Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The GOP Platform I'd Like to See

 
These are the ten key planks I'd like to see.


*  Stronger national defense   - increase the size, capability and efficiency of our Armed Forces

*  Physical barriers at the border   - stop illegal immigration completely now. Did you hear me? Now!

*  Energy Independence   - open up ANWR and the OCS to exploration; aggressively pursue nuclear energy; and incent private industry to aggressively pursue clean, renewable energy sources.

*  English only   - the sole national language is English; it must be legal for all governmental entities and businesses to require English from its employees

*  Flat tax/Fair tax   - revamp the tax system and eradicate a tax code gone mad

*  Reduce the size of government   - provide "whistleblower-style" awards for reducing the size of government and task the IRS (which will no longer have to worry about enforcing the tax code) with achieving the reduction goals on an annual basis

*  Address health-care deficiencies   - with competitive, free-market solutions, not Government largesse

*  Death to earmarks   - they must go! Or their supporters must go.

*  Zero tolerance for Congressional corruption   - accelerate FBI investigations of Congress and remove all barriers for investigating corruption.

*  Use Quarterly Report Cards and Bully Pulpit   - anyone in the Executive Office ever heard of Powerpoint? Every quarter the President should get on prime-time TV and issue a report card on progress in the nine preceding areas. If Congress is lagging, he should use the bully pulpit to lobby the American people. And, for heaven's sake, use Powerpoint or some other highly graphical medium for getting the point across.

Update: thanks to Reliapundit for pointing out the omission on energy policy.

Do it (donate) for the children

 
The root-system connecting database marketer InfoUSA, its founder Vin Gupta, and the Clinton clan gets more exposed by the day. Yeoman's work by A Jacksonian offers essential background reading on the foul-smelling mess.


Among the revelations, a host of Clinton donors named Gupta still wearing diapers:

...the number of student contributions of $1,000 or more quadrupled between 1990 and 1996. Take 8-year-old Jason Corcoran -- a high roller barely out of his highchair -- who plunked down $1,000 for a seat at a Clinton fund-raising luncheon in October 1995. Or 10-year-old Emily Gartner, a ponytailed influence peddler who ponied up $250 for the president. Or 11-year-old Alexander Gupta, whose largesse keeps both Clinton and Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson crammed in the hip pocket of his Toughskins...

...Alexander Gupta's brothers Ben and Jess are also frequent campaign contributors, although not so frequent as their father Vinod, who gave $53,000 in the last election cycle, including a $40,000 gift to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Little Emily Gartner's story is similar. She, brother Jeremy, sister Jennie and mom Sandra all gave $250 apiece on the same day that her father, Vermont businessman Allen Gartner, gave $1,000 to the Clinton campaign.


So what we have here is a form of kiddie money-laundering. Is it legal? Not if the money doesn't actually belong to the kids or if it wasn't their decision to contribute it.

...The eldest Gupta brother, 17-year-old Jess, told a reporter last year, "Truthfully, I'm not really associated with the donations. I'm not involved in a big way. Dad makes those donations in my name."

A. Jacksonian's reaction:

This sort of stuff really is galling, particularly when President Clinton would garner over $217,000 from these 'child donations'.... only by 1997, of course. Makes you kind of wonder just how much is being filtered through such donations...

The entire relationship is suspect. And the fact that it represents such a tiny microcosm of the entire Clinton sleazosphere is itself galling.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Now that Oprah has joined Barack Obama on tour...

 
...all of the Democratic candidates have found alliterative celebrities to accompany them.

Joe Biden's celebrity is Harry Belafonte; who -- coincidentally -- is a blowhard who'd be intellectually challenged in a game of checkers with a squirrel.

Hillary Clinton's celebrity is Chevy Chase. The general reaction to the announcement that he'd be hosting a talk-show was similar to that elicited by her contention that experience as First Lady qualified her for the Presidency. In effect: you've gotta be freaking kidding me.

Chris Dodd's celebrity is Tyne Daly. Dodd is to politics what Cagney & Lacey were to television.

John Edwards' celebrity is Bob Eubanks. The host of The Newlywed Game joins forces with the host of Channeling Fetuses.


