Stone Cold
Superstar
MSM spinning more than Kareem Abdul Jabaar in the post 
BREAKING NEWS: Hillary Clinton's Wall-Street Transcripts LEAKED #WIKILEAKS (UPDATE: DNC ADMITS IT)
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MSM spinning more than Kareem Abdul Jabaar in the post
See you in 2020 
Stone Cold
Superstar
btw Podesta part 3 just dropped
Today? Let me see so I can drop more. Thanks famo
If you say so breh
da hell u laughing at - 9 months ago u called me all types of fukk'd up names with NO WAY IN HELL HILLARY CAN WIN
We know this one was rigged, but whatever. She won't win in 2020 against a Ryan, Kasich, or Paul type.
da hell u laughing at - 9 months ago u called me all types of fukk'd up names with NO WAY IN HELL HILLARY CAN WIN
what dose Obama being establishment gotta to do with this non rigged system
the fact is 3 more million voted for Hillary over Bernie
THATS NOT RIGGED - THATS BERNIE LOSING FAIR & SQUARE
Stop lying
The only lie, is what your doing to yourself
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“Getting Things Done” – The Brother of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chair is a Major Lobbyist for Saudi Arabia
Michael Krieger | Posted Tuesday Apr 19, 2016 at 4:55 pm
Although scores of us in the alternative media world have been discussing the obvious links between Saudi Arabia and the attacks of 9/11 for many years, this reality has only now started to enter the mainstream consciousness due to a recent report on 60 Minutes.
But that’s not the only reason Saudi Arabia has been in the news as of late. In an extraordinary act of blackmail, Saudi officials have warned the U.S. government that it could be forced to sell $750 billion in U.S. assets if a specific piece of legislation currently circulating in Congress becomes law.
The New York Times covered the threat on Friday:
WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.
Read that last part again. U.S. officials have warned of “diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.” So what sort of economic fallout do they envision? Part of the concern is no doubt related to the impact on global financial markets from a Saudi fire sale, but there’s a potentially even bigger concern at play.
Specifically, Saudi Arabia pays Washington insiders an exorbitant amount of money to put the monarchy’s interests ahead of what’s best for the American people. It does this via an elaborate propaganda network, which we first learned about in last year’s post,A Look Inside Saudi Arabia’s Elaborate U.S. Propaganda Machine.Here are a few excerpts:
Elements of the charm offensive include the launch of a pro-Saudi Arabia media portal operated by high-profile Republican campaign consultants; a special English-language website devoted to putting a positive spin on the latest developments in the Yemen war; glitzy dinners with American political and business elites; and a non-stop push to sway reporters and policymakers.
That has been accompanied by a spending spree on American lobbyists with ties to the Washington establishment. The Saudi Arabian Embassy, as we’ve reported, now retains the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, the leader of one of the largest Republican Super PACs in the country, and a law firm with deep ties to the Obama administration. One of Jeb Bush’s top fundraisers, Ignacio Sanchez, is also lobbying for the Saudi Kingdom.
In September, the Kingdom helped sponsor opulent galas for Washington’s business elite at the Ritz Carlton and the Andrew Mellon Auditorium. The events were attended by King Salman, along with the chief executives of General Electric and Lockheed Martin, the chairman of Marriott International, and prominent think tank officials.
The above excerpt mentions the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair working as a lobbyist for the Saudis, but an article just published at The Hill provides some much needed detail:
Saudi Arabia has threatened to sell off $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets it holds in the United States if the bill passes Congress, according to The New York Times, which also mentions a fierce lobbying campaign by the country. The selling of assets would prevent them from being frozen by U.S. courts if American victims are able to sue.
The terrorism bill, which President Obama is threatening to veto, would weaken legal immunity of foreign governments in cases “arising from a terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil.”
Saudi Arabia has an army of Washington lobbyists to deploy as it tries to stop Congress from passing legislation that could expose the country to litigation over the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The kingdom employs a total of eight American firms that perform lobbying, consulting, public relations and legal work.
Five of the firms work for the Saudi Arabia Embassy, while another two — Podesta Group and BGR Group — have registered to represent the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, an arm of the government. PR giant Edelman, meanwhile, is working for the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority to encourage international investment.
