Politics and Celebrity Collide

[mountaineer]

What a dingdong, yet I'm sure the good people of NY will elect her to some office for which she's completely unqualified.

Bill and Hillary Clinton met Chelsea’s husband at Mario Batali's Babbo
 May 2, 2013 Page Six


Chelsea Clinton owes a lot to Mario Batali, saying he’s been a huge influence on her life. While one might assume they share a love of Crocs and Fanta Pants, Clinton explained it was over a dinner by the superstar chef that her (probably very nervous) husband, Marc Mezvinsky, met her parents, Bill and Hillary, for the first time.

 “It’s not hyperbole to say I could not imagine my life in New York or really my life in general without Mario,” she told the crowd at Tuesday’s Food Bank for New York Can Do Awards at Cipriani Wall Street.

 “The first meal I shared with the man I am now very happy to call my husband and the people I am now very happy to call my husband’s in-laws, otherwise known as my parents, was at Babbo. Thankfully, that went well.”

 Also at the event were Sandra Lee, Selita Ebanks, Lauren Bush Lauren, Tom Colicchio, Rachael Ray and Kelly Bensimon. Jon Bon Jovi performed.

[mountaineer]

It's the ultimate collision of politics and celebrity:  the KENNEDYS!

Caroline Kennedy turns heads in coke trial jury selection
By LAURA ITALIANO and YASMINE PHILLIPS
 May 13, 2013 New York Post

She punted on the question of whether she or any member of her family has ever been a crime victim. And she didn't mention her campaign appearances on behalf of Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance. Still, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg was selected as a juror in a felony crack cocaine sale trial today, turning heads in Manhattan Supreme Court in a way no other unassuming-looking, Upper East Side gal with a backpack and tote bag could do.

"My name is Caroline Kennedy; I live on the Upper East Side; I've lived at my present address for twenty five years," Kennedy said, sitting in the jury box of a 13th floor courtroom for jury selection.

A small murmur of recognition spread through the courtroom, and Kennedy continued -- speaking into a small microphone as she recited her answers to a written jury questionnaire.

"I live with my husband and two grown children," she said. "I have a law degree."

Then came the question, about halfway down the questionnaire, of whether she or any member of her family has ever been a victim of a crime. That's when the daughter of an assassinated president and niece of an assassinated attorney general skipped the question. Instead, she answered the next question, which inquired if she or anyone close to her has ties to a law enforcement.

"My brother, years ago, worked as an assistant district attorney," she said of her brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. John-John, as he was affectionately known, a prosecutor for the Manhattan DA's office for four years in the early '90s, and died in a plane crash off of Martha's Vineyard in 1999.

The lawyer and philanthropist did not mention, at least in open court, her 2009 campaign efforts on behalf of the current DA, Cyrus Vance Jr.

Kennedy was similarly tight-lipped when a defense lawyer asked if she and her fellow prospective jurors know anyone with a drug problem.  "I know … a few people," she mumbled. The list of Kennedy's with admitted histories of drug issues is a long one, and includes her cousins Robert F., Jr. (heroin), David, (heroin), and Rep. Patrick J., (cocaine).

"Absolutely," the defense lawyer for accused drug dealer Nelson Chatman said, when a reporter asked after court if he believed all of the selected jurors could be fair, including those who had headlined at fundraising dinners for the DA.

"Otherwise, I wouldn't pick them," said the court-appointed lawyer, Mark Jankowitz.

It could not be immediately determined whether -- during a closed door jury selection session -- Kennedy did give a fuller accounting of her law enforcement ties, family history of drug use and tragic connection to two of the biggest political crimes in the twentieth century.  Either way, Kennedy was chosen as a trier of fact in the third degree cocaine possession case, which should keep her at the courthouse for a week or more.

Jurors must return to court tomorrow at 11 a.m. for possible openings in the case, which charges Chatman, 31, sold crack cocaine to an undercover at Lexington Ave. and East 129th Street last December.

[andy58-in-nh]

"Bill Clinton says Chelsea changed his view on gay marriage."

