I have to post this somewhere so I'm parking it here. It's @ and random. Went to book club last night. Friend A walks in late from a dentist appt. Other bookclub members start to tease her a bit asking if she's @ (married 1.5 years and she told us they were trying now). Friend A says "Yes, with twins. Just found out 30 minutes ago." Totally shellshocked. She's a bit of a smartass so we all thought she was kidding. She's not.
I can't tell H, I can't tell anyone until after her next appt in early November. Keeping my fingers crossed for her. She has a heart condition so this wouldn't have been an easy pregnancy without it being twins.
Chelsea Clinton flagged “serious concerns” about her father’s closest aides trying to cash in by using the former president’s name to gain access to government officials on behalf of paying clients, according to hacked emails released this week.
The emails, which were disseminated by WikiLeaks, reveal bitter tensions within the Clintons’ inner circle that were inflamed when Chelsea Clinton tried to put an end to practices that blurred the line between the foundation, governments and a consulting firm called Teneo that paid Bill Clinton.
Some of the concerns raised by the former first daughter echo attacks that have been dogging her mother, Hillary Clinton, during her presidential campaign. Clinton’s GOP rival Donald Trump and other Republicans allege that the Clintons used their foundation and private business arrangements to enrich themselves by essentially auctioning off access to the powerful family and their associates in government — including during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Teneo, in particular, did lucrative work for foundation donors and entities with business before Clinton’s State Department. And it signed a contract reportedly worth $3.5 million with Bill Clinton to serve as an adviser (though the former president ultimately kept only $100,000 of that, according to his tax returns and a source familiar with the arrangement). Teneo also paid Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman at the State Department, as a “senior advisor.”
One of the pair of Clintonites who founded Teneo, Declan Kelly, was working for Clinton’s State Department while laying the groundwork for the firm, as revealed by POLITICO. POLITICO also exposed that the other Teneo founder, longtime Bill Clinton aide Doug Band, was drawing salaries from both the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s taxpayer-subsidized personal office, while another early Teneo official, Justin Cooper, was being paid by Clinton’s taxpayer-funded office, even as he was performing maintenance on Hillary Clinton’s controversial private email server.
In December 2011, Chelsea Clinton sent a sharply worded email to top family confidants saying that people in London had raised "serious concerns" about the way Teneo was using her father's name to set up meetings for clients, according to private emails released by WikiLeaks. "I will raise all of this and more with my father this evening," she wrote. "Wanted to update you all in the meanwhile about my augmented concerns post London."
At the time, Chelsea Clinton had already been pushing to enact tougher rules at the foundation regarding conflicts of interest and outside income. In response, Band blasted her behind her back as an irrational ingrate who runs “to daddy to change a decision or interject herself in the process.”
In the emails released by WikiLeaks on Monday and Tuesday, Band dismissed Clinton as an entitled and power-hungry young woman who wreaked havoc at the Clinton Foundation — and who created a stressful environment that contributed to one person's contemplating suicide — simply because she was bored and protective of her relationship with her father.
“She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has a lack of focus in her life,” Band wrote in a November 2011 email to longtime Clinton family adviser John Podesta.
Band added that Teneo “has almost nothing to do with the Clintons, the foundation or [the Clinton Global Initiative] in any way.” Podesta urged Band to try to avoid sparring with Chelsea Clinton, but at the same time he was emailing with her and others in a manner that seemed to validate Chelsea's concerns about setting up outside procedures for dealing with Teneo.
A former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, Podesta is now serving as the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and the emails WikiLeaks released came from his personal account.
Podesta and Band did not respond on Tuesday to questions about the emails, nor did representatives for Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton or the Clinton Foundation.
Glen Caplin, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, declined to answer questions about the dispute over Teneo, instead alleging that the hack was the work of Russia and intended “to help Donald Trump become President of the United States.”
While U.S. intelligence officials have fingered the Russia government for other hacks intended to influence the presidential election, there is no evidence that Russia is behind the hack of Podesta’s emails. Podesta has been a close personal adviser to the Clintons for decades.
In late 2011 — the period covered by most of the WikiLeaks emails related to the foundation and Teneo — Podesta agreed to serve as the Clinton Foundation’s temporary CEO after its longtime CEO, Bruce Lindsey, the Clintons’ longtime Arkansas lawyer, suffered a stroke.
Podesta inherited an organization that was still being run to some extent like a Bill Clinton personality cult steered by the former president’s friends and former aides, even as it had grown into a $2 billion global philanthropy credited with major breakthroughs in fighting childhood obesity and AIDS.
