Hillary goes into the lion's den and comes out with a lion's skin: Richard Mellon Scaife's

[Rageneau]

When people listen to what cranky people SAY about Hillary, they thinks she's rotten.

But when people meet her IN PERSON, they discover she is nothing like the monster she is portrayed to be in the Corporate Media.

The most recent person -- a cranky one indeed -- to learn that is Richard Mellon Scaife of the notorious Arkansas Project. He is truly one of the all-time Hillary haters, the fomenter and financer of some of the vilest slanders ever aimed at her. But he finally met her in person, and here is what he has to say.

Don't overlook the video clips on the right.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/multimedia/s_559659.html

[dkf]

1. Oh yeah, he loves Hillary now that she is a sellout.

[papau]

14. Chicago Machine Obama says he wants Reagan "realistic" foreign policy - who's a sellout?

[susankh4]

15. Ray-gun?

We aren't going back to building battle stations in space, are we?

[Tellurian]

17. Yes, modeled on Bush-Reagan's Foreign Policy

From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan

GREENBURG, PA -- Barack Obama promised that his foreign policy would be a return to what he says was the realist approach practiced by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

"My foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of in some ways Ronald Reagan," he said Friday. A voter at the town hall in Greenburg had asked Obama to respond to charges that his foreign policy was naïve.

"It is George Bush who has been naïve and it's people like John McCain and unfortunately some democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naïve ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation in the world," Obama said.

Drawing on the example of the first Gulf War, Obama said that the first President Bush had "conducted a Gulf War with allies that ended up costing twenty billion dollars and left us stronger because they were realistic."

"Remember, people were saying why didn't you go into Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein? The realists understood that that would be a nightmare. And it wasn't worth our national interests," Obama added.

He described this President Bush's world view on foreign policy as a big stick approach.

"Certainly George Bush's foreign policy has been dominated by the idea that because we are so militarily powerful we can dictate events around the world," he said. "If people don't like it doesn't matter because we are the biggest, toughest thing on the block. Now that is naïve."

Obama claimed that since 9-11, the way foreign policy was viewed had turned from one that understood the limits of military power and had placed a greater emphasis on diplomatic and economic strength to one that placed its sole emphasis on country's military might.

He described the conventional thinking in Washington on foreign policy as "bipartisan" and this "both ideological and highly political."

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/29/837657.aspx

[joshcryer]

19. How exactly did she sell out?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

30. Who is Richard Mellon Scaife?

Richard Mellon Scaife
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Richard Mellon Scaife (born July 3, 1932 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American billionaire and newspaper publisher.

Scaife owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. With $1.2 billion, Scaife, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, is No. 283 on the 2005 Forbes 400.

Scaife is particularly well known for his financial support of conservative public policy organizations over the past two decades. Scaife has provided support for conservative and libertarian causes in the U.S., mostly through the private, nonprofit foundations he controls: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Carthage Foundation, and Allegheny Foundation, and until 2001 the Scaife Family Foundation, now controlled by his daughter Jennie and son David.<1><2> Scaife also helped fund the Arkansas Project, which ultimately led to the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.

...

Support for Richard Nixon
Scaife gained notoriety for making an end-run around weak campaign finance laws to donate US$ $990,000 to the 1972 re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon. Scaife was not charged with a crime, but about $45,000 went to a fund linked to the Watergate scandal. Scaife later said he was repulsed by the scandal and refused to speak with Nixon after 1973. Following Duggan's suicide and then Watergate, Scaife shifted his political giving from politicians' campaigns to anti-communist research groups, legal defense funds, and publications.


Opposition to Bill Clinton
Scaife's publications were substantially involved in coverage against then-President Bill Clinton.

