If you ever find yourself wondering how it is that Clinton doesn't manage to resist the temptation to accept paid speaking gigs even when she's already rich and clearly gearing up for a presidential campaign, Foster is basically the reason. Where most politicians would be warned by staff to avoid even a slight appearance of impropriety, Clinton feels from experience that she'll be slammed regardless of what she does, so she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered.
May 25, 2016
Matt Yglesias explains Hillary Clinton's mindset — it all goes back to Vince Foster.
From "Vince Foster's death and subsequent conspiracy theories, explained" at Vox:
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"Let her own conscience be her guide"
Right.
See, it's everyone else's fault! We pretty much made her corrupt!
So a few nuts push this idea that she had Vince Foster murdered, so she's decided to just go the hell with it and give normal people plenty of reason to think she's a slimeball? Got it.
That's a mighty convenient conscience she's got there.
That makes zero sense. By definition, as a candidate for office, she has every incentive to not look like a scumbag. The only people who can say, whatever haters gonna hate are people who don't need to convince anyone else of their value.
The real reason: standards for conviction increase as people gain power, money, and institutional support. Those bold enough to steal records and offer obvious lies as justification can skate through.
She believes this because it worked in the Whitewater fraud.
"Clinton feels from experience that she'll be protected by the major media outlets regardless of what she does..."
There. Corrected it.
MattY g is mid-30-something internet pundit who millennials think is an old geezer sellout and non-prog Gen Xers still consider a member of Ezra Klein's juvenile Juice Box Brigade.
The lightspeed pace of political entertainment media has made him both too young and too old at the same time.
She is a slimeball and as well has no conscience as demostrated with her "What difference does it make?", remark regarding her ineptitude of assisting the poor souls she abdondoned in Benghazi.
Oooops! The Inspector General at State did not like her private server much. Oh well, just another case where she can just ignore others' opinions.
What conscience?
A less convoluted explanation is that Hillary Clinton is an amoral, shameless, conscience-free megalomaniac with an urge to power fostered (pun intended) by her lifelong humiliations at the hands of her serially-adulterous husband, Bill.
See, that requires only Hill & Bill to be involved in her personality, rather than the entire citizenry of the US or the population of the world that knows who she is.
Occam's Razor, it would shave her close.
Well, that's one way to rationalize it. I understand Matt Y went to Harvard.
Hillary is history, however long she continues to live.
If Yglesias is floating a trail balloon on behalf of the Clinton campaign he should report back that it's made of lead.
It's our fault we didn't allow her to be our honest public servant.
Yglesias gets knocked down, but he gets up again, still a progressive soldier.
This is starting to sound like a woman making excuses for an abusive boyfriend with the possible caveat that the figurative woman actually believes it.
Small words: HILLARY. CLINTON. IS. CORRUPT.
It is an accepted truth by police and prosecutors that a minor traffic transgression, such as speeding or weaving between lanes, is very often an indicator of more major criminality by the car's occupants, such as having contraband drugs or firearms in the vehicle, or driving inebriated.
It is an accepted truth by police and prosecutors that hiding the truth about small issues during an investigation is an indicator of further, more serious transgressions. "So we know you were actually at the scene of the crime when it occurred, but you said you were at home. What did you see or do at the crime scene? oh, we also have fingerprints and DNA evidence, before you answer."
It is an accepted truth by the US media that minor transgressions, such as prosecuting a film maker to cover up one's own blunders in Benghazi, or hiding the truth, such as deleting tens of thousands of emails before turning over the rest to lawful authority, indicates Hillary is clean as the driven snow, and then "Shut up," they explain, to everyone's questions.
MattY is just fine with Hillary pressuring the FBI to investigate travel office people who had done nothing wrong, to see if they could dig up some dirt that would justify their termination. Heh Nixon did it, so what's the big deal? The same reaction the left has to sicking the IRS on political enemies. What's the big deal?
I think Foster may have committed suicide, in part, because he felt miserable having to do the Clintons' dirty work and was completely disillusioned. That would also explain the rush to rifle through his files before investigators could get to them. Who knows, maybe he left a suicide note.
The Clintons should have hired someone like MattY rather than VinceF. I am sure they will not make that mistake again.
News Flash! Corrupt politicians rationalize taking the money!
A better explanation is that Hillary and her husband have come to believe over their long years at the top of government that they are entitled to wealth, praise and deference for this, and because they choose to surround themselves with toadies in the media and government they are unlikely to hear anything more than justifications for their behavior. There's always an excuse. And the usual lines have often worked: "everyone else does it"; "this is old news"; "just more crap dredged up by unhinged right wingers." Sometimes, Republican overkill helps sell those defenses, other times they fall flat, but this has never truly derailed them. The closest thing to a loss they've faced since 1980 was Hillary losing the nomination in 2008--and even then, Obama insanely gave Hillary a top government post which (in her supporters' eyes) gave her even better experience than she had already. It also helped up the value of their graft machine, as you can see from how much more they raised from 2009-13.
So what happens when someone never faces accountability or consequences? They get worse and worse. They lie because they feel entitled to do so, and they take graft for the same reason. Why should they stop? So far they're on track to keep this going in the White House again, and their influence machine will have turned out to be a good investment for some of the world's most corrupt.
...it all goes back to Vince Foster.
Probably true. She figured if she could get away with that, she could get away with anything.
Trial balloon. Damned autocorrect.
Dick Morris explains it better. Hillary knows that she is totally a creature of Bill Clinton's power. And if Bill's power is attacked she loses her power source. So she covers for him.
Hillary knows that she is only entitled to rule if Bill's rule was legitimate. Therefore an attack on Bill paralyzes her.
So,
Having reach an age and position of accumulated wealth at which most respected philanthropist are well into the process of the distribution of their acquired wealth, Hillary just keeps hoarding the gold.
And Hillary is not afraid of attacks on her so long as Bill has power.
And Vince Foster's faked suicide was likely Bill's doing. Not Hillary, unless she did it to protect Bill.
Probably one of the best and most decent men to run for president in the current age was Mitt Romney. Before the election was done, the media had convinced a large number of people that he was a bully. A racist. A greedy capitalist. A torturer or animals. And on and on.
It's not because he was a bad guy. Its because he was running as a conservative Republican.
Therefore, if we use Matt's estimation of how one should behave, if others are going to accuse you, might as well let conscience be your guide, right?
And this is how we wind up with Trump.
