Category: Hillary Clinton

‘Early in Their Political Lives, the Clintons Needed to Maintain a Level of Artifice’

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by Smitty

I guess Matt Bai has some connection with Pravda on the Hudson (the NYT), which explains why his work as a Clinton apologist at Yahoo looks like it fell out of the Screwtape Letters. He mentions the word ‘lie’ about as often as Her Majesty touches the truth. The opening gag juxtaposing Senator Cotton’s epistle to the Iranian mullahs with a Nigerian email scam is clever. Always start with a laugh. And then:

If Clinton thinks, however, that her explanation is going to end speculation about whatever sinister secrets she is said to be keeping, she’s mistaken. And that’s not because she’s an especially nefarious person, or because she’s a woman, or because the media is bent on destroying her.

This is beautiful in the way the reader is lured by the plausibility of “whatever sinister secrets she is said to be keeping” into buying “not because she’s an especially nefarious person”. The full court press of David Brock, Lanny Davis, James Carville, and Matt Bai himself indicates just how much “sin” that Her Majesty puts in “sinister”. Bai then dismisses the gender card, and the victim card. Is the media bent on destroying Her Majesty? Let’s stipulate that mutual contempt is certain, but the media is a pit bull that knows from whence its scraps come.

No, to understand why truth and transparency are Clinton’s main vulnerability in 2016, you need to understand the moment in which the Clintons entered American politics, and how they came to dominate it.

Having thrown out a joke and a few reasonable conjectures, he moves to a professorial sentence: “Come, let me share the skinny”.

First, let me say that I have a hard time getting too worked up about Clinton’s vanishing emails, although maybe I should. It’s possible, I guess, that in the many thousands of unreleased emails is evidence of her having endangered national security by talking policy on unsecured servers. It’s possible that some emails refer to meetings that Clinton or her aides would rather not make public.

And now that you’re semi-hypnotized, but still reading, let’s have Bai reach in and modulate your stance concerning one of the all time great middle fingers ever given the American people by a public figure.

Read the whole thing. Bai’s article should be studied as a masterpiece of concise Mephistophelian persuasion. His task is not to change your mind, but to alter the course of your thinking, so that you get where he wants you over time. Absolutely brilliant soft sell for a woman with a concrete heart.

We can only hope Hillary’s security flunkies were as proficient as her propaganda people.

via HotAir

EmailGate Is Just How Her Majesty Rolls

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by Smitty

Trende gets close to the bone in Why Clinton’s Emails Matter, which you should read. But it’s not just a case study in Advanced Scandal Choreography, as we move from

  • Bibi (“Quick, #OccupyResoluteDesk is too amateurish”) to
  • Her Majesty’s Secret Email Service to
  • Oh My God! Those 47 GOP Senators said something concise and cogent pointing out, for the 1,103 time this Administration, the Rodeo Clown ain’t got sack.

As Trende points out, scandals come and go, cancelling across parties stochastically and sarcastically. Closer to the election is certainly worse, and Her Majesty must know that she’s got a full-on zombie parade to await, should the Royal Syllables condescend to grace the ballot. But this is Her Majesty, Hillary What-difference-at-this-point-does-it-make Diane I’ve-schemed-for-this-for-decades-and-this-is-MY-turn Rodham If-you-make-a-last-mistake-and-cross-me-you-get-Foster-care Clinton.

The woman doesn’t give a tinker’s dam about anything. This is the woman who doesn’t just fully comply with every rule, but “I fully complied with every rule I was governed by.” A look at her soiled career from Watergate to now indicates she’s been governed (in the sense of properly controlled) pretty much never. It’s always some angle, some nuance, some loophole she’s working.

A Hillary administration would likely deliver some email-gate style outrage frequently, perhaps weekly. Do you doubt that ObamaCare would be terminated and replaced with Single Prayer, should Her Majesty be the next Commie in the oval office? An even more weaponized IRS/DoJ tag team showering goon squads on the South and flyover country?

