Here then is a refresher of a few of the incompetencies, deceptions, and dishonest dealings of Hillary Clinton and her Casanova husband, which don't exactly inspire confidence. They're listed more or less in inverse chronological order, starting with the past year's biggies, Hillary's hypocritical Wall Street connection and the email or "Servergate" affair. Since there are so many "incidents", I only have space for a short description of each, but you can click on the paragraph heading, and a Google result for the incident will open in a new window. (Various authorship.)

There's an old saying that "money can't buy everything." That may be true, but it can buy people, including superdelegates. When you're the Clintons you're going to find a way to win, especially after an embarrassing loss to a young black whippersnapper the last time out. And when you realize that the superdelegates are people, it won't take long before you figure it out. It's just a matter of setting up a conduit for donations that will benefit the superdelegates, along with some promise to remember them when you win. At the above link Margot Kidder gives the clearest explanation I've seen of the Clintons' complicated money laundering operation that funneled campaign funds from their many donors to the superdelegates. But for a quick taste, the scheme goes (yes, present tense – it's still going) about like this:

To quote Kidder, "In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 state Democratic parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington." By donating directly to each state party committee, which passed the money on to the DNC and then to the Hillary Victory Fund, donors could increase their "legal" donation. The money then came under the management of Elizabeth Jones, the head of the Clinton campaign, who would decide how much of the money would be disbursed back to the states. Back to the states where the state leadership, who would benefit from the money, were also the state's superdelegates. Funny - they're all backing Hillary! Do yourself a favor and read Margot Kidder's tale of Hillary's edge-of-the-law scheme to buy delegate loyalty. Ethical or not (NOT!), if you've got money, you can get democracy to work for you!

Update: Now that the Democratic Convention is over, and Clinton has been crowned as the party's nominee, we have all discovered – through the DNC email hack – that the Democratic primary process was fraudulent from the start. Evidently engineered by the Clintons and Hillary's former campaign chair / then DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC in violation of its vow and its mission to function as a neutral promoter of a fair election process, rigged every aspect of the primaries to favor its predetermined candidate, Hillary Clinton. (Let's raise a toast to the then-DNC vice chair, Representative from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard, who had the moral fiber to resign from the DNC in protest many months ago when she discovered the Committee's fraud.) The DNC defrauded not only Bernie Sanders, but equally the remaining Democratic candidates, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee, and Lawrence Lessig. After a few blips of protest by the Sanders delegates at the convention (the Clinton delegates seemed completely unaffected by the revelations of fraud), the non-Clinton delegates were simply sent home and those left could join in a sincere hug.
( Here's an updated link from Politico.)

One typically devious "explanation" came from Hillary's campaign spokesman Nick Merrill, who wrote in an email to the Washington Post (9/22/2015) that: "Due to her practice of emailing her colleagues on their state.gov email addresses, 90% of her work-related correspondence occurred on the Department's email system." Don't laugh! – the Clinton campaign is actually asking the American people to conclude that email sent to a secure server is secure, so that "90%" of Hillary's emails were OK. What kind of dupes do they take us all for? The affair is developing daily, but a click on the heading should get the latest news.
Update: By now, we know the outcome: the FBI found Hillary to have handled highly classified material "with extreme carelessness", which is a federal crime, but the Obama administration declined to indict her on political grounds because, as the FBI director explained, she didn't understand what she was doing.
(Below, find a relevant ironic incident: Hillary's firing of an Ambassador for ... guess.)

Three elements have jelled to make the money-machine work: 1. Hillary's policy level job as Secretary of State, 2. the Clintons' well-known adaptable ethics, which has always attracted mysterious money, and 3. their brilliant stroke of establishing a charitable foundation in the Clinton name. The Clinton Foundation reputedly does some good here and there around the world, but has been especially good for the Clintons' bank account. With the Secretary of State's family name on it, the foundation has acted as a ready receptacle for multi-million dollar gifts from foreign actors – both businesses and governments – that were looking for a favorable ruling from Hillary Clinton's State Department. At the same time, these parties would invite Bill to deliver a short talk, in connection with which he was given sums up to a half million dollar per event into his own pocket. Bill's trips "to give a speech" were really just to pick up the bribe check. The speech was entirely incidental. This is called greasing the skids, and to be blunt, the Clintons are totally corrupt.