Bill Richardson's celebrity is Rob Reiner. Both are nicknamed Meathead and both played second-fiddle to chunky, bleached blondes.

Dennis Kucinich's celebrity is Kermit the Frog. They have much in common: each had a painful experience with a UFO; each gives the impression that some unseen being -- inserted up their hiney -- is actually in control.

A military funeral in Texas

 
Email from my Dad (See below for update).

In Texas we really do pull off the road and stop for funerals......nobody moves until the last car has gone by. What follows is a message from Vicki about her nephew James' funeral (he was serving our country in Iraq):

"I'm back, it was certainly a quick trip, but I have to also say it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

There is a lot to be said for growing up in a small town in Texas. The service itself was impressive with wonderful flowers and sprays, a portrait of James, his uniform and boots, his awards and ribbons.

There was lots of military brass and an eloquent (though inappropriately longwinded) Baptist preacher. There were easily 1000 people at the service, fil ling the church sanctuary as well as the fellowship hall and spilling out into the parking lot.

However, the most incredible thing was what happened following the service on the way to the cemetery.

We went to our cars and drove to the cemetery escorted by at least 10 police cars with lights flashing and some other emergency vehicles, with Texas police handling traffic.

Everyone on the road who was not in the procession, pulled over, got out of their cars, and stood silently and respectfully, some put their hands over their hearts.

When we turned off the highway suddenly there were teenage boys along both sides of the street about every 20 feet or so, all holding large American flags on long flag poles, and again with their hands on their hearts. We thought at first it was the Boy Scouts or 4H club or something, but it continued... for two and a half miles.

Hundreds of young people, standing silently on the side of the road with flags. At one point we passed an elementary school, and all the children were outside, shoulder to shoulder holding flags kindergartners, handicapped, teachers, staff, everyone.

Some held signs of love and support. Then came teenage girls and younger boys, all holding flags. Then adults. Then families. All standing silently on the side of the road. No one spoke, not even the very young children.

The military presence, at least two generals, a fist full of colonels, and representatives from every branch of the service, plus the color guard who attended James, and some who served with him . was very impressive and respectful, but the love and pride from this community who had lost one of their own was the most amazing thing I've ever been privileged to witness.

I've attached some pictures, some are blurry (we were moving), but you can get a small idea of what this was like."

* * *

Update: Several folks pointed out that this funeral occurred in Texas, not Tennessee. The post was updated to reflect this.

If the movie Redacted had been made during World War II

 
I'm pretty sure FDR's reaction to Redacted director Brian DePalma would have been either this:

...or a firing squad.

Does this strike anyone else as odd?

 
So I get a text-message from my wife yesterday -- during a heavy rain -- that reads:

      i need new tires!!! i am hydroplaning!

Hmmm. Let me think about this for a moment. Something -- I can't quite put my finger on it -- strikes me as odd about that message.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Linda Bat-Boyd and Life at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

 
The nuclear physicists who run the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have decided to accelerate their campaign for impeachment. It seems to be a strategic element of management's stewardship, which has resulted in the loss of 40% of the paper's subscribers in the last decade.


Illustration accompanying Linda Bat-Boyd's Seattle P-I Op-Ed

Actually, Linda Bat-Boyd lays out her case for impeachment brilliantly:

Impeachment is squarely on the table, and momentum is building. A year ago, almost no elected official breathed the word impeachment. Now impeachment has hit the House floor, and our electeds have gone on record. Millions of Americans are demanding an end to executive abuse of power.

After six years of state of emergency, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, continual war and occupations, our Constitution is deeply in crisis. Americans are in danger of losing our system of government and civil rights if they do not roll back the Bush administration's assault on the rule of law.

Yes, momentum is building, only it's to have you forcibly committed to a local mental health facility, Linda.

Of course, Linda fails to describe a single instance of said abuses. Consider her "slamdunk" case:

The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments are all now subject to the caprice of government officials. The Military Commissions Act allows U.S. citizens to be detained without due process if they are declared enemy combatants. Without our permission, this country has become an exporter of torture.

One teensy, weensy little problem, Linda: you've failed to mention even one real instance of abuse. That's because you can't. Even the so-called instances of "torture" by American troops -- the controversial cases of non-lethal waterboarding -- are actually practiced by our armed forces on themselves.

As ABC's News Blotter reported earlier this month:

For all the debate over waterboarding, it has been used on only three al Qaeda figures...

The most effective use of waterboarding, according to current and former CIA officials, was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], who subsequently confessed to a number of ongoing plots against the United States... A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the waterboarding that he talked.

Ultimately, KSM took responsibility for the 9/ll attacks and virtually all other al Qaeda terror strikes, including the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl...

But Linda Moonboyd doesn't care about beheadings. After all... it's not torture, it's just murder. As for the Al-Qaeda Torture Manual, well, that doesn't count. They're misguided "minutemen," I suppose.

And as for "lying us into war" or "manipulating intelligence": Hillary Clinton saw the same intelligence that that the President and VP saw... and voted for war. Should we impeach Hillary as well?

Super Special Photo-Gallery Feature for Progressives Only!

Don't recall what Madeline Albright, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Jay Rockefeller, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry said before and after the invasion of Iraq? Our super-fantabulous stop-action photo gallery takes you into the way-back machine to revisit all of the Dems' hi-larious hi-jinks in glorious MoonbatVision™!

If anyone needed to be impeached, it was Bill Clinton and not for the reason he was actually impeached. The Progressive Review recaps the unbelievable track record of wrongdoing by the Clinton Regime:

- The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
- Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates*
- Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
- Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
- Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
- First president sued for sexual harassment.
- First president accused of rape.
- First first lady to come under criminal investigation
- Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
- First president to establish a legal defense fund.
- First president to be held in contempt of court
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
- Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad
- First president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court

- Number of individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47
- Number of these convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33
- Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61
- Number of congressional witnesses who have pleaded the Fifth Amendment, fled the country to avoid testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed: 122

The number of times that Clinton figures who testified in court or before Congress said that they didn't remember, didn't know, or something similar during the many, various investigations: Bill Kennedy 116, Harold Ickes 148, Ricki Seidman 160, Bruce Lindsey 161, Bill Burton 191, Mark Gearan 221, Mack McLarty 233, Neil Egglseston 250, Hillary Clinton 250, Bill Clinton 267, John Podesta 264, Jennifer O'Connor 343, Dwight Holton 348, Patsy Thomasson 420, Jeff Eller 697.

- FBI files misappropriated by the White House: c. 900
- Estimated number of witnesses quoted in FBI files misappropriated by the White House: 18,000
- Number of witnesses who developed medical problems at critical points in Clinton scandals investigation (Tucker, Hale, both McDougals, Lindsey): 5
- Problem areas listed in a memo by Clinton's own lawyer in preparation for the president's defense: 40
- Number of witnesses and critics of Clinton subjected to IRS audit: 45
- Number of names placed in a White House secret database without the knowledge of those named: c. 200,000
- Number of women involved with Clinton who claim to have been physically threatened (Sally Perdue, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Juantia Broaddrick): 6

Of course, let's not even delve into the Chinagate Missiles-for-Money Scandal, the still-redacted Barrett Report, and still-redacted Cox Report for other corruption (or perhaps even treason) investigations that were "stone-walled" and/or censored by the Clintons' lawyers.

Or Pardongate, in which Presidential pardons and commutations were seemingly traded like baseball cards... but for large sums of cash instead.

Or the litany of terrorist attacks sustained by US and Allied interests under the Clinton Regime without even a semblance of a plan to combat extremists and their state supporters.

Dear Linda, those are the sorts of thing that you can use for real grounds for impeachment. Not a demented fantasy world, for which you can point to no real instance of abuse of power. Now get back on your meds and stop bothering the working folks..

Postscript: Linda Bat-Boyd is allegedly a Washingon state senator and is director of Washingtonians For Impeachment: FlamingTreasonousWashingtonMoonbats.org; Citizens to Impeach George and Hillary Cheney: www.IAintPlayingWithAFullDeck.org; and Progressive Morons for a Better Seattle: moron.org.

Bonus Line o' the Day: Poet, Philosopher, First Lady

 
MVRWC asks (hat tip: Maggie's Farm):

At [what] point will a Clinton candidacy prompt the following question of Laura Bush “Do you feel qualified to run for President, after eight years as First Lady”?

[And] What would be the reaction if she said “being First Lady doesn’t qualify you to be President”?

The reaction? Anarchy. Cats and dogs, sleeping together. Truly, the end of the world.

Line o' the Day: Who is a refugee?

 
[Missing is the] scholarly article on why the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, who escaped to Israel leaving all their possessions behind, are no longer refugees, while the Arabs who became refugees as a result of their violent rejection of the U.N. partition plan for two states, one Jewish and one Arab, are still living in refugee camps supported by the U.N., even at a time when, as Mr. Robbins reminds us, Arab countries are awash with petrodollars.

The so called moderate Palestinian leadership, to this day, refuses to accept the fact that Israel was created as the only (tiny) Jewish state in the world, pursuant to the U.N. resolution of 1947 and Israel's war of survival and independence.

                  -- Professor Ezekiel Bahar, writing in the Wall Street Journal's Letters to the Editor

Sunday, November 25, 2007

The Clinton Gambit: 'Protection money', 'fear of retribution' and 'pressure to give'

 
Yesterday's Washington Post exposed another odd donation bundler utilized by the Clinton Machine. Matthew Mosk -- with help from Alice Crites and Sarah Cohen -- examined the contributions of a Texas real-estate developer named Alonzo Cantu.

Operating out of the town of McAllen, Texas, Cantu has raised more than $640,000 for the Clinton campaign. In contrast, Barack Obama has raised less than $2,100. In this relatively poor border town, the Post was interested in how Cantu had raised the money -- and from whom it had been raised.

Because of his financial interests, Cantu's influence over potential donors is substantial. He has raised money from doctors who work at the hospital where he holds an ownership interest, from bankers who work at the bank he co-owns and from the scores of tradesmen who contract with his primary business, Cantu Construction and Development Co., one of the town's dominant residential and commercial builders. The Clinton donors included dozens who had never registered to vote, several who were Republicans and 10 who had previously made contributions to President Bush and former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R).

Even when Hillary ran for her New York Senate seat, Cantu was actively raising donations for her.

What does Cantu want? The Post states that Cantu has been lobbying his contacts for help in bringing an interstate highway to McAllen and described a significant "local opposition" to the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence that was authorized last year.

Some donors appear less than ecstatic with Cantu's methods of fundraising:

A longtime local surgeon who left the hospital said Cantu and the other hospital board members referred to the political contributions as "protection money."

"They said, 'We've got to give this money to Hillary so we can be exempt from the bill,' " said the surgeon, who asked that his name not be used...

The concept of "protection money" is not new for Clinton's donation bundlers. The Norman Hsu fundraising affair, for example, has some peculiar similarities.

When the Hsit hit the fan

In a previous post ("Hsit hits the fan"), a Human Events' summary of the Hsu debacle has some eerie parallels to the Cantu scenario.

GOP Bloggers' Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan posted their FEC complaint against the Hillary Clinton for President Committee in response to the reports of donors who felt pressure to give money for fear for retribution and a number of poor donors who donated thousands of dollars each to her campaign.

Townhall.com's Patrick Ruffini reports:
On the heels of the Norman Hsu scandal, the Clinton campaign was rocked by questions of even more Hsu-like shakedowns in connection with a $380,000 fundraiser in New York which saw contributions ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 from cooks and dishwashers. At least one donor admitted to being an illegal immigrant. Another said she was illegally reimbursed for her contributions. Others said they felt pressured to give.

Unlike the Hsu cash, Hillary's campaign has yet to return the bulk of this tainted money.

This complaint brings these charges into a formal FEC process. The Clinton campaign will have 15 days to respond and publicly defend itself from charges of illegal campaign fundraising.