The good news  about Her Majesty oozing toward a run is that these and other foreseen horrors are going to bring conservatives out of slumber. Every election is the Most Important Election In U.S. History, and 2016 isn’t going to disappoint in that regard.

Conservatives: You Know What To Do

Let Us Enjoy A Moment When We’ve Something Nice To Say Of Stacy’s Cousin

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by Smitty

It’s not often that I can give a thumbs up to fellow IFNAG and Senator John McCain, but signing Senator Cotton’s letter was the Right Thing To Do.

Vox is about as clueful on this point as they were on Her Majesty’s email.

McCain told Politico that:

“I saw the letter, I saw that it looked reasonable to me and I signed it, that’s all. I sign lots of letters.”

McCain’s statement, reported late on Tuesday when the furor over Cotton’s letter had become a national scandal, seems clearly intended to minimize his actions by making them seem commonplace and inconsequential.
Just signing a letter! Who among us hasn’t signed letters? Basically the same as the family update your mom mails to all her cousins every Christmas — they’re all just “letters.”

Well, yeah, read it, Vox bimbo. This is the same blog where another Vox knob said of the letter:

This is a direct strike at the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy without congressional interference. Presumably, Clinton doesn’t like the precedent: after all, Senate Republicans could do something similar to a President Clinton in 2017.

Now, I’m old enough to remember that fabled, pre-unitary executive America, when the Senate had a responsibility to ratify treaties. Rumor has it that the Vox staff thinks “treaties” are what they get from neighbors at Halloween.

No wonder I don’t read Vox. I feel dumber from even this tiny exposure.

30,000 ‘Personal’ Emails?

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Hillary Clinton’s big press conference Tuesday, where she “addressed” the subject of her official emails, she said this:

We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work- related emails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.
No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy. . . .
In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear.
For any government employee, it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what’s personal and what’s work-related. I am very confident of the process that we conducted and the e-mails that were produced.

Now, this is an issue because (a) Hillary’s emails as Secretary of State have been subpoenaed by a congressional committee, and (b) Hillary has admitted carrying on official correspondence with a non-governmental email account that was hosted on her own private server. Therefore, investigators are being asked to take her word for all this, because there is no verifiable record — no government computer with a hard drive that can be checked with forensic methods — to confirm what she’s claiming.

And here’s my thing: 30,000 “personal” emails in four years?

Do the math: That’s 7,500 emails a year or (divide 7,500 by 365) 20.5 personal emails every day, 7 days a week.

Gosh, Mrs. Clinton, you were the Secretary of State of the most powerful nation in the world, in charge of a federal department with 18,000 employees around the world, and you had time for 20 personal emails — “not in any way related to my work” — every single day? Madame Secretary, I don’t have time for that, and I’m just a damned blogger.

Does anyone actually believe that Hillary had 7,500 emails every year — at the same account she used for her State Department business — about planning Chelsea’s wedding, condolence notes, yoga routines, family vacations? Her husband doesn’t even use email, so who all had Mrs. Clinton’s private email address to be sending her these personal emails  “not in any way related to my work”? Were these people not the least bit reticent about emailing the Secretary of State?

Think about it. In my line of work — and I’m just a damned blogger — there are some people I only contact with very important information. You don’t want to be the guy who’s bombarding, say, Mark Levin or Glenn Reynolds with an email announcing every little clever bit of snark you write.  No, you only send those guys an email tip when you think you’ve got something hot, something big.

From such an understanding of ordinary email etiquette, therefore, we may assume a few things. First, that this private email address — the one Mrs. Clinton hosted on a server located in her home — was known only to a few people who were very close to her. It wasn’t like she was handing out business cards with this email address to people she shook hands with at cocktail receptions, OK? Exactly how many of those people would be emailing her about yoga routines? Or who, among these close associates of hers, after finding a joke on the Internet and in the process of spamming it out to their friends, would think, “Hey, this cat video is so funny, I’ll CC it to the Secretary of State”?

Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t make sense at all.

Hillary’s message to America: “Go to Hell.”


