Well, they seemed like immigrants
People might say, as Hillary Clinton did about the four diplomats killed at the compound in Benghazi Libya, in 2012, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" But telling the truth always makes a difference.
On her van tour of Iowa last week, the Democratic presidential front-runner continued to spin a story about her immigrant grandparents, saying at one stop, "... there are a lot of immigrant stories. All my grandparents, you know, came over here, and you know my grandfather went to work in a lace mill in Scranton, Pa., and worked there until he retired at 65." And last year she talked about her paternal grandmother having "immigrated with her family as a young girl to Scranton."
However, according to Census and other records, it's not quite the truth, according to BuzzFeed, which produced records to prove it. One of her four grandparents, her paternal grandfather, did immigrate from England. But the grandmother she mentioned and her maternal grandparents were born in the United States.
Oh, well, a Clinton spokesperson told the website, "Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants."
Ah, the truth. Easy come. Easy go.
If she can't trust her fellow libs ...
No national security meeting was involved, but Pottawattamie County, Iowa, Democratic officials who attended a meeting with Hillary Clinton at the Main Street Cafe last week had to turn over the cellphones and cameras before attending.
KETV of Omaha reported the former first lady met with party leaders for about an hour and a half during her much discussed van tour.
Reporters following the campaign rollout say Clinton officials have been trying wherever possible -- once even parking in a handicap parking space for easier embarkation and debarkation -- to control the events and what happens in and around them.
Bodes well for the country, doesn't it?
But she looked so sincere
Whether every stop on Hillary Clinton's van tour of Iowa is as scripted as was one last week in LeClaire is not known. But a participant in the LeClaire event spilled the beans, according to The Daily Mail.
The three supposedly "everyday" Iowans at the coffee shop for a "roundtable" were former Obama campaign intern Austin Bird, University of Iowa College Democrats president Carter Bell and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland staffer Sara Sedlacek. They were called by a Clinton official, picked up and driven to the Village Inn in Davenport for a meeting.
"We were asked to come to a meeting with Troy [the Clinton staffer], the three of us, at the Village Inn," he told the Daily Mail. "It was supposed to be a strategy meeting ... then all of a sudden he says, 'Hey, we have Secretary Clinton coming in, would you like to go meet her?'"
When they got to the coffee shop, they sat down at a table, and Clinton soon "came up and talked with us."
"Troy asked us all to do -- to go to a meeting with him," Bird said. "And we didn't really know what it was about. I mean, he did. He knew."
Just kind of gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling about the candidate, doesn't it?
Unequal footing
Chattanoogans know by now that U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a resident of the Scenic City, made the recent list of Time's 100 most influential people. His short tribute was written by his fellow senator and fellow Tennessean, Lamar Alexander.
Not surprisingly, in a left-wing publication, Hillary Clinton also made the list. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, wrote the tribute, describing her as "one of America's greatest modern creations."
That wording might have caused a stir if it had been written by one of her political opponents.
But Jobs also said Clinton is somehow "familiar" and "revolutionary" but "not radical" in any way. Perhaps to blunt the candidate's age, she noted of the former first lady that "her decades in our public life must not blind us to the fact that she represents new realities and possibilities. Indeed, those same decades have conferred upon her what newness usually lacks: judgment, and even wisdom."
While Jeb Bush, in some polls the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, also was on the list, his tribute was not written by a contemporary or fawning friend but by Time Washington bureau chief Zeke Miller. He was tagged as being "buttoned-up" and "conservative." It also said his "last name is, well, complicated" and that "his path" to the nomination "is hardly unobstructed." Makes you wonder if his name was added as an afterthought when some Time staffer realized that Clinton being the only presidential contender on the list might look a little, well, biased.