From POLITICO

Democrats fret over timing of Clintons’ charity fete

So many good paragraphs to choose from, so few which can be borrowed under Fair Use. It's not long - be sure to head over and gape. This event is scheduled for one week prior to the first presidential debate.

For a second year, the former First Lady and former Secretary of State, now Democratic nominee will not attend, neither will the Obamas. However, if YOU'd like to attend, just cough up $20K, please.

Let's start off on a note which will make folks pucker from far down the page. We've just learned the timing is set to coincide with the UN session opening, and this gala apparently tops anything those folk do, plus is filled with CELEBRITIES! Sorry, Mark Zuckerberg and Pope Francis are staying home this year (argh! Foiled again! Bernie got to meet him...). But it's not JUST celebrities and titans of industry:

The conference has also been linked to less glittery names; it was at the 2009 meeting that the “Clinton Global Citizen” award for “excellence in public service” went to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose economic success in the country has been matched by human rights abuses and accusations of violence against his opponents.

Lovely.

Here's how POLITICO sets up the event:

The 12th and final annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative will showcase its philanthropic work and also the Democratic nominee’s greatest potential vulnerability — her ties to a sprawling global charity that has accepted donations from Middle Eastern governments, foreign businessmen with checkered histories and major corporations with business before the government.

Some Democratic operatives say they’re dismayed by the timing of the three-day conference Sept. 19-21 — a week before the first national debate and seven weeks before Election Day. They say it’s inevitable that having two members of the former and perhaps future first family rubbing shoulders with the well-heeled and well-connected will provide fresh ammunition to the Republican campaign, even as Hillary Clinton is off honing rebuttals to charges that donors got special consideration from the government while she was Secretary of State.

I presume they got caught with their pants down in that they never guessed there would be pushback about the Foundation or they would have moved the event up so as to not be so close to the election....