'Protection money', 'fear of retribution' and a 'pressure to give'

The pattern is disturbing at best. Outsized donations are raised by some powerful, well-connected patrons of the Clintons and, when some of the money is tracked back, the actual parties who contributed are none-too-pleased. Or they are actually illegal aliens, prohibited from voting.

Either way, the Clinton Machine doesn't seem very good at scrubbing their donor lists, despite their bizarre ties to database marketer InfoUSA.

Hat tip: Mike and Patti

Line o' the Day: Debate Chaos

 
LGF Commenter US Beast, responding to accusations that CNN rigged debate questions in order to lob softballs at Hillary Clinton.

Now lets be fair here. You can't expect CNN or the Dems to allow ordinary citizens to question these candidates. Ordinary citizens just aren't intelligent enough to understand the mental gymnastics it takes to arrive at the positions held my these mighty intellects. The average Joe or Josephine cannot comprehend what kind of intellectual fortitude is required to ignore the world as it is and achieve the world they hallucinate envision.


And remember, it was a bunch of these ordinary citizens that voted for George W. Bush, not once but twice.

Can you imagine the embarrassment it would cause if an ordinary citizen asked a question like: "Each of you talks about 'ending the war in Iraq'. None of you ever mention the word 'victory'. Has 'victory' become a dirty word for the Democrats or are you all a bunch of candy-assed defeatists?"

Chaos. It would result in absolute chaos.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

My first entry in Michelle Malkin's Photoshop Contest

 
Michelle Malkin:

Want a project for the holidays? Check this out: Arianna Huffington is calling on her minions to design posters that capture their BDS spirit. It’s “A HuffPost Project: Posterizing the Modern GOP.” She hooked up with... the guy who created the “Got Milk?” ad campaign, and came up with three posters “that simply but graphically capture the lunacy of the modern GOP.”


One word. Wow. Michelle's challenge is to "posterize the modern Democrat Party."

Here's my first entry:

I think it captures the essential fragrance of the Sesame Street Party.

The bizarre ties between the Clintons, Vin Gupta and InfoUSA

 
Gateway Pundit has the essential introduction to the Clinton machine's ties to a single, powerful company in the data-mining industry. After some additional research, the many intricate links between the Clintons and InfoUSA deserve further attention.

The Clinton "Public Library"
On the Larry King show, Hillary Clinton described the Clinton "Public" Library (emphasis added):

That’s one of the things the library really stands for. It physically stands for openness with all the glass and the light. But he wants it to be a place where people come and really study. And everything’s going to be available.

In reality, the Clinton "Public" Library will not disclose millions of documents relating to Hillary's activities during her husband's administration until after the 2008 election.

The Secret Donor List
In September, ABC reported that the list of donors to the Clinton Library remains secret:

Former president Bill Clinton said Thursday that he will not reveal the names of donors to the Clinton Presidential Library unless he is required to by law... the issue of contributions to the Clinton library has gotten fresh attention [with the scandal concerning] disgraced Clinton fund-raiser Norman Hsu. Hsu has given widely to the Clintons and their causes; he raised $850,000 for Sen. Clinton’s campaign, and gave $30,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative... Those contributions have been returned. But Clinton aides have declined to say whether Hsu has given any money to the foundation that funds the Clinton Presidential Library, or whether such funds have been returned...

...[The Clinton Library has received] $165 million from private sources, according to press accounts. None of those sources must be revealed, under state and federal law... Among the entities who have been reported to have given more than $1 million toward the presidentical center: the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar; the Saudi royal family; a deputy prime minister of Lebanon; filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Stephen Bing, and David Geffen; Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton; the Anheuser-Busch Foundation; and Vin Gupta, chairman and CEO of infoUSA Inc., a telemarketing firm that has come under scrutiny for its handling of private information...

The Clintons' relationship with the Emir of Dubai has received significant attention over the last 18 months but there has been virtually no disclosure of the full extent of the Emirate's ties to both Clintons. In Gupta's case, various legal actions are beginning to expose the true depth of the relationship between InfoUSA and the Clintons.

The Clintons Sell the Secret Donor List
While the Clintons have withheld the donor list from public scrutiny, they appear to have sold it to Vin Gupta's InfoUSA.

