Subject: ​Correct The Record Tuesday September 23, 2014 Afternoon Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:48:18 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*​**Correct The Record Tuesday September 23, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:*

*Tweets:*

*Correct The Record* @CorrectRecord: Sec. Clinton visited every country in
Southeast Asia, renewing & strengthening ties#HRC365
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash> http://usat.ly/MqPu2N
<http://t.co/AFNd1ML1WU>[9/23/14, 12:31 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/514451891120402432>]

*Pres. Bill Clinton* @billclinton: On stage w/@HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton> today at #CGI2014
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/CGI2014?src=hash>. Proud to mark 10 years of
@ClintonGlobal <https://twitter.com/ClintonGlobal> & look fwd to a great
meeting. [9/22/14, 2:21 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/billclinton/status/514117295862722560>]

*Headlines:*

*Bloomberg: “Clinton Gender Equality Appeal Targets Fathers, Brothers”
<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-23/clinton-gender-equality-appeal-targets-fathers-brothers>*

“Her renewed focus on equality aligns Clinton’s ambitions with those of
women around the country, as well as fathers, brothers and sons who support
closing gender gaps.”

*Huffington Post opinion: Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert: “When There's
Nothing Left To Uncover About Hillary”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/when-theres-nothing-left_b_5868536.html>*

“If Free Beacon's latest installation of its deep-dive into Clinton's past
is any indication, GOP investigators have already run out of leads.”

*Slate: “Occupy Wall Street”
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/saul_alinsky_correspondence_with_hillary_clinton_how_can_she_support_wall.html>*

[Subtitle:] “How can Hillary Clinton be both a limousine liberal and a Saul
Alinsky radical?”

*National Memo: “Chasing Hillary: What The Republicans Refuse To Learn From
Wile E. Coyote”
<http://www.nationalmemo.com/chasing-hillary-republicans-refuse-learn-wile-e-coyote/>*

“Should Hillary Clinton choose to run for president again, she is certain
to stumble and make mistakes, like any other politician. But unless her
dull-witted adversaries somehow begin to comprehend who she really is, she
will remain perfectly safe from them.”

*Zee Media Bureau: “No Modi-Sharif meeting in New York: MEA”
<http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/no-modi-sharif-meeting-in-new-york-mea_1474656.html>*

“‘The Prime Minister will be meeting President Barack Obama on the 29th as
well as on the 30th of this month, when he is in Washington. He will also
meet Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in New York on 29th
September,’ Akbaruddin said.”

*The Hill blog: Raoul Lowery Contreras: “Hillary Clinton, Hispanics and
2016”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/218572-hillary-clinton-hispanics-and-2016>*

“Blinded by star power manufactured in former President Bill Clinton's
shadow, many Hispanics have declared for Hillary Clinton's nascent 2016
presidential campaign, proving that they wish to remain sheep buried in the
ignorance they manifested in voting for President Obama.”

*BuzzFeed: "Bill Clinton: U.S. Will Be Engaged In Middle East 'As Long As
Somebody’s Trying To Have Total Control'"
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/bill-clinton-us-will-be-engaged-in-middle-east-as-long-as-so#467iqgk>*

[Subtitle:] “‘Particularly ISIS,’ the former president says at the Clinton
Global Initiative conference in New York. Clinton predicts the U.S. will
avoid a ‘land war.’”

*MSNBC: “Bill Clinton: No land war in Iraq”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bill-clinton-isis-no-land-war-iraq>*

“Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the U.S. is likely to be
involved in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for ‘a
while,’ hours after the Obama administration launched its first airstrikes
of the conflict into Syria.”

*Articles:*

*Bloomberg: “Clinton Gender Equality Appeal Targets Fathers, Brothers”
<http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-23/clinton-gender-equality-appeal-targets-fathers-brothers>*

By Jonathan Allen

September 23, 2014

Hillary Clinton might become the primary beneficiary of her own push to
empower women -– and not just because it rallies them to her side.

Her renewed focus on equality aligns Clinton’s ambitions with those of
women around the country, as well as fathers, brothers and sons who support
closing gender gaps. Her candidacy also could draw voters from other
demographics who support the idea of breaking political and economic
barriers.

