CEO says attacks on him and his brother are “beneath the dignity … of the president.”

By Mike Allen
Politico
8/25/15 8:36 PM EDT

Charles Koch hit back at criticism of “the Koch brothers” during President Barack Obama’s energy speech in Las Vegas earlier this week, saying he was “flabbergasted” by the attack and charging that Obama made the dig as a favor to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who appeared with him.

“It’s beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that,” Koch said during a phone interview Tuesday.

Koch’s blistering comments came as he and his brother David, whose conservative political network plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the 2016 election, have spoken out more frequently in an attempt to blunt Democratic attacks on their political influence and insinuations about their motives.

Reid has been particularly relentless, calling the Kochs “shadowy billionaires” who seek to “rig the system to benefit themselves and the wealthiest 1 percent,” among many other charges. At the National Clean Energy Summit at the Mandalay Bay Resort Convention Center on Monday, Obama joined the fray.

The president drew applause when he said: “[Y]ou start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding — that’s a problem.”

But Koch, who is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, said his opposition to subsidies for clean energy companies — or any other private businesses — doesn’t mean he’s against their success. Rolling back corporate welfare is one of the top issues Koch is pursuing with his richly funded political network.

Koch said his company also opposes subsidies for fossil fuels. And he portrayed Obama’s remarks as an unwarranted personal attack.

Read more at: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/charles-koch-blasts-obama-121746.html

Charles Koch AP Photo 2015

First Read: A One-Two Punch of Tough News for Hillary Clinton

by Chuck Todd and Carrie Dann
NBC News

Meet the Press
Aug 12 2015, 1:52 pm ET


'First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

A Double-Whammy for Clinton, Part One:

After months of resistance, Hillary Clinton's campaign says that the former secretary of state will turn over to the Justice Department her private server and a thumb drive containing copies of her emails. (And that news came on the same day that we learned that two of the emails that the inspector general for the intelligence community reviewed contained "top secret" information, the highest classification of government intelligence.) This is exactly the scenario that many people assumed would play out beginning six months ago - that Clinton would resist and resist and resist and then relieve the pressure when it became absolutely necessary. The big problem for her camp is that now, instead of looking proactive, Clinton looks like she's been dragged into turning these materials over.

And Part Two: A new poll shows Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire

And here's Part Two of the double-whammy for Clinton the day after this new flurry of email stories: A fresh poll from Franklin Pierce University and the Boston Herald shows Sanders leading Clinton 44 percent to 37 percent among likely Democratic primary voters.

Read more at: http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read-one-two-punch-tough-news-hillary-clinton-n408411

Hillary Clinton July 24, 2015 BGR image

Calls mount for Hillary Clinton criminal investigation amid email data breach fears

Critics say former secretary of state’s actions compare unfavorably to David Patreaus’


By Guy Taylor - The Washington Times - Sunday, August 2, 2015

With U.S. intelligence officials scrambling to contain damage from potentially hundreds of spy agency secrets in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private emails, questions are mounting over why the Justice Department has not yet opened a criminal investigation against the Democratic presidential front-runner for mishandling a mountain of classified information.

While some secrecy experts believe Mrs. Clinton will be able to build a strong case that material on her server was not classified at the time it was moving through her emails, others assert that what the former secretary of state did was far more egregious than the mishandling of information that saw former CIA Director David H. Petraeus sentenced to two years probation and a $100,000 fine.

“I don’t see how the Justice Department would be able to avoid at least investigating this,” said Kevin Carroll, a former CIA officer and secrecy lawyer in Washington. “What Petraeus did was really small in comparison, because there was no exposure of any information to any foreign intelligence services.”

Read more at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/2/hillary-clinton-emails-calls-mount-for-criminal-in/

HillaryClinton Associated Press July 2015

Parsing Clinton: What Is She Hiding?

Her slippery defense of the email scandal requires a Clintonologist. I volunteer.

BY RON FOURNIER

July 27, 2015 Let's return to the original sin: Hillary Rodham Clinton violated White House policy, federal rules, and every principle of political common sense by stashing her government email on a home-brewed server. Her covert and unprecedented actions—she deleted more than half the email and scrubbed the server—thwarted the rights of Congress and the public to review many of those records.

Now for the repeated sin: Clinton is not being honest with people about what she did and why she did it. Her most recent comments were legalistic at best, deceptive at worst, and require an experienced Clintonologist to parse them.
...
Clinton has put herself in a box. She can either hand the server over to an independent third party, who would protect her private email and our government's working email. Or she can stonewall.