The Podesta Group is the key firm in question for the purposes of this article. So what is the Podesta Group? From the firm’s website we learn that:
The Podesta Group is a top-ranked bipartisan team of tested global advocacy and strategic communications specialists.
So it’s a bipartisan group of lobbyists. In case you forgot what George Carlin told us about “bipartisan.”
With that out of the way, who runs the show at the Podesta Group? Well that would be none other than Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chair, John Podesta. Here’s a description of Tony Podesta from the firm’s site:
Many people in Washington can tell you what just happened to you.Tony Podesta helps you change outcomes. From the halls of the Capitol to the agencies that operate the country, Tony draws on his unique mastery of how the nation’s capital works to navigate the policy landscape as Founder and Chairman of the Podesta Group. Dubbed one of DC’s “50 heavy lifters” by the Financial Times and “one of Washington’s biggest players” by The New York Times, Tony is recognized by his peers, the news media and decision-makers across the federal government as the man with the judgment and smart, strategic sense to get things done.
Similar to Hillary, I have no doubt that Tony “gets things done.” The problem is who he “gets things done” for, and it’s not the American people. So who does he work for?
Here are a few examples of Podesta Group clientele over the years according to Open Secrets: BAE Systems, BP, Credit Suisse Group, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, General Electric, KKR & Co, Lockheed Martin, Monsanto Co, Wal-Mart Stores and Wells Fargo. Of course, this is just a small fraction and you can examine the entire listhere.
All that said, lobbying for U.S. corporations is one thing. Lobbying for a barbaric monarchy with “classified” ties to the 9/11 attacks is quite another. Yet that’s exactly what the Podesta Group does. Once again, the Founder and Chairman of the firm, Tony Podesta, is the brother of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chair, John Podesta.
To see just how much dough the Podesta Group is earning from the Saudis, let’s return to that Hill article:
The dispute is causing a diplomatic storm for the Obama administration; Saudi Arabia has long been an ally of the U.S. despite the country’s history of abusing human rights.
The country has some top-flight representation in Washington — at a hefty price tag.
The Podesta Group is billing Saudi Arabia $140,000 a month for its public relations services. During the last few months of 2015, it sent 27 emails, had two phone calls and one meeting with lawmakers and staffers, journalists, and organizations including Human Rights Watch and the Center for American Progress, disclosure forms show.
Yes, you read that right, $140,000 per month. Of course, they’re not the only ones.
DLA Piper receives $50,000 a month from the kingdom and sent hundreds of emails to top congressional staffers between September and the end of February regarding meeting requests and, more generally, “issues affecting U.S.-Saudi Arabia national security interests.”
Only one meeting appears to have occurred, between the firm and a counsel with the House Judiciary Committee. There were also several phone calls with staffers, forms show.
The law and lobby firm Hogan Lovells, which includes former Rep. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) on its $60,000-per-month Saudi Arabia contract, scored meetings with Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), dikk Durbin (D-Ill.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), as well as Reps. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), from September to February, in addition to numerous phone calls and emails with members and senior staffers.
Look at the kind of access to so-called U.S. “representatives” Saudi Arabia achieves through its network of lobbyists. No wonder nobody in Congress has any time to think about the needs of the American people. This is absolutely disgusting. The lobbying of U.S. elected officials by foreign governments via egrgious payments to Washington D.C. insiders should be 100% illegal.
While a foreign nation should have the right to make its grievances known to the U.S. government, this should only be done via officials channels and no money should ever change hands. This is ethics 101.
Of course, the Saudis make sure to spread out the money…
The bulk of Saudi Arabia’s advocacy spending goes to MSL Group, a PR and consulting firm, which took in more than $7.9 million from the country last year, according to a tally of disclosure records.
The firm, which has had the kingdom as a client since 2002, has been working with Saudi Arabia to create a positive image for its military strikes in Yemen, according to news website The Intercept, as well as a more positive image for the U.S. ally overall.
A subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, has also registered as a foreign agent to represent its oil interests and the government of Saudi Arabia.
In September, it shelled out almost $1 million to host an event in Washington during King Salman’s visit.
So the next time you wonder why the U.S government seems to never listen to the American public, you know the answer. You don’t have a lobbyist.