Among the many State Department actions potentially influenced by such money transfers to the Clintons (for examples of international arms sales approved by Hillary after payments to the Clintons see this from International Business Times), several have involved mining companies; for example, the approval of the purchase by the Russian Atomic Energy Agency ROSATOM of exclusive mining rights to a large portion of North American and international uranium deposits, including up to half of U.S. uranium resources, according to a N.Y.Times report in April 2015. The deal was accompanied by a huge Russian contribution to the Clinton Foundation, as well as a $500,000 check waiting for Bill in Moscow - and, yes, he did give a short talk. A significant point is that the White House, concerned about possible conflict of interest in the Clintons' financial dealings, had Hillary sign an agreement to the effect that she would notify the White House of all significant private financial dealings with foreign corporations or governments, including specifically speaking fees for Bill or gifts to the family foundation. But she "forgot" to comply with that before she signed over half the U.S. uranium resources to Russia's atomic energy agency! The facts in the Clinton enrichment scheme are still being developed; expect this scandal to erupt big-time over the coming year.

The appearance of impropriety was repeated time and again on Hillary's Sec. of State watch. Because of her position, her husband's contract work (i.e., speeches) for foreign governments or corporations needed approval by the U.S. government. That is, they needed approval by the State Department. Bill presented more than 330 such requests, usually for exorbitant fees, to the Department, and all but a small handful were immediately approved by Hillary. Among these were a large number of financial institutions of mixed repute, for example Barclays Bank and HSBC Swiss bank which were under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, and were found to have engaged in money-laundering and illegal sanction-busting.

At the more recent House committee hearing on Benghazi, Hillary was faced with her own emails to her daughter and to the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, both sent within hours of the Benghazi murders. In these, she wrote (certainly a breach of security) that "we" knew that the riots and killings were not inspired by the touted video, but were the work of a terrorist group. Why did the administration then continue for several days to blame the YouTube video? She had no answer, but the answer must be that being struck down by a chance event seemed more palatable to the administration than an attack by the very groups that the Ambassador had vainly sought security assistance against, especially since Mr.Obama's reelection was less than two months away. Since the hearings uncovered the fact that the government knew the cause of the killings (terrorists and lack of security) but continued to blame it on circumstances beyond their control, the clear truth is that Hillary and the administration were simply lying to the world, to the American people, and to the grieving relatives of the victims, evidently for political reasons.

She wrote later, "I made a mistake, and I'm sorry." A mistake! And she's "sorry": About 4500 American soldiers have died so far as a result of her "mistake". and an estimated million persons have died in the middle east holocaust that her decision set in motion. Additional millions live unspeakable lives as refugees. Without her vote and those of others who are equally guilty, there would be no "Arab spring" horror, no murderous ISIS, no continuing Islamist conquests, no Syrian war, no European refugee flood. But she's "sorry".

What Hillary didn't understand, and still doesn't grasp, is that a decision to go to war is a decision to kill and be killed, most likely in vast numbers, and that the consequences will certainly be a catastrophic human disaster, as it has been in this case. The Iraq war and its horrendous aftermath must be laid on the conscience of those who started the war, including President G.W.Bush and then-Senator Hillary R. Clinton, along with fellow members of Congress. Each legislator who votes for war must acknowledge that he or she is starting the war and will be fully responsible for it. Individual responsibility for this disaster is not lessened or diluted by being shared; each member of Congress had the question to decide: "Shall I take responsibility for starting a war?" And each of those who voted Yes, answered "Yes, I will start this war. Be it on my conscience." And there it rests after a million dead: on their conscience. Hillary's dismissive "I made a mistake, and I'm sorry." is not enough. That's not taking responsibility for the horrors of the wars she started. Perhaps "I ask you to forgive me for my stupidity that led to so much misery" may bring some sympathy, but we'll never hear that from Hillary Clinton. In the view of this writer, one who was responsible for starting the carnage in the middle east that has destroyed the region ought to have the decency to lay low, rather than boisterously trumpeting her qualification to be American President and Commander-in-Chief. The cheek!

But Berger was interested in more than just perusing documents. He was there as Bill Clinton's representative, and the Archives held materials that the Clintons did not want the 9/11 commission to see. Due to slack security at the Archives, Berger was able to secrete on his person an unknown number of papers and carry these out of the Archives to his home. (He had been seen by a staff member stuffing documents into his socks, under his pant legs.) When Archives staff later discovered that documents were missing, Berger was questioned but denied taking any. A day later, however (after conference with the Clintons, no doubt), he returned a few documents to the Archives, admitting to carrying them out for use by the September 11 Commission, and saying that he had made an innocent mistake. The incident was reported to the Justice Department, and by a plea bargain, after Berger had confessed that the theft was preplanned, and that he had in fact destroyed some documents ("copies" only, he said), he incredibly got off with a misdemeanor conviction for removing classified documents, which carried a modest fine and temporary removal of his security clearance. Clearly, the light sentence was adapted to the person of Mr.Berger. Most individuals would have faced a felony charge for theft of classified material. There must have been high-level negotiations involved to reduce the charge, very likely a phone call from Bill Clinton to President Bush, explaining that everyone would be best served if this case did not drag out.