 

Perhaps You’ve Forgotten …

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Pam Grossman (@Phantasmaphile) “is an independent curator, writer, and teacher of magical practice and history” who “explores the role of magic in contemporary life.” And in a July 2013 Huffington Post column, Ms. Grossman wrote this:

So several months ago, I proclaimed to my friends and readers that 2013 would be the Year of the Witch . . .
The archetype of the witch is long overdue for celebration. Daughters, mothers, queens, virgins, wives, et al. derive meaning from their relation to another person. Witches, on the other hand, have power on their own terms. They have agency. They create. They praise. They commune with nature/ Spirit/God/dess/Choose-your-own-semantics, freely, and free of any mediator. But most importantly: they make things happen. The best definition of magic I’ve been able to come up with is “symbolic action with intent” — “action” being the operative word. Witches are midwives to metamorphosis. They are magical women, and they, quite literally, change the world. . . .
Hillary Clinton, arguably the most powerful woman in American history, ended her tenure as Secretary of State . . . with the following words:

“If women and girls everywhere were treated as equal to men in rights, dignity, and opportunity, we would see political and economic progress everywhere. So this is not only a moral issue, which, of course, it is. It is an economic issue and a security issue, and it is the unfinished business of the 21st century.” . . .

The apocalypse has happened, my friends, and it’s still happening. Our task at hand is to bring about the end of the old world, but then to create something vital and shining and new. Instead of four horses, we’re riding in on brooms.

Google “Dianic Wicca” — “a branch of Wicca that focuses on feminist values and the worship of the Goddess Diana.” You may think feminist witchcraft is a joke, but these witches are serious.

Just because feminist witches are crazy doesn’t mean they’re not also dangerous. Please buy my book, help promote it to others and don’t forget the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

 

Fremdschämen On Behalf Of Lanny Davis

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by Smitty

What kind of bizarre photos of Lanny are the Clintons holding? Watching a grown man roll like a drunk in Her Majesty’s scandal vomit really leaves one needing some hygiene:

Lanny your only hope for your Mistress is that people are as craven as you, or really, really stupid. Because nobody with half a shred of intelligence ever believed Her Majesty at any point. The nicest thing that can be said is that her corruption is consistent.

Kudos to Chris Wallace for doing a proper job, such a rarity these days.

Meanwhile, whom shall the Commies run? ManBearPig? The Pluggernaut? Lurch? Moonbeam? Pseudajawea? When your candidate roster sounds like a pack of third-rate supervillains, you know you’ve got problems.

Via HotAir

55k Actual Pages. You’re [Redacted] Me

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by Smitty

So, Her Majesty blows off common sense and any number of regulations to run her own email server while in office. Her Royal Bluff is called, and she’s all

“I want the public to see my email, ” she wrote in the Tweet. “I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”

What is “soon” on the Regal Timepiece?

What does that mean, 55,000 “pages”? Or maybe you just read it, as the crack fact-check team over at PolitiFact did just last night, as 55,000 emails.

It turns out the reference is to literal physical pages. From Friday’s Times: “Finally, in December, dozens of boxes filled with 50,000 pages of printed emails from Mrs. Clinton’s personal account were delivered to the State Department.”

Why did Mrs. Clinton have her staff go through the trouble of printing out, boxing and shipping 50,000 or 55,000 pages instead of just sending a copy of the electronic record? One can only speculate, but there is an obvious advantage: Printed files are less informative and far harder to search than the electronic originals.

Given the Imperial non-command of security, one can only hope that a ream or twa is not mislaid in the process.

I mean, sure would be a cryin’, godforsaken shame if somebody got ahold of a box, scanned them with a drunken OCR program, and had Her Majesty in a furious catfight with President Jarrett over an Ambassador getting whacked, or something. No, that would never happen. Too farfetched. Who would believe anything less that exactly what the Regal Lips have uttered?

Also:

Gov. Palin: “I faced tough questions over email, so should Hillary Clinton”

Fat chance o’ that, guv.