But hey…
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Ya'll gonna learn to keep falling for the bait
Dear Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal
By Kurt Eichenwald On 10/10/16 at 7:45 PM
I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin seems to believe.
An email from Blumenthal—a confidant of Hillary Clinton and a man, second only to George Soros at the center of conservative conspiracy theories—turned up in the recent document dump by Wikileaks. At a time when American intelligence believes Russian hackers are trying to interfere with the presidential election, records have been fed recently to Wikileaks out of multiple organizations of the Democratic Party, raising concerns that the self-proclaimed whistleblowers group has become a tool of Putin’s government. But now that I have been brought into the whole mess—and transformed into Blumenthal—there is even more proof that this act of cyberwar is not only being orchestrated by the Russians, but that they are really, really dumb.
The evidence turned up thanks to the incompetence of Sputnik, the Russian online news and radio service established by the government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya.
Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week
The documents that Wikileaks unloaded recently have been emails out of the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s election campaign. Almost as soon as the pilfered documents emerged, Sputnik was all over them and rapidly found (or probably already knew about before the Wikileaks dump) a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal.
The email was amazing—it linked Boogie Man Blumenthal, Podesta and the topic of conservative political fevered dreams, Benghazi. This, it seemed, was the smoking gun finally proving Clinton bore total responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American outpost in Libya in 2012. Sputnik even declared that the email might be the “October surprise” that could undermine Clinton’s campaign.
To understand the full importance of the story—and how much Putin and his Kremlin cronies must have been dancing with delight—I have to quote the top few paragraphs:
In a major revelation from the second batch of WikiLeaks emails from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta it was learned that Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal believed that the investigation into Benghazi was legitimate because it was "preventable" and the result of State Department negligence.
In an email titled "The Truth" from Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the adviser writing to undisclosed recipients said that "one important point that has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable" in what may turn out to be the big October surprise from the WikiLeaks released of emails hacked from the account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta.
Then came the money quote: "Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate," said Blumenthal, putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel during their meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia on September 21. REUTERS/Ivan Sekretarev/Pool
Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote.
The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000 word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which apparently Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. They had carefully selected the “of course” paragraph, which essentially tipped a hat to the reality that there were legitimate points of criticism regarding Clinton and Benghazi, all of which had been acknowledged in nine reports about the terror attack and by the former Secretary of State herself. But that was hardly the point of the story, “Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages.” The piece is about the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans, and the article slammed the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation—the tenth inquiry into the tragedy.
Here is the real summation of my article, which the Russians helpfully failed to quote: “The historical significance of this moment can hardly be overstated, and it seems many Republicans, Democrats and members of the media don’t fully understand the magnitude of what is taking place. The awesome power of government—one that allows officials to pore through almost anything they demand and compel anyone to talk or suffer the shame of taking the Fifth Amendment—has been unleashed for purely political purposes. It is impossible to review what the Benghazi committee has done as anything other than taxpayer-funded political research of the opposing party’s leading candidate for president. Comparisons from America’s past are rare. Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the IRS to investigate his perceived enemies come to mind. So does Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting during the 1950s, with reckless accusations of treason leveled at members of the State Department, military generals and even the secretary of the Army…The consequences, however, are worse than the manipulation of the electoral process. By using Benghazi for political advantage, the Republicans have communicated to global militants that, through even limited attacks involving relatively few casualties, they can potentially influence the direction of American elections.”
Of course, this might be seen as just an opportunity to laugh at the incompetence of the Russian hackers and government press—once they realized their error, Sputniktook the article down. But this is not funny at all. The Russians have been obtaining American emails and now are presenting complete misrepresentations of them—falsifying them—in hopes of setting off a cascade of events that might change the outcome of the presidential election. The big question, of course, is why are the Russians working so hard to damage Clinton and, in the process, aid Donald Trump. That is a topic for another time.
For now, though, Americans should be outraged. This totalitarian regime, engaged in what are arguably war crimes in Syria to protect their government puppet, is working to upend a democracy to the benefit of an American candidate who uttered positive comments just Sunday about the Kremlin's campaign on behalf of Bashar al-Assad. Trump’s arguments were an incomprehensible explication of the complex Syrian situation, which put him right on the side of the Iranians and Syrians who are fighting to preserve the government that is the primary conduit of weapons used against Israel.