I must say that I agree with Bill on this one.

Hillary definitely should have married a woman.

[Cincinnatus]

She punted on the question of whether she or any member of her family has ever been a crime victim

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to ask her how many members of her family have committed crimes?

[mountaineer]

Some snark from Cindy Adams, NY Post:

House Speaker John Boehner’s daughter Lindsay, 35, who lives in Hollywood, Fla., married Jamaican construction worker Dominic Lakhan, 38, last week in Delray Beach’s Sundy House garden.  She has a tatto’d arm. He a marijuana conviction. She: strapless white gown. He: dreadlocks. Sixty guests including Mrs. Debbie Boehner and other daughter Tricia, 32.

The Daily Mail and Gossip Extra report they’re registered at Macy’s. So far the pair’s classiest gift was a $500 KitchenAid; the cheapo was $7.99 on sale bath towels. Dress code besides heavy security plainclothes dudes, uniformed sheriff, a squad car, cops and invitees’ ID wristbands were Hawaiian shirts and sundresses.

A big-time six-course sit-down? Uh-uh. Three-piece band and buffet in a small banquet room. Blinds drawn. Snoopers couldn’t snoop.

Court records list the groom’s 2003 and 2006 arrests. Once for possessing 2 grams of pot. His new father-in-law has stated he’s “unalterably opposed to legalizing marijuana even for medical purposes.”

I am stating the Speaker wore a bright tie, bright smile, said he was “proud” and danced at his daughter’s wedding. ...

UNITED States Sen. Rand Paul. Republican from Kentucky. Know what he did recently during a big-time high-powered hotshot multimillionaires’ fund-raising meeting? Clipped his nails. Those around were grateful he was manicuring fingers not toes . . . Daniel Craig keeps his ID secret with mail to his New York house. Being the truly wonderful person that it is well-known I am, I will not reveal the town or that fake name.

link

[Rapunzel]

Good grief.

[Cincinnatus]

UNITED States Sen. Rand Paul. Republican from Kentucky. Know what he did recently during a big-time high-powered hotshot multimillionaires’ fund-raising meeting? Clipped his nails. Those around were grateful he was manicuring fingers not toes

Given the source and her target, I want independent verification before I believe it.

[mountaineer]

This is NY Gov. Andy Cuomo's ex:


Kerry Kennedy's trying time: Drugged-drive rap stands
By LAUREL BABCOCK, New York Post
 May 22, 2013

Kerry Kennedy must stand trial for drugged driving, a Westchester judge said yesterday in rejecting a bid by the former wife of Gov. Cuomo to dismiss the misdemeanor charge.

North Castle Town Court Judge Elyse Lazansky set Oct. 8 for the next court date in the case of Kennedy, 53, who was allegedly under the influence of a sleeping pill when she swerved her Lexus into a tractor-trailer on I-684 near her home last July 13.

The judge conceded that Kennedy, a human-rights activist who is the 10th of 11 children of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, “is not a typical criminal defendant. She has achieved a great deal and is dedicated to good works.”

 But Lazansky added, “Other gifted, powerful and wealthy politicians and celebrities too numerous to mention have faced a wide variety of criminal charges and have gone on to do their jobs or serve the public in many important ways.”

The judge said Kennedy “cut a wide swath of danger and risk to other vehicles on the road during rush hour that day, allegedly driving on the grass, the median, hitting a tractor-trailer and weaving across lanes of the interstate.”

Kennedy refused to comment as she left court after the brief hearing.

Her attorney, Gerald Lefcourt, said he has “every confidence that Ms. Kennedy will be exonerated.”

Kennedy, who is a niece of the late President John F. Kennedy, was arrested after she allegedly failed sobriety tests.
She reportedly told police that she accidentally took a sleeping pill instead of the intended thyroid medication she takes every day.

Prosecutors claimed dropping the charge would fuel the perception that Kennedy was being let off because of her celebrated name and status.

[Rapunzel]

pretty hard to mix up a sleeping pill for a thyroid pill.. they look NOTHING alike.