Because Matt has it exactly right. Only, he has the wrong person and the wrong party.
she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered.
Funny how easily some people can justify whatever is in their personal interest to justify.
So what was their reasoning before Foster died?
A few months ago some woman was arrested for slapping a police horse at an anti Trunp rally. She was trying to spook the horse in a crowd of people. Does anyone know what happened to her?
That made so little sense, even for Matt Yglesias. She can't not accept piles of cash for a few words because of her conscience. The logic is that if I'm going to accused of a crime, I might as well do the crime. Is that a sign of conscience or lack of one?
I don't know what happened in that office, and I don't know why there were carpet fibers on his suit, I don't know why they cleaned up his office before investigators got there, I don't even know why they could not find the bullet.
I do know that if I had invested my political life into that pair and came to realize what I had done to America, I might have killed myself too.
Really shameful to rationalize Foster's suicide as the reason for Hillary's corruption.
Matt Yglesias is a person of little accomplishment. Seriously, why would anyone pay attention to what he has to say? His writing style is dull and he simply repeats the common wisdom of his social class. Like so many on the Left, his greatest accomplishment was having wealthy, socially connected parents.
"Ignorance is Bliss said...
...it all goes back to Vince Foster.
Probably true. She figured if she could get away with that, she could get away with anything."
Exactly. She had Foster whacked. Justifying a speaking fee....easy.
Matt, here's an alternative explanation: She wanted the money and figured her toadies in the media would cover for her.
So far, so good.
so she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered
And this is exculpatory how?
@David Begley, do not use the word "shame" in relation to any member of the Democrat party. They are incapable of feeling the emotion that the more human of us know as "shame."
Big Mike
Good point.
But do people really buy such a crazy rationalization? I guess some do. As long as they get what they want from HRC.
You don't have to believe that Hillary had anything to do with Foster's death for the Vince Foster story to be another lawless and tawdry one for Mrs. Clinton.
"I think Vince Foster committed suicide, plain and simple and who ever knows why someone does that. But I know for a fact that Hillary's aides were in Vince's Office, rifling and sanitizing the files, and that several years later a juicy one (which was under subpoena) showed up in the Clinton's personal quarters in the WH."
That's what I said a few threads ago and it's the real, provable lawbreaking scandal involving the death of Vince Foster.
The Daily Beast has a list of 'the Left's top 25 journalists.' Yglesias is #19. #1 is Jon Stewart, who is, of course, not a journalist, but a stand-up comic and television personality. He has a bachelors degree in chemistry or psychology.
Stewart likes to play clown-mask-on,clown-mask-off. That means that he attacks real journalists (always from the Left) and when he is attacked in turn, he claims that he is just a comedian and should not be held to the standards of a journalist.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/02/16/the-left-s-top-25-journalists.html#slide25
Any political movement that would recognize Stewart (and Yglesias) as its top journalists is intellectually bankrupt.
Skimming that Yglesias's whole article I'm struck by this sentence, concerning the White House Travel Office:
So in a perhaps misguided effort to make the changing of the guard look more high-minded, the administration had the FBI look into financial improprieties at the WHTO.
That "perhaps misguided" stands out. But overall, this piece is a perfect example of the Clinton Exoneration Essay. The Clinton Exoneration Essay is an anti-Jacobin tract In Which It Is Proved, Rhetorically, Schematically, Legally, & Logically, The Selflessness & Pure Propriety Of Our Lord & Lady Clinton.
Yglesias is perfectly correct that Vince Foster committed suicide and it is venal and idiotic for Trump to bring it up. But this is not enough. Y can't help himself. He must prove his patrons innocent of every stain, including personal ambition and political blunder.
Reversing "cause" and "effect" -- big mucho red flag fallacy.
Yglesias: "Foster's suicide contributed to Hillary's corruption.
No, Matt: Hillary's corruption likely caused Foster to commit suicide.
Not saying Foster was murdered, either. Don't want to go too far out on a shaky limb.
So the fallout from Foster's suicide convinced her to do Whitewater and trade shady cattle futures all the way back in the 70's?
The first two sentences of Yglesias:
"In truth, there is nothing fishy about Foster's death. In fact, few if any suicides have been investigated as thoroughly — or repeatedly — as Foster's, and it's very clear what happened to him."
Holy cow, this is some crappy writing. "In truth", "in fact", "very clear".
"
Blogger Mingus Jerry said...
What conscience?"
You beat me to it.
"No, Matt: Hillary's corruption likely caused Foster to commit suicide. "
I think that was probably it. With the Clintons, though, who knows?
"Yglesias is perfectly correct that Vince Foster committed suicide and it is venal and idiotic for Trump to bring it up."
No, it is part of the legacy that young people need to be educated about. The media has been lying for so long that no one under 50 knows the story.
It began with the Travel Office and everyone should read, "Unlimited Access" to get the story. I bought a copy for my wife who is 71 but has forgotten some of it.
You have dirt on the Clintons you end up with dirt on you...six feet of dirt.
...Clinton feels from experience that she'll be slammed regardless of what she does, so she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered.
Sure, Matt, throw a Roman Toga Party (Bill would like that!), but really did Hillary have to engage in rapacious influence peddling?
I've got news for you, pal. They're gonna nail us no matter what we do, so we might as well have a good time.
"TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!"
href="https://soundcloud.com/andrewklavanshow">Andrew Klavan does the Vince Foster situation in the opening monologue today.
. . . Clinton feels from experience that she'll be slammed regardless of what she does, so she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered.
Why would this be more true of Hillary than of GW Bush, Ted Cruz, or, of course, Donald Trump?
So in a perhaps misguided effort to make the changing of the guard look more high-minded, the administration had the FBI look into financial improprieties at the WHTO.
That "perhaps misguided" stands out. But overall, this piece is a perfect example of the Clinton Exoneration Essay. The Clinton Exoneration Essay is an anti-Jacobin tract In Which It Is Proved, Rhetorically, Schematically, Legally, & Logically, The Selflessness & Pure Propriety Of Our Lord & Lady Clinton.
Holy shit that is some spin there, isn't it?
They SENT THE FBI AFTER INNOCENT PEOPLE TO PUT THEIR CRONIES IN THE JOB INSTEAD. Fucking hell.
Why would this be more true of Hillary than of GW Bush, Ted Cruz, or, of course, Donald Trump?