Scaife was the major backer of The American Spectator, whose Arkansas Project set out to find facts about Clinton and in which Paula Jones' accusations of sexual harassment against Clinton were first widely publicized.
In a 1999 series of articles on Scaife and foundations that support conservative causes, the Washington Post named a close Scaife associate, Richard Larry, and not Scaife himself as the man who drove the Arkansas Project.
Regardless of his role, the project not only accused Clinton of financial and sexual indiscretions (some later verified, others not), but also gave root to hyperbolic conspiracist notions that the Clintons collaborated with the CIA to run a drug smuggling operation out of the town of Mena, Arkansas and that Clinton had arranged for the murder of White House aide Vince Foster as part of a coverup of the Whitewater scandal. The possibility that money from the project had been given to former Clinton associate David Hale, a witness in the Whitewater investigation, led to the appointment of Michael J. Shaheen as a special investigator. Shaheen subpoenaed Scaife, who testified before a federal grand jury in the matter.

So involved was Scaife in efforts against Clinton that many Democrats believed Hillary Clinton's statement condemning a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband was a direct reference to Scaife himself. President Clinton later admitted to sexual indiscretions, but the other allegations that came out of the Arkansas Project were never proven.

Coincidental to the Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's impeachment, Scaife endowed a new school of public policy at Pepperdine University. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was named the first dean of this school, although Pepperdine denies any connection. Starr accepted the post in 1996, but in the ensuing controversy, Starr gave up the appointment in 1998 before ever having started at Pepperdine.

That same year Scaife's friend and Pittsburgh attorney, H. Yale Gutnick, denied that there was any connection between Scaife and Starr:

I can tell you unequivocally that there is absolutely no linkage between Scaife and Starr in any way, shape or form. Had Ken Starr's picture not been all over the television and newspapers in recent weeks, I don't think Dick Scaife would recognize him at a social event. They have never communicated, they have never seen each other personally, and there's no relationship whatsoever.
Dick Scaife has been involved with Pepperdine I think before Clinton became governor of Arkansas, and clearly long before he was president and before the special prosecutor ever was even a dream in anybody's imagination. His giving to Pepperdine has been consistent over the years and it's been generous.<13>
However, once the investigation was behind him, Starr was appointed to head Pepperdine's law school in 2004.

In the fall of 2007, however, Ruddy published a positive interview with former President Clinton on Newsmax.com, followed by a positive cover story in the magazine. The New York Times noted with reference to the event that politics had made "strange bedfellows".<14> Newsweek reported that Ruddy praised Clinton for his Foundation's global work, and explained that the interview, as well as a private lunch he and Scaife had had with Clinton (which Ruddy says was orchestrated by Ed Koch), were due to the shared view of himself and Scaife that Clinton was doing important work representing the U.S. globally while America was the target of criticism. He also said that he and Scaife had never suggested Clinton was involved in Foster's death, nor had they spread allegations about Bill Clinton's sex scandals, although their work may have encouraged others.<15> It has been suggested that Scaife is motivated by a desire to improve his public image in regard to his divorce, or even that he may be motivated by a desire to oppose his ex-wife's support for Barrack Obama. <16>


Political donations
According to campaignmoney.com, from 1999 through 2006, Scaife has, under the name "R. Scaife," made 10 contributions of over $200 to political campaigns, for a total of $19,000. Under the name "R.M. Scaife" he made 4 donations, for a total of $22,000. Under the name Richard Scaife, he made 23 donations over this period, for a total of $142,904. Besides donations to the Republican National Committee and various political campaigns such as Santorum 2000 and the Santorum Victory Committee for Rick Santorum, he has also supported Political Action Committees such as the Pro-Growth Action Team, the Free Congress PAC (formerly: Committee For the Survival Of a Free Congress), and the Club For Growth Inc. PAC.

