.

[Moustaches]

.

[GizmoTX]

You are missing the massive corruption that means the Clintons "play for pay" & are wholly beholden to those foreign & Wall St "contributors". Only 5% of the Foundation goes to charity, & it's been shown that even the vendors kick back a portion to the Clintons. If those contributors truly cared about charity, they'd give directly to the charities & cut out the grifters. No, they expect something in return: influence, favorable laws, tax carve outs, pardons, you name it. If not, there's always blackmail. The leaks have also proved that illegal activities have occurred, including beating people up & worse.

[Spork]

You are missing the massive corruption that means the Clintons "play for pay" & are wholly beholden to those foreign & Wall St "contributors". Only 5% of the Foundation goes to charity, & it's been shown that even the vendors kick back a portion to the Clintons. If those contributors truly cared about charity, they'd give directly to the charities & cut out the grifters. No, they expect something in return: influence, favorable laws, tax carve outs, pardons, you name it. If not, there's always blackmail. The leaks have also proved that illegal activities have occurred, including beating people up & worse.

I totally agree with the flavor of this.  There does seem to be pay-for-play.  And I can't stand the Clintons (or Trump for that matter). But that 5% number is a bogus thing that's been tossed around on social media.

Charitynavigator shows it at 86.9% funding program expenses:  https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680

[Glenstache]

Well, since Russia is in the mix: Russia's goal seems to be to delegitimize the election in any way they can to weaken the next president starting on day one thus reducing the leverage they have to be influential in the world (especially where at odds with Russia's interests). It is also good PR for Putin back home in Moscow to be seen as meddling.

Context:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2016-09-20/putins-meddling-us-elections

[onlykelsey]

Well, since Russia is in the mix: Russia's goal seems to be to delegitimize the election in any way they can to weaken the next president starting on day one thus reducing the leverage they have to be influential in the world (especially where at odds with Russia's interests). It is also good PR for Putin back home in Moscow to be seen as meddling.

Context:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2016-09-20/putins-meddling-us-elections

Counterpoint (or, rather, update?): http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/26/putins-chaos-strategy-is-coming-back-to-bite-him-in-the-ass/

"...the aim of all of Russia’s election interference was to do two things. First, to weaken Clinton, such that on her inauguration she would be too busy coping with a disgruntled Democratic left, an embittered Republican right, and a divided country in between to devote energy to confronting and toppling Putin. It is too early to be sure, but if anything, the hacks actually seem to be doing the unthinkable and bringing Democrats and mainstream Republicans together in their shared anger at Moscow.

Second, by undermining the very legitimacy of U.S. democracy, Russia’s hacking sought to weaken U.S. legitimacy abroad, dismay its friends, and provide fuel for a global propaganda campaign that, at its heart, tries to convince people not that the Russian system is better than the rest, so much that it isn’t any worse. That propaganda has resonated somewhat, but it is hard to demonstrate that anything the Russians are doing is more damaging than the Trump campaign itself.

...

In Moscow, the realization is growing that a few months of schadenfreude during the U.S. presidential campaign are not going to be worth the likely fallout. The foreign-policy elite fear that Washington is preparing to call Moscow’s bluffs in the Middle East and Europe and also push harder on a wavering European Union to maintain and even step up pressure on Russia. The political and business elite are concerned that even if the United States does not actively push for regime change, it will clamp down all the more tightly on their opportunities to travel abroad and invest. One senior parliamentary aide recently expressed to me the worry that “Russia is becoming the new South Africa,” referring to the 30-year era of boycotts and sanctions that isolated that country when it was still white-ruled and characterized by apartheid."

[scottish]

I would also like to see some more objective evidence.    Clinton appears to be much like the typical politician and I've always had trouble understanding why she is so reviled.

[Glenstache]

Context:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2016-09-20/putins-meddling-us-elections

Counterpoint (or, rather, update?): http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/26/putins-chaos-strategy-is-coming-back-to-bite-him-in-the-ass/
[/quote]

Thanks for that update article. Once again, events turn out differently than planned. 

[deadlymonkey]

You are missing the massive corruption that means the Clintons "play for pay" & are wholly beholden to those foreign & Wall St "contributors". Only 5% of the Foundation goes to charity, & it's been shown that even the vendors kick back a portion to the Clintons. If those contributors truly cared about charity, they'd give directly to the charities & cut out the grifters. No, they expect something in return: influence, favorable laws, tax carve outs, pardons, you name it. If not, there's always blackmail. The leaks have also proved that illegal activities have occurred, including beating people up & worse.

I totally agree with the flavor of this.  There does seem to be pay-for-play.  And I can't stand the Clintons (or Trump for that matter). But that 5% number is a bogus thing that's been tossed around on social media.

Charitynavigator shows it at 86.9% funding program expenses:  https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680

To be more specific, the 6% of 5% whatever is what the Clinton Foundation grants to other charities.  Most of the work is done inhouse.  For example, one of the biggest thing they do is give away AIDS medication.  That is all done in house, they don't give money to yet another charity to buy aids medication.  They are actually one of the most transparent charities in the world with one of the lowest expense ratios as evidenced by all their financial filings and charity rating guides.  If you give to the foundation you aren't giving to middlemen who take a cut (or buy 6 foot paintings of themselves) you are giving directly to the agency that does the work.

[oldtoyota]

I would also like to see some more objective evidence.    Clinton appears to be much like the typical politician and I've always had trouble understanding why she is so reviled.

So far, the Wikileaks emails (assuming they are real) only confirmed that they've found little on Clinton.

And I find it curious that we're only seeing Wikileaks from Clinton's past and not from Trump's. He has a questionable foundation, yet I've only seen one or two articles about his foundation and its shady tricks. Reference: The most recent article about Trump's foundation and the $$ mostly benefiting him and his business appeared today in the Washington Post.

[deadlymonkey]

It has been established I think fairly confidently that Assange (and by extension wikileaks) is friendly to Russia.  If you look into the history of the site, they have rarely published anything of value on Russia or it's interests.  Several of Assange's chief collaborators have quit the site because of this discrepancy where they received potentially explosive Russian data and then never publish it.  If this is because Assange is afraid the Russia will literally kill him or if he just hates the US that much, I don't know.  There is definitely a target discrepancy in wikileaks, which was founded to expose the hidden world in closed governments and their initial mission statement specifically cited Russia, Iran and China as targets.

[onlykelsey]

It has been established I think fairly confidently that Assange (and by extension wikileaks) is friendly to Russia.  If you look into the history of the site, they have rarely published anything of value on Russia or it's interests.  Several of Assange's chief collaborators have quit the site because of this discrepancy where they received potentially explosive Russian data and then never publish it.  If this is because Assange is afraid the Russia will literally kill him or if he just hates the US that much, I don't know.  There is definitely a target discrepancy in wikileaks, which was founded to expose the hidden world in closed governments and their initial mission statement specifically cited Russia, Iran and China as targets.

+1.  Snowden to me is a much more sympathetic case.  I lived and worked in Russia and have an acquaintance who was a Russian-language collaborator of Assange who backed out a few years ago.