I never even CONSIDERED that. Why do her experiences exonerate her and nobody else? It's not like Bush was accused of bombing the levees in NO or anything.
Right, Yglesias' slant is idiotic.
Still, everyone forgets, Hilary's a human being. Her good friend and mentor, who had moved across the country to work for and help her husband, his childhood friend, got depressed and shot himself in the head, all alone and far away from his family. Then, the likes of Scaife, basically for shits and grins, to amuse themselves, said she had the guy killed. They raked his death over and over, no feeling for his widow, no sense that the people involved are people, not evil robots. Talk about something that would toughen you up and make you paranoid: there it is. It was traumatic, and I'm not sure she ever really recovered. Scaife's a monster, and she knows she's surrounded by monsters. She's no monster, but boy is she defensive and wary.
I'm releived to hear this. All this time I was thinking it was just about the money.
Did I read that right? Did somebody use the word 'venal' against someone else while defending the Clintons? LOL FUCKING L!
Somebody needs a dictionary.
Unknown 5/25/16, 1:53 PM, go eat a blowme sandwich.
Human beings don't try to deprive Presidents of legal counsel at Watergate.
Humans don't cackle at how they got a child rapist off through abusing the system.
Humans, literally, do not say "What difference does it make?" when asked to account for the brutal, avoidable deaths of their people in the line of duty.
You think H! has any conception of feeling for Foster's widow, or the Benghazi widows, or anyone else not named Clinton?
HRC is a human being, you say? Someone else on God's green earth is a monster, but she's not a monster?
Prove it.
"Vince Foster made me buy this dress."
"I didn't want to do it. Vince Foster made me do it."
@tim in vermont.
You're right. "Venal" was a poor choice of words. I should have used "vile".
eric -- Re: Mitt Romney...
When did you suddenly become such an articulate, sensible guy? I feel like there is a whole world of good friends waiting for me out there after Trump is no longer a front-page story.
As for Vince Foster, I wonder how many people actually believe any if the various and sundry conspiracy theories. Since the number of people who actually recall the events in question is probably small, the number if people who believe the tinfoil hat theories has to be minuscule. But, naturally, it seems to include Mister Trump.
It's hard to start a cult of personality when the personality is as unappealing as Hillary's, but Matt Yglesias sure demonstrates that he is ready to be the complete fanboy.
Of course, if I accept Yglesias' basic premise but come at it from a less sympathetic perspective, I might conclude she and her husband are treating the further-out conspiracies as a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card for misconduct in office:
Q: Madame Secretary, some say you maintained a private server because you were trading access and influence for cash while heading the State Department.
A: Ha, ha, ha! It's amazing what my husband and I have been accused of by partisans determined to destroy us. Did you know there are people who think I killed my friend Vince Foster? Or that Bill ran cocaine out of Arkansas? But you know, there's no limit to what these people will accuse me of, so I just keep my head down and keep working for the American people.
Clinton fans everywhere: YAAAAAY!!
eric, 12:17: Very well put.
Was Matt Yglesias even born when the Vince Foster thing went down?
Ask the thousands of refugees who drowned fleeing Hillary's shit show in Libya if she's a monster. Well, their surviving family members.
Good Henry, because the Clintons have the market cornered on 'venal.' Glad you agree.
If you ever find yourself wondering how it is that Clinton doesn't manage to resist the temptation to accept paid speaking gigs even when she's already rich and clearly gearing up for a presidential campaign, Foster is basically the reason.
Of course. Whacking Foster wasn't just a one-time expense--there's the continuing cost of keeping people quiet about it, or having them whacked too if they get too greedy.
TravelGate preceded the Vince Foster controversy.
I wonder what Yglesias would think of the theory that when leftists excoriated Nixon for the Hiss case (which history proved Nixon was absolutely right about Hiss) it caused him to cover up the Watergate break-in. It's more plausible than the "Foster caused Hillary to become corrupt" theme.
"she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star"
Now that's funny right there!
I'm sure someone to the left of me could point out what they consider a similar gut buster from someone justifying someone for whom I might vote, but it seems to me that there is far more of this pretend analysis on the left. That this passes for serious commentary is very demoralizing.
At the time, I thought about the movie "Godfather II", specifically the scene where Robert Duvall's lawyer character visits the state's witness against the Corlione's. In that meeting he explains how Romans facing the wrath of the Emperor would take a warm bath and slit their wrists to avoid trauma for their family. The Clinton's sure know a lot of people that took a fall for things they for which they got off Scott Free.
There used to be a list of people in prison or who were murdered or committed suicide that the Clinton's knew personally. It was a long list. The question posed form that was "How many people do you who have been murdered, killed themselves or ended up prison?"
John Dillinger was kicked out of the Navy. This affected his life so, of course(!) he turned to robbing banks....
As night follows day.....
Let me see if I've got this straight... Hillary resents being thought of as evil incarnate, so she's decided to BE evil incarnate just to show us how distraught we've made her? Is that it? Maybe I'm just irretrievably stupid, but this seems to me to be the Yglesias thesis in a nutshell...
Well. It's original, I'll give him that much. If John Milton were alive today there'd be a quite firm palm to face moment. "Ten thousand lines of iambic pentameter on the problem of Good and Evil," he'd moan, "and Yglesias de-bones my whole argument in 1666 words on a fucking blog."
@tim. Yeah, this reconsidering leads me to the following:
Hillary is venal.
Donald is vile.
Bill is venal and vile.
"she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered" As others noted way upthread, H has in fact followed her conscience in everything she has done. Of course, it is also the most damning thing anyone can say about her.
That's idiotic, even for Yglesias.
That's the same excuse the Right has for Trump! The Media calls all Republicans extremists, calls all Republicans racists, calls all Republicans sexists, etc. They called Mitt f'in Romney all those things! If the Republicans are going to be called all those things no matter who they nominate/what they say, why not just nominate someone like Trump?!
Same argument. Does Yglesias accept that? If I'm responsible for Hillary Clinton's utter corruption and lack of ethical behavior (because I believed the worst about her and convinced her she's better off doing whatever she wants since people like me will believe she's rotten no matter what she does) then Yglesias is responsible for Trump (since he's claimed the Republicans were extremists/racist/sexist/etc no matter what they did all these years). Fair?
Now, of course, it has to be mentioned that Hillary Clinton acted unethically LONG before Vince Foster's death, going back at least to her Rose Law Firm & cattle future trading days (during which she helped perpetuate illegal S&L fraud, crooked land deals, etc for her friends like the federally-convicted McDougals).
