TRUMP - Impeachment Update

"The latest from the impeachment inquiry, including new transcripts and a court ruling" PBS NewsHour 11/26/2019

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SUMMARY:  More transcripts from closed-door impeachment hearings were released Tuesday, providing new insight into how aid to Ukraine was delayed -- and why.  Meanwhile, a federal court ruled witnesses subpoenaed in the impeachment inquiry must testify, noting that "Presidents are not kings.”  Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff to discuss these developments and news from the House Judiciary Committee.

"How Nixon, Clinton and Johnson dealt with the threat of impeachment" PBS NewsHour 11/28/2019

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SUMMARY:  Impeachment is a rare event in American politics.  Amid the past few weeks of public hearings, we have wondered how this episode compares to previous instances of impeachment.  Amna Nawaz spoke with three historians, each focused on a former president who had to grapple with that threat: Peter Baker on Bill Clinton, Timothy Naftali on Richard Nixon, and Brenda Wineapple on Andrew Johnson.

OPINION - Bill Clinton on North Korea Summit

"Bill Clinton says America should be rooting for Trump’s success on North Korea" PBS NewsHour 6/8/2018

IMHO:  Of course Clinton is assuming that Trump isn't going to screw-up the any 'deal.'

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SUMMARY:  Americans should “be rooting” for President Donald Trump at next week’s U.S.-North Korea summit on denuclearization, former President Bill Clinton said Thursday.

“I think we should be rooting for [Trump] to succeed with the North Korea negotiations,” Clinton said in an interview with PBS NewsHour managing editor and anchor Judy Woodruff.

INSIDE LOOK - The Clinton Foundation

"A glimpse inside operations at the Clinton Foundation" PBS NewsHour 8/24/2016

aka 'Clinton Foundation, Guilt by association'

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SUMMARY:  The Clinton Foundation has been subject to increasing scrutiny in the presidential race, as its funding and Hillary Clinton's role as secretary of state appear ever more intertwined.  Clinton vowed this week to change donor restrictions if she wins.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with James V. Grimaldi of the Wall Street Journal, Columbia University's Doug White, and foundation president Donna Shalala.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Now to the 2016 presidential race, and the growing scrutiny over Bill and Hillary Clinton's namesake foundation.

DONALD TRUMP (R), Presidential Nominee:  It's impossible to tell where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  That was Republican nominee Donald Trump (aka Bully Trump) today in Tampa, Florida.

The Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit, was started back in 1997, and in less than two decades, has grown into a philanthropic giant.  In 2014, the foundation took in $338 million and had $250 million in expenses, geared toward improving global access to AIDS drugs, speaking out on women's rights, and more.

But some of the countries that contribute to the Clinton Foundation struggle with human rights issues of their own, like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait.

And a recent Associated Press analysis found that about half of the 150 people from outside government who met with, or spoke by phone with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state either donated or pledged donations to the Clinton Foundation.

This morning, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook responded.

ROBBY MOOK, Clinton Campaign Manager:  By our count, there were 1,700 other meetings that she had.  You know, she was secretary of state.  She was meeting with foreign officials and government officials constantly.  So, to pull all of them out of the equation, cherry-pick a very small number of meetings, is pretty outrageous.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And in a statement posted on Monday, Bill Clinton said that, if Hillary is elected, the foundation would — quote — “accept contributions only from U.S. citizens, permanent residents and U.S.-based independent foundations, and not foreign or corporate entities.”  He also said he would step down from its board, and stop fund-raising for it.

DONALD TRUMP:  The amounts involved, the favors done, and the significant number of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Still, the Republican ticket has seized on the Clinton Foundation as a line of attack in recent days.

But as Trump's campaign stop today made clear, the questions swirling around the philanthropic group could keep on swirling as the campaign moves into the final stretch.

We dig into the details now, with Doug White, former director of Columbia University's graduate fund-raising management program, and an adviser to nonprofit groups and philanthropists, and James Grimaldi, investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Doug White, let me start with you.  What's the core critique of how the foundation operates?

