Thursday, September 6, 2012

Obama's Clinton Family Connection Historically

Chelsea Clinton has joined the board of IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet media company controlled by Barry Diller….Ms. Clinton, 31, is now a director of the company, whose portfolio of Web sites includes the Daily Beast, CollegeHumor and Match.com. It also publishes Newsweek magazine.

“Ms. Clinton will earn $50,000 per year as an IAC board member. The company also granted Ms. Clinton $250,000 worth of IAC shares that vests in equal installments over three years…Ms. Clinton, 31, is…working with the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative…Her business experience consists of stints in her 20s at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the hedge fund Avenue Capital.

“Mr. Diller, the chief executive of IAC, was a supporter of Ms. Clinton's father, Bill Clinton, in the 1992 presidential election. He also supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.

“Also joining the IAC board is Sonali De Rycker, 38, a partner at Accel Partners, the venture capital firm….In March, Michael D. Eisner, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, became a director. Other members of the prominent board include Edgar Bronfman Jr., the music executive…and Alexander von Furstenberg, the son of Mr. Diller's wife….Ms. Clinton also recently celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary to Marc Mezvinsky, a former Goldman Sachs executive. Mr. Mezvinsky most recently worked at 3G Capital, the private equity firm controlled by Brazilian billionaires that last year acquired Burger King. He is now starting his own investment firm, according to several reports….”

--from a Sept. 26, 2011  New York Times article by Peter Lattman

Obama’s Clinton Family Connection Historically

Recently, the father of Barry Diller’s IAC/Interactive Corp./Daily Beast/College Humor/Newsweek corporate board member Chelsea Clinton and the father-in-law of former Goldman Sachs executive Marc Mezvinsky—Bill Clinton—gave a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in which he nominated Barack Obama to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Coincidentally, after Obama was elected to his first term as U.S. president in November 2008, Bill Clinton’s wife was named by Obama to be the Democratic Obama Administration’s Secretary of State—despite her lack of diplomatic experience or knowledge of how to bring peace to the world through peaceful negotiations. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter recalled in his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One:

“The idea of choosing Clinton for Secretary of State was first raised by John Podesta in small meetings over the summer [of 2008]…The former president [Bill Clinton] had a complex relationship with Ted Kennedy…Over the first three weeks of 2008 Bill Clinton and Kennedy had several tense telephone conversations…As Kennedy lavishly praised Obama’s Iowa [primary] victory speech the night before, an angry Bill Clinton interjected, `Gimme a break!’ He was enraged at Obama’s nerve—that he thought he could just drop his bags off at the Senate and run for president…The guy had done nothing! `Nothing!’ Clinton said…The former president would tell people privately that Kennedy had chosen race over gender and endorsed Obama mostly because he was black…

“…Bill [Clinton] went quiet for the rest of the primaries [in 2008]…He campaigned for Hillary [Clinton] but talked to no reporters. The former president had been muzzled, though Obama was convinced he was still spreading rumors about him. When the liberal talk show host Ed Schultz asked him off the air who was stirring up opposition in the Jewish community, Obama replied, `It’s the f—king Clintons.’

“…Obama courted Hillary intensely. They talked by phone before and after the [2008] election on a variety of subjects…Obama asked her to come to his transition office in Chicago on November 13 [2008].

“Philipp Reines, Hillary’s press secretary, kept telling his boss that Obama wanted her for Secretary of State…When she arrived for their one-on-one at the Kluczynski Federal Building in downtown Chicago, Obama offered her the jobBill Clinton…wanted her to take the job…He was confident that the new relationships Hillary would establish as Secretary of State could keep what would someday be known as the William Jefferson Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton Foundation vital for another 15 years…After the [2008] election it still didn’t take much to set him on a tear about how the Obama folks played dirty pool in the [2008] primaries, how Obama didn’t work hard enough, how Obama still thought he was the `Messiah'…”

  Given the lack of diplomatic experience and the lack of negotiation skills possessed by the wife of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, it’s not surprising that the Democratic Obama Administration’s State Department failed to bring peace with justice to the Middle East, to Africa, to Afghanistan or to Pakistan between 2009 and 2012 under Secretary of State Clinton’s leadership. And it’s also not surprising that the Obama Administration’s incompetent Secretary of State also failed to finally normalize diplomatic and economic trade relations between the United States and Cuba or create a disarmed, nuclear-free planet between 2009 and 2012. Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the 2012 Democratic presidential candidate in 2009 should be returned to the Nobel Peace Prize committee of judges by the Clintons or the Clintons' daughter in 2013?

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