And the connection to Hillary? She had lambasted the Bush administration in speeches for not doing more to take out Osama bin Laden. If the Clinton administration had had the opportunity, she said, they would have closed in quickly. Unfortunately for her, the truth was that they did have that opportunity on several occasions. As the hit movie "The Path to 9/11" showed – before a 3-minute segment was cut by the Disney Co. after threats from the Democratic Senate leadership – they had bid Laden cornered and hesitated to make the move. These episodes were documented in White House notes which were in the Archives. They're no longer there, they were not made available to the 9/11 commission, and they could no longer contradict Hillary's claims. Sandy Berger, working for the Clintons, saw to that.

After their theft was discovered, Hillary tried the line that they had thought the gifts for the White House anniversary were meant for themselves personally! After wide criticism the Clintons agreed to pay $86,000 for items that the National Park Service decided they could keep, and later they sent back items valued at $28,000, which NPS required to be returned. The total value of what they tried to steal is unclear; New York Times reported it as $190,000, and ABC News described it as "china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts". Several donors of the furnishings were quoted in the news as being flabbergasted – they had naturally intended the gifts to permanently decorate the White House. What can we say? – they are the Clintons, and ... you don't succeed if you don't try. "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission," etc etc.

By the way, among the rest of the pardoned were an exceptional number of Clinton relatives, personal and political friends and associates, and donors to their campaigns. The President's brother, Roger Clinton, was among the pardoned, as was his Arkansas Whitewater partner Susan McDougal. Hillary's brother Hugh was paid $400 thousand to lobby his brother-in-law (successfully, of course) for two clients, though it's said he paid the money back when the news came out in the press and "shocked Hillary, who had known nothing about it." (The year before, Hillary's other brother Tony had lobbied the Clintons (successfully, of course) for a pardon for two friends who had paid him handsomely. What's a brother for?) Pardoned were also Clinton's associates from the Whitewater/Madison Guaranty affair, Chris Wade and Robert W. Palmer, as well as Stephen Smith, an aide to then-Governor Clinton in Arkansas.

The Clinton impeachment – more lying
No need to retell the story of President Clinton's impeachment here. Just a personal note: I'm no Republican, but Clinton's misbehavior in office deserved impeachment and removal. The Arkansas Bar Association thought so, as they withdrew Bill Clinton's license to practice law. Clinton's lies under oath amounted to perjury, although the Special Prosecutor declined to indict him after the Senate's Democrats declined to convict the President. The connection with Hillary? She identified herself totally with Bill in a common presidency – and more often than not she had a vital role in the President's decisions. She knew Bill lied under oath. She knew everything that happened in the White House. But she played the good wife and stuck by her man, lying when she needed to. In a sense, the impeachment was of both the Clintons. So should we give them another shot? Are we that short of leadership in the U.S? Daniel Halperin said it well in the Washington Post: "The truth is, the Clintons never really change." They just shift positions toward what is expedient. It is not odd that a large portion of the American public find the thought of sending the family that sullied the presidential mansion with bribery, graft, perjury and disgraceful conduct back to White House simply disgusting.

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal surfaced in 1997, Mrs. Clinton insisted she did not know about the affair until afterward. In 1998, she flatly told “The Today Show,” “There isn’t any fire,” to the Lewinsky allegations. But subsequent reports indicate it was Mrs. Clinton’s assistant Evelyn Lieberman who orchestrated Miss Lewinsky’s removal from the White House. In 2000, when Mrs. Clinton was confronted by Tim Russert during a New York Senate race debate about the affair, she still insisted she hadn’t deceived the country: “Obviously, I didn’t mislead anyone,” she insisted. “I didn’t know the truth.”

1997 and '98 were difficult years, entirely self-induced, for the Clintons. Not only did Bill harass another female employee into providing him sexual services in the Oval Office, which Hillary was fully aware of, but Bill's lies about it required Hillary to lie in turn. The evidence for the harassment came out in Bill's harassment trial against Paula Jones, yet in January 1998 Bill found it necessary to lie to the entire nation at once. On nationwide TV he assured us, "I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." I remember his marvelously convincing straight face. It was vintage Clinton. Unfortunately there were Linda Tripp's recordings of Monica Lewinsky's side of the story, and eventually the semen-stained blue dress. Bill's approach when he finally had no choice but to confess was typical of both Clintons: he said "it was wrong," and it was "a lapse in judgment," and it was a "personal failure". These are things that happen to all of us, just errors that can easily be forgiven and even overlooked. He never said he lied. He never admitted his act was sexual harassment, for which any CEO of a major firm would have been immediately sacked.

