The last time she ran for president, her posters shouted “Hillary!”  This was an obvious tribute to the belief that she was so well known and we’d be so excited she was available that a shout out was called for. Now, we’re informed she’s planning a tasteful, quiet rollout via video where no questions can or will be asked. An aide announced this week that calling Hillary “Hillary” is now “sexist.” Following that admonition and in light of what we know of her consummate corruption and opacity I think we should call her Madame Ka-Ching.

A.) The Clintons, an ongoing criminal enterprise

This week, Ace of Spades and The Hill and International Business Times, which he cites, have the latest on Madame Ka-Ching:

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Frank Guistra, a mining magnate -- that means oil -- who gave the Clinton Foundation up to fifty [ed: actually , it turned out to be $130] million dollars.

[snip]

and lo and behold, he suddenly has government assistance in getting him into sweet mining situations.

The thing with the Clintons, though, is that their crimes are never one-offs.

They are always ongoing criminal enterprises.

The Clinton Foundation reportedly accepted millions of dollars from a Colombian oil company head before then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to support a trade deal with Colombia despite worries of human rights violations.

[snip]

The article now narrates claims that Pacific Rubiales called in the Columbian military to crush a strike against them, in 2011. This generated, obviously, human rights complaints, and this was part of the case against the Colombian Free Trade Agreement.

On the campaign trail in 2008, Hillary Clinton, along with then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, opposed the deal as a raw deal for workers, according to IBT. The pair changed their tune after the election and publicly supported the trade agreement. As secretary of State, Clintons State Department certified annually that Colombia was "meeting statutory criteria related to human rights."

I'll now turn to the outfit who actually has the scoop, International Business Times.

[snip]

The details of these financial dealings remain murky, but this much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation -- supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself -- Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact. Having opposed the deal as a bad one for labor rights back when she was a presidential candidate in 2008, she now promoted it, calling it "strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States." The change of heart by Clinton and other Democratic leaders enabled congressional passage of a Colombia trade deal that experts say delivered big benefits to foreign investors like Giustra. 

As these revelations come to light, the Benghazi investigations on the Hill, including her illegal commingling of private and public emails on a private server and the destruction of those records, continue. And the Inspector General at the Department of State, an important statutory watchdog slot left unfilled when she was secretary, is looking into the bizarre agreement with her longtime companion, Huma Abedin (Mrs. Anthony Weiner), which permitted her to work as a State Department employee while consulting with outside clients, a clear and unprecedented (to my knowledge) conflict of interest. Others want to know who funded Clinton’s secret intelligence network headed by the odious Sidney Blumenthal and who besides Madame received the network’s reports?  

Is it any surprise that the campaign plans what is essentially a listening tour route to the White House? There are too many skeletons in her closet to allow even a peek into it through a keyhole.

Ed Morrissey outlines the strategy to insulate this crook of no real accomplishments from scrutiny.

B. The Lap Dog Press Brought to Heel by Madame

If the intent of the “going small” campaign wasn’t already obvious enough, MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald connects the last remaining dots. Team Hillary wants to run an “intimate” campaign in order to counter the impression that the former First Lady and Secretary of State feels overly entitled to voters’ support and higher office, which means doing what other candidates regularly do as part of retail campaigning -- smaller events, one-on-one interactions, especially in Iowa where voters expect that approach. Seitz-Wald reports that the campaign has already begun to strategize how that can keep the media from asking too many questions of Hillary Clinton, and that they may impose reporting “pools” -- as the White House routinely uses for events.

[snip]

Clinton wants reporters to cover the events the way she wants, and not ask questions that might otherwise put her on the spot. So which reporters will go along with those plans? The pool selection at the White House gets handled by the correspondents themselves. Something tells me that this will not be the case when it comes to Hillary Clinton’s press pools. This approach leaves the campaign with a lot of leverage over the reporters assigned to cover her campaign. Ask a tough question once, and don’t hold your breath waiting for another slot in the pool. Nice beat ya got there, kid. Shame if anything happened to it.

But what’s to keep reporters from just showing up anyway to these events? The Secret Service might be a complication. Unlike other candidates at this stage, Hillary has full Secret Service protection as a consequence of her status as former First Lady. The campaign will also manage access in other ways, too. It may not be impossible to cover events outside of the pool, but it will be a lot more difficult, and good luck getting the candidate to interact with you if you crash the party.

Will the press tolerate this staging? You betcha. Ace nails it:

The Summer of Sequels.

I don't mean sequels in movies -- I mean sequels in news stories.

Right now the alleged news media is churning out sequel after sequel about Rand Paul's alleged testiness to female reporters.

Today he is allegedly testy with a male reporter, which should put an end to claims that he's testy with female reporters. After all, if he's testy with both, he's not singling out women.

But it won't be the end of it. Today, they just say he's testy with a reporter, sex unspecified; the next time it's a woman -- and there's about a 50% chance of that -- they'll forget the male reporter they claimed he was testy with, and once again claim he's testy with female reporters.