DOUG WHITE, Former Director, Columbia University Fundraising Management:  Well, right now, the core critique should be what its mission is accomplishing around the world.  We don't know the specifics on that, but they are doing a lot of good work around the world, from my estimation.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And so is there an appearance of impropriety or a conflict of interest in how the foundation works or whether or not it increased access to Secretary of State Clinton?

DOUG WHITE:  There is most definitely an appearance of impropriety.  There's no question about that at all.

My concern is what kind of influence prior to now that has been into Secretary Clinton's office, and then, as — if she becomes President, what will the influence be then?

I don't want to have a President who is that enhanced by the donors of other — by another charity, so that when we have questions that are dealing with the issue of international relationships, we have to separate that from what a foundation is all about.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  James Grimaldi, what are the meetings that Secretary of State Clinton took that are raising these concerns?

JAMES GRIMALDI, The Wall Street Journal:  Well, there was a recent Associated Press report that analyzed the calendars of Secretary Clinton.

And they looked at all the private meetings for the first half of her tenure at the State Department, because that's all that's been released under the lawsuit they have under the Freedom of Information Act.  There were 145 meetings, and about 85, I believe, of those meetings were with Clinton Foundation donors.

So, that raised the question about whether those meetings meant that if you paid money to the donation or gave some sort of gift that you were going to get expedited treatment at the State Department.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Even if this is a limited cross-section of all the meetings that she took, is there evidence or are there issues where she advocated on behalf of companies that might have contributed to the foundation?

JAMES GRIMALDI:  Yes, so I took a look at that question.

We broke down all of the donors for the Clinton Foundation.  We categorized them by size.  And then we looked at the largest corporation.  Of those corporations, we then compared them with lobbying records that are filed with the United States Congress.

When we did that, we found that 60 corporations that were lobbying the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state had given $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.  In addition, they had participated in commitments, they call them, charitable projects, with the Clinton Foundation, valued by the foundation at more than $2 billion.

Those are sort of big numbers in terms of that.  The billions didn't go to the Clinton Foundation.  They went to charities and charitable activities, but the Clinton Foundation rightly takes some credit for those.

So the question is, when these favors that Hillary is doing for certain companies or these companies are seeking favors from Secretary Clinton, were they giving because they were hoping she was going to help them out?

Now, in certain cases, we know that she actually did help certain companies out.  But, in those cases, they were probably for logical, rational reasons any secretary of state, for example, lobbying the Russians to buy jets from Boeing, lobbying Algeria to buy $2 billion worth of generators from General Electric.

But we also know that both of those companies, as well as others like Microsoft, Wal-Mart who had asked for favors and gotten them, also had given gifts to the Clinton Foundation, either before, during or after those favors were performed by Secretary Clinton.

POLITICS - The Up-Coming Bout, Clinton vs Trump

"Inside the Clinton Team’s Plan to Defeat Donald Trump" by Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy, New York Times 2/29/2016

IMHO the conservative electorate lives in fear, their conservatism is fear of change.

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In the days after Donald J. Trump vanquished his Republican rivals in South Carolina and Nevada, prominent Democrats supporting Hillary Clinton arranged a series of meetings and conference calls to tackle a question many never thought they would ask:  How do we defeat Mr. Trump in a general election?

Several Democrats argued that Mrs. Clinton, should she be her party’s nominee, would easily beat Mr. Trump.  They were confident that his incendiary remarks about immigrants, women and Muslims would make him unacceptable to many Americans.  They had faith that the growing electoral power of black, Hispanic and female voters would deliver a Clinton landslide if he were the Republican nominee.

But others, including former President Bill Clinton, dismissed those conclusions as denial.  They said that Mr. Trump clearly had a keen sense of the electorate’s mood and that only a concerted campaign portraying him as dangerous and bigoted would win what both Clintons believe will be a close November election.

