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Thursday, July 2, 2015

Blumenthal gave diplomatic advice to Hillary Clinton as early as 2009, emails show





5o shades of grey
That will never see the light of day

Interesting to see what Barry may do
When it comes to the election of you




The NYT's no less first broke this story in March 2015.  I'm no computer expert but did it occur to the Republicans who owned the House and Senate to immediately but a 'freeze' on her email account the minute it was made known? After all, you're dealing with a Clinton. To draw a parallel... is a person  charged with murder allowed access to the DNA evidence so they can destroy it before going to trial?


1o-29-14 email







Controversial adviser Sidney Blumenthal was sending then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton guidance on sensitive diplomatic matters much earlier than previously known, even as the White House was blocking him from becoming a part of her staff, according to emails released late Tuesday by the State Department.

The emails, part of a series of document dumps from Clinton's private email server from which she controversially conducted official State Department business, also show that Clinton paid special interest to the attempt to hire Blumenthal.

Blumenthal served as a senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton between 1997 and 2001, but was prohibited by the Obama administration from taking a job with Clinton's State Department team.

Another brain dead Barry moment. 

The Clintons don't live by rules.


However, in an email dated November 5, 2009, Blumenthal sent Clinton an email titled "Agenda with Merkel," encouraging Clinton to develop the Transatlantic Economic Council, which he said "now languishes." Noting that it was German Chancellor Angela Merkel's major initiative when Germany held the EU presidency in 2007, Blumenthal advised that "raising Merkel's project and reinvigorating it would undoubtedly be well received."

Emails previously released by the State Department and the House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack showed that Blumenthal forwarded intelligence information to then-Secretary Clinton about Libya around the time of the attack that killed four Americans. Clinton then asked that his insight be circulated amongst the staff.

The above 2009 email is one of several that year showing that Clinton was receiving advice from the controversial confidant much earlier than had been previously known.

Additionally, a conversation between Clinton and her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills on June 22, 2009 shows Clinton's interest in getting Blumenthal hired. In response to an unrelated matter, Clinton writes to Mills: "Good. What is latest re: Sid Blumenthal."

Mills writes, "Will see – he is doing the paperwork."

The confidant's role with Clinton became clearer in a June 2009 email. Blumenthal passed an email along to Clinton from then-U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and spoke of her helping him with "Adams" in a meeting with Martin McGuiness of Northern Island. Adams is apparently referring to Gerry Adams.

"Shaun briefed me that Gordon will be meeting with Martin McGuiness together on Wednesday and may want your help with Adams. I said that he and Gordon should let me know before Wednesday and may want your help with Adams. I said that he and Gordon should let me know before Wednesday whether your involvement is essential and what they request."

Blumenthal gave more of his input before Clinton's 2009 speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. Blumenthal told Clinton her speech must have "a distinctive and authoritative voice."

"The speech must be crafted with a sense of real time and cannot be delivered out of sync with it," he wrote. "Slogans can become shopworm, especially those that lack analytical, historical and descriptive power."


Blumenthal also gave tips for policy on Afghanistan.


"Hillary: FYI," the message read. "I found this one of the most sensible and informed brief articles on Afghanistan. Patrick Cockburn, of the London Independent, is one of the best informed on-the-ground journalists. He was almost always correct on Iraq."

In a statement late Tuesday night, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called the latest email findings "troubling."

"Administration officials knew more than previously disclosed, Sidney Blumenthal was involved with more than just providing Libya off-the-books intelligence, and State Department officials were possibly fundraising on government accounts," the statement said. "These emails however are just the tip of the iceberg and we will never get full disclosure until Hillary Clinton releases her secret server for an independent investigation."

The revelations come at an awkward time for Clinton, now a presidential candidate, who had repeatedly sought to distance herself from Blumenthal, saying his advice on Libya and other issues was "unsolicited."

The emails, covering March through December 2009, were posted online Tuesday evening, as part of a court mandate that the agency release batches of Clinton's private correspondence from her time as secretary of state every 30 days starting June 30.

Clinton's emails have become a major issue in her early presidential campaign, as Republicans accuse her of using a private account rather than the standard government address to avoid public scrutiny of her correspondence. As the controversy has continued, Clinton has seen ratings of her character and trustworthiness drop in polling.

