insurgents, many of whom have received U.S. training and equipment.
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Another factor that disturbs Russian analysts is the fact that, unlike prior hawks such as John McCain, Clinton is a Democrat. This has allowed her to mute the West’s normal anti-interventionist voices, even as Iraq-war architect Robert Kagan boasts that Clinton will pursue a neocon foreign policy by another name. Currently, the only voice for rapprochement with Russia is Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump. If she vanquishes him, she will have a free hand to take the aggressive action against Russia that Republican hawks have traditionally favored.
Moscow prefers Trump not because it sees him as easily manipulated, but because his “America First” agenda coincides with its view of international relations. Russia seeks a return to classical international law, in which states negotiate with one another based on mutually understood self-interests untainted by ideology. To Moscow, only the predictability of realpolitik can provide the coherence and stability necessary for a durable peace.
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In Clinton, it sees the polar opposite — a progressive ideologue who will stubbornly adhere to moral postures regardless of their consequences. Clinton also has financial ties to George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations are considered the foremost threat to Russia’s internal stability, based on their alleged involvement in Eastern Europe’s prior “Color Revolutions.”
Russia’s security apparatus is certain that Soros aspires to overthrow Putin’s government using the same methods that felled President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine: covertly orchestrated mass protests concealing armed provocateurs. The Kremlin’s only question is whether Clinton is reckless enough to back those plans.
I have one difference with this analysis: The evidence shows that the coup in the Ukraine was more directly funded by the CIA (and its front the National Endowment for Democracy) and the State Department, not Soros.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been seeking the endorsement of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and their efforts may pay off, as there are reports that he is expected soon, alongside former Secretary of State George Schultz, to issue a joint endorsement of Clinton.
While those inside the national security community in Washington, D.C., may applaud the endorsement, Kissinger’s legacy of war crimes — from complicity in the 1973 coup in Chile to spearheading the saturation bombing of Indochina — has made him far less popular among human rights observers.
Clinton is well aware of that legacy. As secretary of state, she traveled to areas of the world that were devastated by policies Kissinger crafted and implemented.
It’s like a choice between Caligula and Nero.
Nero is the clear choice, but still ………