Three years after the William J. Clinton Presidential Library opened its doors, the list of donors who helped the former president build his $165 million complex remains a secret from the public... Yet the Blotter on ABCNews.com has learned that the Clinton Foundation sold portions of the list through a data company headed by a longtime friend and donor.

"The fact that they've sold the list and then turned around and said that these names must be kept anonymous completely undercuts their argument," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group that tracks the influence of money in politics.

An employee of Walter Karl, a subsidiary of the data company InfoUSA, told ABCNews.com that the company made a list of more than 38,000 donors to the Clinton presidential library available for sale...

In other words, the Clintons are happy to disclose the Library's donor list to insiders... but not the American public. But the public deserves to know how a current Presidential candidate might be influenced by tens of millions in donations to her husband's foundation.

Walter Karl investigated for telemarketing fraud
Walter Karl is the same firm involved with telemarketing fraud that targeted seniors:

...according to Miller's 2005 court filing, an investigator recognized a mailing as "part of a scheme to create a list of consumers who would be good targets for subsequent telemarketing fraud..."

As we shall see, the controversy involved other key Democrats whose families have been compensated by Gupta and/or InfoUSA. Many observers believe there is a conflict-of-interest, since Congress is considering additional regulations for companies like Walter Karl.


Until press scrutiny of their relationship, Gupta's personal website featured Hillary Clinton
Vin Gupta enriches the Clintons
In June, Amanda Carpenter called attention to the Clintons' odd relationship with Gupta:

You may have read about the $146,886 jet trip a prominent CEO bankrolled for the Clintons to vacation in Acapulco, but this trip is just one of the favors the Clintons received from a company that makes millions selling the kind of personal data that's coveted by political campaigns...

Gupta has secured $3 million in consulting contracts for the former President. Gupta has also donated at least $1 million to Bill Clinton’s presidential library, $2 million to Hillary’s 1999 New Year’s Eve Millennium party and “bundled” $200,000 for her Senate campaign.

The Clintons were also given use of InfoUSA’s corporate jet to take trips to Switzerland, Hawaii, Mexico and Jamaica at an estimated cost of $900,000. When Hillary used the jet for campaign purposes she only reimbursed the company at the cost of a first class flight. Her reimbursements, for seven of these trips, totaled $450,000—a significant discount from private jet fare costs.

...InfoUSA also paid Mr. Clinton $200,000 to deliver a speech in Omaha, Nebraska, where the company is headquartered, on July 27, 2001. Hillary’s disclosure forms also report that Mr. Clinton is paid an undisclosed fee of “more than $1,000” annually in “non-employee compensation.”

Recently, Cardinal Value Equity Partners, InfoUSA’s largest shareholder filed a lawsuit against [Gupta] for recklessly spending company money. Among other things, the shareholders were outraged about the company money had been spent on the Clintons...


Shareholders rebel against Gupta's favors for the Clintons and other Democrats
In July, the New York Times called attention to the intricate ties between Gupta and the Democrat Party apparatus:

Mr. Gupta signed Mr. Clinton as a consultant after he left office. Over the years, he appointed Mr. Kerrey, Mr. Pressler, Mr. McAuliffe and Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, to the boards of his companies, and gave jobs to Mr. Kerrey’s brother, William, and Ms. Pelosi’s son, Paul...

...Such expenditures caught the attention of fund managers who had invested in infoUSA. The funds filed a lawsuit last year accusing Mr. Gupta of wasting millions of dollars on the payments to Mr. Clinton, as well as houses, cars and a yacht for himself and corporate-jet flights for the Clintons and Mr. McAuliffe. Mr. Gupta denies misspending company money.

The funds have also questioned Mr. Gupta’s decision to pay a substantial premium last December to acquire the Opinion Research Corporation, which has done opinion surveys for CNN since April 2006. In January, CNN began using Opinion Research for its presidential polling, leading conservative bloggers to ask if Mr. Gupta, as a Clinton supporter, should have influence over CNN’s polling...

