Tag: Hillary

As the Impeachment Senate Trial Begins, Shocking New Information is Revealed as to How Big the Biden Corruption Scandal Actually is

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

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Nadler insisted on Face the Nation that all “relevant witnesses must be heard” — meaning their witnesses. Yet, if allowing witnesses meant Hunter Biden being called, he suggested that they would reject any deal — and any witnesses. He dismissed any negotiation as a cover up: “Any Republican senator who says there should be no witnesses, or even that witnesses should be negotiated, is part of the cover-up.” – Jonathan Turley

Uh huh.

There is a reason that Jerry Nadler and the Democrats do not want Hunter Biden to be questioned by President Trump’s Legal Team.

It could bring down an entire Administration…and it would not be President Trump’s.

Breitbart.com reports that

Hunter Biden, son of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, has come under scrutiny for his business links to Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma while his father was vice president.

Now, a new book by author Peter Schweizer reveals Hunter Biden forged other business deals with individuals and entities tied with the governments of Russia, China, and Kazakhstan, that reportedly scored him hundreds of millions of dollars.

The book, titled Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite., lays out how Hunter Biden and his business partners, in addition to his numerous Rosemont-branded entities and ventures, was deeply involved with an entity called the Burnham Financial Group.

Hunter and his business partner, Devon Archer, used Burnham to make foreign deals with governments and oligarchs, according to a copy of the book viewed by Breitbart News.

One of those oligarchs included Nurlan Abduov, the associate of another Kazakh oligarch, Kenges Rakishev. Rakishev is the son-in-law of the former vice prime minister of Kazakhstan, Imangali Tasmagambetov. Tasmagamvetov was also formerly the defense minister, and is now the Kazakh ambassador to Russia.

According to the book, an account Hunter regularly received funds from showed money arriving from a firm run by Rakishev in 2014:

“A Morgan Stanley investment account from which Hunter regularly received funds shows money arriving from mysterious sources around the world. There is a $142,300 deposit in April 2014 from Kazakh oligarch–controlled Novatus Holdings. Kenges Rakishev, whose father-in-law is the former vice prime minister of Kazakhstan and a close ally of Kazakh dictator Nursultan
Nazarbayev, runs the offshore firm.

While Burnham received funds from Kazakh oligarchs, Archer acted as a backchannel between Kazakhstan to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the book. (Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz was a business partner with Biden and Archer in some of their ventures).”

In a July 11, 2013, email, Kerry’s chief of staff David Wade wrote to Archer:

“Devon: understand you spoke to the Secretary re having him call [Kazakh] Foreign Minister Idrisov today, can you let me know topics Idrisov wants to talk about/any requests he’ll have of the boss, so we can get paper prepared for a call. Hopefully, the situation on the home front will leave him time to do it.”

Burnham also had business deals with two mysterious Chinese companies — Kirin Global Enterprses Limited and Harvest Global Investors, according to the book.

Kirin Global Enterprise Limited was an investment vehicle run by Xiangyao (or Yaojun) “Larry” Liu and Guo Jianfeng, according to Schweizer. “Very little is known about Kirin or its two principals, other than the fact that they invest heavily in mainland Chinese real estate,” he writes. Harvest Global Investors was a Chinese investment firm linked to the government in Beijing.

Burnham also had a financial relationship with Russian Oligarch Yelena Baturina, a billionaire with extensive political connections in Moscow and links to Russian organized crime, according to Schweizer. Archer said Baturina invested $200 million into “various investment funds” with which he was involved.

Burnham also got wrapped up in a $60 million fraudulent bond scheme to rip off union pension funds and the poorest Indian tribe in America, the Oglala Sioux, Schweizer writes.

In May 2016, Archer was arrested in New York and charged with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars.”

Some of the targeted were government employee or labor union organizations that had supported Joe Biden in the past. Biden has long described himself as a “union man.”

