Spotting Hillary Clinton Hit Pieces

Between now and November there will be endless negative ads about Hillary Clinton. Some will be valid but a couple of the old standards are nakedly misleading, thanks to Carl Rove and others crafting and repeating them early and often.

Here are two clues that a Hillary Clinton hit piece is ahead:

• that picture with dark glasses holding a cell phone, and 
• any reference (visual or print) to "What difference does it make...?" 

Go to the links and read the context for each item. After endless so-called hearings the Benghazi inquiry, finding nothing of consequence, quietly folded their tent and moved on to the email matter. I'm not sure what the big deal is about security when literally thousands of individuals have access to information tagged "classified" and private email is routinely used by many government employees from time to time. (And when I read about data breaches in places like the Office of Personnel Management and most recently the IRS I question whether the official channels are all that secure anyway.)

These two items taken together have become for Clinton what Katrina and Mission Accomplished were for George Bush, reliable indicators that the reader or viewer is encountering something critical, and not in a good way. Both have been taken out of context and spun with remarkable success.

The buzzed-about image was actually taken by Diana Walker on assignment for TIME back in October 2011. In fact, Walker, who worked as TIME’s White House photographer for 20 years under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, was recently awarded the Luce Lifetime Achievement Award for her remarkable contributions to political photography, of which the Clinton picture is just one example. Taken during a weeklong trip with the Secretary of State for a TIME cover story, Walker’s image shows Clinton reading her mobile phone upon departure in a military plane bound for Tripoli, Libya on Oct. 18, 2011. A similar image by Kevin Lamarque of Reuters, who was also on the trip, is being also being used on the Tumblr. 

http://pllqt.it/FdgJRJ

The "What difference..." quote is from one of the endless Benghazi hearings in January, 2013, just a few days following Hillary Clinton's fall in which she sustained a brain concussion (which was why she was wearing glasses). Read the extended transcript and it is clear that her meaning was totally different from what is routinely being twisted to sound awful.)

In December 2012, Clinton fell and sustained the concussion while dealing with a stomach virus. She was subsequently treated for a blood clot and returned to work the following month. 

At the time, some conservatives accused her of faking injuries to avoid testifying before Congress about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

Recently, though, Republicans have increasingly tried to raise doubts about Clinton's health in light of her possible 2016 presidential run. Republican strategist Karl Rove suggested at an event last month that she may have suffered brain damage as a result of her fall -- an assertion that was rebuked by Clinton's spokesman and condemned by some Republicans, such as Newt Gingrich.  

http://pllqt.it/pGJ8mq

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The following screed is being copied and pasted all round the Web. I found it first in a comment at Morning Joe, but a search turns it up in a number of other places, typically in a comment. I recall most of these names and events from when they happened, but this list relies on allegations, suppositions and suspicions more heavily than documented facts.

If you're under 50 you really need to read this. If you’re over 50, you lived through it, so share it with those under 50. Amazing to me how much I had forgotten! 

When Bill Clinton was president, he allowed Hillary to assume authority over a health care reform. Even after threats and intimidation, she couldn’t even get a vote in a democratic controlled congress. This fiasco cost the American taxpayers about $13 million in cost for studies, promotion, and other efforts. 

Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood – both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration.  

Next she chose Janet Reno – husband Bill described her selection as “my worst mistake.” Some may not remember that Reno made the decision to gas David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas resulting in dozens of deaths of women and children. 

Husband Bill allowed Hillary to make recommendations for the head of the Civil Rights Commission. Lani Guanier was her selection. When a little probing led to the discovery of Ms. Guanier’s radical views, her name had to be withdrawn from consideration. 

