Why Elizabeth Warren Should Smile This Morning: Hillary’s Foreign-Funding Scandal
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Morning Jolt February 26, 2015 Why Elizabeth Warren Should Smile This Morning: Hillary's Foreign-Funding Scandal No, this woman cannot be president: "The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, foundation officials disclosed Wednesday." Sorry. This is disqualifying. The Secretary of State cannot take money from foreign governments while allegedly representing our interests in negotiations with that government. It's bribery: The new disclosures, provided in response to questions from The Washington Post, make clear that the 2008 agreement did not prohibit foreign countries with interests before the U.S. government from giving money to the charity closely linked to the secretary of state. In one instance, foundation officials acknowledged they should have sought approval in 2010 from the State Department ethics office, as required by the agreement for new government donors, before accepting a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government. The money was given to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti, the foundation said. At the time, Algeria, which has sought a closer relationship with Washington, was spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues . . . Some of the donations came from countries with complicated diplomatic, military and financial relationships with the U.S. government, including Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman. Other nations that donated included Australia, Norway, and the Dominican Republic. The claim is that all of the money went to good charitable causes. But Algeria could donate to Haitian relief funds, or any other charity, directly. There's an obvious incentive to give money -- even with the allegedly best intentions -- to the Clinton Foundation: access and goodwill to the Clintons.
Welcome to CPAC, Jeb Bush. Good Luck with the Crowd! Welcome to CPAC, readers! Maybe the most interesting reception to watch today? At 1:30 p.m. Eastern, Jeb Bush will participate in a question-and-answer session with Fox News' Sean Hannity." See how the crowd responds, as there's considerable evidence that there's a lot of Jeb-skepticism out there. Jay Cost: "Jeb certainly looks to be cornering the market on the modern variety of professional Republicans, but he too will have to do more. What is the case for a Bush restoration, beyond the fact that it would make the professional GOP comfortable once again? Why should average Republican primary voters -- the insurance salesmen and truck drivers, not pollsters and policy advisors -- choose Jeb over Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, or the dozen other potential nominees?" Here's Politico's Mike Allen Wednesday, offering a perspective with completely valid historical points but one that I think completely misreads the actual mood of the Republican party: What should be the presidential race of a lifetime (open nomination in both parties) is starting to look like a slog and maybe even a snore. Barring a major disruption in the force field, it's looking like Hillary vs. Jeb, and the same might still be true a year from now. The new dynamic of the GOP race, once totally up for grabs, is that someone has to knock out Jeb. It could be Walker, it could be Rubio, it could be Rand - but it'll be hard. The D.C. chatter is that for all Bush's advantages in the invisible primary, he has yet to encounter random voters, or perform strongly in an unscripted (or even scripted!) setting. Bush skeptics wonder over drinks if he's Phil Gramm from '96 - huge war chest, but a paper tiger. But here's the rub: There's no post-Reagan instance of a Republican candidate who locks up the center-right slot, plus big donors and the clear establishment blessing, then loses the nomination -- Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, Romney. Obviously, this trend could break. But based on what we know about modern campaigns, Bush 45 looks very strong for the nomination at this point. Yes, but there's an accelerating trend: an increasingly large number of Republicans feel like the party completely fouled things up by nominating Romney, McCain, Dole, and in some cases, the Bushes. On that list, only two of them won the popular vote out of six tries, winning three out of six. And the Allen perspective ignores the fact that a couple candidates with something akin to the Bush formula ran in the past few cycles and didn't win the nomination: Center-Right Slot + Big Donors + Establishment Blessing = Rudy Giuliani, who spent $65 million and got no delegates in 2008. Center-Right Slot + Big Donors + Establishment Blessing = Mitt Romney, who spent $97 million in 2008 and didn't win the nomination. A core argument of that center-right-big-donor-establishment-blessed perspective is the claim that the candidate with those qualities is the "most electable." There's a lot more skepticism of that claim among the GOP rank-and-file now than there was in 2012 or 2008. In other news, Lisa de Pasquale, CPAC Director from 2006 to 2011, explains why Donald Trump was invited in 2011, and why she thinks having him continue to speak is a terrific idea: As the CPAC director from 2006-2011, I know more than anyone that CPAC wouldn't be CPAC without controversy. Every year there was some speaker who should or shouldn't be invited. This year people were once again maddened by the announcement that Donald Trump will be speaking at CPAC. The most common criticism I hear about Trump is that he's a "show boater" and is attending CPAC just for the media attention. Without mentioning any names, how is he different from the majority of stand alone speakers at most political conferences? Our movement is full of showboaters who flirt with running for office or who use CPAC to make a joke that offends a handful of people while getting wild applause from the audience. Let the left be the crybabies. I'll