The monthly releases all but guarantee a slow drip of revelations from the emails throughout Clinton's primary campaign, complicating her efforts to put the issue to rest. The goal is for the department to publicly unveil 55,000 pages of her emails by Jan. 29, 2016 -- just three days before Iowa caucus-goers will cast the first votes in the Democratic primary contest. Clinton has said she wants the department to release the emails as soon as possible.

"There's been nothing but nearly nonstop work on this" since the last group of emails was released, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday at briefing in which he acknowledged the inconvenient timing. "You have to understand the enormity of the task here. It is a lot of stuff to go through."

Clinton turned her emails over to the State Department last year, nearly two years after leaving the Obama administration. She has said she got rid of about 30,000 emails she deemed exclusively personal. Only she and perhaps a small circle of advisers know the content of the discarded communications.

Though Clinton has said her home system included "numerous safeguards," it's not clear if it used encryption software to communicate securely with government email services. That would have protected her communications from the prying eyes of foreign spies or hackers.

Separately, the State Department on Tuesday provided more than 3,600 pages of documents to the Republican-led House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, including emails of Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, and former Clinton aides Mills and Jake Sullivan.

In a letter to the committee, the department said "to the extent the materials produced relate to your inquiry, we do not believe they change the fundamental facts of the attacks on Benghazi."

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the assaults on the diplomatic facility in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. Several investigations have faulted security at the facility, but found that the CIA and military acted properly in responding. One Republican-led House probe asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration officials in its report last year.

The House committee will hold a public business meeting next week to vote on whether to release the transcript of Blumenthal's deposition. Blumenthal testified behind closed doors for more than eight hours earlier this month, and Democrats have been pressing the panel to release the full transcript. 



This whole fiasco is probably moot. The left would vote for her even if she personally shot Chris Stevens.






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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Prosecuting 31,000 deleted emails in one gif




Cast of characters:


The Cats...  Republicans

The Frozen Lake...  The MSM

The Big Fish...  If you don't know by now you never will










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Chelsea Clinton Demands $65,000 for 10-Minute Speech





A chip off the old block.




I'm sure after she gave this illuminating 10 minute speech those present were richly rewarded and because of her living far better lives. Or they just got taken again by another Clinton.

Listen baby...for $6,500 bucks a minute you better be able to tell me who's going to win the World series, in how many games, and the final score!

The money goes to the 'Clinton Foundation' alright.

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(Washington Post) – When the University of Missouri at Kansas City was looking for a celebrity speaker to headline its gala luncheon marking the opening of a women's hall of fame, one name came to mind: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But when the former secretary of state's representatives quoted a fee of $275,000, officials at the public university balked. "Yikes!" one e-mailed another.

So the school turned to the next best option: her daughter, Chelsea.

The university paid $65,000 for Chelsea Clinton's brief appearance Feb. 24, 2014, a demonstration of the celebrity appeal and marketability that the former and possibly second-time first daughter employs on behalf of her mother's presidential campaign and family's global charitable empire.

More than 500 pages of e-mails, contracts and other internal documents obtained by The Washington Post from the university under Missouri public record laws detail the school's long courtship of the Clintons.

They also show the meticulous efforts by Chelsea Clinton's image-makers to exert tight control over the visit, ranging from close editing of marketing materials and the introductory remarks of a high school student to limits on the amount of time she spent on campus.

The schedule she negotiated called for her to speak for 10 minutes, participate in a 20-minute, moderated question-and-answer session and spend a half-hour posing for pictures with VIPs offstage.

As with Hillary Clinton's paid speeches at universities, Chelsea Clinton made no personal income from the appearance, her spokesman said, and directed her fee to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

"Chelsea is grateful to have the opportunity to speak at events like this while also supporting the work of the Clinton Foundation," said the spokesman, Kamyl Bazbaz. He said she was happy to "celebrate the legacy of women in their community."

Chelsea Clinton, who at the time was just shy of her 34th birthday, commanded a higher fee than other prominent women speakers the university considered booking when Hillary Clinton proved too expensive, including feminist icon Gloria Steinem ($30,000) and journalists Cokie Roberts ($40,000), Tina Brown ($50,000) and Lesley Stahl ($50,000), the records show.

