Betsy's Page blog reports that the Clinton campaign was warned about Norman Hsu awhile back, but did not heed those warnings.

The Los Angeles Times, that rightwing rag, revealed that the Clinton campaign had been warned that fundraiser Norman Hsu was involved in a suspicious ponzi scheme.

Before the announcement, new evidence surfaced that the Clinton camp had dismissed allegations about Hsu made by a Southern California businessman. In an e-mail obtained by The Times, a Clinton campaign staffer told a California Democratic Party official in June that the businessman's concerns were unwarranted.

"I can tell you with 100 certainty that Norman Hsu is NOT involved in a ponzi scheme," wrote Samantha Wolf, who was a campaign finance director for the Western states."He is COMPLETELY legit."

In fact, Hsu was a fugitive wanted on a 15-year-old bench warrant stemming from an early 1990s investment fraud case.

The businessman's query prompted Clinton staffers to review public records about Hsu, but no problems surfaced, the campaign source said. In part because of that incident, the campaign also announced Monday that it would institute more stringent procedures to vet major contributors, including running criminal background checks.

Whoops! Somebody goofed.

But wait, there's more...

This story gets more interesting every day. Apparently, Norman Hsu reportedly ran off with a whole lot of money. Now what inquiring minds want to know is---where did it go?

Captain Ed over at Captain's Quarters takes a look see.

The following is an excerpt he took from the Wall Street Journal.

New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing.

Mr. Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each deal, according to a business plan obtained by the Journal. Now the investment fund, Source Financing Investors, says Mr. Hsu's company owes it the $40 million, which represents 37 separate deals with Mr. Hsu's company. When Source Financing recently attempted to cash checks from the company, Components Ltd., the investors say they were told the account held insufficient funds.

Source Financing's arrangement with Mr. Hsu's company, according to court documents and investor accounts, echoes an older matter that came to light in recent weeks. In 1991, California officials charged Mr. Hsu with grand theft for failing to repay investors for money he raised to import latex gloves from China.

Wow, what a crook! What the heck did Hsu do with that $40 million? Can you believe that a person like Hsu could be affiliated with Hillary and the Democratic party? ha ha... ;)

Here's more from Captain Ed..

The Hillary Clinton campaign can stop the cash from going back to the bundled contributors. If Hsu stole $40 million, it explains how all of these families of modest means could afford to contribute eye-popping sums to her campaign and others. It also means that the FBI and Rosenman will want the money back.

This puts a brand new spin on the story, and a very bad development for the people through whom Hsu pushed these contributions. At a minimum, the donors who bundled Hsu's money face potential election-finance violations. The feds could add money laundering to the list of charges -- and since the money got sent around via wire transfers, wire fraud will likely get included. Finally, if the wire transfers show complicity to deceive, all of the contributors who participated may find themselves in the middle of a RICO prosecution, which could mean lengthy stretches in federal prison for everyone.

Furthermore, that would put the Democratic candidates and the organizations in a very uncomfortable position. The FBI would want to know just what involvement they had in Hsu's theft and subsequent manipulations of cash. While it would be unlikely that Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Eliot Spitzer, the DSCC, and a host of other candidates and organizations would have knowingly approved embezzlement, some of their staff members could potentially have participated in the illegal activities that assisted it. In any case, it hardly paints the Democrats in a good light to have to answer depositions in a fraud involving the theft of $40 million, dragged out over the next several months.

Damn. Who's got the culture of corruption going now? This could potentially be the story that takes the Democrats "culture of corruption" line right out of their campaign vocabulary.

Also, if some on the left were afraid before that Hillary could cause them harm in a general election, you wonder what they must be thinking now?

This one's gonna hurt...

With NJ having the highest property taxes in the nation, it's best that Hillary Clinton not quit her day job and try out for last comic standing.

Trying to show solidarity with New Jersey, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today unwittingly stumbled into an issue that Garden State Democrats would rather forget: sky-high property taxes.

Speaking to the state Democratic Party convention, the New York senator thanked New Jersey for moving its presidential primary up to Feb. 5.

"I feel like I'm pretty much an honorary resident of New Jersey,'' Clinton said. "I just don't want you to charge me any more property taxes on top of what I pay in New York.''

While most of the room laughed at the joke, several groans were heard in the ballroom of Bally's Atlantic City. New Jersey Republicans have long railed against the Garden State's highest-in-the-nation property taxes, where the average homeowner pays $6,300 a year in property taxes.