Like I said, idiotic, even for Yglesias.
Does anyone believe Yglesias would stick up for George W. Bush because of the conspiracy theories hatched by the 9-11 Truthers?
Or does he assume Bush is tough and can deal the unjust abuse and accusations with equanimity — take it like a man, as it were — whereas Hillary suffers deep psychic wounds from the Vince Foster murder theories. How sexist!
"she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star"
Jiminy Cricket to the white courtesy phone.
"What happened here, in essence, is that when Clinton took office and put his team in place, they wanted to fire the staff at the White House travel office, which they absolutely had the right to do, and replace them with some of their own people, which they also absolutely had the right to do. But while legally speaking the WHTO staff were at-will employees who served at the pleasure of the president, it wasn't customary for new presidents to bring in a new WHTO team."
Wow! That's almost like Bush replacing AUSAs when he took office. How did Baby Matty feel about that? Turns out he thought that Clinton firing all the AUSAs was just peachy, but Bush firing 6 was terrible. To the extent this man-child has any morals, they are more flexible than Mary-Lour Retton in her prime.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/03/less-is-more/41750/
This is insane, especially on the day the State Department IG report reveals she never asked for permission to use a private email server and would not be given permission if she had. She has no conscience!
Conservative pundits, from what I can tell, try to imagine what arguments the Left would use against their position, and try to develop counter arguments. If you are against affirmative action in college admissions, you will inevitably be accused of racism, so you prepare the counter arguments that affirmative action in college admissions is explicitly racist, and that it harms Blacks as much as it does whites, or that the people who pay the price for it are not whites, but other ethnic minorities like Jews and Asians. Elementary.
I don't think that pundits on the Left ever do that. They simply assert things. There is no introspection, it is argument from self-righteousness.
"They called Mitt f'in Romney all those things! If the Republicans are going to be called all those things no matter who they nominate/what they say, why not just nominate someone like Trump?!"
Yeah! "Someone like Trump" is the key of your comment. Emphasis on "Someone." I don't like it, but the entire dozen plus field yielded the plain talking position to Trump, so now that's who we've got.
Hillary is also loathsome. 'Causing feelings of hatred and disgust.'
Bill is louche.
The Travel Office firing of the career staff was not the problem. It was the way they lied to cover up that they were doing it just give the business as pay offs to Arkansas and Hollywood connected Friends of Bill.
Heartless Hillary claimed the veterans of Travel office were being fired for cause on made up accusations of mishandling funds under investigation. It was TOTALLY FALSE!
Little Matty's apology for Clinton could be paraphrased by a kleptomaniac.
"Regardless of whether i steal or not today, I'm going to get slammed, so I might as well go ahead and steal."
I have long suspected that Hillary is innocent of something. Thanks, Matt, for making this clear. However, there's a downside to a lot of people thinking that the Clintons didn't off Foster. If word of this gets around, a lot of rape victims from Bill Clinton's past might start coming out if they think they can do his with impunity. That's what happened with Bill Cosby. It might be a good thing if Juanita gets depressed and shoots herself in the head a few times.
Tradguy, was that heartless, like bragging about throwing miners out of work, or crooked, like taking money from polluters her husband was supposed to regulate?
It is impossible to take someone like Matt Yglesiasp seriously. A charter member of the Juice Box Mafia, this overpromoted offspring of the Manhattan illuminati needed seasoning before he was ever given a byline. He is a classic case of someone who pumps out propaganda fed to him by the Ben Rhodes of this world and calls it opinion journalism. These characters all lost their credibilty when they spit out stories on command hymning the praises of Obamacare, an impractical Rube Goldberg creation that should have been strangled at birth.
Yglesias's exculpatory hymn to Hillary speaks earnestly about events occurring when Matty was thirteen years old. Give me a break. The Clintons would expropriate a hot stove in Tahiti if they saw one lying around. Who can forget Hillary lying to the families about Benghazi? Someone fed this nonsense about Vince Foster to Matty and he lapped it up like the good puppy he is.
Meade, time foe a Pupperazzi feature on Yglesias.
Mattie's explanation misses the real reason-one that Flip Wilson trademarked years ago: "The devil made me do it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SLifea3NHQ
That would also explain the rush to rifle through his files before investigators could get to them. Who knows, maybe he left a suicide note.
Exactly. I don't think Vince Foster was murdered, but the office cleaning is pretty shady.
"I think fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes." Matt Yglesias
He's already told you he's dishonest. Many of the comments have the assumption that he actually believes what he's written. He's just being an advocate.
... so she might as well let her own conscience be her guide....
Well, that certainly explains a lot. Can we see a Venn diagram of Hillary's behavior, Lawful activity, and commonly held moral principles?
Blogger Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...
Well, that certainly explains a lot. Can we see a Venn diagram of Hillary's behavior, Lawful activity, and commonly held moral principles?
Wouldn't the Hillary's behavior circle at least have to touch one of the other circles for it to be a venn diagram/
Well, why didn't he say so sooner? The poor innocent lamb knows she will be persecuted by the "vast right-wing conspiracy" so she doesn't worry about what things "look like." I knew it was the GOP's fault; I had just never had it explained to me.
The Foster mess might have involved the least number of felonies of anything she had done.
Birds are starting to object when the NYT is used as a cage liner.
MY's stretching of Vince Foster to cover HillBills swallowing of billions from Wall Street and Pentagon contractors was EXACTLY the Result TRUMP was looking for.
The Art of the Troll
"Clinton feels from experience that she'll be slammed regardless of what she does, so she might as well let her own conscience be her guide star in terms of policy and cash whatever checks she's offered."
Never thought I'd see "(Hillary) Clinton" and "conscience be her guide star" in the same sentence. "Clinton" and "unconscionable," sure.
You fuckers know how to troll, right? Put some cheese on a hook and drag it through schools of fish.
Try to stay out of the weeds obsessing over shiny tiny grains milled over and over... fools gold.
But ... But ... But ... National Archive records reflect that injuries sustained by Foster went unreported during the many investigations and Vince didn't die from a 38 gunshot but by two shots, the second of which was from a small caliber gun to the right side of his neck.
Then there is the Hillary dodge which may explain everything conspiratorial.
When Barbara Walters asked Hillary if she had been having an affair with Vince Foster, Hillary lowered her eyes and told the 20/20 cameras, “He was a very special man.”