Scaife also funded the Western Journalism Center, headed by Joseph Farah. Farah has been connected to reconstructionism, a movement to replace judicial law with Christian Old Testament law. The organization is antigay, and would move to punish "practicing homosexuals" by sentencing them to death.<17>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

32. Scaife main funder of "Arkansas Project" to lay out "Vince Foster murder scenario"....impeachment

Arkansas Project
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Arkansas Project is the general name of a series of investigations (mostly funded by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife) that were designed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton.<1> Scaife gave $1.8 million "to unearth damaging information about President Clinton."<2> Some reports and investigations connected to this project focused on questions about the suicide of Vincent Foster, the Clintons' investment in Whitewater, and Troopergate.

Background
Like many political magazines of differing ideologies, in the 1980s and 1990s the conservative American Spectator received donations from like-minded benefactors who supported its mission. One of the Spectator's larger donors over the years was Richard Mellon Scaife, a businessman who directed a number of foundations funded with his family's wealth, through which he could support his causes. At first, donations from Scaife to the Spectator were unrestricted, but later, Scaife wanted to direct some of the spending for stories investigating the Clintons.

According to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor in chief of the Spectator, the idea for investigating the Clintons was born on a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay in the fall of 1993. David Brock, who reported many of the Clinton scandals, described himself as a Republican "hitman" who "soon became a lead figure in the drive to" get Clinton. Writing for the American Spectator, he brought the stories of alleged sexual misbehavior by Bill and Hillary Clinton into the public notice in late 1993.<3> The Pacific Research Institute funded further attempts to discredit the Clintons. The "Arkansas Project" name that later became famous was conceived as a joke; the actual name within the Spectator and between the Spectator and Scaife foundations was the "Editorial Improvement Project."

The Washington Post noted David Brock was "summoned" to a meeting with Rex Armistead in Miami, Florida at an airport hotel. Armistead laid out an elaborate "Vince Foster murder scenario", Brock said – a scenario that he found implausible."<4><5> David Brock, then of the American Spectator (and previously of the Heritage Foundation), explained Armistead was paid $350,000 to work with Arkansas Project reporters by the American Spectator.<6> Brock further noted Armistead was a "leader of white resistance to the civil rights movement" as he was working as a police officer.<7> Both Brock and Armistead were reporters who were funded by Scaife to investigate issues ranging from drug smuggling to Foster to discredit Clinton with the Arkansas Project.<8>

Another project investigator was Parker Dozhier who was a bait shop owner.<1> Moreover, "some people who know Dozhier say he is a hard-line right-winger obsessed with destroying Clinton."<2>

Ted Olson, who would later represent George W. Bush in Bush v Gore and be named U.S. Solicitor General, was a Board Member of the American Spectator Educational Foundation, and is alleged to have known about or played some role in the Arkansas Project. His firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher provided $14,000 worth of legal services, and he himself wrote or co-authored several articles that were paid for with Project funds. During his confirmation hearing, majority Republicans blocked Senator Leahy's call for further committee inquiries on the subject. <3>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project

(edited to add link)

[roguevalley]

35. By even speaking to him. All the theocracy, all the war, the roll back

of regulation, the consolidation of media, all the SHIT WE'VE BEEN SITTING IN FOR YEARS was financed by him and a handful of other rednecked billionaires. THIS IS CRAP that she even spoke to him. Amazing how its being spun as him coming to be on her side because of her 'charisma'. He hasn't changed an eyelash. He is just casting around for another vehicle to CONTINUE HIS WAR ON US. That is why this is fucked up shit. Period. If she was still capable of shame, she would be hiding her head.

[Kool Kitty]

2. After all the shit that he did to her and President Clinton,

how could she stand being in the same room with him? I give her credit for her self-control.

[susankh4]

16. Her self control is unlike any....

we have seen or will in the near future.

That can be taken to the bank!

[polpilot]

38. Sociopathic self control. Coldness necessary for her survival with Bubba.

She could walk into an execution room and have that 'self control'. It's almost inhuman. Oh I voted for a war...oh...I was right. How many killed and maimed...oh well.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

24. Here is one of the pics at that interview. It's rather melancholy and sad.

I don't know how she does it.