“Young people who feel like all the options might not be open to them
because of their status, whatever it is -- whether born into a poor family,
or a girl -- to be able to see role models out there is very powerful,”
said Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first openly gay senator, who
recalled being inspired by 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee
Geraldine Ferraro.

The agenda for this week’s Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York
includes a strategy session on girls and women and a panel tomorrow on how
to bridge gender gaps by 2034. Last week, Clinton called equality for women
“the great unfinished business of the 21st century” and observed that many
women don’t have a “secure floor,” much less an opportunity to crash
through a “glass ceiling.”

It’s an issue on which she can credibly claim to have been consistent over
the years. And it’s powerful with voters -– both men and women -- because
it’s perceived as above politics.

*Human Issue*

It’s “a human topic,” said Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science
and communications at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We’re
basically talking about the American dream. It’s very hard for anyone to be
against that.”

Data back her up. In 1972, 47 percent of Americans said women should have
roles equal to men in business, industry and government, compared with 29
percent who agreed more with the statement that a woman’s “place is in the
home,” according to American National Election Studies, which surveys U.S.
voters.

By 2008, 7 percent preferred that women remain in their homes, while 84
percent said women should have equal roles. That included 86 percent of
Democrats, 84 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of independents.

In researching her new book, “The Gamble,” Vavreck found that Democratic
efforts to cast Republicans as waging a “war on women” had an unexpected
effect in the 2012 election campaign between President Barack Obama and
Republican Mitt Romney.

“Those moments did more to keep white men on Obama’s side than they did to
pull white women from Romney,” she said. Obama ended up beating Romney by
12 percentage points, 56 percent to 44 percent, among women in 2012, and
Romney won men, 54 percent to 46 percent, according to Gallup.

*Embracing Gender*

Some of Clinton’s closest friends and advisers urged her to do more to
highlight her gender during her ill-fated presidential race in 2008. She
didn’t relent until the night before her concession speech, when two aides,
huddled with Clinton around a dining room table, persuaded her to talk
about it. That speech, and Clinton’s reference to the “18 million cracks”
her backers put in the glass ceiling of the presidency, became one of the
most memorable moments of her campaign.

Now, as she contemplates a second bid for the presidency in 2016, Clinton
and her inner circle have reached a consensus that she should embrace and
highlight her gender, an approach deeply rooted in decades of advocacy for
women and girls.

*Beijing Speech*

In 1995, as first lady, Clinton traveled to Beijing and delivered a speech
in which she said “womenâ€™s rights are human rights.” Later, as the
nation’s chief diplomat she elevated issues of importance to women and
girls around the world. She has helped start several nonprofits devoted to
enhancing the role of women in society. And she created a project called
“No Ceilings” through the Clinton Foundation.

“She’s been a champion of women’s issues since the beginning of her career
more than four decades ago and every day since. And there will never be a
time when she won’t be working on behalf of women,” said Lissa Muscatine,
who wrote speeches for Clinton in the White House, on the campaign trail
and at the State Department. “Does the issue have political benefit? Yes,
of course. But she’d be doing it regardless. It’s so core to her and so
central to her and who she is and what she cares about.”

Clinton allies say she has approached the topic from the perspective of how
empowering women can boost a country’s economy or ameliorate social ills.

“She has been a global leader on issues affecting women and girls, but not
affecting just women and girls, because they are also critical for economic
and social progress for all of society,” said Melanne Verveer, who was
Clinton’s chief of staff in the White House and served as the first U.S.
ambassador at large for global women’s issues when Clinton was at State.

Republicans say Clinton is out of touch and that will help them compete for
women voters. Sarah Chamberlain, chief operating officer of the Republican
Main Street Partnership, has organized a women’s outreach tour before the
midterm elections with Representatives Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and
Susan Brooks of Indiana.

They’ll be talking to “regular women,” Chamberlain said, “not the women who
charge $200,000 per speech.”

Voters will look beyond Clinton’s gender and see a platform and record that
aren’t appealing, she said.

“After you get over the fact that she’s a woman, what does she stand for?”
Chamberlain said.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said it shouldn’t be a
stretch for voters to see Clinton in the role of champion for a cause.

Stabenow first met Clinton in the 1980s when both were working to combat
child abuse, and she was later present at Clinton’s Beijing women’s speech.

“I see her through the lens of issues and causes,” Stabenow said in an
interview with Bloomberg reporters and editors this week. Stabenow said
Clinton’s the best person for the job of president. “The icing on the
cake,” Stabenow said, “is that she is a woman.”

*Huffington Post opinion: Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert: “When There's
Nothing Left To Uncover About Hillary”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/when-theres-nothing-left_b_5868536.html>*

By Eric Boehlert, senior fellow for Media Matters for America

September 23, 2014, 11:19 a.m. EDT

If the conservative site Washington Free Beacon is still paying a
Republican opposition research firm $150,000 a year to dig up dirt on
Hillary Clinton, editors might want to renegotiate their contract. Because
if Free Beacon's latest installation of its deep-dive into Clinton's past
is any indication, GOP investigators have already run out of leads.

The Free Beacon news flash? Back in 1971, Hillary Clinton (then Hillary
Rodham) corresponded twice with Saul Alinsky, a liberal organizer and
activist of renown in the 1930s, `40s and `50s. More recently, Alinsky's
been immortalized as a bogeyman by conservatives who for years have waged a
fruitless campaign to portray President Barack Obama as a radical-left
acolyte of Alinsky's.

And now the brief Clinton correspondence from more than 40 years ago is
being trumpeted: "The letters obtained by the Free Beacon suggest that
Clinton experimented more with radical politics during her law school years
than she has publicly acknowledged." (Wait, Clinton's a secret commie who's
also tight with Wall Street? Very confusing.)

Some conservatives on Monday strained to explain why any of this matters,
and why their weird, hard-to-understand obsession with someone like Alinsky
ought to be of importance in American politics today. The Free Beacon's
meaningless revelation set off lots of Twitter chuckling, but the story
itself went nowhere, much to the dismay of Rush Limbaugh, and for good
reason: There's no there there. (Favorite line: Hillary's letters were
"paid for with stamps featuring Franklin Delano Roosevelt.")

Keep in mind the attempts to attack Clinton by invoking Alinsky are nothing
new. Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, conservatives tried to
make hay out of the fact that Clinton had written a senior thesis about the
author.

After the story failed to make an impact outside the conservative bubble, a
Free Beacon editor claimed the article was never meant as a Hillary gotcha.
Instead, they were simply sharing "primary documents" with voters. I guess
that's one way to spin a swing-and-a-miss.

The whiff highlights what's becoming a growing problem for the right-wing
media industry: After operating under the microscope during her thirty-year
public career, there's not much about Hillary Clinton we don't know or that
hasn't been dissected. And there's probably not much more that we're going
to learn in the coming years, considering that trolling the Clintons has
been an established far-right cottage industry that dates back to the early
1990s.

Based on three decades in the spotlight as a governor's wife, the first
lady, a U.S. senator, presidential candidate and then secretary of state,
there's simply no other public figure active in the U.S. political arena
today (possibly other than the one who currently occupies the Oval Office)
who's been more scrutinized by the media, who's endured more "scandal"
coverage, who has been thoroughly trashed by the partisan press opponents,
and who still comes out the other side marching on.

So now what?

If Hillary dominates the political landscape in the coming election cycle,
how does the right-wing media pretend they're uncovering all kinds of new
and startling facts about her past, her policies, her influences and her
alliances? How does detailing a couple of letters Clinton wrote to a labor
organizer 43 years ago fill the right-wing media need for fresh, new, and
scary Clinton revelations?

Even when small nuggets of new Clinton information are unearthed, there's
no evidence this year that voters and news consumers care about minor
events or recollections from Clinton's professional past, especially ones
that occurred decades ago. Increasingly, the spectacle of collecting those
snippets seems more like right-wing media intramural sport than it does
attempts at newsgathering.

Still, the Ahab-like quest continues.

Recall that back in February Fox News hosted discredited smear merchant
Kathleen Willey for a session with Megyn Kelly to bash Hillary Clinton.
Willey's synonymous with her unfounded allegations of Clinton skulduggery
from the 1990s, when she claimed Bill and Hillary may have killed her cat,
her husband, and Vince Foster. And that they were definitely behind the
burglary of Willey's home.

