I should admit that Clinton supporters are absolutely right.

It IS important that our candidates -- and their spouses -- be properly vetted.

We certainly wouldn't want the GOP getting ahold of a nasty story involving foreign dictators, uranium mining, and tens of millions of dollars, right?

I couldn't find any beef in that article. Just another Van Natta hit job on Bill Clinton, who is a private citizen and can do whatever the heck he wants to.

Instead of his crazy tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, maybe Van Natta should do a story on the work of he Clinton Foundation.

I actually read enough of it to figure out what it's all about.  Pretty sure most eyes will glaze over long before that point.

I see absolutely nothing here of interest.

What an absolute YAWN of a non-story.  

Obama-nuts must be feeling desperate.

That was an incredibly boring read.

Fearing the worst, I read the article in its entirety (before seeing this diary). I'm relieved that there isn't much, if anything, there.

As far as I can tell, here's what the story boils down to:

Canadian mining executive Frank Giustra and Bill Clinton meet in June 2005 at a fundraiser for tsunami victims. Due to common interests, including philanthropy, they quickly become friends and travel the world together. Giustra is already worth hundreds of millions of dollars at the time.

A few months later, they go to Kazakhstan, where the Clinton Foundation has negotiated a deal allowing the Kazakh government to buy discounted AIDS drugs. Giustra, believing correctly that the price of uranium is about to soar, has been working on a deal to mine uranium there, and completes the deal a couple of days later.

There seems to be no evidence that Clinton helped facilitate the uranium deal in any way. The head of the Kazakh government agency, whose quotes appear to be the basis for the perception of fishiness, even says that the deal was nearly complete before Clinton's arrival and was done according to merit.

Over the next year, Giustra donates $31 million to the Clinton Foundation, and has pledged to give another $100 million or so.

The only thing that's amiss is that Bill Clinton apparently offers praise to the Kazakh leader, who is apparently autocratic in nature. The Kazakh leader appears not to have had any involvement in this either.

So let's see--what do we learn from this?

Bill Clinton is involved in shady deals that raise money for tsunami victims and help people get discounted AIDS medicines.

His friend Giustra likes to make money, and then give it to charity.

Can't trust these two, I say.

We'll all just have to see what the alphabets have to say tomorrow, huh?

We're probably just rubes here in flyover country... things like "Uranium mining", "$131 million", "monster deals stunning the mining industry", and forgetfullness like this:

Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra at first denied that any such meeting occurred. Mr. Giustra also denied ever arranging for Kazakh officials to meet with Mr. Clinton. Wednesday, after The Times told them that others said a meeting, in Mr. Clinton's home, had in fact taken place, both men acknowledged it.

"You are correct that I asked the president to meet with the head of Kazatomprom," Mr. Giustra said. "Mr. Dzhakishev asked me in February 2007 to set up a meeting with former President Clinton to discuss the future of the nuclear energy industry." Mr. Giustra said the meeting "escaped my memory until you raised it."

Considering -- by my math -- Mr. Guistra gave the foundation what... 10% of it's OI?  

I'm sure you're right, though... no way anyone is interested in this.

You guys are the experts on this whole scandal thing - I'm just posting this so I can get tips on how to handle them for my own candidate.

So let's see... 'Yawn', 'nothing to see here', and the 'the reporter is fraud' -- right?

Is that the general way one handles it out of the box?

I predict the MSM will dub this Boratgate.

This sounds like these reporters spent a lot of time working on this story, didn't find anything out, and wrote what they had anyway. You can tell by the prominence given at the end to one incident--the worst that comes out of it is that two people forgot about a meeting at which nothing of consequence happened.

The skinny on the deal.  Bill Clinton, ex-President of the United States, travels to Kazakhstan with a business man looking to negotiate rights to Kazkh Uranium mines. The deal is completed and here's what each gets.

Kazakh Government gets support of the ex-President in trying to bring legitimacy to their repressive Government in their successful bid to the head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This happens despite objections of US administration and Congress.

The businessman gets the deal and sells the company for 3.1 billion dollars.

Clinton Foundation gets gifts of 131 million dollars.

It is a pure example of Bill Clinton trading his status of ex-President for payments funneled into his Foundation.  It is the revolving door from Government to Lobbyist on Steroids.  And the problem is there are a number of these stories lying in the weeds of his Foundation and the Presidential Library.

this story is a big bag of nothing because it's managed to draw 27 comments within 20 minutes of it's posting... at 1 AM CST.

Don't I feel sheepish....

I love the way Clinton supporters stretch as far as they can to find some impropriety between Obama and Rezko...and yet when there's a 131 million donation and favors for a corrupt government involving the candidate they favor they bury their heads in the sand.

From the Wikipedia article on Kazakhstan's human rights/ voting rights record:

Kazakhstan's political structure concentrates power in the presidency. Current President Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected to a 7-year term in a 2006 election that, many observers note, fell far short of international standards. The legislature and judiciary, as well as regional and local governments are not independent from executive control, and changes or amendments to the Constitution require presidential consent. No opposition parties are represented in the Lower House of Parliament. Corruption remains systemic.

While civilian authorities maintained effective control of the security forces, members of the security forces are reported to have committed human rights abuses. On some occasions, members of the security forces, including police, tortured, beat, and otherwise mistreated detainees; some officials were punished for these abuses. Prison conditions remained harsh; however, the Government took an active role in efforts to improve prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners. The Government continued to use arbitrary arrest and detention and to selectively prosecute political opponents; prolonged detention was a problem. Amendments to several laws governing the authority of procurators further eroded judicial independence. The Government infringed on citizens' privacy rights.

