Hillary's Corruptibility Was on Display This Week in New Hampshire

Hillary Clinton has many liabilities as a presidential candidate, her strident liberalism and thin record of accomplishment among them. But her greatest liability is her venality. And it may be what ultimately dooms her campaign.Hillary's corruptibility was on display at a town hall event in Nashua, N.H., on Wednesday. When asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper why she had accepted $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, Clinton replied, "I don't know. That's what they offered."

Clinton said she accepted the money in part because she wasn't really thinking about running for president at the time. Then she insisted that the money wouldn't influence her policies if she becomes president. When asked if she regretted taking the money, she said that she did not. First of all, it is untrue that Goldman Sachs offered Clinton $675,000 to speak. As the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard reported, Hillary's speech fee was set by her agent, not the bank.

Clinton challenged Cooper to "just name one thing" on which those who have paid her for speeches have influenced her. There are numerous examples of the Clintons or their charities receiving money at times when one or both of them exerted influence on behalf of the sources of that money. In fact, a best-selling book was written on the subject last May. Clinton also told Cooper about Goldman Sachs, "I mean, they're not giving me very much money now, I can tell you that much." 

But again, that's not quite true, at least according to most people's definition of "very much." As The Examiner's Timothy P. Carney notes, Goldman Sachs employees have donated more than $90,000 to Hillary's presidential campaign, nearly twice as much as Ted Cruz has raised from the Wall Street giant, even though his wife works there.

The Clintons' extreme wealth and close ties to Wall Street are likely to be a liability for Hillary as she continues trying to fend off a primary challenge from Bernie Sanders. The socialist senator from Vermont has become a plausible threat to her by railing against the 1 percent and assailing Clinton for her close ties to Wall Street.

And it will also hurt her in a general election contest. How can she inveigh against the cost of college when she charges public universities $300,000 to deliver speeches to students who are walking away from school with $100,000 in loan debt?

How can she complain about the insidious role of money in politics when she and her husband have made an estimated $139 million from paid speeches, routing them through a complex system of charities and private companies seemingly in an effort to elude detection?

And how can Clinton claim to "feel the pain" of America's hollowed-out middle class when between 2013-15 she earned roughly $2.9 million from Wall Street banks and other financial companies for just a dozen speeches? After all, according to one estimate, that's more than the average worker with a bachelor's degree can expect to earn in a lifetime.

The answer is she can't.

In 2012, exit polls revealed that most voters preferred Mitt Romney's values and policies over those of Barack Obama. But Obama bested Romney on empathy-related questions, including by 10 points on the question, "Who is more in touch with people like you?" With Clinton as their nominee, Democrats would cede the empathy vote to Republicans — and with it, perhaps, the election.

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2 Charged in Gang-Related Murder of Teen Girls Found in Los Angeles Park

 

 

A gang feud is allegedly behind the brutal murder of two teenage girls whose bodies were found in October in a popular Los Angeles park, Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck said Thursday.  

"This is a case that is gang motivated," Beck said at a late afternoon press conference. "This was motivated by hatred between gangs and unfortunately these two very young very innocent victims fell prey to that."

The bodies of Gabriela Calzada, 19, and her friend Briana Gallegos, 17, were found along a walking path on October 28 in Ernest E. Debs Regional Park in Montecito Heights. Both teenagers suffered blunt-force trauma. Calzada, who worked with the city's Summer Night Lights youth program and had dreams of becoming a firefighter, was also shot with a rifle.

Beck said Calzada and Gallegos, a student at Sonia Sotomayor Learning Academies in Glassell Park, were "known to the suspects" and "specifically targeted by those suspects."

Beck declined to give a motive for the crime.

"Almost 60 percent of our homicides were gang involved," Beck said. "Unfortunately these two young ladies have become part of that gruesome statistic. They were young vibrant women who certainly didn’t deserve to die."

Earlier in the day, prosecutors charged 17-year-old Dallas Stone Pineda and Jose Antonio Echeverria, 18, with capital murder. Echeverria, who was already in custody for an unrelated shooting, is eligible for the death penalty, but Pineda cannot be sent to death row due to his age. Both men appeared in jail attire at an afternoon court hearing. Superior Court Judge Sergio Tapia ordered them held without bail. An arraignment hearing is scheduled for March 8.

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Feds Eye Laptop Bomb in Somalia Mid-Air Explosion, Sources Say

 

Investigators believe that an explosion aboard a plane in Somalia was likely caused by a small bomb that was placed inside of a laptop, sources familiar with the probe said. A small team of FBI agents has arrived in Somalia to help authorities in the East African nation investigate the cause of the explosion this week at 11,000 feet.

The A-321 jetliner made an emergency landing and returned to the airport, but two passengers were hurt. It’s believed one person may have been sucked out of the plane through a relatively small hole left by the explosion -- possibly the bomber.

It is still unclear exactly who is responsible for planning the explosion, but authorities are looking into whether the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabab, based in Somalia, may be behind it, and they're not ready to rule out ISIS, sources said.