If this were the gong show, you would have heard some noise. Of course, there was no mention of the latest political corruption arrests in New Jersey, which occurred a day earlier when 10 Democrats were charged in a bribery scheme.

Instead she talked about how there was no way that the American military could win in Iraq.

"If we don't begin to withdraw our troops, we are going to be refereeing the Iraqi civil
war,'' she said. "There is no military solution to what we're facing in Iraq. If the Iraqis
themselves don't make up their minds that they're going to live together, there is nothing the American military can do for them.''

Clinton said President Bush has squandered the support that America enjoyed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"That's a tough thing to see in New York and New Jersey,'' she said. "The whole world was behind us. All that is in the past. We have emboldened our adversaries and alienated our allies.''

Nice. Senator Clinton needs to do a reality check. It's the Senator and her allies on the left, who have continually emboldened our enemies by turning this war into a political football. It's just a huge disgrace.  read more »

It's amazing what people will come up with to make a buck. Gotta love this though. ;)

Hillary's Nutcracker

Here's the video. LOL!

Feel the squeeze! ;)  read more »

The Hillary camp can't be liking Oprah's enthusiastic support for rival Barack Obama, but can Oprah give Obama the boost he needs?

Add this to Hillary's not so great moments in fund raising.

"Hillraiser," fugitive Norman Hsu was apprehended by the FBI on an eastbound train out in Colorado last night.

Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu, who skipped out on San Mateo County authorities this week rather than face sentencing for a 1992 fraud conviction, was apprehended Thursday night by federal and local lawmen in Grand Junction, Colo.

Authorities said Hsu was taken into custody at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction at 7 p.m. local time. He had been on the lam for almost two days after failing to appear in a Redwood City courtroom Wednesday to surrender his passport.

Hsu was taken off a passenger train at the Grand Junction train station earlier in the day by paramedics who requested a backboard to move him, said Sgt. Lonnie Chavez with the Grand Junction Police Department.

Authorities received a request for medical assistance at the train station at about 11:15 a.m., but the exact nature of Hsu's condition was unclear, Chavez said. Staff at St. Mary's Hospital declined to comment.

FBI spokesman Joseph Schadler said Hsu will be returned to California on the 1992 conviction once released from the hospital.

I think I'd be sick too if I was in Hsu's shoes. This whole incident has to be a major embarrassment not just for him, but for what is shaping up to be a growing number of the Democratic Party.

Could this be a "culture of corruption" that we are witnessing? Silly me, those words only apply to Republicans. Nancy Pelosi told us so right? ;)

The NY Times put out a nice long puff piece for Hillary today. Once again, I was waiting to hear " I'm Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I approve this column."

It presents Hillary as being above the radical 60's persona that was present at that time. It also tries to paint an image of Hillary as being soft and cuddly.

Here's some highlights.

Unlike many of her peers, she never experimented with illegal drugs, Mrs. Clinton said. She embraced collegiate social rituals, attending mixers, showing up to Harvard football games (often with a book, a friend recalls) and planning a strawberries-and-cream bridal shower atop the Wellesley Bell Tower for a roommate, Johanna Branson.

No need for drugs. Power is Hillary's fix.

Friends say she had a playful streak, was game for road trips to Vermont and Cape Cod, and liked to call people by goofy nicknames. “She would sometimes refer to herself in the third person as “the Hill,” or “the Hill woman,” said her Wellesley classmate Nancy Pietrafesa, whose childhood moniker, Peach, sometimes became Peacharoo or Peacharooni in Hill-speak.

This is true. Hillary loves nicknames. In fact, she often referred lovingly to Arkansans as "shitkickers."

She was prone to capricious fashion choices. A suitemate, Connie Hoenk Shapiro, recalled asking why she had bought a particularly dreadful pair of muddy-colored shoes (with clunky 2-inch heels and a square toe) and Ms. Rodham explaining, “I felt sorry for them and wanted to give them a home.”

I wonder if this explains Bill?

“Her opinions are mature and responsible, rather than emotional and one-sided,” Alan Schechter, a political science professor at Wellesley, wrote in a law school recommendation that year for Ms. Rodham.“I’m done with this, absolutely,” Mrs. Clinton recalled thinking upon hearing Mr. Nixon’s acceptance speech. She characterized the Republicanism of her youth as one of fiscal conservatism and social moderation, and at odds with what she viewed as the intolerance of Miami.