[ORDagnabbit]

3. I dont like her cause shes a complete and utter liar about most everything.

[Tellurian]

22. Thats a Lie right there...

[ORDagnabbit]

43. nice collection

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5327599&mesg_id=5327599

[anonymous171]

4. He's just one of those coward repugs who flings shit from a distance.

I'd probably like Bush if I met him in person. Just saying...

[pbca]

5. My Liking someone does not qualify them

to be president..sorry. There are alot of people who I like who I wouldn't trust with any power whatsoever - much less the Commander in Chief of the US Military.

I'm sure that in person, one on one, Hillary is very personable - but her campaign has been sleazy (to say the least) and the lies have been constant. I'm sure she'd be fine to 'have a beer with' but I wouldn't loan her money.

[susankh4]

18. Good point.

That's how I feel about Mr. Obama.

Like him alot.

President? No. Not in 2008.

[FrenchieCat]

6. So she can be accused of murder for 15 years.....and then the accuser falls in love?

Plu-Eazzzzzzzzze!

Where is the Democratic Underground? I must be lost. :crazy:

[Swamp Rat]

10. LOL!

[joshcryer]

20. He probably didn't think she'd have the courage to come there and then be ambivalent about it all.

He figured there would be confrontation, similarily as to how Obama supporters think she's going to the convention on a flaming red horse with an army of lawyers.

And eating your babies the whole while.

[KoKo]

27. lol's.....

[roguevalley]

36. he's looking for a new horse to ride.pure and simple.

he can relate to ruthless ambition

[Faygo Kid]

29. Bingo. Exactly.

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.

For the Hillary supporters to hold up Richard Scaife's praise for her as something wonderful is beyond belief here at DU. But then again, her whole campaign is becoming beyond belief.

[Shakespeare]

7. Oh, fucking SPARE me.

Yes, it was quite a cozy little meeting. Nothing like cozying up to the very person who did his best--including throwing millions of dollars into the Arkansas Project--to completely destroy you. Some things should be unforgivable. Some things should be so egregious, so demanding of a show of one's honor, that you just don't go there.

Hillary went there.

[joshcryer]

21. Hillary turned the other cheek.

WTF is wrong with you.

[Shakespeare]

26. WTF is wrong with YOU?

Don't give me that "oh, she turned the other cheek" bullshit. It's BULLSHIT. She cozied up to her number one enemy, an absolutely vicious and disgusting human being, for nothing more than political expediency.

And that is disgusting and reprehensible.

[KoKo]

28. When Hillary behaves graciously she's condemned...but Obama is

always so gracious one never expects him to behave badly. :eyes:

[roguevalley]

37. you must not remember what the hell it was like during the nineties

when we ALL had to go through this hell together. Or you are so disengenuous not to care. Either way, getting Scaife's endorsement is the American equivalent to being endorsed by Hitler. Get it now?

[merh]

8. On Katrina?

Have you ever heard of the Superfund and Environmental Health Subcommittee? Do you know the jurisdiction of the subcommittee?

Superfund and Brownfields · Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), including recycling, Federal facilities and interstate waste · Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) · Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) · Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) · Environmental Justice · Risk Assessment

Do you know who is the chair of that subcommittee? Yup, you guessed it. HRC.

Have any hearings been held by this subcommitttee on the toxic FEMA trailers that folks lived in and are still living in after Katrina and Rita? Seems to me that the health issues are what this subcommittee was created to look into.

Did you know that as early as January of 2006, FEMA knew those trailers were toxic?

Looks like the last time that subcommittee held a hearing was October 2007.

As a former fema dweller, I find it hypocritical of her to be saying that the response to Katrina was embarrassing. She has failed us as the chair of that subcommittee, she has ignored us.

[Asgaya Dihi]

9. I think it misses the point

From his appearances on Colbert and in other places most people said Huckabee seemed a nice guy and had a good sense of humor, might have made a decent neighbor if you didn't talk politics. He'd be a scary damned leader though.