Officials with the school appeared to believe Clinton was worth her fee, which university spokesman John Martellaro said was paid using private donations. They exulted to Clinton's representatives that the luncheon sold out quickly, with 1,100 tickets selling for $35 each — which would equal $38,500. University officials say the event was intended to boost attention for the new hall of fame, not raise money.

"Chelsea was the perfect fit," Amy Loughman, an alumni relations official who managed the event, wrote in an e-mail a few days later. "It created fantastic buzz in the community."

Chelsea Clinton has become an increasingly public figure in her own right.

With her parents stepping back from the foundation, started by former president Bill Clinton in 2002, Chelsea Clinton has assumed a prominent management role there and as an advocate for its work on global health, childhood obesity and other issues. Until last summer, she worked as a special correspondent for NBC News, where Politico first reported she earned an annual salary of $600,000.

Clinton is stepping out as an early key surrogate for her mother's campaign, appearing this spring on the cover of Elle magazine and walking at the head of the campaign's marchers at last weekend's gay pride parade in New York City. Last week, an all-male a capella group released a playful music video called"Chelsea's Mom," which Clinton praised on Twitter.

Clinton has delivered nine paid speeches on behalf of the Clinton Foundation in recent years, raising between $370,000 and $800,000 for the nonprofit organization. Overall, the foundation has taken in between $12 million and $26 million in speaking fees, the lion's share of that money from 73 speeches delivered by Bill Clinton.

In dozens of e-mails exchanged between University of Missouri officials and Clinton's representatives at the Harry Walker Agency, which arranges appearances by all three Clintons, there was no reference to her $65,000 fee going to charity. Nor was there any reference in the five-page contract.

The university paid the fee — which also covered Clinton's travel expenses — in two disbursements to the Walker Agency. But Martellaro said, "We have no knowledge of how funds were disbursed from that point."

Bazbaz said all of Clinton's paid speeches through the Walker Agency are delivered on behalf of the foundation "to support implementing its life saving work" and that this was "always the intention" with the University of Missouri. He added that neither she nor her hosts receive charitable tax deductions.

The contract stipulated that Clinton would have final approval of everything, such as the selection of her introducer (celebrities, journalists and elected officials were prohibited from consideration), the onstage setup (there must be "room-temperature water" next to her podium along with "two comfortable armed-and-backed chairs" for the question-and-answer session) and the type of microphone provided for her use (both lavaliere and handheld).

In e-mails with university officials, Clinton's aides closely edited the texts of press releases, marketing materials and introductory remarks. Clinton's representatives instructed that a line about her being the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton be deleted from one news release and that her title of vice chair of the Clinton Foundation be added beneath her name on an electronic flier. Other materials mentioned her parents, however.

When reviewing the script that a student would read introducing her, a Clinton Foundation aide asked university officials to remove the list of Clinton's degrees. A Clinton adviser, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the event, said "this was by no means an intention to script a high school student's introduction of Chelsea," but rather to avoid what otherwise would have been a recitation of all of Clinton's achievements.

Clinton's representatives also instructed university officials to cut a reference to her mother-in-law, former congresswoman Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, from a news release being drafted about the event. Margolies-Mezvinsky was an acquaintance of Martha Jane Phillips Starr, a Kansas City philanthropist and namesake of the hall of fame that Clinton was unveiling. However, a Clinton adviser noted that Margolies-Mezvinsky was mentioned during the event itself.

Clinton's representatives also closely managed her time on campus. They asked whether she would be free to depart from the event once she finished her remarks, rather than waiting until the luncheon concluded. Martellaro said she stayed until the end.

Clinton agreed to pose for photographs backstage with 100 VIPs prior to the speech. But her representatives requested that only 20 to 30 minutes be budgeted for the photo line, rather than 45 minutes the university initially sought.

The contract required that the university submit a final list of attendees (including their occupations, titles and affiliations) two weeks prior to the event "for vetting" and stipulated that guests must be lined up prior to Clinton's arrival and then "proceed to their seats" after their photos were taken. The contract also gave Clinton's team "final approval" of which media outlets were authorized to cover the speech.

Some of these requirements are standard for prominent speakers.

The documents show that university officials were persistent in pursuing Clinton as a speaker. When they first inquired about her availability, a Walker Agency staffer informed them that Clinton had never before accepted a speaking invitation.

Later, a speaking agency staffer told the university that Clinton had decided to "consider a very select few invitations" and that the mission of their project made it something she might agree to do.

During her remarks, Clinton praised both her parents and highlighted the work of their foundation, talking at length about its efforts to lower drug prices.

"As my mother has observed, equal rights for women and girls remains the unfinished business of the 21st century," she said, according to a university account of her remarks. "We will only complete this business if we are equally committed and we highlight the role models we are already blessed to have."






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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Same story two takes...make that 4





Take 1




Man exonerated last year after 30 years on death row dies


SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A 65-year-old Shreveport man on death row for three decades before being exonerated last year has died.

An attorney for Glenn Ford told multiple media outlets that Ford died Monday. Ford had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

The attorney, William Most, says Ford had been the longest-serving death row inmate in the U.S. at the time of his release on March 10, 2014. Ford was found guilty in 1984 in the 1983 murder of a Shreveport jeweler, but his conviction was vacated after new evidence pointed to a different suspect in the killing.

After his release, Ford petitioned the state of Louisiana for compensation but was denied.

Ford, who resided in New Orleans after his release and until his death, is survived by several children and grandchildren living in California.

So you read this story and you say to yourself...Man did this poor bastard get screwed! 






Take 2




Exonerated convict Glenn Ford succumbs to lung cancer at 65


Glenn Ford, who spent nearly 30 years on Angola's death row for a murder that prosecutors eventually conceded he did not commit, died in New Orleans early Monday (June 29), supporters announced. He was 65.

Ford learned he had lung cancer shortly after his release from Angola on March 11, 2014. A news release from Ford's supporters said he died at 2:11 a.m., having been "surrounded by friends, loved ones and family in recent days."

Ford, who was born in Shreveport on Oct. 22, 1949, was convicted of the 1983 murder of 56-year-old Isadore Rozeman, a Shreveport jeweler and watchmaker for whom Ford had done occasional yard work. Ford had always denied killing Rozeman, and on March 10, 2014, he was exonerated of the crime when the state vacated his conviction.

State District Judge Ramona Emanuel voided Ford's conviction and sentence based on new information corroborating his claim that he was not present or involved in Rozeman's death, Ford's attorneys said.

Ford was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in 1984 and sentenced to death. He spent 29 years, three months and five days in solitary confinement on Angola's death row. At the time of his release, Ford was the longest-serving death row inmate in the United States, supporters said.

The final 15 months of Ford's life were spent outside prison walls but not without challenges.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's office filed a petition to deny Ford state-mandated compensation for his wrongful conviction and imprisonment, arguing Ford failed to meet the law's "factually innocent" clause. The provision requires petitioners to have not committed the crime for which they were originally convicted as well as "any crime based upon the same set of facts" used in the original conviction.

First Judicial District Court Judge Katherine Clark Dorroh sided with Caldwell in a ruling three months ago, deciding Ford was aware of the plan to rob Rozeman and failed to stop it, and took and sold items stolen during the robbery. The judge also ruled Ford tried to find buyers for the weapon used in Rozeman's murder, and that he tried to hinder the police investigation by initially giving a false name for the man he later identified as Rozeman's killer.

Ford died while awaiting the outcome of separate federal lawsuits aimed at securing compensation for his imprisonment and failing health, which he claimed resulted from insufficient medical treatment while in prison. Supporters said all he had received from the state before his death was $20 for a bus ride home from prison.

Supporters said Ford is survived by "several children" who live in California, and "more than 10 grandchildren."

A memorial service will be held at the Charbonnet Funeral Home at 1615 St. Philip St., but a date and time had not been immediately determined, supporters said. They asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Ford's name to Resurrection After Exoneration at www.r-a-e.org. 


BTW...this is Glenn Ford... then and now.



It is interesting to note in only one of the 4 articles does it mention...[Ford was aware of the plan to rob Rozeman and failed to stop it, and took and sold items stolen during the robbery. The judge also ruled Ford tried to find buyers for the weapon used in Rozeman's murder, and that he tried to hinder the police investigation by initially giving a false name for the man he later identified as Rozeman's killer.]

Is this true? If it is he did exhibit at lease some culpability in the commission of this crime. I don't think to the tune of 30 years in jai was right. But why were they the only one to report it? Why did the others leave it out? 

Just something to think about.








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