Subject: ​Correct The Record Thursday September 25, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:38:14 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Thursday September 25, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Wall Street Journal: “Clintons Side With Obama on ISIS Strategy”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/09/24/clintons-side-with-obama-on-isis-strategy/>*

“The Clintons seem to be on board with President Barack Obama’s decision to
bomb targets in Syria in an escalating attempt to rout the extremist group
known as Islamic State.”

*CNN: “Hillary Clinton stands with Obama on airstrikes, arming Syrian
rebels”
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/24/politics/hillary-clinton-airstrikes/index.html>*

“Hillary Clinton publicly backed President Barack Obama's authorization of
Syrian airstrikes during a panel discussion in New York Wednesday and
attempted to dismiss previous disagreements she had with the Obama
administration on Syria.”

*Politico: “Hillary Clinton backs Obama on ISIL strikes”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-backs-obama-on-isil-strikes-111297.html?hp=l1>*

“Hillary Clinton says she supports President Barack Obama’s move to hobble
Islamic State militants with airstrikes in Syria, adding that although she
disagreed with the president years ago on how to handle the conflict in the
Arab country, the deteriorating situation in the Middle East now is
‘demanding a response.’”

*The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Hillary Clinton backs Obama on Syria”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/218791-hillary-clinton-backs-obama-on-syria>*

“Hillary Clinton backed President Obama's Syria strategy on Wednesday and
played down past disagreements on the issue.”

*MSNBC: “Hillary Clinton won’t say if Syria bombing came too late”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-wont-say-if-syria-bombing-came-too-late>*

"There was no sign of discord Tuesday between the president and the
Clintons when Obama addressed at the charitable forum Bill Clinton founded
in 2005. He heaped praise on Hillary and Bill Clinton. “One of the best
decisions I ever made as president was to ask Hillary Clinton to serve as
our nation’s secretary of state,” he said, adding that he owed her a debt."

*New York Daily News blog: Daily Politics: “Hillary Clinton's book tour
takeaway: being a grandparent is more popular than being a parent”
<http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/hillary-clinton-book-tour-takeaway-grandparent-popular-parent-blog-entry-1.1951490>*

“If there’s one thing she learned on her most recent book tour, Hillary
Clinton said it’s that being a grandparent is more popular than being a
parent.”

*Washington Post: “Iraq looms large again for Hillary Clinton as she weighs
another White House bid”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/iraq-looms-large-again-for-hillary-clinton-as-she-weighs-another-white-house-bid/2014/09/24/71c20a22-4358-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html>*

“Now weighing another White House run, Clinton is faced again with the
problems in Iraq and her role in shaping U.S. policy in the region.”

*Los Angeles Times: “At Clintons' 3-day event, Hillary basks in a
candidate's dream setting”
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-hillary-clinton-campaign-20140925-story.html>*

“Hillary Clinton was front and center for most of the three days, talking
about the foundation initiatives she is most involved in: fostering greater
support for early childhood education, expanding youth employment and
improving the lives of women and girls around the world.”

*The Atlantic: “Where Girls Get Kidnapped on Their Way to School”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/when-girls-get-kidnapped-on-their-way-to-school/380721/>*

[Subtitle:] “Throughout the developing world, young women don't always make
it safely to the schoolhouse door, much less get a decent education inside.
The Clinton Foundation is hoping to change that.”

*CNN: “Bill Clinton: America has 'bought the NRA's theory'”
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/24/politics/bill-clinton-nra/index.html?iref=allsearch>*

“Bill Clinton addressed a number of crime and justice issues during a
sweeping talk with CNN on Wednesday, including taking on the National Rifle
Association and its pro-gun policy.”

*New York Times blog: Arts Beat: “Kathryn Bigelow Joins New York Film
Festival Lineup”
<http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/kathryn-bigelow-joins-new-york-film-festival-lineup/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0>*

“The Oscar-winning director said in a statement that the film was inspired
by a conversation she had last year with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea
Clinton.”

*Washington Post blog: Erik Wemple: “Clinton Inc. imposes bush-league
security totalitarianism on reporters”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/09/24/clinton-inc-imposes-bush-league-security-totalitarianism-on-reporters/>*

“This bush-league totalitarianism appears somewhat recent: Though there
were ‘always’ tight security measures, Chozick writes, ‘reporters could
roam relatively freely until last year, when interest in and scrutiny of
the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation spiked amid speculation that
Mrs. Clinton would run for president in 2016.’”

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “The Clinton team is following reporters to
the bathroom. Here’s why that matters.”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/24/the-clinton-team-is-following-reporters-to-the-bathroom-heres-why-that-matters/>*

“Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the media or,
increasingly, sees any positive use for them.”

*Mother Jones blog: Kevin Drum: “Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting
Has Poisoned the Political Press”
<http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/09/bill-clinton-right-storyline-reporting-has-poisoned-political-press>*

“In any fair reading, the press has legitimate grievances about its
treatment by the Clintons, but the Clintons have some legitimate grievances
about the obsessive shiny-toy-feeding-frenzy nature of modern political
press coverage too.”

*Wall Street Journal opinion: WSJ editorial board member Jason L. Riley:
“Webb Weighs White House Bid”
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-webb-weighs-white-house-bid-1411582566>*

“Mr. Webb doesn't have Hillary Clinton's money or star power—no potential
candidate does—but he would be able to credibly and forcefully rebut the
former secretary of state's inevitable attempts to distance herself from
the Obama administration's foreign policy fiascoes.”

*Articles:*

*Wall Street Journal: “Clintons Side With Obama on ISIS Strategy”
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/09/24/clintons-side-with-obama-on-isis-strategy/>*

By Peter Nicholas

September 24, 2014, 9:01 p.m. EDT

The Clintons seem to be on board with President Barack Obama’s decision to
bomb targets in Syria in an escalating attempt to rout the extremist group
known as Islamic State.

In separate appearances Wednesday, Bill and Hillary Clinton endorsed the
new U.S. strategy to destroy the group through a mix of stepped-up U.S. air
strikes and ground attacks led by Iraqis and moderate Syrian rebels.

The former president, who grappled with terrorism in the 1990s, said the
threat posed by Islamic State is “quite significant.”

“It certainly threatens to change the whole landscape in the Middle East,
redraw national boundaries, crash national governments and we know they’re
killing a lot of innocent people who don’t agree with them,” said Mr.
Clinton, in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“This strategy that the president has adopted has a chance to succeed,
because it recognizes that in this case the Iraqis and Syrians have to
fight for their own country.”

Success, though, “is not guaranteed,” Mr. Clinton said.

He appeared supportive of Mr. Obama’s reluctance to send large numbers of
ground troops into the fight.

“What [Islamic State] was trying to do was to sucker us into putting a lot
of soldiers on the ground …” Mr. Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton, a likely presidential candidate in 2016, has a personal
stake in the mushrooming conflict. As secretary of state in Mr. Obama’s
first term, she pushed him to arm moderate Syrian rebels at an earlier
point. She lost that debate.

She told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta: “It’s something the president is right to
bring the world’s attention to and say, whatever the debates might have
been before, this is a threat to the region and beyond,” she said.

Mr. Gupta gave her an opening to say, in effect, I told you so: that Mr.
Obama should have listened to her and armed the rebels earlier in the fight.

Mrs. Clinton didn’t bite.

“I can’t sit here today and tell you if we had done what I had recommended
we would be in a very different position,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I just
can’t. You can’t go and prove a negative.

“But what I do believe is the situation now is demanding a response and
we’re seeing a very robust response … .”

*CNN: “Hillary Clinton stands with Obama on airstrikes, arming Syrian
rebels”
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/24/politics/hillary-clinton-airstrikes/index.html>*

By Dan Merica

September 24, 2014, 3:08 p.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton publicly backed President Barack Obama's authorization of
Syrian airstrikes during a panel discussion in New York Wednesday and
attempted to dismiss previous disagreements she had with the Obama
administration on Syria.

Clinton, Obama's former secretary of state, said the President gave a "very
clear explanation and robust defense of the action he has ordered"
regarding airstrikes against the terrorist group ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

"The situation now is demanding a response and we are seeing a very robust
response," Clinton said. "It is something that I think the President is
right to bring the world attention to."

The United States and a coalition of member countries conducted their
second day of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq on Tuesday, targeting terrorist
cells and organizations in the region.

The Clinton Global Initiative panel on developing children's brains was
hosted by CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who started the panel with a series of
questions for Clinton on Syria.

Clinton has not always agreed with Obama on his policies in Syria. As
America's top diplomat, Clinton urged the President to arm Syrian rebels
and made clear that she disagreed with Obama's decision not to arm them in
her much-talked-about memoir.

But on Wednesday, Clinton dismissed her previous disagreements in light of
the current situation.

"Whatever the debates might have been before, this is a threat to the
region and beyond," Clinton said. "I can't sit here today and tell you that
if we had done what I had recommended we would be in a very different
position. I just can't. You can't go and prove a negative."

She added, "I think you can always argue back and forth. Certainly when I
was in the administration we had some very good discussion, debates even on
what to do and how to do it starting in Syria... I was on one side of the
debate, others were on other side."

Earlier in the day, Clinton's husband -- former President Bill Clinton --
echoed his wife, telling CNN's Erin Burnett that he supports the airstrikes.

"I personally believe the way they have thought this through and planned it
and limited our involvement, avoids ISIS achieving their objective of
suckering us into their fight," Bill Clinton said. "We should give support
for people who are fighting for their lives."

*Politico: “Hillary Clinton backs Obama on ISIL strikes”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-backs-obama-on-isil-strikes-111297.html?hp=l1>*

By Maggie Haberman

September 24, 2014, 2:46 p.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton says she supports President Barack Obama’s move to hobble
Islamic State militants with airstrikes in Syria, adding that although she
disagreed with the president years ago on how to handle the conflict in the
Arab country, the deteriorating situation in the Middle East now is
“demanding a response.”

Clinton made the comments in a session with CNN health reporter Sanjay
Gupta at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to CNN reporter Dan
Merica. They were Clinton’s first comments on the matter since the
president began strikes over Syria this week.

Obama gave a “very clear explanation and robust defense of the action he
has ordered,” said Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of state and a likely
2016 presidential candidate.

“The situation now is demanding a response and we are seeing a very robust
response,” she said. “It is something that I think the president is right
to bring the world attention to.”

Syria represented a major area of disagreement between Clinton and Obama
while she served in his Cabinet.

She favored arming moderate Syrian rebels years ago, a move some now
believe could have stopped the growth of the Islamic State militant
network, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL and has spread across much of
Syria and Iraq. Obama, however, has described as a “fantasy” the notion
that arming the rebels would have made a huge difference.

“Whatever the debates might have been before, this is a threat to the
region and beyond,” Clinton said. “I can’t sit here today and tell you that
if we had done what I had recommended we would be in a very different
position. I just can’t. You can’t go and prove a negative.”

At another point, she said: “I think you can always argue back and forth.
Certainly when I was in the administration we had some very good
discussion, debates even on what to do and how to do it starting in Syria.
… I was on one side of the debate, others were on other side.”

*The Hill blog: Briefing Room: “Hillary Clinton backs Obama on Syria”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/218791-hillary-clinton-backs-obama-on-syria>*

By Peter Sullivan

September 24, 2014, 2:44 p.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton backed President Obama's Syria strategy on Wednesday and
played down past disagreements on the issue.

"The situation now is demanding a response and we are seeing a very robust
response," Clinton said at panel discussion at the Clinton Global
Initiative annual meeting in New York, according to CNN.

When Clinton was secretary of State in 2011, she pushed for arming the
Syrian rebels, and Obama ultimately rejected the recommendation.

Clinton was seen as separating herself from the administration's policy
when she said in an Atlantic interview in August that the "failure" to arm
the rebels "left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled."

Clinton played down those differences on Wednesday.

"Whatever the debates might have been before, this is a threat to the
region and beyond," Clinton said. "I can't sit here today and tell you that
if we had done what I had recommended we would be in a very different
position. I just can't. You can't go and prove a negative."

"I think you can always argue back and forth," she added. "Certainly when I
was in the administration we had some very good discussion, debates even on
what to do and how to do it starting in Syria."

President Obama has now won approval in Congress for a plan to arm the
Syrian rebels, and is launching air strikes against ISIS militants in Iraq
and Syria.

The original debate in 2011 was about arming the Syrian rebels to fight the
forces of President Bashar Assad, not ISIS, though.

*MSNBC: “Hillary Clinton won’t say if Syria bombing came too late”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-wont-say-if-syria-bombing-came-too-late>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

September 24, 2014, 2:47 p.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton offered some support for President Obama’s nascent military
campaign in Syria Wednesday, but wouldn’t say whether she thought the
effort came too late.

As Obama’s first secretary of state, Clinton pushed the administration to
arm moderate rebels in Syria. The president overruled her then, but has now
decided to provide assistance to those groups in coordination with a
stepped-up air campaign against the jihadi group known as the Islamic State
(ISIS) in both Iraq and Syria.

In an interview with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta at the Clinton Global Initiative
Wednesday, Clinton said she supports the new campaign. “Whatever the
debates might have been before,” Clinton said, “the situation now is
demanding a response, and we’re seeing a very robust response.”

She added, “I think the president gave a very clear explanation and robust
defense of the actions that he has ordered with respect to the terrorists
in Iraq and Syria.”

But Clinton sidestepped the question of whether the action came too late.
“I think you can always argue back and forth, and certainly when I was in
the administration we had some very good discussion, debates even, about
what to do and how to do it,” she said, before launching in a lengthy
description of the group’s capabilities.

As she contemplates a presidential bid in 2016 that would require support
from Obama backers, Hillary Clinton has been careful to show she’s a team
player for the president. But after Clinton criticized Obama’s foreign
policy worldview in an interview this summer, relations were strained.

As erstwhile rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008,
Clinton was viewed as more hawkish than Obama, who launched his candidacy
as a fierce opponent of the Iraq war. As a New York senator, Clinton voted
to authorize U.S. intervention in Iraq and her vote likely cost her the
2008 nomination.

Clinton told Gupta Obama is “right to bring the world’s attention” to the
issue now, and praised the coalition the U.S. has assembled to support its
actions in Syria.

A day earlier in the same room, Bill Clinton said he believed Obama’s
campaign has “a chance to succeeded.”

There was no sign of discord Tuesday between the president and the Clintons
when Obama addressed at the charitable forum Bill Clinton founded in 2005.
He heaped praise on Hillary and Bill Clinton. “One of the best decisions I
ever made as president was to ask Hillary Clinton to serve as our nation’s
secretary of state,” he said, adding that he owed her a debt.

*New York Daily News blog: Daily Politics: “Hillary Clinton's book tour
takeaway: being a grandparent is more popular than being a parent”
<http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/hillary-clinton-book-tour-takeaway-grandparent-popular-parent-blog-entry-1.1951490>*

By Annie Karni

September 24, 2014, 3:51 p.m. EDT

If there’s one thing she learned on her most recent book tour, Hillary
Clinton said it’s that being a grandparent is more popular than being a
parent.

“On my book tour over the summer, I must have shaken 70,000 hands and over
half of them mentioned something about being a grandparent,” she said
during an interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta Wednesday, which taped at the
Clington Global Initiative conference.

With her daughter Chelsea due any day, Clinton has been happy to talk about
her future as a grandmother while demurring on questions about her possible
future as a presidential candidate.

“I think you have just a different perspective in part because of your time
in life and all of that to enjoy a grandchild,” she said. “Most of us when
we have our children, we're still younger, we're still striving, we're
still preoccupied with what's going to happen in our lives and I think a
lot of people look back and say i did the best i could but...being a
grandparent you just have that freedom, at least that's what I’m told, and
I'm anxious to find out.”

Clinton said she is fine with her daughter’s decision not to find out the
gender of the baby -- and that she has not been pre-purchasing any gifts in
pink or blue.

“It's up to her and her husband,” Clinton said. “It's been a wonderful time
for her and we're anxious to meet this new person.”

*Washington Post: “Iraq looms large again for Hillary Clinton as she weighs
another White House bid”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/iraq-looms-large-again-for-hillary-clinton-as-she-weighs-another-white-house-bid/2014/09/24/71c20a22-4358-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html>*

By Karen Tumulty

September 25, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EDT

When Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down on a Manhattan stage with CNN’s Sanjay
Gupta, the planned topic for discussion was babies’ brains and how to
improve infant development around the globe.

Instead, the first three questions from Gupta focused on the U.S.
airstrikes raining down on Iraq and Syria, aimed at defeating the expanding
Islamic State terrorist group.

“I support what they are doing,” Clinton said in the interview Wednesday,
referring to her former colleagues in the Obama administration. “I
personally believe the way they have thought this through and planned it
and limited our involvement, avoids [Islamic State] achieving their
objective of suckering us into their fight.”

War in Iraq is a subject that won’t go away for Clinton, whose Senate vote
in 2002 to authorize the last war in that Middle Eastern country put her
out of step with the Democratic base six years later. She lost her bid for
president to a challenger who, as an obscure Illinois state senator, had
come down on the antiwar side.

Now weighing another White House run, Clinton is faced again with the
problems in Iraq and her role in shaping U.S. policy in the region. The
airstrikes on the Islamic State group have inflamed the Democratic left,
adding another potential line of attack against her if she decides to run
for the White House.

In her remarks Wednesday — which came during the swanky Clinton Global
Initiative annual meeting — Clinton was largely supportive of the Iraq and
Syria strategy being pursued by her former opponent and boss, President
Obama.

But, prompted by a question, Clinton also noted that, as the top U.S.
diplomat, she had disagreed with Obama’s decision not to give more
assistance to moderate rebels in Syria — while demurring on whether it
would have made a difference. Both she and her husband, former president
Bill Clinton, have suggested in other interviews that Obama made a mistake
by not following her advice.

“I can’t sit here today and tell you that if we had done what I had
recommended we would be in a very different position, I just can’t,”
Hillary Clinton told Gupta. “You can’t prove a negative.”

*A risky stand to take*

The exchange underscores the perilous road ahead politically for Clinton as
she decides how much to say, and what to say, about the unfolding campaign
against Islamic State. There are many questions she has yet to address at
all.