Hillary promptly came to the defense of her husband while he was telling his lies, although she knew the accusations to be true. She went on the offense, accusing the Republican Party of engineering the case. And Monica, said Hillary, had only imagined a relationship with the President – which young girl wouldn't? Rumors to the contrary were, in Hillary's famous phrase, the work of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

The honest office chief, Mr.Dale, was charged and stood trial for negligence, and was found not guilty on all counts. His life and reputation were pretty much ruined by the experience. Special Prosecutor Robert Ray's final report on the matter wrote about Hillary's sworn testimony, "The overwhelming evidence establishes that she played a role in the decision to fire the employees. ... Thus, her statement to the contrary under oath was factually false." Translated: she lied. (A good place to mention the Clintons' flexible view of testimony. They're both lawyers, and they recognize two kinds of statements: those given under oath, and those not. If you're not under oath you say what suits your purpose. If you are under oath, you prevaricate and avoid telling a direct lie. It's the Clinton way.)

This case is too complex to even summarize here, so see the Wikipedia article for details of the sorry affair. It's enough to say that an Arkansas banker associated with Jim McDougal (and later convicted of fraud) accused Governor Clinton of pressuring him to make an illegal loan of $300,000 to Susan McDougal. This triggered the Whitewater investigation by a Special Prosecutor, and at its completion, fifteen friends, coworkers, and associates of the Clintons were convicted of various financial crimes, but the Clintons were not charged. Certain evidence had disappeared (Hillary's records of her work for Whitewater and Madison Guaranty for the Rose Law Firm, for example), and Susan McDougal refused to answer questions about the Clintons' involvement in fraudulent transactions. She was found in contempt of court, and served 18 months in jail – during which time she could have got out on the spot by talking. Now that's friendship, and Bill thanked her with a retroactive pardon. The missing Rose Law Firm files later turned out to have been taken by Hillary, and were kept in the White House office of attorney Vince Foster. After Foster committed suicide, a Secret Service agent testified that the first lady (that's our Hillary) directed the unlawful removal of records related to the Whitewater Development Corp. from Vince Foster’s office – unlawful because the office had been ordered sealed by the FBI.

The matter was wrapped up with the Independent Counsel's final report in September 2000, which, in spite of "the President's abundant and calculating lies under oath, obstruction of justice and abuse of power," gave this ringing endorsement of the Clintons'... uh, innocence: "This office determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Clintons had violated the law.

(Summarized from Wikipedia:)

• The editor of the Journal of Futures Markets said, "This is like buying ice skates one day and entering the Olympics a day later."
• USA Today concluded after a four-week study that "Hillary Rodham Clinton had some special treatment while winning a small fortune in commodities."
• In the Journal of Economics and Finance, economists from the University of North Florida and Auburn University investigated the odds of gaining a hundred-fold return in the cattle futures market during the period in question. They concluded that the odds of such a return happening were at best 1 in 31 trillion. (That is to say, impossible.)
• Financial writer Edward Chancellor noted that Clinton made her money by betting "on the short side at a time when cattle prices doubled" (making the profits essentially impossible).
  
• Bloomberg News columnist Caroline Baum and hedge fund manager Victor Niederhoffer published a detailed analysis in National Review and concluded that her explanations for her results were highly implausible.

Much has been written pro and con on this matter. Chief Counsel Zeifman's strong view of Hillary as a dishonest lawyer didn't have a political background, since the 27-year old Ms.Rodham was essentially an unknown junior staff member. His view was apparently based on the matter of the biased brief, though there may have been other incidents that fed his vigorous dislike for Hillary. Zeifman nevertheless suspected a political involvement in her (and her supervisor's) work, which ran about like this: Ted Kennedy was at the time a favorite for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination (which went instead to Jimmy Carter – the Chappaquiddick incident still haunted Kennedy). The Kennedy forces supposedly did not want Howard Hunt – one of the operatives in the Watergate affair – to be crossexamined by President Nixon's counsel at their hearing, since Hunt had also been an operative for President Kennedy in the disastrous Bay of Pigs affair and in "dirty" domestic activities in Kennedy's CIA. Testimony about the Kennedy administration carrying out operations outside the law was not what Democratic leaders wanted to hear in the Nixon hearings. Thus the effort to keep Nixon's lawyer out of the hearing. Zeifman claimed that committee phone records showed Hillary consulting daily with Burke Marshall (who was not employed in government), supposedly in the interest of the Kennedy clan. Whatever the actual facts behind such allegations, it's clear that such scheming does occur, but the only thing well established from the Zeifman-Rodham controversy is that Hillary's background brief for the committee was slanted and intentionally suppressed information that would have contradicted her conclusion. Professional deceit, in other words – but then again, it was a long time ago...