Although Hunter Biden was not charged, Schweizer writes, “his fingerprints were all over Burnham.” The legitimacy that his name and political status as the vice president’s son lent to Burnham was brought up repeatedly during the trial, he writes.

That status was used as a means of both recruiting pension money into the scheme and alleviating investors’ concerns, he writes. In an August 2014 email, Jason Galanis, who was convicted in the bond scheme, agreed that Burnham had “value beyond capital” because of their political connections.

Hunter Biden had an office at Burnham’s New York City offices on Fifty-Seventh Street, and during the trial, numerous witnesses came forward describing Hunter’s involvement with the firm, according to the book.

Schweizer writes these deals have long been a pattern with the Biden family, to include Hunter Biden:

“With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. Sometimes he would hitch a prominent ride with his father aboard Air Force Two to visit a country where he was courting business. Other times, the deals would be done more discreetly. Always they involved foreign entities that appeared to be seeking something from his father. Often, the countries in question, including Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan, had highly corrupt political cultures.”

In short, Hunter Biden was not cutting business deals in Japan or Great Britain, where disclosure rules and corporate governance might require greater scrutiny. These were deals in the truly dark corners of the world.

If you have been wondering why the Democrats have been arguing that Hunter Biden is irrelevant to their Impeachment of President Trump, the above article should have answered your questions.

Hunter Biden was the point of the spear in a Foreign Policy scandal which is just a small part of what will go down as the most corrupt Presidential Administration in history, making the Warren G. Harding Teapot Dome Scandal pale in comparison.

All of this boggles the mind. Think about it:

The Clinton Foundation Pay-for-Play

The Bidens’ misuse of the power of the Vice-President for personal gain

President Barack Hussein Obama’s $150 billion bribe of the murderous Mullahs of Iran which included hosting Radical Islamists like the late (Thank God) Gen. Quassem Soleimani at the White House

The trading of Muslim Terrorists for the traitorous Bowe Berdahl

What if this whole continuous attack on President Trump…the Special Counsel’s “Russian Collusion” investigation and the hurried Democratic House Impeachment are all part of a strategy to cover up the out-of-control corruption, both foreign and domestic, which took place during the Obama Administration with the knowledge and consent of President Barack Hussein Obama, himself?

That would certainly explain the Democrats’ over-the-top reaction to losing the 2016 Presidential Election and their vicious rhetoric and unconstitutional political actions and schemes since.

If the House Democrats continue to insist today in attempting to bully the Senate into calling witnesses against President Trump, then as Senator Ted Cruz has said, for each Democrat Witness that it allow, a corresponding Witness for the Defense MUST be allowed to testify.

Time timing of the release of this information about the Bidens’ criminality certainly favors the Presidents’ case for asking for information from the President of Ukraine.

President Trump was right all along.

I have this feeling that things are about to get very interesting and this could be the start of something BIG.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Hillary: From Watergate to E-mailGate…A Matter of Trust

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments
BBerry-Grandma-NRD-6002Where Hillary Rodham Clinton spits, grass never grows again.
According to The Daily Beast,
These weren’t just ordinary secrets found in Clinton’s private server, but some of the most classified material the U.S. government has.
After months of denials and delaying actions, Hillary Clinton has decided to turn over her private email server to the Department of Justice. As this controversy has grown since the spring, Clinton and her campaign operatives have repeatedly denied that she had placed classified information in her personal email while serving as Secretary of State during President Obama’s first term. (“I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received,” she said last month.) Her team also denied that she would ever hand over her server to investigators. Now both those assertions have been overturned.Hillary Clinton has little choice but to hand over her server to authorities since it now appears increasingly likely that someone on her staff violated federal laws regarding the handling of classified materials. On August 11, after extensive investigation, the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General reported to Congress that it had found several violations of security policy in Clinton’s personal emails.Most seriously, the Inspector General assessed that Clinton’s emails included information that was highly classified—yet mislabeled as unclassified. Worse, the information in question should have been classified up to the level of “TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN,” according to the Inspector General’s report.You may have seen acronym lists like these on declassified documents before—and glazed over them. This is the arcane language of the cleared cognoscenti so let me explain what this means:

• TOP SECRET, as the name implies, is the highest official classification level in the U.S. government, defined as information whose unauthorized release “could cause exceptionally grave damage to national security or foreign relations.”