[Cincinnatus]

Kennedy...who is the 10th of 11 children of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

There is something wrong with the entire Kennedy clan going all the way back to Papa Joe, and probably beyond.

[mountaineer]

Bubba’s guard robbed by kids
Last Updated: 12:44 AM, May 26, 2013
NY Post

Bill Clinton’s tough senior adviser Justin Cooper was mugged in Paris Wednesday by two young kids in broad daylight.

Cooper, who served as Clinton’s “body man” and most recently special adviser since Clinton left office, was in France at the same time the ex-president was in Paris for an AIDS conference organized by the international non-profit UNITAID.

Cooper was said to be withdrawing money across the street from the historic Hotel George V just off the Champs-Élysées when he was attacked. While Cooper was at the ATM, two boys said to be grade-school age approached.

As reported by the French newspaper Metro, one of the boys asked Cooper to sign a fake petition while the other one snatched 300 euros ($387) he’d withdrawn from the ATM. The youths, who were not carrying weapons during the attack, then ran off.

Metro reports that the perps are still at large, and video of the incident is being reviewed.

Cooper is a longtime close aide to the former president, and helped Clinton write several of his books, including his 957-page, 2004 memoir, “My Life.” Clinton thanked Cooper in the acknowledgments, saying, he “gave up more than two years of his young life to work with me every day and . . . all night.

“He never lost his patience, his energy never flagged and by the time we got to the last lap, he sometimes seemed to know me and what I wanted to say better than I did,” Clinton wrote.

Cooper is also a former employee of strategy group Teneo, run by Clinton adviser Doug Band and Declan Kelly, the former US special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Clinton on Wednesday spoke at a dinner for UNITAID, which uses innovative financing to increase funding for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatments in low-income countries.

A rep for the Clintons declined to comment on the incident.

[mountaineer]

I wonder what this is about. From the July 22 "sightings" section of the NY Post's Page Six:

VALERIE Jarrett at the Cosmopolitan offices to visit editor Joanna Coles . . .

Cosmo? 

[Oceander]

Bubba’s guard robbed by kids
Last Updated: 12:44 AM, May 26, 2013
NY Post

Bill Clinton’s tough senior adviser Justin Cooper was mugged in Paris Wednesday by two young kids in broad daylight.

Cooper, who served as Clinton’s “body man” and most recently special adviser since Clinton left office, was in France at the same time the ex-president was in Paris for an AIDS conference organized by the international non-profit UNITAID.

Cooper was said to be withdrawing money across the street from the historic Hotel George V just off the Champs-Élysées when he was attacked. While Cooper was at the ATM, two boys said to be grade-school age approached.

As reported by the French newspaper Metro, one of the boys asked Cooper to sign a fake petition while the other one snatched 300 euros ($387) he’d withdrawn from the ATM. The youths, who were not carrying weapons during the attack, then ran off.

Metro reports that the perps are still at large, and video of the incident is being reviewed.

Cooper is a longtime close aide to the former president, and helped Clinton write several of his books, including his 957-page, 2004 memoir, “My Life.” Clinton thanked Cooper in the acknowledgments, saying, he “gave up more than two years of his young life to work with me every day and . . . all night.

“He never lost his patience, his energy never flagged and by the time we got to the last lap, he sometimes seemed to know me and what I wanted to say better than I did,” Clinton wrote.

Cooper is also a former employee of strategy group Teneo, run by Clinton adviser Doug Band and Declan Kelly, the former US special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Clinton on Wednesday spoke at a dinner for UNITAID, which uses innovative financing to increase funding for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatments in low-income countries.

A rep for the Clintons declined to comment on the incident.

He wasn't mugged so much as he was snookered by a pair of nascent con-men; no doubt they'll be running for office as French Socialists sooner rather than later.

[mountaineer]

Yesterday's NY Post published snippets of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s diary, in which he confessed his sex addiction. In today's installment, he reveals his opinion of ex-brother-in-law Andrew Cuomo, Al "The Charlatan" Sharpton and others. Fun reading!