At the time, Chelsea Clinton — newly married, bearing an Ivy League master’s degree in public health and coming off stints on Wall Street and at the consulting powerhouse McKinsey & Co. — had joined the board of one of the foundation’s subsidiaries and begun seeking to instill data-driven management techniques across the foundation.
Clinton initiated a 2011 audit by the New York law firm Simpson Thacher focusing partly on “potential conflicts of interest.” The firm conducted 38 interviews with employees and officials, explaining in a Simpson Thacher document released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday that “many interviewees were unaware” of the foundation’s policies related to conflicts of interest and outside employment.
Chelsea Clinton’s efforts to reform the foundation were perceived within the foundation as a vote of no-confidence in Band, Lindsey and the Clinton old guard, according to interviews with a handful of sources who worked with or around the foundation.
During a November 2011 meeting, Band complained to Bill Clinton that his daughter’s efforts to implement conflict of interest rules were actually a thinly veiled effort “to push him out, take over,” according to an email from Chelsea Clinton to Podesta. “Dad kept asking him — has she said that to you? To anyone? She's never said it to me and I think she's been very clear and consistent in her goals, etc.,” Chelsea Clinton continued in the email, which was sent from a pseudonymous email address bearing the name Anna James and associated with New York University, where she served as an assistant vice provost.
Those goals, according to Chelsea Clinton’s email, “were to help to take stock, professionalize the Foundation, build it for the future and build it in such a way that supported his work and mom's.”
But, as POLITICO reported last year, Chelsea Clinton, who had by that point become the foundation’s vice chair, was seen by some in the foundation’s rank and file as distant and intimidating, while some officials saw her as using her relationship with her father to get her way.
In a December 2011 email to Podesta and Cheryl Mills, who was then serving as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff in the State Department, Band alleged that “the stress of all of this office crap with [Bill Clinton] and [Chelsea Clinton]” had contributed to pushing a top foundation official to the brink of suicide.
And Lindsey “said the stress of specifically the office had caused his very serious health issues,” according to Band’s email. Lindsey did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the foundation official who Band indicated had become suicidal, who has since left the foundation.
Band suggested that Chelsea Clinton should have been more concerned about “her role in what happened to” Lindsey and the allegedly suicidal staffer, as well as “what she is doing to” the Clinton Foundation, and with stories about her father’s marital infidelity.
Instead, though, Band contended in a January 2012 email to Podesta, Mills and family friend Terry McAuliffe (now the governor of Virginia) that Chelsea Clinton was courting trouble by openly telling people outside the foundation “that she is conducting an internal investigation of money within the foundation.” According to Band’s email, which was released Tuesday, Clinton relayed this to “one of the bush 43 kids,” who “then told an operative within the republican party … Not smart.”
In another email, Band suggested that Chelsea was trying to drive a wedge between him and Bill Clinton by highlighting a news story reporting that a controversial financial services firm called MF Global had been paying Teneo $125,000 a month.
In fact, Chelsea Clinton had forwarded a version of that story in December 2011 to Podesta, Lindsey, McAuliffe and two Simpson Thacher officials. Clinton requested that the story be added to the news clips presented to her father, presumably via printouts, since he eschews email, suggesting that negative coverage of Teneo is typically kept from him.
Chelsea Clinton indicated that during a trip to London “two people separately voiced concerns directly to me about Teneo,” while a third told her chief of staff that a Bill Clinton staffer “has called Members of the House and Members of Parliament, ‘on behalf of President Clinton,’ for Teneo clients” including Dow Chemical, a major Clinton Foundation donor.
These calls, according to Chelsea Clinton, were made “without my father's knowledge and inelegantly and ineffectually at best.” The situation has led to “people in London making comparisons between my father and Tony Blair's profit motivations. Which would horrify my father.”
Podesta responded: “We need to move to a resolution of this quickly,” to which Clinton agreed, asking whether Mills and McAuliffe had made any progress working out an agreement with Band and Cooper relating to outside income.
Less than two weeks later, Mills emailed Podesta, Band and Cooper with a draft of a document proposing what it called an “Infrastructure Model” for the Clinton Foundation.
The draft outlined a number of proposed structures for handling Bill Clinton’s personal, political and foundation business, but the common theme in each is that Band and Cooper would be less central to the operation. They would “not have any obligation or authority regarding the implementation of decisions,” the document says, and “would no longer serve as either employees or consultants to the Foundation; should the Foundation or its affiliated entities desire their services, they would engage them directly, through a personal consulting contract, to provide mutually agreeable services.”
A later draft of the document indicates that Bill Clinton’s role with Teneo — which it says began in July 2011, with Clinton serving “as an advisor to Teneo in support of its establishment and start-up” — would end. “Commencing January 1, 2012, the President instead will become a client of Teneo; Teneo principals will provide consulting services to the President in his personal capacity.”
On Dec. 22, 2012, a Simpson Thacher official forwarded to Mills and Podesta a draft of Bill Clinton’s letter resigning from Teneo’s advisory board, in which he said he applauded “the wonderful work that you are doing, and I wish you and the firm all success in the future.”
Band continued to be paid by the Clinton Foundation into 2012, and by Bill Clinton’s taxpayer-subsidized personal office through January 2013, but he has since become distanced from the family, even as Teneo’s clientele continued to overlap with the Clinton Foundation’s donor rolls.
ETA: Bolding and emojis are mine. I tried to restrain myself but basically I could , , ^o) , or the whole thing.
Chelsea flagged 'serious concerns' about Clinton Foundation conflicts
This is really long but I think the upshot is that Bill and Hill are not being served well by their longtime hangers on. I think Hill gets it - I read another report that said she's dropped old staffers and distanced friends in favor of new people - Robbie Mook, etc - and her administration won't be a rehash of Bill's admin. We shall see.
Oh, and I want to kick the people at Teneo in the teeth. If you'd have listened to Chelsea instead of calling her a "spoiled brat" maybe you would have saved everyone a load of grief.
I work from home and my office is freezing, but it's really not cold enough to turn on the heat yet. I'm just always cold. I'm sitting here bundled up in a long sleeve, hoodie, sweats, and heavy socks...lol. I think I need to buy a little space heater or something.
Oh, and hi to everyone! I've lurked for a while but just recently started participating. I've realized with this election cycle that I need to become more informed re: politics and this board has really helped with that.
Welcome! I WFH too and the space heater is key. Combined with layering up to the point where I could go on an arctic expedition, it keeps me comfy without heating the whole house during the day.
My random: I was eligible for a new iPhone 7 and got all carried away and went with the one I could get quickly - matte black - and it's here (!) but now I'm having color selection remorse and want to swap it for the rose gold. Which is stupid since I put it in a triple layer Otterbox so I can't even see the rose gold. But I'll know it's there. Tell me I'm stupid.
It's a chain, so if you have one near you and you have a girly girl (or boy who likes sparkles; the woman said she just had a little boy there that morning), definitely check it out. I wish it was close enough to have her birthday party there. Hell, I'd have MY birthday party there.
DS1's class made cards at school yesterday. The girl who sits across from him wrote her name and a big heart on her card. She then gave it to DS1. Sadly, she's a Trump supporter so she's barking up the wrong tree.
DS2 is being a terror at school. He punched a girl yesterday (she's fine). Earned him a trip to the principals office and a call home from the teacher. Then I found the same girl's water bottle in his bag this morning. He swears he didn't put it in there but IDK. Teacher and I are in synch and determined to get him on the straight and narrow. He's is sorely mistaken if he thinks this nonsense will fly.
I love making risotto. It's the best excuse to just stand in the kitchen, constantly stirring with one hand, and with the other hand sipping my wine, while H wrangles the hellions, lol.
And now my H is going to wonder why we've moved to an all risotto diet.
Argh to why absentee is so easy - but glad it was for you.
DE is weird with absentee. It's the only state that requires absentee ballots to be notarized. I have no idea how my sister votes absentee from Spain but she swears she does.
My Deplorable for Trump person tweeted yesterday about Philly rigging the election since they lost her registration every time she goes to vote. You MOVED you moron. Before both this election and 2012.
Also, she tweeted that POTUS should pardon Nixon. NIXON. I am going to stroke out - new BP pills may not get me through to Nov 9. I finally blew my cover and responded to that tweet saying that it's kind of hard for POTUS to pardon Nixon since Ford did so in freaking 1974.
Oh, and of course she's originally from up near WB too. My other WB area friends (1) GTFO of WB (2) are with her. She's my only crazy left.
Ditto to the PP - I hope moving somewhere quieter within your metro area is an option.