More recently, Clinton-bashing authors this summer tried to generate some
momentum with books claiming to blow wide open the truth about Hillary and
her supposedly shocking and immoral ways. The titles included Daniel
Halper's Clinton Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine,
Edward Klein's Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas, and Ronald
Kessler's The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden
Lives of Presidents

But they all shot blanks.

Halper's book embodied the struggle of uncovering anything new (and
verified) about Hillary. A supposedly detailed dive into Clinton's
political life, Halper came up with very little and he was reduced to
gossiping about Bill Clinton's sex life on national television in hopes of
drumming up sales interest in his book. (That part didn't work either.)

Edward Klein did score a commercial success with his oddball, fiction-like
account of a villainous Bill and Hillary Clinton who came across in his
book more as soap opera characters than American dignitaries. But no, the
book didn't contain any new information about Hillary. At least not any
that a lucid reader would consider to be accurate.

And then there was Kessler, who had previously accused Hillary Clinton of
"pathological lying" and pushed the conspiracy theory that she was
responsible for Vince Foster's suicide. In his new book, Kessler apparently
uncovered so little new material about the former first lady that he
essentially copy-and-pasted passages from his previous books in order to
fill out the First Family Detail manuscript.

Hillary's determined opponents in the far-right press won't ever stop
attacking her or making wild allegations. (That's what passes for editorial
content.) But as a possible Clinton campaign awaits on the horizon, those
opponents must privately concede that after all these years and after all
those hollow allegations, if uncovering innocuous letters from 1971 is what
passes for Hillary news, then the oppo research cupboard is running bare.

*Slate: “Occupy Wall Street”
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/saul_alinsky_correspondence_with_hillary_clinton_how_can_she_support_wall.html>*

By John Dickerson

September 23, 2014, 12:43 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] How can Hillary Clinton be both a limousine liberal and a Saul
Alinsky radical?

My Twitter feed and my email inbox are in tension. Conservatives have been
passing around a story on Twitter from the Washington Free Beacon, which
has been doing great work unearthing new items from Hillary Clinton’s past.
The paper found a 1971 letter from Clinton to radical socialist organizer
Saul Alinsky. The argument is that Clinton, who wrote her thesis on
Alinsky’s methods and his approach to alleviating poverty, retains her
college-era radicalism. But at the same time, the Republican National
Committee is filling my inbox with emails plinking Clinton for her
relationships with celebrities, fat cats, and financiers as part of her
work with the Clinton Global Initiative, which holds its annual gathering
this week in New York. The GOP committee asserts that Clinton’s coziness
with the wealthy and powerful are going to cause her trouble with the
liberal Elizabeth Warren wing of her party. The only way this tension could
be reconciled is if Clinton appears at the Clinton Global Initiative and
protests herself.

Despite the enthusiasm with which some conservatives greeted the Alinsky
revelation, it’s unlikely to break out into the general political
conversation. The letter, while an interesting artifact, doesn’t add much
to the story of Clinton’s well-known liberal college days and is at odds
with the reigning Republican critique of the moment.

Why does anyone care about a 43-year-old letter? Origin stories can be
powerful in politics. They can contain easily digestible nuggets from which
voters can form instinctual impressions about a candidate. Bill Clinton
recast his image during his 1992 convention video by highlighting his
humble upbringing, branding himself as the Man From Hope and connecting
himself with Democratic icon John Kennedy through old footage of the two
shaking hands. Democrats tried to use George W. Bush’s origin story against
him, painting him as a callow youth besotted with drink. Obama’s lack of an
origin story was a liability for him. When former Mississippi Gov. Haley
Barbour was considering running for president, he offered an opinion about
why there were so many rumors about President Obama and his upbringing.
“There’s not much known about him, in college, or growing up. ... We don’t
know any of the childhood things,” he said. By comparison, he said, we all
knew that George Washington “chopped down a cherry tree.” (Which, of
course, is the original apocryphal origin story.)

Clinton has used her origin story to tell people who she is now. Before she
ran for the presidency in 2008, her first autobiography described growing
up in the heartland as a Methodist helping poor families and her journey
from Goldwater Girl to campus radical. At Sen. Tom Harkin’s steak fry in
Iowa last weekend, she was doing it again, talking about the values her
mother taught her about giving people a second chance. The message was that
she was raised with a certain set of values that she retains even today, no
matter how high she has risen in life.