Among them: Should the nation be prepared to commit ground troops if the
bombing campaign does not achieve the desired result? Should Congress
repeal or rewrite the broad 2001 authorizations upon which Obama is relying
as justification for U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria? Should Americans be
troubled by the fact that strikes against Islamic State extremists could
help Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad maintain his hold on power — the
very thing that she wanted to undermine by arming the rebels earlier? And
should the United States become resigned to the prospect of long-term war
in Islamic world?

“I think everybody who’s considering running for president is going to have
to tell the public where they are on these important issues. Like it or
not, everybody is going to have to weigh in,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen
(Md.), an influential House Democrat who says Congress should assert itself
more vigorously and go on record opposing the deployment of ground troops.

Clinton is basking in the spotlight this week in New York at the
celebrity-studded annual conference her husband founded. But she has sought
to keep most of her focus on such unassailable topics as philanthropy and
opening opportunities for women.

That Clinton would be reluctant to discuss Iraq is understandable, both on
grounds of substance and politics.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who ran for president as an antiwar
candidate in 2004, said prior to Clinton’s remarks Wednesday that “there’s
no upside to answering questions, ‘What would you do differently than the
president is doing?’ ”

No matter what she answers, Dean said, “the press is always running and
pitting her against President Obama. She’s been put in a no-win position by
the Beltway press corps.”

Clinton caused a sensation in August when she told Jeffrey Goldberg of the
Atlantic that Obama’s “failure” to assist the Syrian rebels “left a big
vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled. They were often armed in an
indiscriminate way by other forces and we had no skin in the game that
really enabled us to prevent this indiscriminate arming.”

On Sunday, Bill Clinton sounded a similar note in an interview with CNN’s
Fareed Zakaria, albeit with some hedging. “I agree with her, and I would
have taken the chance. I also agree with her when she said we can’t know
whether it would have worked or not.”

Nor was that the only time that Clinton took a hawkish stance during her
tenure as Obama’s first secretary of state. She supported a bigger troop
surge in Afghanistan than the one that Obama approved in 2009, and she
pushed the president to bomb Libyan targets in 2011.

Now, antiwar sentiment is stirring again within the party’s liberal
Democratic base as it considers the prospect of another long-term military
engagement in the Middle East — this time, led by a president of its own
party who had been elected on a promise to end such conflicts.

Last week, more than 40 percent of House Democrats voted against Obama’s
plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels.

Among the 10 Democrats who voted against it in the Senate were Elizabeth
Warren (Mass.), whom many of the most ardent liberals would like to see
challenge Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary season. Warren denies
having any plans to do so.

“I do not want America to be dragged into another ground war in the Middle
East,” Warren said in a statement. “It is time for those nations in the
region that are most immediately affected . . . to step up and play a
leading role in this fight.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a Clinton supporter, called for a
robust congressional debate to clearly define the parameters of the U.S.
military posture in Iraq and Syria. He favors a new war authorization
putting strict limits on Obama and whoever succeeds him in 2017.

In a presentation at the Center for American Progress — a liberal think
tank that Clinton helped found — Kaine said that Congress’s reluctance to
influence the course of the military engagement is “just the height of
public immorality.”

Kaine received loud applause in conclusion, but afterward, he brushed off
questions about Clinton.

“I’m with Hillary,” he said. A few hours later, he co-hosted an event
downtown for a super PAC that is supporting her as a potential 2016
candidate.

Meanwhile, the fact that the country is once again on a war footing could
prompt other Democrats to challenge Clinton’s perceived inevitability as
the party’s next nominee.

“We continue to be trapped in the never-ending, never-changing
entanglements of the Middle East,” former senator James Webb (D-Va.) said
Tuesdayin a speech at the National Press Club.

Webb told the crowd that he is “seriously looking at the possibility of
running for president. We want to see if there’s a support base from people
who would support the programs that we’re interested in pursuing.”

*Los Angeles Times: “At Clintons' 3-day event, Hillary basks in a
candidate's dream setting”
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-hillary-clinton-campaign-20140925-story.html>*

By Maeve Reston

September 24, 2014, 7:11 p.m. EDT

Imagine if a presidential campaign was designed by the candidate. The day's
agenda would focus on what the candidate alone wanted to talk about. No
pesky reporters would drill the candidate on unwelcome topics. The events
would be meticulously stage-managed. The lighting would always be perfect.

It might look very much like the world that Hillary Rodham Clinton — who is
weighing a run for president in 2016 — inhabited over the last three days
at the Clinton Global Initiative, the glittery annual gathering hosted by
the foundation that she runs with husband Bill and their daughter, Chelsea,
with support from blue-chip corporate sponsors.

Over three tightly managed days, the Clintons set the agenda. The final
image on Wednesday: They strolled on stage hand in hand for the last
session, "Aiming for the Moon and Beyond." (With the help of NASA, Bill
Clinton spoke to astronaut Reid Wiseman live from the International Space
Station. Hillary then took the stage and, in girlish tones, told the crowd
she had once dreamed of being an astronaut.)

The event at a hotel in New York's Midtown brought a level of security that
rivaled, and at times exceeded, that of the White House — and not just on
the day that President Obama dashed across town from the United Nations
headquarters to recognize the work of his former secretary of State and
compliment her on her "post-administration glow."

During the sessions, Bill, Chelsea and Hillary Clinton were joined on stage
by leaders from some of the nation's most lucrative companies, including
Alibaba, Goldman Sachs, Western Union and Merck. Sometimes those executives
appeared as panelists, other times they were simply recognized by one of
the Clintons for partnering with the foundation on programs to help
impoverished Americans and people in underdeveloped nations across the
world.

Those who had a speaking role, including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs,
often showered the Clintons with accolades for their charity work. (Hillary
Clinton noted in the opening session that over 10 years, the Clinton
Foundation's partnerships had led to "action that is valued at nearly $100
billion.")

And it wasn't just the business world. Milling about were Hollywood stars
including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashley Judd, Ted Danson and Matt Damon. And
the gathering, which is held each year at the same time as the United
Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, brought in high-powered
international guests too. One panel featured Bill Clinton coyly asking
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to talk about her experience as a
two-term female president. With others such as King Abdullah II of Jordan
joining the discussion, it was not uncommon to hear Hillary and Bill
Clinton summoning "Your Majesty" or "His Excellency" to join them on stage.

Drawn by the intense interest in Hillary Clinton's presidential plans,
hordes of reporters from all over the world covered "CGI 2014." But for
those reporters, there was virtually no way to talk to the guests who
mingled in the "Impact Lounge" upstairs or outside the ballrooms. To move
anywhere outside the well-appointed press room in the hotel's basement —
including to the bathroom — reporters were escorted by one of the dozens of
Clinton Foundation volunteers who wore crisp white shirts embellished by
silk scarves or ties that bore the foundation's logo.

Presumably to avoid any unplanned encounters with the potential candidate
or other press-averse guests, reporters were sternly instructed by one
press handler to wear their neon yellow press tags, each with its unique
bar code, around their necks and facing forward at all times, so they could
be identified and properly scanned before entering any "open press" session.

Hillary Clinton was front and center for most of the three days, talking
about the foundation initiatives she is most involved in: fostering greater
support for early childhood education, expanding youth employment and
improving the lives of women and girls around the world.

Whether talking to friendly interviewers or serving as the moderator
herself, Clinton spoke at length about her own experiences as a young
career woman — the barriers she faced in getting jobs, for example, and how
that has improved over the last few decades.

She also shared her more personal side. In a session on early childhood
education with CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta, she talked about her
mother's "terrible upbringing"; as a young girl she often went to school
without lunch and was fed by a kindly teacher. Clinton also talked about
her attempt to try to balance work and family as she raised Chelsea, who is
now expecting her own child.

The sessions also often highlighted Clinton's achievements as first lady
and secretary of State, as well as her husband's as president. During a
panel with Melinda Gates, a philanthropist along with her husband, Bill, on
whether equality for women and girls was achievable by 2034, Clinton noted
that it was her husband who signed the Paid Family Leave act into law.

Even in some of the panels led by news personalities, the Clintons appeared
to have set — or at least suggested — the parameters of the discussion. In
Gupta's session, the reporter said at one point that he was "told" about
the topic for the panel, which was about the development of a baby's mind.
And Clinton appeared slightly startled when Gupta began the session by
pressing her to state her position on the U.S. airstrikes in Syria.

After several questions on her past differences with Obama on arming the
Syrian rebels, the soon-to-be-grandmother was on more comfortable turf,
talking about her initiative to encourage parents to read, sing and talk to
their children to foster greater brain development at an early age.

*The Atlantic: “Where Girls Get Kidnapped on Their Way to School”
<http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/when-girls-get-kidnapped-on-their-way-to-school/380721/>*

By Jessica Lahey

September 24, 2014, 2:34 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] Throughout the developing world, young women don't always make
it safely to the schoolhouse door, much less get a decent education inside.
The Clinton Foundation is hoping to change that.

The Clinton Global Initiative is holding its annual meeting this week in
New York City, and the atmosphere—from the basement pressroom to the
sparkly, A-list presentations upstairs—has been celebratory. Stories about
CGI’s successes keep coming: the healthcare it has provided, the waterways
it has protected, the saplings it has planted, the women it has empowered.
Over the past decade, the organization has funded 3,100 commitments valued
at over $100 billion, providing education to over 44 million children and
safe water and sanitation to 27 million people.

Yet amid the good news were reminders that change does not come easy. Some
projects stall, others end in failure, and much work remains, particularly
when it comes to the challenges women still face in the developing world.
In a country where all girls have the right to an education, and girls tend
to get better grades than boys, it’s easy to forget that education remains
out of reach for many in the rest of the world.

While the number of girls attending school worldwide has climbed from just
under half to nearly 80 percent in the past 20 years, these gains are due
in large part to an increase in primary school attendance. Relatively few
of these girls are able to continue their education into their teens, and
today, over 30 million girls do not—or cannot—attend secondary school or
leverage their education into a decent-paying job.

At the announcement on Wednesday, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
recalled a girl she and her daughter, Chelsea, had met on a trip to
Pakistan. The girl had attended primary school, but was not allowed to
continue her education. Hillary told the crowd that this encounter—along
with the experiences of Malala Yousafazi in Pakistan and the three hundred
Nigerian girls who were kidnapped while attending secondary school in the
village of Chibok, Nigeria—had inspired the Clinton Foundation’s No
Ceilings effort to make a new commitment. Clinton added, “We know that when
girls have equal access to education in both primary and secondary schools,
cycles of poverty are broken, economies grow, glass ceilings crack, and
potential is unleashed.”

With that guiding principle in mind, No Ceilings has joined forces with the
Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution to launch
Girls’ CHARGE (Collaborative Harnessing Ambition and Resources for Global
Education), a collective endeavor of over 30 NGOs, private corporations,
and civil organizations. The groups hope to ensure the continued education
of 14 million girls over the next five years, focusing on these five goals:

Ensure that girls enter and stay in school through secondary education.

Ensure that schools are safe and facilities are girl-friendly.

Improve the quality of learning opportunities for girls.

Support girls’ transition from secondary to post-secondary school and the
workforce.

Support leaders in developing countries to help catalyze change in girls’
education.

In an interview on Tuesday, Jennifer Klein, Senior Advisor for Women and
Girls Programs, spoke of the “intractable barriers that prevent girls from
continuing their education.” In Sub-Saharan Africa and West Asia, where 80
percent of the world’s undereducated girls reside, female students are
vulnerable to kidnapping and violence on their way to school, and can face
sexual harassment and lack of adequate sanitation once they make it through
the schoolhouse door. CGI partners such as the Global Coalition to Protect
Education from Attack are working to provide technical assistance to help
countries adapt and adhere to Lucens Guidelines for Protecting Schools and
Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict.

Rachel Vogelstein, director of the Clinton Foundation’s Women and Girls
Programs, added that organizations such as BRAC and UNICEF are working with
CGI to improve safety in schools by “raising awareness about harassment,
creating safe spaces, providing adolescent life skills training, and
education on gender-based violence.”

Meanwhile, No Ceilings and the Brookings Institution plan to help improve
girls’ education by tracking and quantifying educational quality and
outcomes. Corporate partners such as Discovery Communications and
governmental organizations such as the Government of Nepal will work to
increase the number of female teachers and offer them training and ongoing
professional development.

Once girls have secured a safe, high-quality education, partners such as
CARE and the Mastercard Foundation have pledged to help girls acquire
skills that transfer to the workforce, and to offer college scholarships
for high-achieving high school girls.

Finally, as a longer-term investment, Girls’ CHARGE will rely on partners
such as the Malala Fund and Echidna Giving to train, mentor, and fund
leaders in education, and help them scale up their efforts to reach more
students. All told, Girls’ CHARGE has secured over $600 million to lead
this charge.

Taken together, these goals, investments, and cross-sector partnerships
represent an unprecedented commitment to girls’ education. Still, there are
bound to be significant cultural, religious, and political obstacles ahead,
and carrying out these ambitious plans will demand every bit of the pep and
enthusiasm on display at CGI’s annual meeting.

“We aim to educate girls,” said Klein, “but more than that, we want to
raise our global ambition for girls. The World Bank has shown that
increases in the share of girls with secondary education contribute to GDP
growth; imagine what 30 million educated girls could contribute.”

*CNN: “Bill Clinton: America has 'bought the NRA's theory'”
<http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/24/politics/bill-clinton-nra/index.html?iref=allsearch>*

By Dan Merica

September 25, 2014, 5:30 a.m. EDT

Bill Clinton addressed a number of crime and justice issues during a
sweeping talk with CNN on Wednesday, including taking on the National Rifle
Association and its pro-gun policy.

The former president, in a conversation with CNN's Erin Burnett at the
Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, lumped together the NRA,
stand your ground laws, and people surrounding themselves only with those
who agree with them as problems that lead to a more violent climate in the
United States.

Clinton, however, rejected the idea that several high-profile cases with
apparent racial undertones mean the U.S. is more racist than it was in the
past.

"I think we have enhanced the risks by changing the environment, basically,
because it seems we bought the NRA's theory that we would all be safer if
everybody in this audience had a gun that was a concealed weapon," Clinton
said. "Then if one of them felt threatened by another, they could stand up
right here and stand their ground. And we could watch the whole saga
unfold. That is what happens."

During the 2013 trial of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed 17-year-old
Trayvon Martin in Florida, the NRA stridently advocated to maintain stand
your ground laws that allow people to respond with force to would-be
attackers.

A jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges
in Martin's death in 2013. The case captured the nation's attention and
raised a number of question about race.

The Zimmerman trial wasn't the only case involving race that Clinton
addressed on Wednesday.

Clinton pointed out that the more recent shooting of an unarmed teen in
Ferguson, Missouri, ignited similar concerns about race and the law.
Overnighton Wednesday the city broke into protests again over the shooting
of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson.

Wilson has not been arrested, but a grand jury in Missouri has taken the
Brown case.

Clinton said one of the primary problems in Ferguson was that the city's
police force and political leadership did not reflect the population.

"You can't have a community that is more than two-thirds African-American
where only one in six city council people are African-American and only
three out of 60-plus police are African-American," Clinton said. "You've
got to have some effort to have ties to the community."

Although Clinton said that while cases like Zimmerman and Ferguson do not
mean the country is becoming more racist, he did express concern that the
country is "playing with [racism's] darker possibilities."

"I actually think we're less racist, less sexist, less homophobic than we
used to be," Clinton said. "I think our big problem today is we don't want
to be around anybody who disagrees with us. And I think that in some ways
can be the worst silo of all to be held up in."

The former president later added, "I think whenever people are insecure,
they tend to return to home base psychologically. We tend to want to be
with our own, however we define that. ... I think that's what is really at
the root of many of our problems today."

*New York Times blog: Arts Beat: “Kathryn Bigelow Joins New York Film
Festival Lineup”
<http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/kathryn-bigelow-joins-new-york-film-festival-lineup/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0>*

By Lori Holcomb-Holland

September 24, 2014, 3:09 p.m. EDT

The premiere of a short film by the director Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark
Thirty”) about elephant poaching has been added to the New York Film
Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which organizes the annual
festival, announced on Wednesday.

The three-minute public service announcement, titled “Last Days,” will
screen Saturday and is to be followed by a panel moderated by Ms. Bigelow.

The Oscar-winning director said in a statement that the film was inspired
by a conversation she had last year with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea
Clinton. “Chelsea had just returned from sub-Saharan Africa where poachers
killed herds of elephants by cyanide poisoning,” Ms. Bigelow said. “After
our conversation, I felt compelled to enter this space, encourage a
dialogue, raise awareness.”

The panel discussion, titled “The Crisis in Elephant Poaching,” will
feature Peter Knights, executive director of the conservation group
WildAid; Julieta V. Lozano, a New York County assistant district attorney;
the journalist Peter Godwin; and the artist and activist K’naan Warsame.

*Washington Post blog: Erik Wemple: “Clinton Inc. imposes bush-league
security totalitarianism on reporters”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/09/24/clinton-inc-imposes-bush-league-security-totalitarianism-on-reporters/>*

By Erik Wemple

September 24, 2014, 5:32 p.m. EDT

A great deal has been written about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s uneasy
relationship with the media, with the cemented wisdom being that, in the
unlikely event that she somehow doesn’t run for president in 2016, press
phobia would be a determining factor.

For the latest on how Clinton Inc. views the Fourth Estate, go no further
than Amy Chozick’s update on how the media is moving around at the ongoing
Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York. The highlights:

Reporters must be escorted to the restrooms. Chozick reports that her
minder “waited outside the stall in the ladies’ room at the Sheraton Hotel,
where the conference is held each year.”

“Hordes of journalists,” notes Chozick, have ended up “cloistered” in a
Sheraton basement.

Barricades separate journalists from the lobby, where “actual guests enter.”

Escorts are required “wherever we go, lest one of us with our yellow press
badges wind up somewhere where attendants with an esteemed blue badge are
milling around.”

This bush-league totalitarianism appears somewhat recent: Though there were
“always” tight security measures, Chozick writes, “reporters could roam
relatively freely until last year, when interest in and scrutiny of the
Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation spiked amid speculation that
Mrs. Clinton would run for president in 2016.”