• SI refers to Special Intelligence, meaning it is information derived from intercepted communications, which is the business of the National Security Agency, America’s single biggest source of intelligence. They’re the guys who eavesdrop on phone calls, map who’s calling who, and comb through emails. SI is a subset of what the intelligence community calls Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI. And these materials always require special handling and protection. They are to be kept in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF, which is a special hardened room that is safe from both physical and electronic intrusion.

• TK refers to Talent Keyhole, which is an IC caveat indicating that the classified material was obtained via satellite.

• NOFORN, as the name implies, means that the materials can only be shown to Americans, not to foreigners.

In short: Information at the “TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN” level is considered exceptionally highly classified and must be handled with great care under penalty of serious consequences for mishandling. Every person who is cleared and “read on” for access to such information signs reams of paperwork and receives detailed training about how it is to be handled, no exceptions—and what the consequences will be if the rules are not followed.

In the real world, people with high-level clearances are severely punished for willfully violating such rules. At a minimum, those suspected of mishandling things like NSA “signals intelligence”—intercepts calls, emails, and the like—have their clearances suspended pending the outcome of the investigation into their misconduct. Any personal items—computers, electronics—where federal investigators suspect the classified wound up, wrongly, will be impounded and searched. If it has TOP SECRET//SI information on it, “your” computer now belongs to the government, since it is considered classified.
People found to have willfully mishandled such highly classified information often face severe punishment. Termination of employment, hefty fines, even imprisonment can result. Yes, people really do go to jail for mishandling classified materials. Matthew Aid, a writer on intelligence matters, served over a year in prison for mishandling TOPSECRET//SI information from NSA, for example. The well connected tend to avoid jail, however. Sandy Berger and John Deutsch—who both served in high-level positions under President Bill Clinton, did not go to prison for mishandling TOP SECRET intelligence (though Berger got probation and was fined $50,000).
What, then, does all this means for Hillary? There is no doubt that she, or someone on her State Department staff, violated federal law by putting TOP SECRET//SI information on an unclassified system. That it was Hillary’s private, offsite server makes the case even worse from a security viewpoint. Claims that they “didn’t know” such information was highly classified do not hold water and are irrelevant. It strains belief that anybody with clearances didn’t recognize that NSA information, which is loaded with classification markings, was signals intelligence, or SIGINT. It’s possible that the classified information found in Clinton’s email trove wasn’t marked as such. But if that classification notice was omitted, it wasn’t the U.S. intelligence community that took such markings away. Moreover, anybody holding security clearances has already assumed the responsibility for handling it properly.
Responsibilities.
Mrs. Clinton has shown in the past how she handles “responsibilities”. 
From my blog, “It Takes a Radical: The Very Political Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton”:

“In the spring of 1974, Hillary Rodham Clinton became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal.Her boss back then, Jerry Zeifman, now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, tells a very revealing story concerning her work there.

According to Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former Yale Law Professor, Burke Marshall, also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.

When the Watergate Investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. That made the Future First Lady and Secretary of State one of only three people who earned that badge of dishonor in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

According to Zeifman,

Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.

Zeifman claims that she was one of several individuals including Marshall, Special Counsel John Doar, and Senior Associate Special Counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum, who plotted to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Zeifman believes  that they were deathly afraid of putting the break-in’s mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by Counsel to the President.  The reason being, Hunt had the goods regarding some dirty dealings  in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a kid busting open his Piggy Bank…dealings which purportedly included Kennedy’s complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

Hillary and her associates were acting directly against the decision of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, who all believed that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel.