Now conservatives are trying to make a similar case about the indelible
markings of her youth. The Alinsky connection will no doubt start appearing
in the speeches of Clinton’s possible GOP presidential rivals. Though she
refers to their biennial conversations, the connection sounds more sinister
than talking about her more protracted work for George McGovern in 1972 or
any number of other liberal associations she’s had. But that’s about as far
as it’s likely to go as a political weapon. No one outside of conservative
circles or liberal organizations knows who Saul Alinsky is—in part because
he died in 1972. If you try to explain why a more than four-decade-old
letter is so important, regular voters are going to think you’re a little
overheated. (And if they don’t, then they probably already believe far
worse about Clinton.)

As a political matter, origin stories work when voters don’t know much
about the candidate or when the past confirms a current caricature. Clinton
is perhaps the most well-covered likely presidential candidate since Gen.
Dwight Eisenhower. And the dominant Republican caricature of her is the
direct opposite of this Alinsky-inspired one.

For the last several months, Clinton detractors have been working to convey
the impression that her wealth has walled her off from regular people and
that her attempts to claim solidarity with the middle class through tales
of being “dead broke” were laughable. Alinsky writes in Rules for Radicals:
“The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power.
Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
The Clintons are not the Have-Nots. That’s why on the Free Beacon website
the story right above the story on the Alinsky letters is about how
Clinton’s wealth reveals how she has broken so thoroughly with Alinsky’s
teachings.

If the story of Clinton’s liberal past hadn’t appeared in a conservative
outlet, someone might have accused Clinton of planting it to restore her
liberal credibility among Democratic primary voters. Though it’s not likely
to do much good, since liberals are familiar with Clinton’s past. A letter
from Nixon’s first term isn’t going to convince them of much. Tell them who
her economic advisers will be and they might change their opinion that she
is a member of the Democratic Party’s Wall Street wing.

The burden of this discovery is not just to prove that Clinton is a
limousine liberal, which she obviously is. The claim emanating from this
old correspondence is that she is a closet Alinskyite—a sleeper cell of one
prepping for radical redistribution. For more than 40 years, she has been
biding her time, amassing a fortune, hanging out with the privileged that
Alinsky despised, asking them repeatedly for money to fuel her campaigns,
voting for foreign military intervention, and consistently infuriating the
grassroots liberals most likely to join in an Alinskylike crusade all in
furtherance of an Alinsky revolution that she will spring on the country
once she’s elected.

That is nuts. What’s more plausible is that Hillary Clinton is a liberal
with some lumpy mix of pragmatism and expedience gained through experience.
Also, if she’s an acolyte of Saul Alinsky at the genetic level, she
wouldn’t have been so thoroughly out-organized in the 2008 Democratic
primary by a community organizer from Chicago trained in the Alinsky method.

*National Memo: “Chasing Hillary: What The Republicans Refuse To Learn From
Wile E. Coyote”
<http://www.nationalmemo.com/chasing-hillary-republicans-refuse-learn-wile-e-coyote/>*

By Joe Conasom

September 23, 2014 6:00 a.m. EDT

As their fear swells in advance of Hillary Clinton’s anticipated
presidential campaign, the feverish smears of the Republican right
increasingly resemble the desperate gambits of a certain Wile E. Coyote.
The latest episode in their cartoonish crusade appeared in the Washington
Free Beacon, which headlined “The Hillary Letters” the other day with an
ominous subhead: “Hillary Clinton, Saul Alinsky correspondence revealed.”

Not only did Clinton become acquainted as a young woman with the legendary
community organizer – a fact mentioned in Living History, her own memoir –
but she apparently wrote at least two letters to him in the summer of 1971.
At the time, she was working as a legal intern for a well-known left-wing
law firm in Berkeley – another item noted in Living History, which was
published 11 years ago.

Now the Free Beacon, a neoconservative online publication, has dug up those
two notes that she sent to Alinsky, which prove conclusively that she was
interested in the man’s books and ideas, and enjoyed talking with him.