Many of the passengers on the flight were originally scheduled to be on a Turkish Airlines flight but the flight was canceled "due to operational reasons" and bad weather, according to Turkish Airlines spokesman Yahya Ustun. An FBI spokesman declined to comment for this article, referring questions to Somali authorities.

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Donald Trump rolls out the expletives at Portsmouth rally

 

 

PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire "And you can tell them to go f**k themselves," Donald Trump told a crowd at a Portsmouth Rally on Thursday night, uttering the expletive at the climax of the riff on his tax proposal. He was referring to companies that have relocated overseas for more favorable tax rates.

Trump often relies on expletives and crude language to spice up his stump speech, though Thursday evening's event was a little more profane than usual. While he refrained from using the vulgar Yiddish word that he directed at Secretary Clinton in December, Trump ran through more than his usual share of profanity at the Portsmouth rally.

"They're ripping the sh*t out of the sea," Trump said when explaining China's island building in the South China Sea, eliciting a gasp of approval and laughter from the rapt audience.

And he capped off a stream-of-consciousness rant on foreign policy this way. "These guys in Washington - they can't beat ISIS they can't beat anyone, Afghanistan is going to hell," he told the crowd.

Trump also sprinkled an obscenity into one of his current favorite one liners, criticizing what he called the hypocrisy of Obama's trips to Hawaii on an old Boeing 747 (a.k.a. Air Force One) while also advocating for a lighter carbon footprint. Trump said of Obama's golfing excursions, "I'd want to stay in the White House and work my ass off."

At the end of his event, Trump told the audience that he had done five campaign events in a single day for the voters of New Hampshire because, "you like that right?" This was a departure from his campaign schedule on most days, which consists of a single 7 p.m. rally.

Another less literal screw-you of sorts: Trump took the stage to strains of Adele's," Rolling in the Deep." Earlier this week, the award-winning British pop star banned Trump from playing her music at his campaign events.

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Can Chelsea Clinton Handle the Heat?

Now a 35-year-old multi-millionaire, the political press is still grappling with how to cover the former First Kid.

As Chelsea Clinton crosses the country stumping for her mother, toting an adorable child and incubating another one, it is occasionally hard to remember that she is no longer the frizzy-haired, braces-clad teenager that we recall from Bill Clinton’s ascendance to the White House—that vulnerable young woman who had to grin and bear it as her parents’ marital troubles played out in the most public forum imaginable. But for all intents and purposes, she and her family still present her as an avatar of her younger self—even if the 35-year-old now sits on the boards of numerous nonprofits and corporations and lives in a $10 million apartment.

By and large, the media has allowed the Clintons to maintain this posturing, perhaps out of some reflexive guilt, or maybe because Clinton handled the humiliation with extraordinary sangfroid. Either way, the moratorium appears to be over. This morning Politico published an article titled “Time for Chelsea Clinton’s Easy Ride to End,” in which veteran media critic Jack Shafer chronicles the growing frustration of the political press over the former First Daughter, a grown-up public figure who, he argues, still expects to enjoy the “cone of deference” afforded to White House children. “The time for treating her as a fragile kid has long passed,” Shafer wrote, arguing that she was not a “goodwill ambassador” with solely a ceremonial function. “She’s an educated (Stanford, Columbia, Oxford), mature, wealthy, campaign surrogate and a well-connected ex-journalist who knows the score.”

In some respects, Shafer has a point. While the Clinton campaign has hesitated to make her a full-fledged proxy, Chelsea has been deployed as an unofficial surrogate—and an important one at that. Chelsea, who was born in 1980, can help deliver her fellow millennials to Hillary, who is struggling to attract young voters, especially young women, who overwhelmingly favor Bernie Sanders.

In this role, however, occasional moments of her past shyness emerge. Absent the preternatural political talents of her parents, Chelsea doesn’t always seem to connect. She also present some relatability issues. The ex-McKinsey consultant is married to a hedge-fund manager, sits on the board of media conglomerate I.A.C., serves as the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, owns a very expensive apartment in Manhattan, and has an estimated net worth in the millions. It's a life that cash-strapped, indebted young women might not be able to identify with. The Clinton campaign has had better luck with fellow Hillary surrogate and Girls actress Lena Dunham, 29, who has not shied away from scrutiny. But it is highly unlikely that the Clintons would, for instance, intervene with a major news network and declare Dunham off-limits, as they did for Chelsea when she was 27.

But as Hillary shifts into attack mode ahead of the New Hampshire primary, making her opening moves during Thursday night’s fiery debate, Chelsea’s honeymoon may be coming to an end. With the presidential field rapidly narrowing, Republican opponents may soon focus their fire on the fundraising practices of the Clinton Foundation, where Chelsea holds a prominent role. Amid a flurry of controversy over Hillary’s ties to Wall Street, Chelsea’s marriage to hedge fund co-founder and former Goldman Sachs banker Marc Mezvinsky could also prove troublesome. Chelsea, who may one day harbor her own political aspirations, will have to come up with answers for these inquiries. If she hopes to embrace her role in public life, she had best prepare for the same scrutiny her mother has famously survived.

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