The job for Pelosi's son was especially controversial. The job was described as a $180,000-a-year "Vice President for Strategic Planning" that allowed Paul Jr. to keep his full-time job as a loan officer for Countrywide (California) and does not require him to work at InfoUSA headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

Dick Morris notes that Pelosi's son was offered the job only after his mother became Speaker of the House. And that such a payment is highly unorthodox given Pelosi has "no experience at all in the basic business of InfoUSA". Morris goes on to describe a possible rationale for InfoUSA's bizarre hiring practices:

InfoUSA is the same company that has been cited by the New York Times for creating marketing lists that were used by con artists to fleece vulnerable elderly people. The lists had provocative names and offered the names of elderly people with cancer, elderly people with Alzheimer's and gamblers over 55 years of age who think their luck will change. After purchasing the lists, the con artists would call and convince the elderly person that they had actually ordered an expensive item. Once they received the victim's financial information, they often emptied their bank accounts, leaving many people penniless. Some of InfoUSA's internal e-mails suggest that company employees were aware that several of the companies they sold the lists to were under investigation...

it is likely that Congress will eventually address privacy issues involved with the selling of data that InfoUSA sells. Pelosi would be directly involved in that legislation, and her son should not be involved with the company in any way... [InfoUSA's payments] to Pelosi's son can only be viewed as an investment and should be stopped.

SEC opens an investigation of Gupta and InfoUSA
Just days ago, the SEC announced a formal investigation of Gupta and InfoUSA relating to the company's spending practices:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into spending by a database marketer in Omaha that already faces a lawsuit contending that the company misspent millions, some of it on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The shareholder lawsuit contends that Vin Gupta, founder of the company, InfoUSA, used private corporate jets to fly the Clintons on business, personal and campaign trips; that Mr. Gupta gave Bill Clinton a $3.3 million consulting contract; and that the company paid for luxuries that Mr. Gupta enjoyed... The lawsuit states that Info USA has spent nearly $900,000 since 2001 flying the Clintons to domestic and international destinations and political events.


Opinion Research Corporation, CNN, and the Clintons
In 2006, just three months before the elections that put Democrats in power by a narrow margin, InfoUSA purchased Opinion Research.

CNN utilizes Opinion Research heavily for its political polling. In fact, the two organizations frequently combine forces. For example, two weeks ago, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll revealed that "Iraq war opposition is at a record high":

Despite the drop in violence in Iraq, only one quarter of Americans believes the U.S. is winning the war. There has been virtually no change in the past month in the number of Americans who believe that things are going badly for the U.S. in the war in Iraq... The public also opposes U.S. military action against Iran. Sixty-three percent oppose air strikes on Iran, while 73 percent oppose using ground troops as well as air strikes in that country... Overall, 56 percent, of Americans are dissatisfied with progress in the war on terrorism.

These results are counter-intuitive at best and completely false at worst. Were they the result of push-polling or misleading questions?

In my opinion, every single poll produced by CNN and/or Opinion Research Corporation should be utterly and completely ignored because of the bizarre and unexplained ties between InfoUSA and the Clintons.

Questions for Hillary
Several obvious questions for Hillary Clinton arise from these many, varied relationships.

* Why would you and your husband sell the Clinton Library Donor List to InfoUSA but not disclose the list to the public?

* Will you describe all of your family's financial ties to Vinod Gupta and InfoUSA, such as your husband's true compensation?

* Should we trust any poll coming from CNN/Opinion Research Corporation given various financial ties -- not all of which have been disclosed -- between Vinod Gupta and your family as well as other key Democrats?

I won't hold my breath waiting for the mainstream media (especially CNN) to ask these questions. But perhaps one day during a debate, some real -- not scripted -- questioners will ask the tough questions that can and must be asked.

Update: In June, 2005, Walter Karl offered for sale the 720,000 names of registrants with Rock the Vote. I wonder how many of the mostly young registrants (e.g., MTV viewers) understood that their names would be hawked by the Democratic-linked InfoUSA subsidiary when they signed up?

Update II Big Lizards has "More on the Clintonian Culture of Corruption".

Update III: Linked by Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, and Maggie's Farm - Thanks!

Update IV: Linked by the incomparable Anchoress - Thanks!