*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “The Clinton team is following reporters to
the bathroom. Here’s why that matters.”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/24/the-clinton-team-is-following-reporters-to-the-bathroom-heres-why-that-matters/>*

By Chris Cillizza

September 24, 2014, 5:13 p.m. EDT

Amy Chozick is the reporter tasked with covering the Clintons -- and the
runup to the now-almost-inevitable Hillary Clinton presidential bid -- for
the New York Times. Sounds like a plum gig, right? Until, that is, a press
aide for the Clinton Global Initiative follows you into the bathroom.

Chozick describes a "friendly 20-something press aide who the Clinton
Global Initiative tasked with escorting me to the restroom," adding: "She
waited outside the stall in the ladies’ room at the Sheraton Hotel, where
the conference is held each year."

Yes, this may be an extreme example. And, yes, the press strictures at the
Clinton Global Initiative are the stuff of legend. But, the episode also
reflects the dark and, frankly, paranoid view the Clintons have toward the
national media. Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the
media or, increasingly, sees any positive use for them.

“If a policymaker is a political leader and is covered primarily by the
political press, there is a craving that borders on addictive to have a
storyline," Bill Clinton said in a speech at Georgetown University back in
April. "And then once people settle on the storyline, there is a craving
that borders on blindness to shoehorn every fact, every development, every
thing that happens into the story line, even if it’s not the story.”

That view, according to a terrific story by Politico's Glenn Thrush and
Maggie Haberman over the summer, informs and impacts the Clintons' thinking
on a 2016 bid.  Write the duo: "As much as anything else, her ambivalence
about the race, [Clinton sources] told us, reflects her distaste for and
apprehension of a rapacious, shallow and sometimes outright sexist national
political press corps acting as enablers for her enemies on the right."

It also colors how the media is treated during the long runup to Clinton's
now-expected bid. While Chozick's experience may be on the extreme end of
the spectrum, reporters who have spent any amount of time on the trail with
the Clintons -- including during their recent trip to Sen. Tom Harkin's
Steak Fry -- describe a candidate and an operation that always assumes the
worst of the press horde and acts accordingly.

In theory, Clinton is, of course, a candidate -- assuming she is a
candidate -- who needs the political press as little as any person seeking
the presidency in modern memory. Clinton is known by much of the electorate
-- for good and bad -- and, thanks to her massive national network and the
spate of technological innovations over the last decade, can almost
entirely avoid the media filter when she wants to communicate with
supporters.  The media's ability to cover lesser-known candidates in ways
that can make them more appealing to a broader swath of the electorate
means nothing then to Clinton. The media -- as viewed by the Clintons --
is, at best, a neutral factor and, much more often, a negative.

And yet, any objective analysis of the 2008 primary campaign would conclude
that the remarkably adversarial relationship between the Clinton campaign
and the media hurt her chances. To be clear: The media and its relationship
with Clinton was far from determinative in the nomination fight. Barack
Obama's superior understanding of delegate allocation was the determining
factor. But, it's hard to deny that the friction between Clinton, her
campaign and the media didn't help. Access to the candidate was
nonexistent. Simple questions were routinely ignored or, on the other
extreme, treated as adversarial. That is not to say that reporters were
entirely innocent in the whole thing; Clinton was the story and as the
story she had far more reporters poking and prodding her campaign than
anyone else -- including Barack Obama -- in the race. And, even in 2008,
the world of online news and social media was beginning to kick into high
gear -- leaving the Clinton campaign hopelessly unable to handle the sheer
volume of incoming they were receiving every day and deeply cynical about
reporters' true motives.

(Worth noting: The Obama team was not exactly press friendly. And, as he
grew into a bigger and bigger phenomenon, they had less and less use for
the media. That continued into Obama's presidency, particularly the first
few years. But, once Obama's popularity began to flag and with it his
ability to drive his preferred message to an increasingly skeptical public,
his lack of relationship with the media caught up with him.)

Regardless of who was to blame, by the end of the campaign, reporters --
including me -- and the Clinton operation were at each others' throats
daily and often more than daily. In the wake of that campaign --
particularly as it became clear that Clinton was, in fact, interested in
running again -- some of those in Clintonworld promised a different
approach to the press in 2016. No, Clinton would never be John McCain in
the back of the straight Talk Express in 2000 but neither would she or her
campaign repeat the mistakes of their dealings with the press in 2008. They
understood, they insisted, that while Clinton was very well defined to most
voters, there was an entire generation of younger people -- who, not for
nothing, were a pillar of Obama's electoral success -- who knew little
about the former Secretary of State other than her famous name and would
use the media coverage of her to form their opinions.

The early returns on those pledges don't look promising. How a campaign
deals with the media is a direct result of how the candidate views the
media.  And the Clintons have as dim a view of the political press as any
modern politicians. So you can imagine what a Clinton 2016 campaign will
think of those tasked with covering it.

*Mother Jones blog: Kevin Drum: “Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting
Has Poisoned the Political Press”
<http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/09/bill-clinton-right-storyline-reporting-has-poisoned-political-press>*

By Kevin Drum

September 25, 2014, 6:45 a.m. EDT

Today brings a remarkable column from the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.
It's about the Clinton family's adversarial relationship with the press:

“Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the media or,
increasingly, sees any positive use for them.

“‘If a policymaker is a political leader and is covered primarily by the
political press, there is a craving that borders on addictive to have a
storyline,’ Bill Clinton said in a speech at Georgetown University back in
April. ‘And then once people settle on the storyline, there is a craving
that borders on blindness to shoehorn every fact, every development, every
thing that happens into the story line, even if it’s not the story.’”

That's an interesting comment from Bill Clinton. Is it true? Well, check
this out from the start of Cillizza's column:

“Amy Chozick is the reporter tasked with covering the Clintons — and the
runup to the now-almost-inevitable Hillary Clinton presidential bid — for
the New York Times. Sounds like a plum gig, right? Until, that is, a press
aide for the Clinton Global Initiative follows you into the bathroom.

“Chozick describes a ‘friendly 20-something press aide who the Clinton
Global Initiative tasked with escorting me to the restroom,’ adding: ‘She
waited outside the stall in the ladies’ room at the Sheraton Hotel, where
the conference is held each year.’