The reason that Hillary and the rest came up with the scheme is because they believed that they could gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon.

In order to pull off this scheme, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

Hillary wanted to present in her brief that there was no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. Zeifman told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970….

As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer.

Douglas was allowed to keep counsel by the Judicial Committee in place at the time, which clearly established a precedent. Zeifman told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files.

That was  a mistake, per Zeifman…

Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public.

Hillary then wrote a legal brief which argued that there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding…ignoring the Douglas case completely.

The brief was so laughingly fraudulent, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had ever actually submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary and her associates had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even be a part of the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.”

There are a lot of images that race through my mind, right now, as I sit here at my computer.I remember the image of a lone terrorist, brandishing a machine gun, standing in front of the burning Benghazi Consulate.

I also remember the image of Benghazi Barbarians dragging a murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens through the streets, taking pictures every few yards, with their cell phones. 

My mind envisions the image of two brave Americans, up on a roof holding off 100 Muslim Terrorists, trying desperately to hold out for help which was denied to them, until finally the overwhelming numbers which comprise the horde of barbarians, murdered them as well. 

I imagine Ambassador Stevens’ elderly mother, making the trip from the West Coast to the East Coast to pick up the lifeless body of her abused and murdered son, whom she and her entire family were so proud of.

Finally, I remember the show of hypocrisy involving members of this anti-American Administration, including then-Secretary of State Clinton, solemnly welcoming the bodies of those brave Americans home.

And, then, her brazen, unfeeling statement,

At this point, what difference does it make?

I Fully expect her to make some sort of arrogant statement like that about this egregious situation.

Former Secretary Clinton…the truth makes a big difference…to the families of those that were so savagely murdered that fateful night…and to the millions of Americans who still believe in this “Shining City on a Hill”.

Americans deserve the truth.

And, you should be ashamed to be running for the office of President of the United States.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

 

 
 

The War Against Christianity: Hillary-“Religious Beliefs Have to be Changed” to Allow Abortion

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, PoliticsLeave a comment

American Christianity 2History has shown us that, no matter how hard a politician tries to hide the nature of their heart and soul, eventually, they will say something to reveal it.

In a speech this past week at a Women’s Summit, Democratic Presidential Hopeful, Hillary Rodham Clinton, did just that.

Breitbart.com reports that

“Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth. All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced,” Hillary Clinton said at the Women in the World Summit on Thursday night. “Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper.  Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

Clinton made it emphatically clear she’s not just talking about, say, the horrific abuse of women by Islamist extremists: “As I have said, and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century, and not just for women but for everyone… and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.” She pointed at the very ground she was standing upon, to emphasize the point.

As an aside, that has to be one of the strangest, clunkiest rhetorical devices I’ve ever heard: “As I have said, and as I believe…” Granted, with politicians in general and Clintons in particular, a disclaimer that what they’re saying really is what they believe is often necessary, but there’s no particular reason to believe such a disclaimer when Hillary Clinton delivers it.  If she really believed everything she was saying at this Women in the World Summit, why was she happy to rake in millions of dollars from countries that treat women horribly?

Quibbles about odd rhetorical devices aside, this vow to use government force to rewrite religious belief and make it more contraception- and abortion-friendly is deeply offensive, and par for the course with true believers in the Church of the State, as both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are. Clinton has been at it much longer. Back in the Nineties, she was high on the notion of the collectivist State as a spiritual vehicle – the “politics of meaning,” as the catch phrase went.

The difference is that Obama will occasionally use Christian symbolism and Scripture to advance his political agenda, as when he insists that charity can only be properly administered by the State, and Christians are therefore obliged to support high taxes, massive government spending, and regulatory power. Obama is also big on using Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” against Christians, as when he tried to shame them out of criticizing his foreign policy by pontificating about the Crusades.