[snip]

Furthermore, sequels are the easiest sorts of Narratives to produce by mediocrities and incompetents. The original might have taken a bit of ingenuity or luck, but scripting a sequel is an easy job for hacks. You just write the same story you did before -- even if the facts don't fit. It's the Narrative that sells, after all.

One more thing that makes sequels so attractive: The all-important Audience Awareness of the property in question is high. You don't have to work at building up audience awareness, as is the case in the original (mostly) story about Hillary Clinton changing her position on human rights violations in Colombia after a very, very deep pocketed miner paid $130 million into the Clinton Foundation.

That could be a sleeper hit, but no one's expecting gonzo box office out of it. The audience isn't there yet. (And, given the media's distaste for that kind of story, don't count on the media to advertise it much.)

So today, the left churns out the newest sequel to its ongoing franchise, Rand Paul Is Rude Especially To Women, Of Which Hillary Clinton Is One.

It will be rubbing elbows at the multiplexes with Chris Christie Did Something With a Bridge and Is Also Too Gruff, Especially In the Eyes of Women, Of Which Hillary Clinton Is One, and competing especially with Ted Cruz is a Woman-Hating Maniac Who Hates Women, Of Which Hillary Clinton Is One.

On the other side, you'll have a smattering of counter-programming sequels, such as Hillary Clinton is a Grandmother Who Loves Babies (and By the Way, Grandmothers Tend to be Women) and Hillary Will Be the First Female President Who Is a Woman.

Meanwhile, Jezebel will be producing its indie reboot: Vagina, A Love Story.

Elle magazine is right up there at the plate, ready to bat for Clinton with a heavily airbrushed cover and story about Chelsea:

 There is something innately regal about Chelsea -- a kind of grace that doesn't seem practiced, or trotted out just for public consumption. She's a person of substance for sure, a young woman who, while measured in her manner, has a fierceness of conviction, and a calling to make the world a better place.

{snip]

No Ceilings is emblematic of the work Chelsea says she felt called to do. It was an idea she and her mother dreamed up together, looking back at the United Nations' World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, where Hillary, then First Lady, made her famous declaration that "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights”.

You can count on every glamour magazine, TV show aimed at women, Parade, and newspaper Style section to appeal to low information distaff voters with soft pitches for Clinton’s candidacy like this one.

So, what are her Republican candidates to do? Turn the tables and ask the press to submit the gotcha questions to their opponent exactly as Rand Paul did when he told the interviewer trying to press a wedge issue -- abortion -- to ask a question of the head of the DNC. 

“After Planned Parenthood spent all yesterday attacking Sen. Paul, two reporters coincidentally asked him if he would accept any exemptions on abortion. Come on, senator: is there no limit to your cruel oppression of women? Paul knew the fix was in and responded accordingly.

“Here’s the deal -- we always seem to have the debate waaaaay over here on what are the exact details of exemptions, or when it starts,” Paul said, moving his hand to one side. “Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus? You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman-Schultz if she’s okay with killing a seven-pound baby that is not born yet. Ask her when life begins, and you ask Debbie when it’s okay to protect life. When you get an answer from Debbie, get back to me.”

Sure, the press fought back at being called to task, as Ace shows, but be bold, ignore them. Most of us already do. In any event, it’s your only resort.

Janet Shagam has a list she’d like asked of all Democrat candidates, including Madame Ka-Ching:

How about asking reporters [to ask Hillary] if marriage can KEEP being redefined. If not, why not? Explain.

What exactly is the correct global climate? Who picked what is "correct"?

or ask [Hillary] why the multimillion dollar abortion business is given taxpayer money?

Why do regulation lovin' Dems not want any health & safety regulations on abortion clinics & how exactly is that pro-women?

Ask [Hillary] if [she] let[s] strangers onto their private property & if not, why should Americans near our southern border have to put up with illegals roaming their property?

Ask [Hillary] how much of [her] OWN money [she gives] to Planned Parenthood & NPR/PBS. Does [she give her] OWN money to "green" businesses?

[snip]

Ask [Hillary] if a federal employee is caught using their position to attack innocent American citizens what should the consequence be?

Ask [Hillary] if  [she] ride[s] a bike to work to "save the planet".

Ask [her] to explain global warming.

Ask [her] to define "social justice".

Ask [her] how acres & acres of solar panels impacts wildlife. What number of chopped up & fried birds is an acceptable number for the taxpayer subsidized windmill & solar businesses?

When does human life begin?

Riccochet is on the same page and suggests some more good questions candidates should ask the press to pose to their opponent, including.

"What made you finally agree with Dick Cheney that same-sex marriage should be legalized?”

“How much should taxes be increased to combat climate change? Did your record-setting number of State Department trips contribute to the problem?”

“Should we increase immigration while African-American unemployment is at record highs?”

He’s right: The press has proven time and again to be an arm of the Democrats and an enemy to every Republican candidate. Do not try to placate them. Ignore their efforts to steer you to their desired responses. Treat them as if they are working for Madame Ka-Ching, because they certainly are.