The latter course gives every voter the right—and every self-respecting journalist the responsibility—to ask, "What were you hiding, Hillary?"

What are you hiding?

Read more at: http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/parsing-clinton-what-is-she-hiding-20150727

John Boehner: Hillary Clinton is lying about State Department emails

By S.A. Miller - The Washington Times - Sunday, July 12, 2015

House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday accused former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of lying about the email scandal that is hounding her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“She is not telling the truth. She had an obligation to turn these e-mails over,” Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“Our committees asked for her emails going back to 2012, and we’ve been rolled and rolled and held off and held off now for over three years,” he said. “The emails need to come forward.”

He said that he wouldn’t rule out issuing another subpoena for Mrs. Clinton to turn over the private email server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, that hosted her email account as secretary of state.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/12/john-boehner-house-speaker-hillary-clinton-is-lyin/

John Boehner of Ohio - June 11 2015 - AP PhotoPablo Martinez Monsivais

Kenyan Leader Warns: If Obama Preaches ‘Gay Agenda, We Will Tell Him to Shut Up and Go Home’

Kenyan leaders are warning President Obama not to bring his “gay agenda” with him when he visits his father’s homeland at the end of this month to open the sixth Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, the White House image was cloaked in the militant LGBT rainbow, as was the Facebook profile picture of the U.S. Department of Education.

In Nairobi on Monday, members of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya called upon Obama to refrain from discussing the gay agenda, reports CNSNews.com.

“It is important for us as Kenyans to know that the U.S. is not God,” evangelical Bishop Mark Kariuki was quoted by local media as saying.

Kariuki added that Obama should not use the visit to “talk about the gay issue.”

Irungu Kangata, a lawmaker in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance (TNA) party, said, “We are telling Mr. Obama when he comes to Kenya this month and he tries to bring the abortion agenda, the gay agenda, we shall tell him to shut up and go home.”

Kangata, according to The Standard of Nairobi, said Kenyans would protest against Obama over the gay agenda issue while he visited their country.

“Anybody who tries to come and preach to this country that they should allow homosexuality, I think he’s totally lost,” said TNA lawmaker Jamleck Kamau, according to The Daily Nation. “And I would also like to add, our son from the U.S., Barack Obama, when he comes here, to simply avoid that topic completely because Kenyans will not be happy with him if he comes to bring the issue of homosexuality in this country.”

“Liberal thoughts are being entertained in some countries under the guise of human rights,” said Justin Muturi, the speaker of the National Assembly, to an Anglican Church congregation. “We must be vigilant and guard against it. We must lead an upright society and not allow obnoxious behavior as we have a responsibility to protect our children.”

Rose Mitaru, one of 47 female lawmakers in Kenya, said that allowing same-sex marriage in her country would open “floodgates of evil synonymous with the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Read more at: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/07/kenyan-leader-warns-if-obama-preaches-gay-agenda-we-will-tell-him-to-shut-up-and-go-home/

AP Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Republican field divided on Donald Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants

Republican field divided on Donald Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants

(Bloggers note: This is why the Republicans will lose in 2016 to whatever Democrat wins the primary - regardless of how bad that candidate is. You don't talk religion and you definitely don't disparage any class of voter who dominates an election. Only the Republicans seem stupid enough to do this!)


By DAVID LAUTER
LA Times, Reporting from Washington, D.C.
July 5, 2015

More than two weeks after Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants, he continues to dominate the Republican presidential campaign debate and to divide his rivals for the nomination.

Initially, most Republican candidates tried to ignore him. But as major corporations cut ties with Trump over his declaration that some Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug-runners, and as the issue continues to fill the airwaves of Spanish-language media, more candidates have spoken out, separating into two camps.
....
Jeb Bush [married to a Mexican], who initially commented about Trump only in an interview in Spanish, stepped up his criticism over the weekend, calling Trump's remarks “extraordinarily ugly” and “wrong.”

“He's doing this to inflame and to incite and to draw attention to his campaign,” Bush said. “It doesn't represent the Republican Party or its values.”
....
Trump has expressed surprise about the intensity of the criticism he has faced. “It's bad for my brand,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News in which he lashed back at several of his Republican critics.

“The crime is raging. It's violent, and people don't want to even talk about it. If you talk about it, you are a racist. I don't understand it,” he said.

Trump said Bush was “out of touch with the American people.”

Read more at: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-gop-division-20150705-story.html

Donald Trump July 5, 2015, Jim Cole/Associated Press