Diary bombshell: RFK’s secret slams against Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Gov. Cuomo
By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein
September 9, 2013 | 4:04am




The Post exclusively reported Sunday how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grappled with what he called his “lust demons” and kept a scorecard of more than two dozen conquests in a secret diary. Below are more sensational details from the journal, in which RFK Jr., a member of the political elite, bashes everyone from then-brother-in-law Andrew Cuomo to the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Over breakfast on New Year’s Day 2001, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his brother-in-law Andrew Cuomo sat down to talk politics.

Cuomo’s tenure as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development was about to end, and he sought Kennedy’s counsel as he mulled a run for New York governor.

“Andrew could win because he is totally focused and energetic,” Kennedy later observes. “He could lose because he lacks humanity and doesn’t love people. He is not a retail politician.”

Cuomo did go on to seek the Democratic nomination in 2002 and blundered badly. His criticism of Gov. George Pataki in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was widely viewed as inappropriate and derailed his campaign.

Kennedy recorded the thoughts in a bombshell diary from 2001, a copy of which was reviewed by The Post. The fat, red book, covered with bumper stickers shouting liberal slogans, bluntly reveals the scion’s true feelings about some of the most important political figures of our time, including family members such Cuomo, fellow Democrats and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

RFK Jr. also kept notes for his journal during his month-long stint in a Puerto Rican prison that July. He, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson’s wife, Jacqueline, were charged with trespassing during protests on Vieques, the Puerto Rican island the US Navy used as a bombing range.

The Revs. Jackson and Sharpton “give me the creeps,” Kennedy writes in a July 5 entry.

“Al Sharpton has done more damage to the black cause than [segregationist Alabama Gov.] George Wallace. He has suffocated the decent black leaders in New York,” he says. “His transparent venal blackmail and extortion schemes taint all black leadership.”

Rev. Al Sharpton gave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “the creeps,” he wrote in his diary.

He goes on to call Sharpton a “buffoon” who has never escaped the “stench” of his advocacy for Tawana Brawley, the black Dutchess County teen who fabricated a story about six white men raping her in 1987.

Kennedy said that he couldn’t forget the Brawley episode.
 
He writes that Jesse Jackson has “a desperate and destructive addiction to publicity.” He recalls that Jackson, at labor leader Cesar Chavez’s funeral, pushed “Cesar’s friends and family out of the way to make himself lead pall bearer.”

“I feel like with Jesse, it’s all about Jesse,” Kennedy writes.
 
“His love affair with [Nation of Islam leader] Louis Farrakhan and his Jewish xenophobia are also unforgivable,” Kennedy adds.

“I feel dirty around him, and I feel like I’m being used. I feel like with Jesse, it’s all about Jesse.” ...

More snark about Mario Cuomo, George W. Bush and others in today's New York Post.

[Rapunzel]

Very interesting.........

[mountaineer]

RFK Jr. is a pathetic excuse for a human being. So are the people he mocks as giving him the creeps, buffoons, unforgiveable, etc.

[Rapunzel]

RFK Jr. is a pathetic excuse for a human being. So are the people he mocks as giving him the creeps, buffoons, unforgiveable, etc.

That is what made this an interesting read... he is one of my least favorite people - right up there with Al Gore and all their fake Global Warming crap......

[mountaineer]

Well, that's comforting. Sharpton forgives Kennedy's diary diss.

[mountaineer]

More news from the incestuous bunch of losers that is Hollywood:

Rahm Emanuel was feted last night at a dinner prepared by top chef Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch at the Core Club to celebrate the film “Haute Cuisine.” The French film — being distributed by Harvey Weinstein — is based on Mazet-Delpeuch’s culinary career, including becoming private chef to former French President François Mitterrand.

We hear that as part of the gig, the French cook served meals to world leaders including Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Spotted at the power party were Ron Perelman, Robert De Niro, David Boies, Barry Diller, hedge-fund manager Orin Kramer, former Bill Clinton aide Doug Band, James L. Dolan and Susan Torricelli.

So what does the ballerina have to do with this chef's career? Hey Rahm, a few more children were slaughtered in Chicago this month. How about focusing on that?