For those who don’t know much about Alinsky, he was an iconoclastic
activist who sought to improve the lives of poor families, by showing them
how to demand and win the same kind of services enjoyed by their
middle-class neighbors.  William F. Buckley once described him as “very
close to being an organizational genius,” and more recently the leaders of
the Tea Party have admitted that they consult his works for organizing
tips. He famously disdained all forms of totalitarian ideology, including
Communism, working more closely with religious institutions than political
parties of any complexion. Consistently, the heirs to his Industrial Areas
Foundation have forged strong alliances with local church leaders,
including the U. S. Catholic bishops. No doubt Pope Francis would have
loved him.

In the most telling passage from the letters Clinton sent to Alinsky during
that turbulent summer more than 40 years ago, she writes: “The more I’ve
seen of places like Yale Law School and the people who haunt them, the more
convinced I am that we have the serious business and joy of much work
ahead—if the commitment to a free and open society is ever going to mean
more than eloquence and frustration.” (She doesn’t sound much like a
Communist either.)

But like the hapless Looney Tunes varmint brandishing his Acme dynamite
sticks, the right-wing pamphleteers are so furious in their fruitless
pursuit of Clinton that they will seize any and every bomb to throw at her,
no matter how many times they blow themselves up instead. Those angry,
soot-covered boobs never seem to understand why their attacks leave her
completely unscathed — and often even stronger than before.

Nor do they realize that their shrill condemnations of Clinton sound
contrived, confused, and even contradictory: Sometimes she is a secret
radical, as the Alinsky “scoop” was meant to insinuate, and sometimes she
is a tool of Wall Street and corporate interests, as a silly release from
the Republican National Committee claimed on the opening day of this year’s
Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York.

That same day, on the CGI stage at Manhattan’s Sheraton Hotel, the former
Secretary of State conducted a lively discussion with two other notorious
radicals – Ginni Rometty, the first female president of IBM Corporation,
and Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank.

So while her ideological opponents continued to make themselves look
ridiculous, she was publicly exploring a few of her own lifelong
obsessions: how to improve the lives and health of working people, how to
empower women and girls around the world, and how to advance America’s
commitment to “a free and open society.” That suggests why, despite decades
of vilification by media outlets and the far right, she remains among the
world’s most admired leaders.

Should Hillary Clinton choose to run for president again, she is certain to
stumble and make mistakes, like any other politician. But unless her
dull-witted adversaries somehow begin to comprehend who she really is, she
will remain perfectly safe from them.

*Zee Media Bureau: “No Modi-Sharif meeting in New York: MEA”
<http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/no-modi-sharif-meeting-in-new-york-mea_1474656.html>*

By Ritesh K. Srivastava

September 23, 2014, 19:15

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is set to embark on a five-day
visit to the United States, will begin his trip fromSeptember 26 to 30,
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Tuesday, while stressing that
his visit is signal of India's abiding commitment to multi-lateralism and
desire to build strong ties with Washington.

He will be accompanied by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. She will
leave for the US on Tuesday night and will join the delegation once Modi
reaches there, MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said in a press conference.

In his five-day trip to New York and Washington, Modi will have over 30
engagements. He is scheduled to hold meetings with US administration, Heads
of state, businessmen and NRI community.

Modi will meet four leading figures of the US administration, including
President Barack Obama on September 29 and 30 when he is in Washington,
Akbaruddin said.

The MEA spokerperson furthe confirmed that the Prime Minister Narendra will
be meeting US President Barrack Obama on September 29 in Washington.

"The Prime Minister will be meeting President Barack Obama on the 29th as
well as on the 30th of this month, when he is in Washington. He will also
meet Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in New York on 29th
September," Akbaruddin said.

"The Prime Minister's private dinner with President Obama will be on September
29th in Washington, and the rest of the events will take place on September
30th," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to US is being viewed as India's
abiding commitment to multilateralism. Some of the themes of PM's upcoming
visit to US will be trade and investment, science and technology, and
defence and maritime security," he added.

He further said that the Prime Minister will also be meeting his
Bangladeshi and Nepali counterparts on his visit.

"Prior to his address, our PM will be meeting the United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He will also be meeting the President of Sri
Lanka and the Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and Nepal," Akbaruddin said.
However, he will not meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

"The PM will pay homage to the 9/11 memorial on 27th September. He will
also pay homage at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial and
Mahatma Gandhi's statue in Washington 30th morning," he added.