“Yes, this may be an extreme example. And, yes, the press strictures at the
Clinton Global Initiative are the stuff of legend. But, the episode also
reflects the dark and, frankly, paranoid view the Clintons have toward the
national media. Put simply: Neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton likes the
media or, increasingly, sees any positive use for them.”

Here's what makes this fascinating. If you click the link and read
Chozick's piece, you'll learn that every reporter at the CGI is "cloistered
in a basement at the Sheraton" and that an escort is required wherever they
go, "lest one of us with our yellow press badges wind up somewhere where
attendants with an esteemed blue badge are milling around." It's entirely
fair to argue that this is absurdly restrictive. It's not fair to imply
that this is special treatment that Chozick got because she's the beat
reporter covering the Clintons. Every other reporter at the event got the
same treatment.

But that's what Cillizza did. In other words, he had already settled on a
storyline, so he shoehorned the Chozick anecdote into his column to support
that storyline. Which was exactly Clinton's complaint in the first place.

Don't get me wrong. I don't actually have any doubt that the Clintons do,
in fact, have a pretty tortured relationship with the press. After the way
the press treated them in the 90s, it would be remarkable if they didn't.
It might even be "dark and paranoid." That wouldn't surprise me too much
either.

Nonetheless, I wish Cillizza would at least try to analyze his own tribe's
behavior with the same care that he analyzes the Clintons'. In any fair
reading, the press has legitimate grievances about its treatment by the
Clintons, but the Clintons have some legitimate grievances about the
obsessive shiny-toy-feeding-frenzy nature of modern political press
coverage too. Unfortunately, all Cillizza manages to say about the hostile
atmosphere of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign is that reporters weren't
"entirely innocent in the whole thing."

Nobody should take this as a defense of the Clintons. High-profile
politicians have always been gotten klieg-light treatment, and they have to
be able to handle it. At the same time, there ought to be at least a few
mainstream reporters who also recognize some of the pathologies on their
own side—those specific to the Clintons as well as those that affect
presidential candidates of all stripes. How about an honest
appraisal—complete with biting anecdotes—of how the political press has
evolved over the past few decades and how storyline reporting has poisoned
practically everything they do?

*Wall Street Journal opinion: WSJ editorial board member Jason L. Riley:
“Webb Weighs White House Bid”
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-webb-weighs-white-house-bid-1411582566>*

By Jason L. Riley

September 24, 2014, 2:16 p.m. EDT

Democrat James Webb continues his flirtation with a White House run,
telling an audience Tuesday that he is "seriously looking" at a 2016 bid.

"We've had a lot of discussion among people that I respect and trust about
the future of the country, and we are going to continue having these
discussions over the next four or five months," said the former Virginia
senator after a speech at the National Press Club. Mr. Webb had already
told a radio interviewer in May that he was thinking about the presidency.
More recently, he was in Iowa campaigning on behalf of Rep. Bruce Braley,
who's running for Senate this year.

Mr. Webb is a Naval Academy graduate and decorated Vietnam combat veteran
who served as Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan. Foreign affairs, his
strong suit, is dominating the news right now, and Mr. Webb has criticized
the Obama administration for "bouncing from issue to issue without a clear
articulation of what the national security interest of the United States
actually is."

In his speech Tuesday, he doubled down. "An understandable statement of our
national security interests is the basis of any great nation's foreign
policy," said Mr. Webb. "We do not have that now," he added. "Our foreign
policy has become a tangled mess in many cases of what can only be called
situational ethics."

Mr. Webb doesn't have Hillary Clinton's money or star power—no potential
candidate does—but he would be able to credibly and forcefully rebut the
former secretary of state's inevitable attempts to distance herself from
the Obama administration's foreign policy fiascoes. And then there's Mr.
Webb's appeal among working-class voters, especially men. As he told a
labor conference in Iowa last month, "I'm the only person elected to the
United States Senate with a union card, two Purple Hearts and three
tattoos."

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  September 29 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton headlines fundraiser for DCCC
for NY and NJ candidates (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-new-york-fundraiser-110902.html?hp=r4>
)

·  September 29 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton headlines another fundraiser
for DCCC (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-headline-dccc-fundraiser-110764.html?hp=l8_b1>
)

·  September 29 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton meets Indian Prime Minister
Modi (Zee News
<http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/no-modi-sharif-meeting-in-new-york-mea_1474656.html>
)

·  September 30 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton keynotes Congressional
Hispanic Caucus Institute, Inc., conference (CHCI
<http://www.chci.org/news/pub/former-secretary-of-state-hillary-clinton-to-address-leadership-luncheon-at-public-policy-conference>
)

·  September 30 – Potomac, MD: Sec. Clinton fundraises for Maryland
gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown (WaPo
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/hillary-clinton-to-headline-fundraiser-for-maryland-gubernatorial-hopeful-brown/2014/09/19/3e9b4aea-4057-11e4-b03f-de718edeb92f_story.html>
)

·  September 30 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton fundraises for New Hampshire
state Sen. Lou D’Allesandro of Manchester (New Hampshire Journal
<http://nhjournal.com/hillary-clinton-to-host-dc-reception-for-long-time-friend-dallesandro/>
)

·  October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the real estate CREW
Network Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network
<http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>)

 ·  October 2 – Miami, FL: Sec. Clinton signs “Hard Choices” at Books and
Books (HillaryClintonMemoir.com
<http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/miami_book_signing>)

 ·  October 2 – Miami, FL: Sec. Clinton fundraises for Charlie Crist (
Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/hillary-clinton-charlie-crist-campaign-florida-111229.html>
)

·  October 6 – Ottawa, Canada: Sec. Clinton speaks at Canada 2020 event (Ottawa
Citizen
<http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/hillary-clinton-speaking-in-ottawa-oct-6>
)

·  October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation
Annual Dinner (UNLV
<http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>)

·  October 14 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes
salesforce.com Dreamforce
conference (salesforce.com
<http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/highlights.jsp#tuesday>)

·  October 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton fundraises for House
Democratic women candidates with Nancy Pelosi (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-nancy-pelosi-110387.html?hp=r7>
)

 ·  December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts
Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)