Some creative genius really needs to dramatize the Clintons as MacBeth Redux Americana.
Hillary is Lady Macbeth to be sure. And a bit of Emilia from Othello. And completely the attitude of Queen Elizabeth with her Oath to Supremacy and Privy Council.
Alternative explanation: the Clintons have an operating model that naturally generates scandal. They receive large amounts of money in controversial ways and indulge in scandalous personal behavior like Bill's philandering. They expect scandal, plan for it, and reward people who help them get away with it. If Foster had lived, he'd be one of the cronies.
Darrell said...
Birds are starting to object when the NYT is used as a cage liner.
5/25/16, 7:40 PM
LOL! Lots of comments here have me laughing, but this one- Gold, Darrell! That's gold!
Vincent Foster wasn't killed by Bill or Hillary Clinton. That gets it all wrong. THe death took them by surprise. They were not prepared for it.
If that had been the case, that they'd killed him, they wouldn't have been able to get very many high ranking people to cover it up. Bill Clinton was not Stalin - people close to him were not so afraid of him that they didn't dare not participate. And if he had been like Stalin, other people close to him also would have died.
Vincent Foster was probably killed by the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United states, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, or someone acting on his instructions.
This is the smoking gun:
http://i58.tinypic.com/ih8nx3.jpg
Page 10 of the MArch 14, 1994 New Republic.
The key words are "in July" This reveals asecret unscheduled meeting between Prince Bandar and President Clinton and the late Sandy Burglar. I was unable to verify or obtain the date and time using the Freedom of Information Act. The Saudi Arabian Ambassador's residence is rigght across teh street from Fort Marcy Park. Theis leak occurred right at the same time as several other known Foster case leaks.
One thing I learned from the Vince Foster flare-up is that the current HHS Secretary was the Clinton aide who rifled through Vince Foster's residential garbage before police could secure it.
They just keep popping up, like Herpes.
At this point, I suppose even Yglesias would agree that American politics would be healthier if GHW Bush had been re-elected in '92.
Nobody talks anymore about how loony Perot handed the election to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Without Perot, there would be no Clinton, no Gore, no Florida chad counting, no 9/11, no Iraq War, no 2008 crash, no Obama.
Vince Foster dead. Hillary hardest hit.
Perot is the root of most political evil-- it's true, Terry. (1:37)
will Trump be our next Perot?
It's kind of funny that the Vox "explainer" ignores so many things that happened. Just pretends they didn't. Ignores the carpet fibers on his suit. I would like to hear the official explanation of that one. Ignores that his office was rifled before investigators got there.
You know what would have been cool? If they took the time to actually debunk those kinds of allegations. That would be an explainer. At least when Slate took on the Broaddrick forcible rape by Clinton, they presented the damning evidence, even if they declined to draw a conclusion. Here Vox draws a conclusion with nothing to support it but sneers.
People commit suicide when they are deeply depressed. Depression can be triggered or exacerbated by outside stress, and certainly Vince Foster was subject to that. But suicide is not so easily carved into cause and effect, as Yglesias would have it. And his further extrapolation that Hillary Clinton would focus blame on the outside stressors, her enemy list, leaves a vacuum where her soul would be.
Your close friend commits suicide while failing at a job that you asked him to do. Suicide is heartrending. You ask why did I not see it coming? Why did I not act?
Terry wrote: At this point, I suppose even Yglesias would agree that American politics would be healthier if GHW Bush had been re-elected in '92.
Nobody talks anymore about how loony Perot handed the election to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Without Perot, there would be no Clinton, no Gore, no Florida chad counting, no 9/11, no Iraq War, no 2008 crash, no Obama.
I personally think our politics would be healthier if Al Gore was elected in 2000. It would have forced the Democrats to take ownership for national security and the Clinton economy.
I think that when a White House official, close to the President, dies by gunfire, it is up to authorities to prove it wasn't murder. The stakes are too high. But nobody had any interest, I guess.
OT: She's a liar.
Does Yglasias care? Nope.
Hillary is a liar
Apparently, Ms. Clinton never requested permission to operate her own private server system. She certainly refused OIG requests for an interview. Great quote (footnote 152, document page 38): “Secretary Clinton declined OIG’s request for an interview. The former Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations has not responded to OIG’s request for an interview.” Yes, more than one key Clinton aide refused to grant interviews to OIG investigators. (See footnote 7 on document page 2.)
A close reader of the document will note that current Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to an OIG interview. So did former Secretaries Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright.
" It would have forced the Democrats to take ownership for national security and the Clinton economy."
LOL
So Matt Yglesias thinks Vince Foster's death made him a horcrux?
I guess that would explain Hillary's soul torn in two. But has anybody found the other six?
First and foremost, this behavior predates Foster's death. She was already money grubbing. The cattle futures were nothing more than a weakly hidden bribe by Tyson's foods, one of the states biggest employers of its governor through his wife. It worked by buying matching cattle futures. One paying if the price went up and one if it went down. And a Tyson's person paying for one, and Hillary paying for the other. Then, when the price went up or went down, the winning one was assigned to Hillary, and the losing one to the other party. My memory is that the guy in the middle was convicted for something for this scheme. Then came the Madison Federal and Whitewater Land deals. Apparently, Hillary wasn't making her numbers at the Rose Law Firm. They were projects thrown her way after a request by her husband (the governor, apparently at the end of his morning run). Whitewater involved flipping the sort of land you sometimes hear advertised on radio. People were put into land that they couldn't afford, and then rapidly defaulted on and reclaimed, forfeiting their down payment. Rinse and repeat. Madison was more complex, with a circular pool of money of hidden insider loans being used as capital contributions used to support more ultimaly insider lending. Ultimately, the scheme collapsed, and the federal banking people came in to clean it up. Hillary was the billing partner for all the legal work on the scam, and the Feds wanted to see who had given the legal advice supporting it. And hence, the demand for the billing records, which mysteriously had disappeared (sound familiar?) Everything was blamed on a junior attorney, and Hillary was able to claim she was only guilty of weak supervision. The bombshell in those billing records, when they finally reappeared outside her office in the WH was that she had been up to her eyeballs in the scheme, with her, or one of her mentors (Vince Foster (dead by then) and Webster Hubbel (a Deputy US AG)) billing for each and every meeting at which the banking scheme was developed and run.
I think that Vince Foster's death was suicide. The Feds were closing in, and he was almost assuredly sitting on those billing records, which would have shown (and ultimately did show) that Hillary was the primary attorney involved in what was up till then a fairly major banking fraud. She either did the legal work making it all happen, or at least billed as if she had. Which, of course, were major federal felonies. Foster was being dragged into this and was the person standing between Hillary and the Feds, and by then had to know that she was guilty. Moreover, he may have had some of his own billing in those records. His life was falling apart, and his legal reputation was likely to do so too. There is some evidence that he had been a decently ethical attorney back in Arkansas, and this latter may have put him over the edge. The reason I accept that it was likely a suicide is that Hillary's people had to do an emergency rescue operation to get those billing records before the police did, and they ultimately ended up in the hands of the Feds. Their emergency (and, as usual, illegal) records search and grab just seems too amateurish and ad hoc for me to believe that Foster's death was a well planned hit.
This post needs a "bullshit" tag.
"Without Perot, there would be no Clinton, no Gore, no Florida chad counting, no 9/11, no Iraq War, no 2008 crash, no Obama."
Yes but we don't know what may have happened in the absence of Perot (though I still believe Bush would have lost with Perot not in the race, I'm assuming for the sake of argument that Perot lost it for Bush). What might we have faced in '96, or '00 for president after a second Bush term? How would the second Bush term have gone?
Also, let's assume Nixon beat Kennedy in 1960. We might surmise a few things about the '60s (maybe no major involvement in Vietnam, maybe slower economic growth but no inflation) but it gets iffier the farther out you go. Would a Nixon victory in 1960 have meant no Reagan, no Clinton, no Obama? Or might these things have just taken a slightly different form?
If Trump pulls off a victory this fall, please remind leftists that had they simply let Romney win in 2012 none of this would have happened.
Bruce Hayden on 5/26/16, 8:23 AM
The reason I accept that it was likely a suicide is that Hillary's people had to do an emergency rescue operation to get those billing records before the police did, and they ultimately ended up in the hands of the Feds. Their emergency (and, as usual, illegal) records search and grab just seems too amateurish and ad hoc for me to believe that Foster's death was a well planned hit.
That only means it was an unplanned death and unexpected death, not that it was a suicide. You have to be careful when dealing with abstractions.
I too, thought, for about two years, that it was a suicide, but ultimately I found a much better explanation. It's not so easy for a person to decide to commit suicide. A suicide doesn't make too much sense.
What happened was he went to the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and attempted to blackmail him for money, in order to pay for a lawyer. He wanted the contents of one of those locked briefcases he kept in his home. These briefcases did not contan secret files, like he told reporters. That makes no sense. He's got no better place to keep secret records than briefcases?
Bandar handled projects he considered so sensitive that he could not
take his work to the Saudi Embassy. That's why at least 30 briefcases
with combination locks are strewn over one corner of his small office
at the Ambassador's residence. . .One of the briefcases contains a small
machine gun, part of the anti-assassination kit Bandar must live with.
- Sunday, June 7, 1992 article by Patrick E. Tyler on June 7, 1992 in the New York Times magazine, page 80.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/07/magazine/double-exposure-saudia-arabia-s-man-in-washington.html?pagewanted=all
Second reference:
In Bandar's office in his lavish ambassador's residence, he kept 15
or 20 locked attache cases containing the details of covert operations
or confidential arrangements with individuals and countries. . .
- The Commanders by Bob Woodward (Simon and Schuster, 1991) page 213. (one year earlier. Both approximately contemparaneous with July 20, 1993.
No. Those briefcases contained money! (withdrawn in cash from the Riggs bank)
Foster was in a position to blackmail Prine Bandar, because Prince Bandar had been involved in corruption in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was Governor.
. . .But Gov. Clinton may have had some Saudi resources of his own. Mr. Clinton was a Georgetown University classmate of Turki bin Feisal, the current [1995, till he suddenly quit or as fired 10 days ahead of Sept 11, 2001] head of Saudi intelligence.
Sources in Arkansas say Mr. Clinton's famous networking skills also put him in contact with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. University of Arkansas officials participated in a Clinton-Bandar meeting in the spring of 1991, when they and Mr. [David] Edwards joined the governor in delivering a request for a major gift to the ambassador. According to a 1991 gubernatorial disclosure statement, Mr. Clinton and Prince Bandar were also together on June 23 [1991], when they traveled from Aspen to Little Rock on a jet leased by the Saudis.
Despite such contacts no progress in raising money was made until Governor Clinton received the Democratic presidential nomination. One month later, Mr. Edwards handled an anonymous lead gift to the university of $3.5 million for a Middle East studies program. Individuals familiar with the gift say it came from the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce. According to the Cyprus-based Arab Press Service, the
gift was approved by Saudi Arabia's King Fahd at the recommendation of Prince Turki.
Under Mr. Edwards' direction and despite some objections from University of Arkansas officials, the unusual gift was transferred to a university account in the form or Treasury bonds. The resulting confusion was the last straw for university officials. They insisted that Mr. Edwards withdraw from the project. Curiously, documents
obtained by the Journal indicate that extra bonds were delivered to the university, with a face value of $3.5 million promised and $3.9 million delivered. A financial administrator at the university said that "excess bonds were put into the account by a mistake in the electronic transfer" and were "returned"
One month after President Clinton's inauguration, Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker announced that Prince Bandar had delievred a $20 million gift to the University of Arkansas.
- editorial page article by Micah Morrison "Who is David Edwards" on page A14 of the Wednesday, March 1, 1995 Wall Street Journal. (Now I have some furter suspicions of Davod Edwards as well but need some more information to know whether a hypothesis is viable]
But Vincent Foster forgot one thing:
Diplomatic immunity!!
After it was over, Prince Bandar rushed over to President Clinton to explain the murder and get his help in cpovering it up. Perhos he brought the tape of the conversation with him. The only other person in the meeting was Sandy Burglar. President Clinton agreed, and told him to put the body in nearby Fort Marcy Park, which would give the death federal jurisdiction.
While Bandar would not be in legal trouble for his death, neither in the United states nor in Saudi Arabia (he was a high ranking member of the royal family) or for whatever Vincent Foster was trying to blackmail him about, his career could be in danger if this became known.
Years later, Prince Bandar, after being in eclipse for a while, became the head of Saudi intelligence and engineered the murder of Ambassador Christopher stevens in Libya. (to stop him from preventing the shipment of arms from old Qauddafi stockpiles near Benghazi to Syrian rebels he supported.)
The scandal(s) that disturbed Vincent Foster were not connected to Whitewater, or the billing records, which were not in his office, and wouldn't have created legal difficulty for him and were nothing new, but later the Clintons tried to make it appear that they were, by mixing items from the office with other records and trurning them all pver at the ame time.
What was bothering him was probably the Waco fire.
The FBI Director had not left voluntarily, but forced Bill Clinton to fire him, (on trumped up ethics charges, which Bill Clinton did not dare to cite in public pronouncements although that the ;egal basis for him firing him)
This was something Vincent Foster had been very anxious to avoid. And now Willliam Sessions had just called a press conference for Thursday. And he had just read a printed out e-mail - the timing is right for him to have read it then - that warned that Sessions should not be fiired, and that reporters knew more than what they wrote, and if he wanted any proof he should read that day's (July 19) Wall Street Journal editorial, and that if Sessions was fired reporters would be released from their pledges of confidentiality and would be free to tell what they knew about waco, particularly how Williams Sessions was kept from the scene at Waco and how his plan for water cannon was rejected in favor of tear gas.
They didn't find the e-mail for approximately a week, I think. So till then the whole thing was a mystery because Vincent Foster had not mentioned to Prince Bandar what the scandal was that was bothering him, but just that he wanted money.
some of this, of course, goes neyond my actual knowledge.
traditionalguy said...5/25/16, 3:46 PM
The Travel Office firing of the career staff was not the problem. It was the way they lied to cover up that they were doing it just give the business as pay offs to Arkansas and Hollywood connected Friends of Bill.
You're buying into the Clintons 9second layer) cover-up story.
They were fired because they would know too much about whom Bill Clinton was meeting with.
They didn't need any excuse to fire them. They were not civil service. It just had become atradition to keep them on from administration to administration. They needed acppver story - ethics problems - in orderr that people shouldn't get an idea of what the real reason was. I never beleived for one second that giving sdome patronage to the Thomason's was the reason.
Of course Bill Clinton did need people he trusted in charge of his travel arrangements, so that's why it was them who replaced them, but giving them some patronage wasn't the reason..
Terry said...5/26/16, 1:37 AM
At this point, I suppose even Yglesias would agree that American politics would be healthier if GHW Bush had been re-elected in '92.
Bit wouldn't Dan Quayle have maybe become preident, or at least the Republican nominee, in 1996.
Some people wanted to get off that train.
Seems there's little difference between this and all the yellow journalism that follows a conservative around after nomination or election where 50% of the populace believes it and it influences their votes just because it's a memorable sound byte, or they are conditioned to believe it anyway. In the words of some movie "it's payback time, baby" - not nice, but fair, since the left started this fight a year after the constitutional convention and even then the conservatives were too decent to return in kind, but now an Andrew Jackson fell on the republicans, soon to be "non" party, where Old Hickory believed in Duels, and killed more than a few who were insulting, irrespective of the truth, even when he was in the wrong.
Maybe your pTb will bring back the Duel. Will certainly make the left more polite, and the few remaining conservatives more bold. And it seems this approach of just publishing the laundry dirty or not defangs the press, if he puts all the old and future nastiness of the MSM on the table, the candidate can prove to the electorate that they can either destroy the press and the source of scurrilous remarks, or get out of the way for someone who can. no more sit there and quietly take the abuse. Your pTb turns out to be such a person. It must be terrifying for MSM, the GoP party apparatus, the establishment, the lobbyists whose jobs and plush lives, the donor class and the wealthy not being able to pick the president, having to leave it in the hands of the proles to apply the wisdom of crowds to come up the best of many bad choices.
No wonder your allies are terrified. Here's someone without policy, which simply defines someone's weaknesses, who values uncertainty to keep our adversaries guessing, and more cautious because they have no clue about if and where the next lightning strike will come. Reminds me of the impact of that so called idiot Reagan's supposed joke dreamed up with Casey where an active mike happened to record "let's dust Moscow" when Moscow was starting an exercise which included first use of Nukes. If the Warsaw pact archives are to be believed. Reagan a dummy my @ss. Grandma loved that one. Not turning West Germany into an ash heap. Something we could have watched without a telescope rom our side of the crater.
furious_a said...5/26/16, 12:26 AM
One thing I learned from the Vince Foster flare-up is that the current HHS Secretary was the Clinton aide who rifled through Vince Foster's residential garbage before police could secure it.
This is news to me - even that this was done. Maybe uf we all put everything we know together, we'll learn things.
I find in Wikipedia:
That Sylvia Mary Mathews Burwell
1) worked on the Clinton campaign (we'll pick it up there)
2) was Staff Director for the National Economic Council from 1993 to 1995, headed by Robert Rubin and then chief of staff from 1995 to 1997 to him when he was Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin.
Now Rubin, when he was at Goldman Sachs had bene one of the two most important targets in Rudolph Giulini's insider trading investigation, (the other was Michael Milken) but the lawyer for his Goldman Sachs depouty, Robert Freeman, had fended him off and eventually had Freeman plead guilty to made up event (which he also complained that the U.S. Attorney's office had leaked) which led nowhere, unlike the true charges.
Bill Clinton attempted to put this lawyer in charge of all investigatons in the ciuntry concerning matters Clinton. (Janet Reno, of course was not a last minute choice for Attorney General. The whole claim of wanting to appoint a woman as Attorney General and then having the first two choices tripped up by the FBI investigation, was just a device to make the choice look unplanned.)
The name of this lawyer whom Bill Clinton could trust was Robert B. Fiske Jr.
He would have stopped state investigations as well, because state prosecutors usually defere to federal ones.
Janet Reno named him an unofficial special prosecutor and then later invoked the special prosecutor law, hoping that the 3 federal judges charged with picking him would ratify that choice. But they chose Kenneth Starr instead. Clinton did have his own people inside the investigation, including Samuel Dash, but he had to give Starr some meat, and also the Monica Lewinsky thing started so suddenly, he could not prevent it.
Robert B. Fiske, Jr, however, was separately charged with investigating the Vincent Foster death, and issued a report. The Senate did to, and that's where I found my first clue about the Saudi connection.
Back to Burwell:
3) Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1998, along with future Center for American Progress founder John Podesta.