*The Hill blog: Raoul Lowery Contreras: “Hillary Clinton, Hispanics and
2016”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/218572-hillary-clinton-hispanics-and-2016>*

By Raoul Lowery Contreras, Contreras formerly wrote for the New American
News Service of The New York Times.

September 23, 2014, 10:00 a.m. EDT

Blinded by star power manufactured in former President Bill Clinton's
shadow, many Hispanics have declared for Hillary Clinton's nascent 2016
presidential campaign, proving that they wish to remain sheep buried in the
ignorance they manifested in voting for President Obama.

Hispanics voted in huge numbers (70 percent) for Obama, who promised jobs,
education and immigration reform; immigration reform would be done in his
first 100 days. A grateful Obama gave Hispanics record high unemployment
and underemployment and no improvement in education after he eliminated
President George W. Bush's signature educational achievement of "No Child
Left Behind," which measurably improved Hispanic test scores.

Most importantly, he did nothing about comprehensive immigration reform. He
didn't even lobby for the aborted "DREAM Act" that would have legalized
people brought here illegally as children. It failed because even though
enough Republicans — three — voted for it to pass, five Democratic senators
voted to kill it, with Obama's knowledge.

The highest percentage of Obama Hispanic votes came, as usual, from Puerto
Ricans and Dominicans in the Northeast and new Floridian Puerto Ricans.
That percentage lowered as the vote moved west into Texas and the
Southwest, where Mexican-Americans gave a majority of their vote to Obama,
but not 70 percent.

In less than 20 months after voting for Obama, Hispanics have joined the
rest of the country and dropped their overwhelming support by more than 20
points in the polls. Obama has suffered more support drop among Hispanics
than from any other identifiable group in the country.

Will this drop in support manifest itself at the polls this November?
Hispanic and Republican Govs. Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Brian
Sandoval in Nevada will run away with their races for reelection, so
breaking down their votes won't show much.

The Colorado governorship race and one suburban Denver congressional seat
might be affected by Hispanic voting. California has two or three close
seats that Hispanics might influence.

Florida's Gov. Rick Scott (R) is carrying a potential two-to-one romp among
South Florida's Cuban-Americans into the voting booth that should torpedo
formerly Republican governor-turned-independent-turned-Democrat Charlie
Crist's chances into oblivion.

2014 voting Hispanics should have some impact but a lower than 2012
Hispanic turnout will not cast a Hispanic hue to election results this time
like they might in 2016's presidential race.

Upwards of 10 million Hispanic voters might vote in 2016 and their effect
could be considerable.

First, Hispanic voters in New York and New Jersey (Puerto Rican and
Dominican) will have minimal effect because they are guaranteed Democratic
voters in Democratic states. The same will be true of Salvadoran voters in
Virginia, but that will be a swing state despite Salvadoran votes.
Florida's Puerto Rican voters in and around Orlando and Tampa Bay could, if
they turn out in huge numbers, affect Florida's vote like they did in 2008
and 2012.

Moving west to Texas, despite registration gains among Democrat Hispanics,
Texas will remain solidly Republican and assuming the Republican isn't a
raving lunatic on immigration and trade with Mexico, Mexican-Americans
could reach 35 percent for the Republican, or more. Arizona will vote
Republican, New Mexico might not and Colorado could swing either way
depending on the campaign. California will remain Democratic because the
Mexican-American voters will need another generation or two of education
and business formations to follow the Italian pattern of emigrating out of
the Democratic Party into the solid Republican mass they have become.

The 2016 campaign might very well be decided by Hispanic voters and that is
why the plunge in Obama's popularity among Hispanics is important, almost
as important as an episode in Iowa at Sen. Tom Harkin's (D) traditional
steak fry. There, former Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator and wife
of former President Bill Clinton totally messed up with her response to a
party-crashing Hispanic "Dreamer" immigration activist's question.

When asked what Clinton thought of Obama's punting or kicking his promised
immigration reforming executive order can down the road until after the Nov.
4 election, Clinton gave the most ridiculous answer possible and gives
evidence to why Mexican-Americans can vote against her with gusto. As
reported in The Hill: "'Well, I think we have to just keep working, can't
stop ever working,' Clinton said, and added, when pressed, 'You know, I
think we have to elect more Democrats.'"