That strategy is beginning to take shape, with groups that support Mrs. Clinton preparing to script and test ads that would portray Mr. Trump as a misogynist and an enemy to the working class whose brash temper would put the nation and the world in grave danger.  The plan is for those themes to be amplified later by two prominent surrogates:  To fight Mr. Trump’s ability to sway the news cycle, Mr. Clinton would not hold back on the stump, and President Obama has told allies he would gleefully portray Mr. Trump as incapable of handling the duties of the Oval Office.

Democrats say they risk losing the presidency if they fail to take Mr. Trump seriously, much as Republicans have done in the primary campaign.

“He’s formidable, he understands voters’ anxieties, and he will be ruthless against Hillary Clinton,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut.  “I’ve gone from denial — ‘I can’t believe anyone would listen to this guy’ — to admiration, in the sense that he’s figured out how to capture everyone’s angst, to real worry.”

During the first Republican debate last summer, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, shushed a room full of people at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters when Mr. Trump started to speak, almost giddily captivated by the wildness of his remarks.  “Shh, I’ve got to get me some Trump,” he said.

Now, Mr. Mook and his colleagues regard Mr. Trump as a wily, determined and indefatigable opponent who seems to be speaking to broad economic anxieties among Americans and to the widely held belief that traditional politicians are incapable of addressing those problems.  Publicly, the Clinton operation is letting the Republicans slug it out.  But privately, it and other Democrats are poring over polling data to understand the roots of Mr. Trump’s populist appeal and building up troves of opposition research on his business career.

“The case against Trump will be prosecuted on two levels,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster and Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist in 2008.  “The first is temperament,” and whether he is suited to be commander in chief, Mr. Garin said, echoing conversations that have dominated Democratic circles recently.  The second “will be based on whether he can really be relied on as a champion for anyone but himself.”

But the tactics the Clintons have used for years to take down opponents may fall short in a contest between the blunt and unpredictable Mr. Trump and the cautious and scripted Mrs. Clinton: a match-up that operatives on both sides predicted would be an epic, ugly clash between two vastly disparate politicians.

“Hillary has built a large tanker ship, and she’s about to confront Somali pirates,” said Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for former President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, who is now an independent.

This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen advisers, strategists and close allies of the Clintons, including several who have spoken directly with Mr. Clinton.  Some spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss strategy publicly.

POLITICS - Bush Administration = Warmongers

"US takes unilateral stance in new space policy" by Jeff Hecht, NewScientist.com

The US has issued a new national space policy that reflects a more aggressive and unilateral stance than the previous version issued a decade ago by former president Bill Clinton.

"There is definitely a difference in approach and mentality," says Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington DC, US.

The earlier statement said US operations should be "consistent with treaty obligations". But the new one, issued on Friday, flat-out rejects new agreements that would limit the US testing or use of military equipment in space.

The new version also uses stronger language to assert that the US can defend its spacecraft, echoing an air force push for "space superiority" made in 2004. The new policy states the US has the right "to protect its space capabilities, respond to interference, and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests".

And it seems to open the door to a new anti-satellite arms race. One idea already in development is a robotic spacecraft that could approach a satellite to check it out, then sabotage it if it seems a danger to US interests.

Another concern is plans by the US Missile Defense Agency to orbit a small fleet of rockets with heavy heads to act as kinetic-energy interceptors. Although nominally intended for missile defense, Hitchens told New Scientist they would also be effective anti-satellite weapons. So far, however, she sees no signs of "a bucketload of money going to war fighting in space".

Other puzzles remain. The document includes a long section on which government agencies will administer space nuclear power systems, which will be used if they "safely enable or significantly enhance space exploration or operational capabilities". The question is whether the systems are part of president George W Bush's plans for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, or potential power plants for some new kind of military satellite.

Ever since the "Space Race" started enlighten people have recognized that allowing the arming of space, space weapons, do no one any good. A "Space Weapon Race" only endangers every nation on earth.

This action by the Bush Administration just shows how ideological and dumb they are, America has the right to do ANYTHING it wants without any restraints. There is no common good in the world community. This is an arrogant stance of an arrogant Administration.