I don't care if someone is nice in person or not, I've never had any doubt either Clinton could be personable. What I worry about is the aggressive tendencies in the campaign and elsewhere. We've had plenty of tough over recent years and not only we're tired of it but our allies are as well. It's time for smart. She can be smart, that I know, but it's hard to see it through the tough sometimes and I don't think that's what we need right now. She'd have had a much better chance if she had run a different campaign.

[donheld]

11. Am I suppose to trust Richard Mellon Scaife?

I'm not about to.

[DURHAM D]

13. Watch the videos -

looks like about 20 reporters were in the room asking questions. No reason to bother with what Scaiffe says - watch it for yourself.

[DURHAM D]

12. Thanks for posting - I just listened to all of it. eom

[Skidmore]

23. Lion bearding? I think not. Horse trading, maybe.

I'd lay odds that Hillary was negotiating with the scandal machine to turn it off and help her out in some way. Leave no billionaire behind....

[Iceburg]

25. That interview is terrific -- listen to the videos -- she is the One!!/nt

[Adelante]

31. Defending her all these against this motherfucker

Boy, was I fucking stupid.

[Seabiscuit]

33. I'm sure he's had a change of mind about her since he had a nasty divorce due to his own infidelity.

These rightwing nut jobs seem to see another's pain when it happens to them. He's still scum to me though.

[intaglio]

34. Your headline is nearly right but should be

Hillary goes into the Lions den and comes out inside the Lions skin

Scaife has funded
the Arkansas project
Santorum (FFS Santorum!)
The Western Journalism Centre, supporters of that "Old Time Religion" and Gay haters
David Horowitz
GOPAC - Newt Gingrich's crowd
The Libertarian publication "Reason Magazine"

[geek tragedy]

39. If Scaife likes her, she can't be good. n/t

[The Night Owl]

45. So, if Scaife's approval of Clinton means she can't be good, then what does Farrakhan's...

...approval of Obama mean?

I can't wait to hear the double-standard you use to get out of this one.

[cliffordu]

40. Helsinki syndrome????

[ClassWarrior]

41. I'll bet her prayer group buddies Sanctimonium and Inhofe are proud of her.

NGU.

[LowerManhattanite]

42. Democrats rightfully shred, mock and pillory McCain for his about-face...

...and sucking up to Bush after the intensely personal attacks on him in South Carolina in 2000...Bush's team put out all manner of vicious rumors about him...

Wife's a crackhead.

McCain's insane.

He sired an illegitimate Black baby.

He was a “traitor” during his imprisonment.

And when McCain sold his soul and embraced the guy who signed off on all that sh*t-slinging—literally EMBRACED HIM—

()

...we all said “What the f*ck?”

Now Senator Clinton cozies up to Scaife, who WAS THE LEADER OF THE VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY SHE DECRIED, who worked like hell against Dems in 2000, 2004, 2006 (aiding in the “Swift-Boating” of John Kerry) and this is okay? A guy who hasn't changed his spots at all? (As in his editorial board's statement on Al Gore today: (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_559648.html)

“Of course, the world should take Internet inventor Al Gore, the fella with a serious "sigh" problem, about as seriously as it would Professor Ludwig von Drake, the nutty professor from Disney's Donald Duck cartoons. It's pretty difficult to have less credibility than a cartoon character, but Gore pulls it off.

No post-traumatic event values change alá Alabama's repentant racist Gov. George Wallace. Nope. Same guy. Same agenda. Just an evil *sshole hedging a bet and running a game.

Sorry, not buying it, as it shouldn't be bought. Just 'cause the devil puts down his pitchfork doesn't make his *ss an angel.

We equivocate on this enemy-embrace chicanery at our own peril.

[Nickster]

46. Exactly, well put.

[alcibiades_mystery]

44. Spinerrific!

:rofl:

[mrreowwr_kittty]

47. Yeah, you go ahead and spin it that way.

It fools no one but maybe it makes you feel better. :eyes: