Source: Huffington Post

They say it's a tacit embrace of Citizens United.

In last week's head-to-head debate with Bernie Sanders, Clinton accused the Vermont senator of deploying a "very artful smear" against her by bringing up the $675,000 she received for speaking at Goldman Sachs.

"I really don't think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you," Clinton said to Sanders. "If you got something to say, say it directly. But you will never find that I have ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation I've received."

The audience booed Clinton over the exchange. She also raised a lot of eyebrows beyond the debate hall.
...
"I can see how in the heat of hand-to-hand political combat, that might be an appealing defense," says Kurt Walters, a campaign manager with the anti-corruption group Rootstrikers, referring to Clinton's "smear" line. "But just like the Citizens United line of thinking, it ignores all of the other ways that money influences politics beyond the explicit exchange of cash for a vote."
...
"Clinton, like our Supreme Court, ignores thousands of years of human experience in how money corrupts politics not just through quid pro quos, but also by shaping attitudes," says David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning economics writer.
...
"People say, 'Oh, [the money] doesn't have any effect on me,'" Frank told NPR in 2012. "Well, if that were the case, we'd be the only human beings in the history of the world who, on a regular basis, took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and made sure that it had no effect on our behavior."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-smear-wall-street_us_56b9025de4b08069c7a86088

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Tone deaf within her own party?

Looks like her campaign is taking on water fast ...

The article snags Barney Frank in a bit of a flip-flop

Source: Politico

Hillary and Bill Clinton are so dissatisfied with their campaign’s messaging and digital operations they are considering staffing and strategy changes after what’s expected to be a loss in Tuesday’s primary here, according to a half-dozen people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Clintons -- stung by her narrow victory in Iowa -- had been planning to reassess staffing at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters after the first four primaries, but the Clintons have become increasingly caustic in their criticism of aides and demanded the reassessment sooner, a source told POLITICO.
...
“There’s nobody sitting in the middle of this empowered to create a message and implement it,” said one former Obama 2008 aide. “They are kind of rudderless… occasionally Hillary grabs the rudder, but until recently she was not that interested in [working on messaging]… Look, she going to be the nominee, but she’s not going to get any style points and if she isn’t careful she is going to be a wounded nominee. And they better worked this shit out fast because who ever the Republicans pick is going to be 29 times tougher than Bernie.”
...
But from the beginning, there have been deeper issues simmering within the cheerfully-decorated Brooklyn headquarters -- and much of that had to do with a disconnect between the candidate and her campaign. Over the summer while her campaign was bogged down in the email controversy, Clinton was deeply frustrated with her own staff, and vice versa. The candidate blamed her team for not getting her out of the mess quickly, and her team blamed Clinton for being stubbornly unwilling to take the advice of campaign chairman John Podesta and others to apologize, turn over her server, and move on. The entire experience made her a deeply vulnerable frontrunner out of the gate, and underscored a lack of trust between Clinton and her operatives, many of whom were former Obama staffers that she didn't consider part of her inner circle of trust.




Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-staff-shakeup-218955

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Worth a read - the four paragraphs do not do it justice but you get the gist

Sounds like they're in a mess.

Clinton’s Achilles Heels (blog by Andrew Sullivan, Feb 2014)
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/threads/clintons-achilles-heels/

But more importantly for me is the inability of her supporters to answer a simple question. I was having dinner with a real Clinton fan the other night, and I actually stumped him (and he’s not easily stumped). What have been Hillary Clinton’s major, signature accomplishments in her long career in public life? What did she achieve in her eight years as First Lady exactly? What stamp did she put on national policy in her time as Senator from New York? What were her defining and singular achievements as secretary-of-state?

Maybe readers can answer those questions. I’m a little stumped.

The readers below this blog (at the link) attempt to answer it without much success in my opinion and apparently, in Sullivans.

Like Andrew Sullivan, I too am still a little stumped.

She's been in Washington politics longer than Tricky Dick Nixon was before he got elected president - maybe the longest in US political history. (??)

This came up again with her chameleon politics, flip-flop from
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/hillary-clinton-democrat-progressive/

"You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center," Clinton told the audience at a Women for Hillary event in Ohio. "I plead guilty."

to "I'm a progressive who gets things done.”

Let's not argue about her being a "moderate progressive", ok? Thanks.

Which got me asking myself again, like Sullivan, "what is she talking about? what things has she got done?" and I've asked that in threads and got crickets.

And I don't mean she tagged along or hopped on board when it was politically safe. I mean she took something, ran with it and achieved something notable - a "signature accomplishment".