Apparently a slow learner, husband Bill allowed Hillary to make some more recommendations. She chose former law partners Web Hubbel for the Justice Department, Vince Foster for the White House staff, and William Kennedy for the Treasury Department. Her selections went well: Hubbel went to prison, Foster (presumably) committed suicide, and Kennedy was forced to resign 

Many younger votes will have no knowledge of “Travelgate.” Hillary wanted to award unfettered travel contracts to Clinton friend Harry Thompson – and the White House Travel Office refused to comply. She managed to have them reported to the FBI and fired. This ruined their reputations, cost them their jobs, and caused a thirty-six month investigation. Only one employee, Billy Dale was charged with a crime, and that of the enormous crime of mixing personal and White House funds. A jury acquitted him of any crime in less than two hours.Still not convinced of her ineptness, Hillary was allowed to recommend a close Clinton friend, Craig Livingstone, for the position of Director of White House security. When Livingstone was investigated for the improper access of about 900 FBI files of Clinton enemies (Filegate) and the widespread use of drugs by White House staff, suddenly Hillary and the president denied even knowing Livingstone, and of course, denied knowledge of drug use in the White House. 

Following this debacle, the FBI closed its White House Liaison Office after more than thirty years of service to seven presidents. 

Next, when women started coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and rape by Bill Clinton, Hillary was put in charge of the #$%$ eruption” and scandal defense. Some of her more notable decisions in the debacle were: 

She urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit. After the Starr investigation they settled with Ms. Jones. 

She refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the appointment of Ken Starr as Special Prosecutor. 

After $80 million dollars of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation led to Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting his affairs. 

Hillary’s devious game plan resulted in Bill losing his license to practice law for 'lying under oath' to a grand jury and then his subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives. 

Hillary avoided indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice during the Starr investigation by repeating, “I do not recall,” “I have no recollection,” and “I don’t know” a total of 56 times while under oath. 

After leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had stolen. 

What a swell party – ready for another four or eight year of this type of low-life mess? 

Now we are exposed to the destruction of possibly incriminating emails while Hillary was Secretary of State and the “pay to play” schemes of the Clinton Foundation – we have no idea what shoe will fall next.

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This is the backstory of Hillary Clinton's oft-reported and totally misleading reference to her "support" for Goldwater. 

Hillary Clinton in the Civil Rights Era
By Bill321

Friday Mar 04, 2016

Those who still, against all reason, insist that canvassing at age 16 for the Republican her father supported in 1964 somehow made Clinton a racist, need to know who she met between the 1960 election and the 1964 election 

One Sunday evening in April, 1962, Hillary Rodham and her church youth group attended a speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King at Chicago's Orchestra Hall. Seeing and hearing the civil rights leader had a profound effect on her. She with her group met and talked to King personally after his address, and the event compelled the 14-year-old to volunteer to babysit for migrant workers who could not afford child care. 

Yes, in 1964, at age 16 she again again canvassed for her father’s favorite, the candidate of the Party of Lincoln. Few Americans voted against Goldwater for being personally racist. He wasn't considered a racist. He was considered a lunatic fringe nutcase whose VP pick wanted to drop H-bombs on anyone he didn't like. And for many, his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, though he defended it on legal grounds, meant he would take the nation in a direction—backwards—that they did not want to return to. The Deep South was the only region where Goldwater won, five states, essentially because he promised them he would not upset the segregation apple cart that every facet of southern culture and economy was built on. He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 just a few months before the election. 

But Goldwater's Department Store in Phoenix was integrated. Goldwater hired black Americans to work there, and he had done so for years. He was not a segregationist, but as he told Meet the Press in 1964, when asked if he was courting the segregationist vote, "I'll go hunt where the ducks are." Racist ducks are all he brought home in 1964. 

Bernie was 23 in 1964. A young civil rights idealist. At age 20 in 1968, Hillary put on a black armband the day after MLK was assassinated and initiated a civil rights movement at Wellesley College. She led demonstrations and a drive to force the school to recruit more black students. 

Also at age 20, she denounced the Republican Party as being racist, after she attended the RNC convention in Miami and saw Richard Nixon's supporters attack, sometimes physically, supporters of moderate Republican Nelson Rockefeller, who stood on the old guard Party of Lincoln platform. Nixon threw that one out with his Southern Strategy that swept the racist southern Democrats off their feet for the GOP. 

At age 21, class valedictorian Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley women's college and was selected to address the class of 1969 at the commencement ceremony—the first student commencement speech in Wellesley history. 

Senator Edward Brooke was the keynote speaker, and Clinton's address followed his. Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts, was the nation's first elected African-American Senator. (Eleven African-Americans served in the House, all Democrats.) 

Much more at the links but you get the idea.