Clinton, on the other hand, more explicitly views politics as absorbing religion, as in this example. Her Church of the State has made certain decrees concerning mandatory payment for other peoples’ contraceptives and unrestricted abortion; any organized religion that resists must be forcibly re-written to accept these judgments.

Unlike Obama, Hillary isn’t much interested in pretending to be a devout Christian. In this speech, she’s creating a continuum between Taliban savages murdering girls for daring to go to school, and American Christians who don’t want to pay for other peoples’ abortifacient drugs.  Genital mutilation, opposition to late-term abortion… it’s all the same to her. Religions must be reprogrammed until they’re fully compatible with the latest version of radical-feminist code.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Far Left Radical Follower of Saul Alinsky, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, should feel this way.

Hillary, like Obama, sincerely believes that she is the smartest person in any room that she happens to walk into.

There is no room in her ego-filled heart and mind, for a Supreme Being. Hillary, herself, believes that she is the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong in her life.

Have you ever tried to have a discussion with an ardent  pro-abortion supporter, either on Facebook or face-to-face? You won’t hear these “Champions of Tolerance” call those innocent lives, babies, human beings, a life, a soul, a gift from God, or anything remotely resembling something that they should feel remorse about killing.

Heck, Pro-Abortionists are opposed to the taking of sonograms of the woman’s womb, before she has a abortion. They’re afraid that the “seed-carrier” will realize that IS a HUMAN BEING inside her, and will decide not to kill that baby.

Here are some thoughts from The Book provided by The Author of Life:

Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15)

Yet Thou art He who didst bring me forth from the womb; Thou didst make me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. Upon Thee I was cast from birth; Thou hast been my God from my mother’s womb. (Psalm 22:9-10)

For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Thy book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:13-16)

Thus says the LORD who made you And formed you from the womb, who will help you, `Do not fear, O Jacob My servant; And you Jeshurun whom I have chosen. (Isaiah 44:2)

Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the earth all alone, (Isaiah 44:24)

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

Why,  even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not;  you are of more value than many sparrows.”(Luke 12:7 )

From the scientific perspective, Dr. Carlo Bellieni, in his book “Dawn of the I: Pain, Memory, Desire, Dream of the Fetus,” writes:

As soon as it is born, the child shows in a scientifically demonstrable way that it recognizes its mother’s voice and distinguishes it from that of a stranger. Where has he learned that voice other than in the maternal womb?

There are also direct proofs. For example, we register how the movements and cardiac frequency of the fetus vary if we transmit unexpected sounds through the uterine wall. And we see that at first the fetus is startled, then it gets used to it, just like we do when we hear something that does not interest us.

In fact, the scientific evidence is immense. We cannot understand how it can be thought that it becomes a person at a certain point, perhaps when coming out of the uterus.

From the physical point of view, at the birth very little really changes: Air enters the lungs, the arrival of blood from the placenta is interrupted, the type of circulation of blood in the heart changes, and not much more.

As I often say, only blind faith in magic arts or some strange divinity can lead one to think that there is a “human” quality leap at a given moment — certainly not science.

I know that there are some of you that read my blog that are non-believers.  For you and for my Christian brothers and sisters, I offer the following closing thoughts:

There is a curious unique enzyme found in the human body.   Laminin is defined by the Webster Medical Dictionary as a “glycoprotein that is a component of connective tissue basement membrane and that promotes cell adhesion.”  In other words, a glue within the body.

Colossians 1:15-17 tells us:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

I believe that our nation and our leaders should realize that you cannot mock God. With actions come consequences. You know, that “cause and effect” thingy that “the Smartest people in the Room” are so found of bringing up.

Each and every life is precious to The Creator. That baby growing in her womb, is not the property of the mother. Each and every one of us belong to the One who made us. He is our Sovereign Lord.

All those who believe that “it is a woman’s right to choose”…think too highly of themselves.