Ah, Hillary the intellectual. See all you Daily Chaos(kos) people, she's not a nutcase like you. She knows better. She's also a fiscal conservative...with her own money, not ours.(tax payers)

Still, she was something of a sponge for all the angst and argument engulfing her generation. Ms. Shapiro recalled going to do errands one afternoon when Ms. Rodham handed her an unopened bottle of perfume she had bought and asked her to return it to the store.

“I asked why,” Ms. Shapiro recalled. “Her answer was that it was an extravagance she felt guilty about indulging in when there was so much poverty around us. We were increasingly sensitive to issues of what we now call white privilege. ”

LOL! Now they've gone too far! ;)

Gaining power, Ms. Rodham asserted, was at the core of effective activism. It “is the very essence of life, the dynamo of life,” she wrote, quoting Mr. Alinsky.

Exactly what Hillary is all about folks. It's all about power and the acquisition of it.

Dick Morris tears apart Hillary for saying, "You can’t always demand everything your own way, or you’ll never get anything done.”

Anyone who remembers the way Hillary tried to ram her "Hillary Care" down our throats, will understand what Morris is getting at.

The winner of the Hypocrite of the Year award goes to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Even though the year is far from over and is likely to have its fair share of hypocrisy, Mrs. Clinton’s comment on the need to compromise to achieve political and social progress has to outclass any other current or future entrant.

This woman, who refused to change a comma or a word of her thousand-page-plus healthcare reform bill and, as a result of her intractable stubbornness, sent the bill down to defeat along with the Democratic Congress and almost her husband’s presidency, is daring to show herself now as the apostle of compromise.

Unbelievable.

Here’s what she recently said:

“Ultimately, to bring change, you have to know when to stand your ground, and when to find common ground. You need to know when to stick to principles and fight, and know when to make principled compromises. You can’t always demand everything your own way, or you’ll never get anything done.”

For Hillary to give a sermon on compromise in politics is a bit like the Ayatollah preaching religious tolerance. This is the same woman who:

• Refused to release the Whitewater documents, triggering the appointment of a special prosecutor;

• Wouldn’t settle the Paula Jones suit — with no apology, admission or damages required — out of simple stubbornness;

• Insisted on the secrecy of her healthcare reform task force’s deliberations until a federal court ruled her position invalid and who still won’t release her first lady healthcare reform documents until after the election;

• Insisted on the travel office firings even when they became a total political embarrassment;

• Will still not apologize for her vote for the Iraq war.

And, in the Senate, where she pretends to have developed her penchant for compromise, she still has not succeeded in passing a single major piece of legislation.

Compromise was not, to put it mildly, uppermost in her thinking in 1993 and 1994. After it was clear that her healthcare package was  read more »

I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approve of this message. Well, this is what I expected to hear after seeing this from ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," George Stephanopoulos showcased a "quirky" poll indicating that Americans would like Hillary Clinton next to them for a multi-hour, cross country drive. Additionally, according to anchor Diane Sawyer, the poll also found a majority of citizens would choose the New York senator to run the company that employs them. Stephanopoulos, host of "This Week" and former top aide to Bill Clinton, spun the good news for Hillary as getting "at what people are looking for in a president."

The two ABC anchors also discussed Senator Clinton’s attempts to increase her likability ratings. Stephanopoulos repeated a talking point by parroting the former First Lady’s claim to be "the most famous person in the world that people don't know." Then, he helpfully played clips of Mrs. Clinton demonstrating warmth and humor on such venues as "The Late Show" and Ellen Degeneres’s program." Finally, what little time was left for the Republicans was spent bashing former Senator Fred Thompson for "fritter[ing]" the summer away and not exciting crowds.

Discussing the ABC poll results, Sawyer noted that, by a 48 to 45 percent split, respondents would prefer Clinton for a cross country trip. On the subject of running their company, the New York Senator came out on top again. The GMA anchor reported, "It would be 45 percent for Hillary Clinton, against Giuliani. 45 percent to 42 percent." (Apparently Americans would prefer a company where the billing records just disappear.)

LOL! That last billing records line has to crack you up. ;)

Of course, what do we expect from a former Clinton hack like Stephanopoulos?  read more »