take the political punks who embrace freedom, not a constant state of outrage. We Give Away the Store to Iran as They Practice Sinking Our Ships Connect the dots. Iran's Revolutionary Guard used a mock U.S. aircraft carrier in its defense drills for the first time Wednesday, blowing up the replica warship near the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. State TV footage showed missiles being fired at the carrier nearly a year after the U.S. Navy disclosed Iran was constructing a replica ship. The full-scale model was attacked by cruise and ballistic missiles as well as rockets fired from speedboats, according to Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency. "The message of these wargames is that others should pay good heed to the point that they should not take any action near the Islamic Republic's security circle," Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Guard's chief commander said, according to Fars. "We believe (Iran) to be the defenders of the Strait of Hormuz' security and showed this in our wargames today." The drills, dubbed the "Great Prophet 9," also involved shooting down drones and planting mines, Fars reported. The Guard's navy commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi told Fars that the nation's mine-laying capability is "the most important concern of the Americans." "We have the most advanced sea mines which cannot be imagined by the Americans," he added. Last month, Fadavi said his force is capable of sinking American aircraft carriers in the event of war, the Associated Press reported. Here's a picture of it from their propaganda agency -- er, I'm sorry, their "independent news agency" affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Here's our current position: Edging toward a historic compromise, the U.S. and Iran reported progress Monday on a deal that would clamp down on Tehran's nuclear activities for at least 10 years but then slowly ease restrictions on programs that could be used to make atomic arms. One variation being discussed would place at least a 10-year regime of strict controls on Iran's uranium enrichment. If Iran complied, the restrictions would be gradually lifted over the final five years. One issue critics are certain to focus on: Once the deal expired, Iran could theoretically ramp up enrichment to whatever level it wanted . . . No Shinola, Sherlock. In other words, we're making bigger concessions to a regime, so they can keep their existing nuclear program in place for ten years -- presuming they don't cheat! -- and then give them permission to bring it up to weapons-status shortly thereafter . . . and as we're giving them this deal, they're practicing blowing up our aircraft carriers. Are you kidding me? President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry go into these negotiations aiming to protect their legacy; the Iranians go into it aiming to protect their nuclear program. In these negotiations, who's in charge of protecting the rest of us? The Massively Popular Game that Mainstream Media Obliviously Ignore What would you say if I told you Google had launched a game that utilized basically every landmark in the world, that had attracted millions of players, and that had become immensely popular with almost no major media attention? The other night I received a fascinating lesson about the intense Balkanization of our culture running into some old friends who have a hand in the creation and management of Google's ongoing game, Ingress. The concept of the game can be seen in this short video. The gist is that landmarks, crossroads, public sculptures, and sites within communities aren't random; they're sites of invisible portals that radiate a form of energy from some other dimension or realm that inspires ideas within the human mind. Government agencies and secret societies vehemently disagree about whether this energy -- deliberately sent into our world by some conscious, intelligence entity -- is actually meant to help humanity, by inspiring great innovation and leading to a new renaissance, or represents "a hostile takeover of the human brain."
To play the game, you join a side, either the Enlightened or the Resistance, and walk around to various landmarks and claiming them for your side. By claiming three landmarks, you create a triangle, and your side "controls" the people within that triangle. My friend Flint Dille talks a bit about the game here with project vice president John Hanke here. Maybe you're one of the folks who have heard of this; the fan base is global. But the game went open to "general release" in December 2013 and I had heard absolutely nothing about this. I asked Flint and a couple other folks involved in the game if I had missed it from media coverage, and they chuckled that Google doesn't need media coverage for its projects. I felt as if I had asked why they hadn't chiseled any stone tablets to spread the word. Think about this; as we on the right argue about the mainstream media's power over the electorate and how we can counter it, Google -- admittedly, an institution with enormous resources and technical know-how -- is demonstrating that a small team can build something massively popular, with millions of participants, with almost no one in the media noticing. Sure, you can find mentions of it on . . . (pause for irony) Google News, but they're largely tech and gamer web sites. The New York Times did an article on the effort to create a mobile-device game that is played in real-world locations, and other newspapers have written about their local Ingress players here and there. But I'll bet a doughnut that this section of the Jolt is the first you've heard of this game, and it's not because the Jolt has a mostly conservative audience. Never mind the question, "Are the mainstream media still powerful?" In some corners of our national or global life, are the mainstream media even a factor at all? ADDENDA: See you at CPAC today.
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