For every life is a Gift from The Creator to be loved and cherished, as He first loved us.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Another Saturday Morning With Bubba

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

Well, howdy, Mr. President. Good to see you. Please…have a seat.

Waitress, one Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity Breakfast for President Clinton, please, with a large sweet tea to drink.

Wow, Mr. President. Did you see this article in the New York Post yesterday? You didn’t? Here’s, let me read some of it for you:

The title of Klein’s explosive, unauthorized bio of Obama, “The Amateur” (Regnery Publishing), was taken directly from Bill Clinton’s bombshell criticism of the president, the author said.

“Barack Obama,” Bill Clinton said, according to book excerpts, “is an amateur.”

The withering criticism is incredible, given the fact that Bill Clinton is actively campaigning for Obama’s re-election.

But according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president’s home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.

“The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does,” Bill said.

Bill Clinton insisted he had “no relationship” with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.

Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”

But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.

“Why risk everything now?” a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.

“Because,” Bill replied, his voice rising, “the country needs you!”

“The country needs us!” added Bill.

He later even joked about the prospect of having two Clinton presidential libraries — about the only time that Hillary cracked a smile.

“I want my term [at the State Department] to be an important one, and running away from it now would leave it as a footnote,” Hillary argued.

She said she had the option of running again in 2016.

But Bill wouldn’t let go.

“I know you’re young enough!” Bill said, his voice booming. “That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that I’m not young enough.”

“I’m the highest-ranking member in Obama’s Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?” she responded.

“Loyalty is a joke,’’ Bill shot back. “Loyalty doesn’t exist in politics.”

Bill’s verbal battle with Hillary over the presidency, if anything, intensified when daughter Chelsea showed up with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

“You deserve to be president,” Chelsea said.

Bill was clearly pleased that Chelsea was on his side and vowed to have allies commission polls on a Hillary-Obama matchup.

“What are you trying to do — force my hand?” Hillary said.

“I want everyone to know how strong you poll,” Bill said.

Hillary said, “Go ahead and knock yourself out.”

Well, Mr. President, the publishing of this book about you certainly isn’t going to help the Missus’ relationship with “The Lightbringer”, is it?

But, in reality, you’ve felt this way for a while, haven’t you?

Remember back on that Friday afternoon in December 2010?  No?  Well, Jon Ward of The Daily Caller described it this way:

In terms of Washington political drama, Friday was an instant classic.

President Obama ushered former President Bill Clinton to the White House briefing room late Friday for an impromptu press session, then abruptly left the wonky and winsome Arkansan at the podium by himself to defend the Obama administration’s tax deal.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour, so I’m going to take off,” Obama said.

Clinton chuckled, joking, “I don’t want to make her mad. Please go,” and then quickly turned back to the microphone and began taking questions from the White House press corps, which had been given no advance notice of the two presidents’ trip to the briefing room.

At the same time on Capitol Hill, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, was in his sixth hour of speaking on the Senate floor in a real life filibuster of the president’s tax deal. He began talking shortly before 10:30 a.m. on Friday and was still speaking at 6 p.m.

“I think that the American people don’t like this agreement,” Sanders said, predicting that if the deal to extend the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for two years were to pass, all cuts – even those for the top brackets, which he opposes – would be “extended long term.”

Despite Sanders’ filibuster, the real obstacles to the deal’s passage are in the House, where Democrats are incensed at the deal, in some ways on substance but also in large part because it was brokered directly with Republicans and without their input.

Clinton’s main purpose in appearing before the press was to lobby the public, but even more so House Democrats, to accept the deal.

“A lot them are hurting now, and I get it,” Clinton said. “I have an enormous amount of respect for the Democrats in the House … I regret that so many of them lost.”

And, just think, Mr. President, thanks to this “amateur” in the White House, more of your Democratic friends are going to lose their jobs this November.  

And, if we’re lucky, the guy you rightly pegged as an amateur will, too.