So no, Mr. Putin, I’m not Sidney Blumenthal. And now that you have been exposed once again, get the hell out of our election.
The Fix
The Trump-Putin link that wasn’t
By Philip Bump October 11 at 9:03 AM
9:47 PM - 10 Oct 2016
Kurt Eichenwald is a reporter and writer who has been dogged in looking at Donald Trump over the course of the campaign. It was Eichenwald who reported that Trump had apparently violated the Cuban embargo in the 1990s and who has written about a number of his investigations into Trump's business ties.
The link in the tweet above goes to another article at Newsweek that outlines how Trump gave a rally crowd in Pennsylvania on Monday night incorrect information that Eichenwald traced back to Russian intelligence.
But that's shortening up the timeline in the misleading way that Eichenwald does in his tweet. In reality, the only proved issue is that Trump will happily pick any news off the Internet and broadcast it to the world, accurate or not.
The timeline of what happened is easy to reconstruct. On Monday morning, WikiLeaks released a new batch of emails that appear to have been hacked from the account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman. These hacks have been tied to the Russian government by the United States intelligence community.
One of the emails ended up at a website called Sputnik News. Sputnik, as we have noted before, was founded by and is still funded by the Russian government, with the apparent goal of bolstering its worldview internationally. That said, Sputnik has a reasonably large audience: A million people like it on Facebook, and nearly 200,000 follow it on Twitter. Sputnik writes and publishes articles about things in the news, often with a Russia-friendly slant.
At about 5 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Sputnik ran its article on an email from the Podesta dump that appears to have come from longtime Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal. (The timing can be determined by the timestamp on the article, which is seven hours ahead of Eastern time in the United States.)
“The attack was almost certainly preventable,” Sputnik reports Blumenthal writing to Podesta about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi in 2012. “Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya.”
original makes clear that Blumenthal was passing along a news article — from Newsweek, by Eichenwald — and not sharing his own thoughts. (In fact, the original email suggests that Blumenthal was passing along the article because it mentions himself, if for no other reason.) This isn't a “falsification” of the email, as Eichenwald puts it, since the email is there in the batch. In the most charitable interpretation, it's a sloppy misreading of it.
Perhaps realizing that, Sputnik pulled the article at some point.
At about 6 p.m. Eastern, Trump was scheduled to take the stage at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. During his speech, he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and said, “This just came out a little while ago.” The “this” appears to have been the alleged confession by Blumenthal that was misreported by Sputnik. The crowd, as Eichenwald notes, began to boo Hillary Clinton.
How could Trump have gotten that? He could have gotten a secret message from a KGB agent posing as a hot dog vendor in the rally arena, the two surreptitiously meeting after Trump gave the appropriate hand signal. Or maybe one of his allies, who follows Sputnik, saw the article and was like, “Hey, Donald, check this out.”
Update: Or another option. BuzzFeed News' Jon Passatino notes on Twitter that the Sputnik article may not even have been the source of Trump's comments. It may have been a tweet from earlier in the day which included the precise language Trump read.
ted, here’s a screenshot of it. Posted at 8:28 am PT pic.twitter.com/5FftXcS7fB
11:04 PM - 10 Oct 2016
There's a great deal of evidence suggesting that Russia is pulling whatever levers are in reach to aid the candidacy of Trump. Intelligence agencies believethat Russia has been involved in politically linked email hacks like Podesta's and that such content has, in some way, ended up at Wikileaks. We know Russia publishes Sputnik News. But we don't know that there's any direct link between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, and this article from Eichenwald — his suggestive tweets notwithstanding — does not prove there is.
What should cause alarm in this situation is another facet of what happened. It's not that Trump is a Putin marionette, it's that he seems to have pulled bad information off a questionable website and presented it on live television to an audience of thousands without skepticism. This is an indictment of his judgment, not of his loyalty.
But it's a slightly less splashy headline.
This article's original description of how information may have ended up at Wikileaks has been clarified.
You Black Democrats are pathetic. That same writer smeared Bernie supporters through the primary. He's a Democratic party sycophant.