Page Six

[mountaineer]

NY Post

Chelsea Clinton gets $750,000 break on new condo
By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein
September 21, 2013 | 9:43pm

Maybe there’s a presidential discount.

Chelsea Clinton and hubby Marc Mezvinksy paid $9,250,000 for a four-bedroom apartment in the celebrity-studded Whitman condominium building on Madison Square Park, city records filed this month show. That is $1.2 million less than the $10.5 million asking price, and $750,000 below what the building’s other two occupants paid for their 5,000-square-foot units. All three apartments are nearly identical, except that the Clinton-Mezvinsky pad is on a higher floor.

The building also includes a duplex penthouse apartment that’s on the market for $25 million.

NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon plunked down $10 million cash for his condo. Hedge-funder John Silvetz and his wife, model Wilda Deon Bray, also paid $10 million, which was $250,000 less than the asking price for their unit.

The three apartments officially went on sale in February, and went to contract within two months of each other.

Clinton and Mezvinsky purchased the property using a company called Cafema LLC.  [???] They took out a $5 million mortgage in addition to a $500,000 line of credit, records show.

The East 26th Street building once belonged to Plumbers Local 1, and was converted to condos by developer David Mitchell. President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured the property in early March.

Clinton and Mezvinksy had been living around the corner in a three-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue since their 2010 marriage. The apartment was on the market for $4.7 million, and is listed as under contract on the Stribling real estate Web site.

Clinton works as a special correspondent for NBC News, and is studying for a doctorate from Oxford. Mezvinksy, who used to work at Goldman Sachs, started a hedge fund in 2011. 

“Marc and Chelsea agreed to buy the apartment last year. As they were the first to do so in the building, they received a discount, as is not uncommon in New York,” a spokesman said.

[mountaineer]

Sean Penn puts up a political smokescreen as he chugs on E-cigarette at Clinton Global Initiative conference
By Shyam Dodge/Daily Mail
PUBLISHED: 15:56 EST, 25 September 2013  | UPDATED: 16:48 EST, 25 September 2013 

When Sean Penn needs to smoke it appears nothing can stand in the way between him and his next hit of nicotine.

And that was certainly the case on Wednesday, when the actor was seen puffing away as he sat on a panel for the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, seemingly unable to make it through the lengthy chat without his fix.

But the high-profile 53-year-old's cigarette was an electronic device, leaving no offending odours or pollution, during the live onstage discussion.

The veteran silver screen star wore a black suit and tie for the event as he listened intently to the heated conversation.

The topic on the table for discussion was Haiti and what the conference labelled Expanding Cross-Sector Coordination in Haiti.

And Penn, who is the CEO & Founder of J/P Haitian Relief Organisation, could be seen speaking passionately about the continuing relief efforts following the disastrous 2010 earthquake that left a continuing nightmare of ruin.

The Mystic River star puffed thoughtfully on his electronic device as fellow panellists Kathleen Matthews of Marriott, Digicel Chairman Denis O'Brien, and Haiti's Ambassador-at-Large Danielle Saint-Lot took their turns speaking.

Penn, who first rose to stardom in 1982's Fast Times At Ridgemont High, even performed a few smoking tricks as he blew out small wisps of smoke through his nostrils.

And the discreet device did not appear to offend his fellow panellists as he seemed to use the cigarette as a conversational tool, puffing thoughtfully and gesturing with it on several occasions.

After the massive, 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti three years ago, killing 230,000 and making 1.3 million more homeless, Penn flew to the country in his private plane to aid the victims. Since that time he has said that rebuilding Haiti is now his life's work.

In 2011 the actor told Oprah: 'Everybody who has spent time in Haiti knows how important it is for the world to see what is going on here.'

Penn's organisation has single-handedly paid for many of the restructuring efforts in the troubled country. Last year Penn paid for all the engineers, equipment, and construction costs to demolish and remove the rubble of the Haitian National Palace.

But the actor has not just leant his money but also his muscle to the efforts, as he has been pictured over the last three years performing many manual labour tasks to help with the relief work.