I moved from DE to NYC iand knew I couldn't handle Manhattan right away - even a quiet neighborhood - I needed to be able to escape the city at the end of the day. So I moved to Hoboken. After a couple years, I was eager to live in Manhattan and then I did sublets all over the city until I settled into my neighborhood. My neighborhood was close to a park overlooking the East River and my H and I spent nearly every weekend morning in that park. The visual of the water really helped me recharge.
I also, had a hard time with the subway so I found alternative transportation - bus, cab, shared ride van, ferry. Something about not cramming in with the rest of humanity and dealing with the sweat and the heat and the smells was worth it. There was a tradeoff with either time or money but it was worth it to me.
My sister lives in Madrid, near Atocha and she loves living in the center. But she has a number of friends who aren't so keen on the city craziness who live further out. The tradeoff is the additional commuting costs but if it gives you a mental and emotional break, it is worth it.
From the article: County taxpayers have shelled out $48 million so far in the profiling case, and the costs are expected to reach $72 million by next summer.
I would love that defending this moron is costing them so much money but I'm sure it is coming out of sorely needed social and educational programs.
A friend from WB posted a picture from the same rally last night of a guy wearing a shirt that said "She's a c*nt. Vote Trump." He was with his wife and young kids. My friend was not at the rally but she's from WB and horrified that this is her hometown. She had to take a break from FB today because her page was getting too intense.
So to question the tweets again. Is it all him posting from various devices or is the campaign posting this crazy too?
Sorry to be so naive about how this is working. I assumed they were all him until I saw the multiple devices (and I think one was sent from Queens but I guess he could be on his way to the airport - although MSNBC had him holed up at TT this morning).
I always imagined the rest of the team was trying desperately not to let him tweet the crazy but maybe they've all just said "F it! Peddle to the metal with the crazy."
I can see a contractor yanking down the odd ginger breading and painting everything shades of white and grey bull-dozing it, digging up the dead bodies, salting the land, building a new house and then doubling his money. Houses in that area usually go for $700k when they have 5 bedrooms
It's kind of surreal to witness the death of a political party like this.
I guess this is how people felt when the Whigs just could not get their shit together.
I was listening to the Weeds podcast earlier and Ezra Klein was saying that not enough people have grasped that they're living in a moment of change. That this is the death of the GOP and we have to wait to see what replaces it.
Sorry everyone struggling today. There is something in the air. DS2 refused to play soccer today. He and DS1 had matches at the same time on fields near each other so H and I were taking turns going back and forth. I was watching DS1, turned and saw DS2 walking towards me with H. After 20 minutes of being cranky he disappeared. I found him back in the sidelines of his team's field kicking around a ball. He's 3 so nobody really cares. (ETA: correction - nobody cares that he's not playing. We cared that he disappeared. It was one of those situations where there were 6 adults and everyone thought he was with someone else).
After I was trying to get him down for a nap since he was being a terror. He fought it until 20 minutes we were to leave for an annual dinner with a couple of H's college friends and their kids. So H took DS1 and DS2 while I took a three hour nap. Oops. He's going to be up all night.
All these republicans dropping their endorsement of Trump, can't save themselves now. When it was Mexicans he was still worthy of their support. When it was calling for the mistreatment of protesters, still worthy. When he was accepting of white nationalism at his rallies, still worthy. discriminating Muslims, still worthy. Doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on Central Park 5, yup still ok. Questioning, talking down to, blaming black lives matter, still worthy. Attacking women constantly, still worthy. Making fun of disabled, yup funny and worthy.
Now? When it's about a white woman or because this will lose white women votes, LINE CROSSED NOT WORTHY.
Fuck them all. They don't get to jump ship and claim they are offended now.
Okay I'm still a few app pages behind but I was thinking about this last night. The midterm and 2020 ads write themselves. In addition to the remaining ads for this cycle. You simply show every gross thing that Trump has said against a group and point out that every time Politician X didn't pull his:her endorsement. It took this to finally get them there - or not.
The fact that this is the group that finally got some people to say "Hey, that's a bridge too far" speaks volumes.
While Trump's comments are lewd, there is also the fact that he said he was pursuing a woman he admitted was married.
...
This is a pretty detailed story — taking the woman furniture shopping — for Trump to have made it up whole-cloth. Did Trump know the woman was married when he "moved on" her? Does or did he often do this?
Why there hell is her relationship to another man the key question here?
Because women only have value due to their relationship to men. We're they're wives or the mothers of their children. Or their mothers or sisters. We're not fully autonomous people. Hence the multiple postings in the big thread last night taking issue with just that concept. But of course, why can't we just accept that is how we have value. It's the "can't you take a joke" of womanhood.