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Hillary and Scaife: Dancing with the Devil?


Hell Has Officially Frozen Over   [Byron York]

It caught my eye as a flash on Brit Hume a few moments ago, but here is a photo from Hillary Clinton's visit today to the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In this picture, she is seen talking to none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the paper and the man who once said that the death of Vincent Foster was the "Rosetta stone" of the Bill Clinton administration. (He also funded the so-called "Arkansas Project" at The American Spectator.) We've heard reports of a rapprochement between Scaife and the Clintons of late, and the Pennsylvania primary is fast approaching, but this is still a pretty striking picture.

The picture is right here: 

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDA2YTFkMmUxNjliNDIzODU1MWQxZmY1MjdiMDE0OGM=

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it.  It does bring to mind the fact that Rupert Murdoch, owner of right-wing media outlets Fox News, the New York Post, and now the Wall Street Journal (op-ed is far right, we'll see what happens to news), hosted a fundraiser for her Senate campaign. 

The links in this piece will give you some background on Scaife, who is probably the one person single-handedly responsible for the absolutely worst elements of American political life through his donations to bogus "conservative" media outlets and think tanks, including the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review vanity press and The American Spectator.  He's the anti-Obama, the opposite of everything Obama talks about and stands for.  Scaife is constantly injecting more BS and venom into our politics, doing whatever he can to increase ignorance and partisanship.

What the hell is Clinton doing meeting with reporters and editors of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review? The Tribune-Review is a money-losing fringe publication published by Richard Mellon Scaife, a bilious and wealthy crank who spent the 1990s manufacturing vile innuendo about the Clintons. If the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" on which first lady Hillary Clinton famously blamed her troubles can be said to exist, its chairman and chief executive officer was Scaife. Scaife gave the American Spectator $2.3 million to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton, and he used the Tribune-Review to spread, among other things, the reprehensible allegation that Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster, a clinically depressed deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in 1993. Scaife was quoted more than once calling Foster's death "the Rosetta stone to the Clinton administration," adding in an interview with George magazine, "Once you solve that one mystery, you'll know everything that's going on or went on—I think there's been a massive coverup. … Listen, [Bill Clinton] can order people done away with at his will. He's got the entire federal government behind him. … God, there must be 60 people who have died mysteriously."

...

For whatever reason, Scaife decided last summer to extend the hand of friendship to Bill Clinton, whose post-presidency he professes to admire. Perhaps Scaife was looking to burnish his image with the judge then presiding over his extremely nasty divorce. Maybe he wanted to get even with the former Mrs. Scaife, who apparently prefers Obama. (She gave Obama's campaign $2,300 in February.) Bill Clinton overcame whatever scruples he might harbor to raise money for his foundation. Hillary Clinton is now doing the same in the interest of her candidacy. She is free, of course, to associate with whomever she pleases. But she is not free, while paddling the sewers with Scaife, to judge Obama publicly for belonging to Wright's church. Compared with Scaife, Wright is St. Francis of Assisi. The only possible reason why any Pennsylvanian might judge Wright more harshly than Scaife is that Scaife is white and Wright is black. That must be obvious even to Hillary as she cozies up to this repulsive billionaire.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187473/


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Somehow I missed Josh Marshall's take on Hillary and Scaife!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/185608.php

Be advised that last fall, Scaife and Bill Clinton enjoyed a tasty lunch and walk before Scaife donated a huge bag of coin of the realm to the Clinton Foundation.

It's called: How to BUY and election.

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Here's an article I dug up from Newsweek on Bill sitting down with Scaife.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/69545

"Last July, the former president sat down with a billionaire impressed with the William J. Clinton Foundation's campaign against AIDS in Africa. The two men chatted amiably over lunch for more than two hours, and the visitor pledged to write Clinton's foundation a generous check. But there was something unusual, if not plain weird, about the meeting. NEWSWEEK has learned that the billionaire so eager to endear himself to the former president was Richard Mellon Scaife—once the Clintons' archenemy and best-known as the man behind a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton said was out to destroy them.