4) In 1998, Erkskine Bowles left as chief of staff, and Podesta was elevated to chief of staff, while Burwell moved to the OMB to serve as Jack Lew's deputy director from 1998 to 2001.
5) Then she worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 2001 through 2012. She might have used her position to make sure Bill Gates didn't interfere with anything Bill Clinton wanted to do, as long as we're speculating. She did not get the top job in the end.
6) Named Obama/Biden Transition Agency Review Lead for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
7) President of the Walmart Foundation in January 2012 (we know of Hillary's ties to Walmart)
8) On March 3, 2013, President Obama nominated Burwell to head the White House Office of Management and Budget. A confirmation hearing was held on April 10, and on April 24 the U.S. Senate confirmed Burwell to be the head of the OMB in a 96-0 vote.
In which position she sent an email initiating the process that closed national parks, visitors’ centers and even the “panda-cam” at the National Zoo.
9) On April 11, 2014, Obama nominated Burwell to be the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, succeeding Kathleen Sebelius, who announced her resignation the day before and she was confirmed as Department of HHS secretary on June 5, 2014.
Bruce Hayden said...5/26/16, 8:23 AM
The cattle futures were nothing more than a weakly hidden bribe by Tyson's foods, one of the states biggest employers of its governor through his wife.
This could have been done in order to avoid the necessity of sending envelopes of cash to the governor.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19941219&id=NldPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XQMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5031,6523801&hl=en
I think the pilot was maybe misleading people a bit. That hd to be in the 1970's during Governor Clinton;s first term 1979 and 1980 ad probably before the cattle futures. I notice he doesn't give any dates anywhere in any interview. Or even a year. Janet Rebo prevented special prosecutor Donald Smatlz from following this up, telling him this was outside of his jurisdiction.
It worked by buying matching cattle futures. One paying if the price went up and one if it went down. And a Tyson's person paying for one, and Hillary paying for the other. Then, when the price went up or went down, the winning one was assigned to Hillary, and the losing one to the other party.
That's one way, it could have bene done, but not the only way. It could have been real insider trading, based on inside information. I mean why else was it cattle futures?
An also this was December, 1979. If it was real it certain would have been silver.
My memory is that the guy in the middle was convicted for something for this scheme.
Not the Tyson lawyer, James Blair. The broker, Robert L. "Red" Bone, got a 3-year
suspension by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as well as a $250,000 fine for his company.
Madison was more complex, with a circular pool of money of hidden insider loans being used as capital contributions used to support more ultimaly insider lending. Ultimately, the scheme collapsed, and the federal banking people came in to clean it up.
But that wasn't the biggest S&L Clinton had ties to. That was FirstSouth of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
I think it was the Clinton campiagn - through dirty tricks - that convinced Perot that Bush wass going to disrupt his daughter's wedding. Clinton wanted him out there.
This year we don't even have anybody in (yet) in the first place!
Perotwould have won if he'd been more sensible.
Shoot, even Nixon's conscience said "but it would be wrong" once in a while.
Nixon meant it.
There were two times he was manipulated by John Dean into taking part in what was part of the Watergate coverup.
The first was in the beginning when, after it was already known John Dean persuaded him to try to prevent it from becoming known that the Committee to Re-Elect the President had a connection to the Watergate burglary.
john Dean claimed it was Ehrlichman's idea (a lie) that he should tell the CIA to tell the FBI that something they were doing might get discovered if they pursued the origin of the money in the hands of the burglars. Nixon agreed that Ehrlichman and Haldeman shold meet. this meeting went nowehere since Ehrlichman knew nothing about it. The idea was broached to the CIA, but this the CIA refused to do, and that was the end of it.
The second time was in March, 1973, when he persuaded Nixon to authorize the giving of money to E. Hiward Hunt after he had already given him the money! (not the first time Hunt got money) on the grounds that Hunt was threatening to reveal - not something to do with the Watergate break-in, but the break-in to the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. This was a lie, by the way Hunt was threatening no such thing. This break-in, Nixon and Ehrlichman had assumed was legal (notwithstanding that there is a Fourth amendment warrant clause, but there was the idea this was permissible under the war power of the president, so in his eyes it was not a question of covering up a crime. But it was politically controversial, and might lead to legislation or something. Nixon said he knew he could raise the money, and he also said that you could buy time that way, but that is all and I think somewhere there he said it would be wrong.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/233222/TAPES-SHOW-NIXON-WEIGHED-PROS-AND-CONS-OF-HUSH-MONEY.html?pg=all
You could get a million dollars," the president said, "You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done. But the question is who the hell would handle it? Any ideas on that?"
....Finally, Dean said if the money were raised and given to the defendants, they would still want clemency, which would be "politically impossible. I'm not sure that you will ever be able to deliver on the clemency. It may be just too hot."
Nixon said, "You can't do it politically until after the '74 elections, that's for sure. Your point is that even then you couldn't do it." Dean said, "That's right. It may further involve you in a way you should not be involved in this." Nixon said, "No, it's wrong, that's for sure."
Haldeman claimed oin his Senate Watergate testimont that Nixon said, "There is no problem in raising a million dollars - we can do that - but it would be wrong."
In Ausgust, in a press conference, Nixon said Haldeman's account was correct, and [quoting the Deseret News from 1992) "then added that he (Nixon) was concerned that the defendants would want clemency. "I said, `John, it's wrong, it won't work, we can't give clemency.'
So Haldeman is responsible for the confusion about what it was that Nixon said would have been wrong.
John Dean also offered a pardon to James McCord Jr. This was entirely without authorization - a lie by John Dean. John Dean later on claimed that Nixon had told him to say that in a conversation, and on this matter, the tapes vindicated Nixon.
If he burned the tapes maybe people might be thinking today that was true.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/jack-caulfield-bearer-of-a-watergate-message-dies-at-83.html?_r=0
But Nixon denied the allegation, and transcripts of White House tapes did not show that he had been behind the offer. John W. Dean III, the White House counsel, told investigators that it was he who had authorized Mr. Caulfield to broach the matter with Mr. McCord, though Mr. Dean insisted that he had done so with the president’s knowledge.
The taoes did show Nixon to be very very amoral in politica.
Sammy, that is a pretty damning case you make on the cattle futures, I would just add two things.
- The paper evidence which could have proven you wrong, and which should have been kept, somehow "disappeared."
- The reason Tyson Chicken wanted influence with the Clintons is because they were big polluters and as such had to deal with the State of Arkansas frequently.
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