In November 2005, a former minister in the Nazarbayev government, Zamanbek K. Nurkadilov, who had stated he planned to speak publicly about high-level corruption, was found shot dead according to accounts by police and an opposition leader, the New York Times reported. His death came three weeks prior to upcoming presidential elections. Nurkadilov had been fired from his position as minister of emergency situations in 2004, after saying that President Nazarbayev ought to answer allegations that Kazakh officials had accepted millions of US dollars in bribes from an intermediary for U.S. oil firms in the 1990's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_right s_in_Kazakhstan

This is the country Bill Clinton recommends to head an international election monitoring agency?! Either Bill Clinton is completely oblivious to reality, or there was a quid pro quo.

Kazakhstan's political structure concentrates power in the presidency. Current President Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected to a 7-year term in a 2006 election that, many observers note, fell far short of international standards.

I wonder if the Democratic Party disenfranchising 2.5 million voters in Michigan and Florida would fall short of "international standards"?

Well I read it all, and I'm not even sure what its trying to tell us. Its just a muddle of circumstances with no clear point. About the worst you can say is that Bill got his buddy to give a ton of money....to charity. Looks for all the world like the NYT is trying to create a "story" where none exists.

I'll tell you this though: if Obama wants to bring this up in the debate tomorrow, he's got a can of Rezko whoop-ass waiting for him if he does (and that DOES look bad!)

That Uranium company was sold for 3.1 billion..wow, not chump change that Bill's buddy was dealing with. 131 million is a drop in the bucket. Imagine how much money he will have to spread to Bill's foundations over the next 8 years.
If HRC is the nominee.. the GOP will have  this in the news everyday for 6 months.

''Clinton Foundation Reaps 131 Million in Nuclear Cash''

The argument that Mr. Clinton's suspicious affair in Kazakhstan should be overlooked because of all the great work of Mr. Clinton's charitable deeds is bogus.

Our potential future First Gentleman is a former President named Bill Clinton that is engaging in the exchange of hundreds of millions of dollars on private jets, with James Bond villains like the authoritarian dictator of Kazakhstan, his uranium ministers, and a mining financier who is expressing a sudden interest in acquiring access to massive amounts of uranium. All this, and the Clinton Global Initiative gets just a little more than the cost of what Philadelphia Phillies 1B Ryan Howard ought to get in his next contract to play baseball.

You've got to admit that sounds pretty bad!

C'mon Clinton defenders! It sounds pretty damn bad!

http://wecouldbeafamous.blogspot.com

The publicly stated reason for the visit was to announce a Clinton Foundation agreement that enabled the government to buy discounted AIDS drugs. But during a news conference, Mr. Clinton wandered into delicate territory by commending Mr. Nazarbayev for "opening up the social and political life of your country."
So here the article, without base, suggests that the AIDS medicine story may have just been a cover for what the REAL purpose might have been.

In a statement Kazakhstan would highlight in news releases, Mr. Clinton declared that he hoped it would achieve a top objective: leading the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which would confer legitimacy on Mr. Nazarbayev's government.
So Bill is saying..."I hope you guys get a turn to lead the OSCE, that would be a positive thing" What does this organization do? According to Wikipedia: "Its stated aim is to secure stability in the region, based on democratic practices and improved governance."

"I think it's time for that to happen, it's an important step, and I'm glad you're willing to undertake it," Mr. Clinton said.

Yeah, thats pretty damning!

So who is this president anyway? Though it expresses some criticism as well, what stood out in the Wikipedia article on him was this in the first paragraph:

"Internationally, Nazarbaev is commonly credited for committing to free-market economic measures, wide engagement with the Western countries, promoting religious and national tolerance, optimism about nuclear non-proliferation and tough stance on terrorism and religious extremism."

Sounds horrible...I'm amazed Clinton even acknowledges this monster's existence.

Also, here's a pic of him with Bush at the White House in 2006. The embrace tells me they like each other very much and this guy is a friend to the United States.

NEXT!

I read the article -- and the one in Newsweek (link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/105650/page/1 ) -- and, honestly, I'm too tired to really understand whether there's something there or not.

But I'm not too tired to see right away that this is big trouble in Hillary Clinton land. Why? Because it's all about Bill Clinton. He's gonna be back in the news for at least a few days as people continue to sniff for something (because, let's face it, there is an odor here -- just a question of what exactly that odor is) and look under other rocks and raise questions (yet again) about whether or not Bill Clinton's post-White House years have been properly "vetted" and raise questions about the real implications of his possible return to the White House.

The Obama campaign most be absolutely gleeful. And if they were wise (and they aren't always) they wouldn't say a word about it.

It looks like it has as much substance as the Rezko non-scandal. Of course that will not stop some partisans from breathlessly wondering when the other shoe will drop and engaging in a lot of innuendo. Hopefully Obama and his supporters and surrogates will show some good sense and stay out of it.

LOL at you people thinking that he was donating $130,000,000 out of the goodness of his own heart. Of course it has NOTHING to do with Clinton greasing the wheels. God only knows what kind of "finder's fee" Clinton received - unmarked Swiss accounts of course.