Scaife was no run-of-the-mill Clinton hater. In the 1990s, the heir to the Mellon banking fortune contributed millions to efforts to dig up dirt on President Clinton. He backed the Clinton-bashing American Spectator magazine, whose muckrakers produced lurid stories about Clinton's alleged financial improprieties and trysts. Scaife also financed a probe called the Arkansas Project that tried, among other things, to show that Clinton, while Arkansas governor, protected drug runners.

The Arkansas Project largely came up empty, and most of the stories were ignored by all but the most avid Clinton antagonists. But one Scaife-backed conspiracy theory got widespread attention. In 1993, White House aide and Clinton friend Vince Foster was found dead of a gunshot wound in a park outside Washington, D.C. Three official investigations concluded the death was a suicide. Yet Scaife dollars helped promote assertions that Foster had been murdered—the not-so-subtle subtext being that the Clintons had something to do with it. Scaife hired Christopher Ruddy, a reporter who doggedly pursued the conspiracy theory in a Scaife newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Though discredited, the story resonated with people who believed Clinton was hiding dark secrets. Scaife and Ruddy later started Newsmax, a Web site and magazine that attacks their enemies and lauds their heroes."

...

"Whatever the reasons for Scaife's change of heart, it's not hard to figure out why the Clintons would embrace a former nemesis. As they prepared for Hillary's presidential run, the Clintons made quiet attempts to disarm, or at least neutralize, some of their most vocal opponents. Last year Hillary accepted an offer from Rupert Murdoch (who always hedges his bets) to host a fund-raiser for her Senate campaign. The New York Times reported that the Clinton camp has also made efforts to open a line of communication to blogger Matt Drudge, who has served as a conduit for anti-Clinton GOP leaks."

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Josh is engaging in the kind of rank speculation that is so detrimental to liberal candidates. For the life of him, he just can't picture the fact that there are TWO major newspapers in Pittsburgh and Scaife owns one of them and Clinton is meeting with both editorial boards because that's what politicians DO. Naturally, she isn't seen as someone who can put aside the rancor and vitriol and do what she has to do, no, Josh says she's bad and so she must be.

Of course, the Clinton rules apply if you're a liberal journalist, and she must be accused of nefarious and ulterior motives, although, Obama appearing on Fox, the station that brought us Wright, is perfectly reasonable and without any but the purest of motives. But that's the way it works in liberal land.

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Here's what Josh said:


This afternoon Greg Sargent and I were talking this over and one of us realized that this wasn't just any Pittsburgh paper. It was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the money-losing, vanity, fringe sheet of Richard Mellon Scaife, funder of the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator during its prime Clinton-hunting years and virtually every right-wing operation of note at one point or another over the last twenty years or more.

In fact, what I only discovered late this evening, when Eric Kleefeld sent me this link at National Review Online, is that not only was it Scaife's paper. Scaife himself was there sitting just to Clinton's right apparently taking part in the questioning.

This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary's having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one.

But there's more.

Let's game this out. Hillary's saying this wasn't some planned thing. She just got hit with this question and she answered it. But here's my question. You think Richard Mellon Scaife might want to dig into the Jeremiah Wright story? This is sort of like, 'Hey, I go on Hannity and next thing you know he's asking me about Wright and Farrakhan. How was I supposed to see that coming?'

I don't know just how this went down. But the idea Sen. Clinton and her staff went into an editorial board meeting with Scaife and his lackey reporters without a clear sense that they were going to get at least one choice Jeremiah Wright question just somehow doesn't ring true to me.

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I just saw Clinton on Fox News, and I know Obama punished them for months after the bogus madrassa story by not going on Fox News, so once again, BevD, you don't know what you are talking about.

... Hillary & Scaife? Simple: birds of feather flock together. Or: two peas in a pod. HRC has made it very clear of the past few days, she intends to detroy the Democratic Party if she cannot have the nomination. Destroying the Democratic Party is simply their common goal.

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