More Chens Than a Chinese Phonebook

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

– John F. Kennedy

Obama’s “Smart Power!” Foreign Policy is looking like anything but, in his handling of the case of a blind gentleman from China who wants to defect to America.

Thehill.com has the story.

The Chinese dissident at the center of a political firestorm called a hearing Thursday and told lawmakers he wants to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng called a hearing set up to explore his efforts to leave China and escape persecution—apparently from a Chinese hospital room.

“I want to meet with Secretary Clinton,” he said on the phone. “I hope I can get more help from her. I also want to thank her face to face.”

Chen added that he is most concerned with his family, and said, “I really want to know what’s going on with them.”

“I want to thank all of you for your care and your love,” he added, through a translation by Pastor Bob Fu, Founder and President, ChinaAid Association. Fu was a witness at Thursday’s hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Chen is at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and China that has become a political liability for President Obama.

Chen was under house arrest for several months for protesting China’s one-child policy, but escaped to the U.S. Embassy, where he stayed for several days.

The U.S. and China appeared to reach a deal Wednesday that allowed Chen to remain in China, where he said he wished to stay.

But after Chen was released to a Chinese hospital to have his injuries treated, the dissident said he did not want to stay in China and requested political asylum in the U.S.

Administration officials insisted they did not pressure Chen to stay in China and that he decided on his own initially that he wanted to remain in his country.

But the about-face has led to criticism from Republicans that U.S. officials never should have allowed him to leave the U.S. embassy.

Speaking of the Republicans, the unofficial/official Republican Nominee for President was not shy about voicing his opinion concerning this fiasco:

Mitt Romney condemned the Obama administration’s handling of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, calling the episode “a dark day for freedom” and “a day of shame” for President Obama if, he couched, reports are true that American officials communicated threats to Chen’s family.

At the same time Romney was speaking about the Chen story, about which there are conflicting reports, CNN was reporting that Chen told the network that he blamed a “misunderstanding” with the U.S. government for impressions that the Americans abandoned him and expressed “deep gratitude” to American officials.

Several times on Thursday, Romney couched his comments with disclaimers like “if the reports are true,” but the takeaway was clearly intended that the incident is a black eye for President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“Just in the last day or two we’ve heard some disturbing things from across the world that suggest that, potentially, if the reports are true, some very troubling developments there,” Romney said. “Where an individual, Mr. Chen, has sought freedom in a bastion of freedom, an embassy of the United States of America. Aren’t we proud of the fact that people seeking freedom come to our embassy to find it?”

Romney continued: “The reports are, if they’re accurate, our administration willingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen an implicit threat to his family. And also probably sped up, or may have sped up, the process of his decision to leave the embassy because they wanted to move on to a series of discussions that Mr. Geithner and our secretary of state are planning on having with China.”

The likely GOP presidential nominee added: “It’s also apparent, according to these reports, if they’re accurate, that our embassy failed to put in place the kind of verifiable measures that would assure the safety of Mr. Chen and his family. If the reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration. We are a place of freedom, here and around the world and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack.”

But, according to the Twitter feed of CNN executive producer Ram Ramgopal, Chen offered praise to the Americans who helped him.

“Chen Guangcheng speaks to CNN; says he believes U.S. will help him, expresses “deep gratitude” to American officials in Beijing,” Ramgopal wrote. “Chen also blames a ‘misunderstanding’ for the impression that the U.S. govt. abandoned him in the hospital.”

Romney, who has made a get-tough attitude toward China a central part of his foreign policy, on Sunday released a statement professing concern for Chen’s treatment, but had not previously spoken about the case from the stump.

Good for Mitt.  Well done.

On the subject of freedom, the greatest president in my lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan,  said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

In 1974, in a speech titled, “The Shining City Upon a Hill”, Reagan said:

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, “We will be as a cityupon a hill.The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

Everyone’s watching, Mr. President.  It’s your move.