[Cincinnatus]

But the high-profile 53-year-old's cigarette was an electronic device, leaving no offending odours or pollution

Unfortunately the same could not be said about Penn himself.

[sinkspur]

Well, if the article is correct, Penn's put his money where his mouth is on Haiti.   No fan of his, but highlighting the smoking of an ecig seems perfectly in line with the trivia that dominates Brit media.

[mountaineer]

First she's going to have to get her husband to spend some time with her. Has he abandoned his plan of becoming a ski bum?

Chelsea Clinton: We want to have a baby in 2014
NBC (her employer)
Next up on Chelsea Clinton's agenda: Becoming a mom.


Clinton, 33, who has been married for three years to husband Marc Mezvinsky, told Glamour magazine in a recent interview that they are intent on starting a family next year. The death of Clinton’s grandmother, Dorothy Howell Rodham, in 2011, resulted in the couple prioritizing what they want in life.

“We sat down and said, 'Here's what we want to do,’’’ Clinton told Glamour. “The first thing on the list was simple: We want, God willing, to start a family. So we decided we were going to make 2014 the Year of the Baby. And please, call my mother and tell her that. She asks us about it every single day."

The daughter of former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hit hard by the death of her grandmother, who she frequently went to for advice.

“It was such a fundamentally unmooring event for me," she said. "I've never been so lost as I was when she passed."

Clinton, who worked at McKinsey & Company and Avenue Capital Group after earning degrees from Stanford and Oxford, has recently taken a larger role as the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, which works with initiatives involving climate change, economic development, global health, and empowering women. She and her father recently visited multiple African countries to help educate the local populations about life-saving technologies like a powder mix that creates drinkable water.

She says she dedicated herself to working for the family’s foundation after consulting her grandmother for advice.

“She had strong ideas about what I should do with the opportunities I had been given,’’ Clinton said. “I realized that as much as I tried not to care about the things my parents cared about, I did care about them. Which was frustrating, in some ways. My grandmother, in her wizened way, just said, 'Yes, I've been waiting for you to come to this realization.'"

In addition to becoming more involved in the foundation, Clinton also took a job as a special correspondent for NBC and even looked at potentially working for other non-profits, but said she didn’t find one where she could be more effective than in the Clinton Foundation. Now she is focused on starting a family and pursuing the work her parents started.

“Work really, really hard, and in a way that makes an impact," she said about her focus. “I was ready to answer that calling and be the person may grandmother had always known I was.”

Good to know someone as accomplished and brilliant as she plans to run for office. 

[mountaineer]

WashPost:

Did Chelsea Clinton’s disclosure in Glamour that she and Marc Mezvinsky have long planned “to make 2014 the Year of the Baby” have you squirming with an uncomfortable sense of TMI? Well, give her a break: Her procreation future has long been Topic A for the Clintons, the only safe and relatable bit of banter this jet-set family has to share (everyone loves babies!) — and, of course, the media can’t stop asking them about it.

◾ “If I could have my wishes, I would like to live to see my own grandchildren.” — Bill, at a AIDS conference in Vienna, July 2010.
◾“Hillary wanted this marriage because she wants to be a grandmother more than she wanted to be president.” — Bill, on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” Sept. 2010.
◾“I love babies, so you know, maybe I’ll have more in my life some day.” — Hillary, ABC interview, Jan. 2011.
◾ “I would like to have a happy wife and she won’t be unless she’s a grandmother..” — Bill at Davos, January 2011.
◾ “No pressure, because I don’t want to be one of those kinds of mothers. But obviously, someday, I’d love it.” — Hillary, Harper’s Bazaar, March 2011.
◾ “Well, that’s really not up to me, but I would like to have that title. I will certainly tell you that’s a title I would be proud to have” — Hillary, ABC interview, April 2012.
◾“[We] try to build a better world for—if she were here , she would say—the grandchildren she hopes to have.” — Chelsea, at a Vital Voices gala, June 2012.
◾ “My goal is to live to be a grandfather.” — Bill, CBS interview, Sept. 2013.