FTR I don’t doubt for a minute that she actually gave the speeches. Part of the reason for this kind of thing is not merely to curry favor with politicians, but to enhance the prestige of the organization who hires her - “look at us, we got the once and future President to hobnob with us”. That doesn’t happen if you just give her the money and she doesn’t show up.
Simply throwing money in order to curry favor is what the Saudis do with their donations to the Clinton foundation. That’s just to be sure that, when they do have something to say to Hillary, she will listen. It’s like campaign contributions, except paid in advance of a campaign.
I don’t necessarily think she is corrupt and it doesn’t bother me that people are willing to pay someone like Hillary Clinton a lot of money to appear at an event. Heck, big shot politicians routinely make lots of money for appearances.
I am more concerned about the contents of her speech. Is she talking out of both sides of her mouth? Is she saying “hey don’t worry what I say on the campaign trail, I’ve GOT to say those things for the rubes but I’m really on your side because we all know that you guys are the most important people in the world”
Or is she giving boilerplate speeches on things like the role America plays in the global economy or the role of government generally. Because that is just people paying for access and connection that is no more corrupt than what we see at every black tie fundraiser I have ever been to.
It might reveal that she is even more corrupt, or less. The issue here is her lame excuse for not revealing the content of the speeches, another example of her long time behavior pattern to delay and deny when her actual record is under examination.
That would make every politician that takes solicits political contributions corrupt, wouldn’t it?
Doesn’t that mean that Jeb Bush is corrupt because he spent nearly a year before he announced his candidacy going around soliciting million dollar contributions for his SuperPAC.
I think everyone on the Republican side would qualify as corrupt except for Donald Trump by your standard.
And there are reasons for that — the fact the Clintons don’t go overboard on secret service security is that they are protected by the forces of darkness, to whom they made their obeisances
[Transylvanian violins]
After the Clinton Circus left the White House, the curious mind of George W. noticed many things awry; an expert in the Occult himself — he had watched Ghostbusters 13 times, 3 times stoned — he paid especial suspicion to the corners, and at last called in the dark arts practitioners of Messrs Rove and Cheney to chase away the Hounds of Tindalos who lurked there whining.
Now few Republicans would claim to be as ept as Shrub, and poor shabby old Romney, stiff and silly, only had Father Adam to call on when he was recorded giving his views on the poor; whereas the Clintons had made the Pilgrimage, and there at Chorazin transacted with the Prince of the Air.
Whereas the wight who shows up a Clinton, will be pursued as by Count Magnus from his tomb at Råbäck: two silhouettes always following; the pair at crossroads on the brows of hillsides and in the cornfields there will always be two figures, one tall, one shorter.
No overt violence, merely…
The gaunt old felly in the plaid shirt will train a gun on you like a cross old farmer whose daughter you have defiled, and then Countess will go into her evocation of her own magical pixie-dust persona of ineffable self-brilliance for exactly one hour
The two vulgar saints of neo-liberal fantasy dissolve away, but for the wretch caught, the effect is the same as beholding the Malefic Vision: a shattered husk, driven by her unparalleled boredom to a permanently empty mind and without personality; * now a Hillary Fan*, and only able to repeat her nonsensical phrases of self-praise, tick-tock, tick-tock in a rambling speel of nonsense until merciful death overtakes and speeds him on his way to Nirvana.
I recall Hillary spending 11 hours addressing congress’s questions about what happened in Benghazi. ELEVEN FUCKING HOURS!!!
I didn’t support her until those hearings. That’s when she erased all doubt about her competency, experience or ability (I had some concerns about her age and thought she was riding entirely on her name recognition and her marriage to a successful Democratic former President). Sure there are some ethics issues but the only ones without those issues are Bernie and Trump and I just think she would be a better president than either of them. YMMV.
I mostly want those transcripts because she is trying to hide them. I still remember Romney hiding his tax returns for 2009 and (he provided for every year before and after that year but 2009 is the year we gave people with secret swiss bank accounts amnesty if they confessed and paid taxes). I suspect that Hillary said a lot of complimentary things to Wall Street and releasing transcripts that said these things would force her to move to the left on a lot of economic justice related issues. I think she STILL wins the nomination but it will move her to the left on some economic justice issues.
I think you meant to post in cafe society or something but you have a couple of point wrong. Rove and Cheney are not practitioners, they are principals. They are the ones that sign as “purchasers” on those crossroads contracts.
Putting up with 11 fucking hours worth of bullshit was impressive. I would have had an aneurism sometime in hour 3 or 4 from the bullshit and stupidity being thrown at her.
It shows something about her, but the problem I have is her judgment. Just as in this case to stonewall releasing the transcripts, she thinks of personal interest first in every circumstance. No need to go into much detail, I won’t forgive her for voting for the Iraq war, it showed clearly that she does not have sound judgment, and then again back to her usual pattern of crying victimization, “Bush lied to me”, and then her dishonesty because for 6 years she claimed she made the right decision until her back was against the wall in the 2008 primaries when she finally admitted her mistake. Now she wants a pass on that by saying she apologized for it. No deal with me. I’ll take her over the Republican candidates, but I won’t be happy about it.
It’s interesting to see Hilary being called to the mat over a legitimate grip. I’m not sure exactly what people are hoping to find in these speeches, though; a Romney-esque “49%” comment or something? They were presumably heavily attended and any anything embarrassing in them would undoubtedly have come out via second-hand reports.
Trump, too. Bribery is generally illegal and/or unethical on both sides of the transaction, and Trump has certainly made large political contributions in the past.
Wait, why would her campaign even have transcripts of those speeches to begin with? I know that when I give a speech, I prepare a few notes beforehand, and then speak mostly off-the-cuff based on those notes. I certainly don’t record the speech and then go through and make a transcript, nor do I have any of “my people” do so. I could release the notes if you wanted, but you still wouldn’t get the exact words I used.
Now, maybe you can argue that she or her people should have known that those speeches would be important enough to be worth transcribing, but if they’re that important, then the media should have been the ones to do it. Why didn’t they?
I kind of doubt that Hillary writes her own speeches, or that she speaks off the cuff regularly.
What makes you think the speeches she gave to Wall St were open to the public or the media? Do you think they would pay her $225K and then let anyone watch it for free?
She may not seem it but I bet she is very disciplined and highly scripted.
I bet your practice would change if you were were a former senator/secretary of state/runner up to the Democratic presidential nomination and VERY likely next Democratic nominee for President AND you were getting paid over 200K for your speech.
She is not claiming that the transcripts don’t exist, she is claiming that she shouldn’t have to provide them until all the candidates (including the Republican candidates) provide them.
I think the Benghazi thing was/[is?] bullshit but I thought she was stonewalling with the email requests and it turns out she was playing fast and loose with the rules regarding the electronic transmission of classified information. I don’t consider that fatal but now she is stonewalling with the text of her speeches and I don’t think there is anything that points to corruption in those speeches but I bet she sounds an awful like a mainstream Republican (New Democrats tend to overlap with them quite a bit), heaping praise on the wall street and telling them all sorts of warm and fuzzy things about how important they are to America. If so, she will have to spend a lot of time backing away from wall street and will be sensitive to being overly cozy with them during her administration. Forcing a wedge between her and wall street is a good thing IMHO.
Selling political influence is different than buying it, IMHO. When buying political influence has become a cost of doing business we don’t blame the guys paying the toll, we blame the ones who set up the toll house.