CNN/WMUR Sanders 58% Clinton 35% Sanders +23
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/07/politics/new-hampshire-poll-donald-trump-bernie-sanders/index.html

UMass/7News (Tracking) Sanders 57, Clinton 40 Sanders +17
http://www.uml.edu/docs/2-7%20TOPLINE%20-%20UMassLowell-7NEWS%20NH%20PRIMARY_tcm18-230859.pdf

ARG (Tracking) Sanders 53, Clinton 42, Sanders +11
http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres2016/primary/dem/nhdem.html


RealClear Poll of Polls Sanders 55.0 Clinton 39.8 Sanders +15.2
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

Bernie is in very good shape for Tuesday's vote

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/23_july_2015_cn_summary_of_ic_ig_support_to_state_department_ig.pdf

We note that none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included IC-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked, and transmitted via a secure network.

link to statement

The IC IG found four emails containing classified IC-derived information in a limited sample of 40 emails of the 30,000 emails provided by former Secretary Clinton. The four emails, which have not been released through the State FOIA process, did not contain classification markings and/or dissemination controls. These emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department; rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/23July2015_CN_SummaryofICIGsupport.PDF

"State personnel continue to deny the classified character of the released information despite a definitive determination from the IC Interagency FOIA process)"

The State Department tried "deny, deny, deny". That's part of the point of my post above for Feb 4th Press Conference. The State Department isn't denying it any more!!!

The FBI, the CIA, the IG of the State Department, the IG of the Intelligence Community and now, finally, the State Department itself all agree ... that Hillary transmitted material that was classified at the time of transmission.

The only one now left who doesn't agree with this ... is Hillary.

Game over.

the State Department on Thursday agreeing with the findings of the CIA that were written up by the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community - that there were top secret emails that were classified at the time of transmission. It's there in black and white.

Who are we to believe: you or the Inspector General of the intelligence Community?

The Inspector General of the intelligence Community scolded the State Department for continuing being in denial the emails were classified even after it had effectively been proven. So some of this was the State Department misleading the public with misleading answers.

My post also lays out why what Clinton claimed is virtually impossible - like a DNA test giving a wrong result.

It also lays out how little Clinton's situation has in common with Powell and Rice private emails.

It's far from the same situation. Powell and Rice (or her staff) used private email for material that was not classified at the time.

For you to believe Hillary did the same, one thing you have to accept, since she only had one email address (no .gov email address),
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/07/13/email-facts/
is that she never sent or received any information in any email that was already classified in her four years as Secretary of State. Think about that. Think about what the Secretary of State does and how impossible that scenario would be to come about given that information from foreigners is born classified.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-emails-idUSKCN0QQ0BW20150821

Powell and Rice did not:
- have their own unsecured server at home storing state department emails - including over 1600 emails with classified information - some that were classified when she took possession of it
- exposed emails between the president and SoS through her unsecure server which are born confidential/classified
- have 29 (apparently the number has risen) top secret emails exposed over and above the other two that were beyond top secret
- expose emails from foreign countries that are born classified (classified the second they are created)
So there are quite of few things very different about what went on here with Hillary's emails compared with Powell & Rice. But Hillary didn't tell the American people that during the debate. She implied her situation was basically the same ... another lie. Clinging to Powell and Rice's situation was bogus and Hillary knew it.

Check out this little exchange in the press conference of Feb 4th
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2016/02/252161.htm

QUESTION: Right. So are you challenging sworn declarations from the CIA that they were top secret at the time of transmission?

MR KIRBY: As I said last week, it was at the request of the intelligence community that we specifically upgraded that traffic to top secret.

QUESTION: Okay, so you don’t dispute that.

MR KIRBY: If we had disputed it, we wouldn’t have upgraded it --

QUESTION: Okay.

John Kirby, Spokesperson at the state Department, acknowledged that there are sworn declarations from the CIA that said there were emails on Hillary's server that were top secret at the time of transmission and Kirby doesn't dispute those declarations (noted in Jan 14th letter link below).
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2693832/Letter-by-the-Intelligence-Agencies-Inspector.pdf

Hillary has denied doing this and the CIA has two sworn declarations she did that the State Department does not dispute.

Do Powell and Rice have "sworn declarations from the CIA that" their emails "were top secret at the time of transmission" ? Nope.

Would Hillary know what has been found? The IG says he's been updating her lawyer. And heck, it's in the news and on the State Department website.

I wouldn't put too much stock in Powell's or Rice's email situation. I realize that's what Hillary has tried to suck us into doing but that's another Clinton deception.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/index.html

Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, combined to earn more than $153 million in paid speeches from 2001 until Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign last spring, a CNN analysis shows.

In total, the two gave 729 speeches from February 2001 until May, receiving an average payday of $210,795 for each address. The two also reported at least $7.7 million for at least 39 speeches to big banks, including Goldman Sachs and UBS, with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic 2016 front-runner, collecting at least $1.8 million for at least eight speeches to big banks.
...
"What being part of the establishment is, is in the last quarter, having a super PAC that raised $15 million from Wall Street, that throughout one's life raised a whole lot of money from the drug companies and other special interests," Sanders said at Thursday's Democratic debate hosted by MSNBC.
...
"Time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is this attack that he is putting forth which really comes down to, you know, anybody who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought. And I just absolutely reject that, senator, and I really don't think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. And enough is enough," Clinton said.

Breakdown of speeches
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2704851/Total-Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton-Speech-Income.pdf

I'd say this supports much of what Bernie has been saying and it's a very prominent story on CNN.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/iowa-caucus-2016-live-updates/2016/02/iowa-caucus-clinton-wall-street-journal-218602?lo=ap_b2





Poor Rupert Murdoch ...

http://www.uml.edu/docs/TOPLINE%20-%20UMassLowell-7NEWS%20NH%20PRIMARY%202-1-16_tcm18-230419.pdf

Bernie beats her in every demographic

On to Nevada ?