Add one more gaffe to the Hillary Clinton repertoire that so far is
highlighted when she claimed that she and Bill left the White House (in
2001) broke, with a daughter in an expensive college and no home of their
own.

Certainly, American Hispanic families will shed a tear for the millionaire
Clintons and how "broke" they were in 2001 when Hispanics family income was
$42,899 and has dropped since while the Clintons have brought in over $100
million dollars for the hard work of speaking into microphones.

*BuzzFeed: Bill Clinton: U.S. Will Be Engaged In Middle East “As Long As
Somebody’s Trying To Have Total Control”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/bill-clinton-us-will-be-engaged-in-middle-east-as-long-as-so#467iqgk>*

By Ruby Cramer

September 23, 2014, at 12:02 p.m. EDT

[Subtitle:] “Particularly ISIS,” the former president says at the Clinton
Global Initiative conference in New York. Clinton predicts the U.S. will
avoid a “land war.”

The morning after the President Obama announced the United States had hit
ISIS strongholds in Syria, Bill Clinton said the United States will be
engaged in the conflict “as long as somebody’s trying to have total
control, particularly if it’s ISIS.”

The former president, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual
conference in New York, emphasized that there was no need for a U.S. “land
war.”

“We don’t need to be there on the ground,” Clinton said, but predicted the
administration would pursue “an extended involvement with airpower and with
providing intelligence and other institutional support to the people who
are fighting ISIS and trying to create a more inclusive set of governments
in the Middle East.”

Clinton made the comments during a one-on-one discussion about the economy
with CNBC anchor Becky Quick, who opened with questions about the
airstrikes.

When Quick asked Clinton whether he believed U.S. involvement in the
conflict would stretch on for “years and years,” the 42nd president said
no. “No one expects in the world we are living in now that every threat can
be eliminated,” he said. “Power is too dispersed. But you can get to the
point where the winning side is inclusive.”

“I think that could be achieved in a reasonable amount of time.”

Quick asked whether arming the Syrian rebels — a subject on which the
president and Hillary Clinton disagreed — to achieve some more favorable
outcome in Iraq and Syria.

“That’s now above my pay grade,” Clinton said. “The more I tell you about
that, the more likely I am to cause trouble for the decision makers.”

“I’m not sure I know enough to make an intelligent comment; I’ll defer to
whatever the Americans have to say about that.”

*MSNBC: “Bill Clinton: No land war in Iraq”
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bill-clinton-isis-no-land-war-iraq>*

By Alex Seitz-Wald

September 23, 2014, 12:36 p.m. EDT

Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the U.S. is likely to be
involved in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for “a
while,” hours after the Obama administration launched its first airstrikes
of the conflict into Syria.

“I think it will be an extended involvement with air power and with
providing intelligence and other institutional support” to allies, Clinton
told CNBC’s Becky Quick during an interview at the annual Clinton Global
Initiative conference here.

He ruled out ground troops, however. “We don’t need to be there on the
ground. And I don’t think that it means a land war in Iraq,” the former
president continued.

But Clinton, who said he thinks the administration’s strategy has “a chance
to succeeded,” wouldn’t say whether he thought the U.S. should be arming
moderate Syrian rebels.

“That’s above my pay grade,” he said, noting he no longer has access to the
intelligence reports. “The more I tell you about, the more likely I am to
cause trouble for the decision makers. I don’t know I know enough to make
an intelligent comment,” he said.

Previously, Clinton has said he agreed with his wife, former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, who pushed the administration to arm the moderate
rebels more than a year ago.

Bill Clinton will share the stage with President Obama at CGI later today.

The former president also decried ISIS’s beheading of Syrian soldiers,
saying that even while the U.S. does not support the Syrian regime, “those
soldiers were just people doing their job and they deserve to be treated by
the rules of war.”

Clinton dodged questions on his wife’s potential presidential ambition.

Asked about so-called inversions, Clinton would not say whether he thought
companies moving aboard for tax reasons are “patriotic.”

He added that while he supports the White House’s executive action to make
inversions less appealing, the only way the issue will be solved is by
reforming the tax code.

“America has to face the facts that we have not reformed our corporate tax
code” in years, he said, noting the country has highest tax rate in the
developed world.

The Clinton Global Initiative, annual conference of philanthropy and global
development, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.