Putting the Squeeze on Ma Clinton

By Monica Crowley  

The Clintons have never taken a political hit lying down. But given their weak and panicky reactions to Mr. Obama’s current, well-orchestrated hit on her — the FBI investigation into her alleged mishandling of classified material as secretary of state — they have appeared to passively absorb the escalating attack.  Until now. 

As he presses his attack, Mrs. Clinton has two choices. Option one: fold early and negotiate a mild end to the investigation in exchange for dropping out of the race. But Mr. Obama is not a forgiving sort, and now that he’s drawn blood, he’s likely to go for the kill.

That suggests that the Clintons are going with option two: fight him — as part of an elaborate, unspoken negotiation between them over their secrets and futures. That requires a plausible defense. Their go-to strategy has always been to blame others, or inanimate objects such as documents, servers, “processes” — and to designate a fall guy (or gal) to take the rap.

This is the well-worn path they now appear to be pursuing to try to escape Mr. Obama’s ever-tightening political and legal vise.

According to a well-placed source, the four known documents at the center of the FBI investigation are deeply problematic. (They came from a relatively small sample; with each new email dump, there are more questionable documents.) Some of the documents appear to have had no original classification markings. A critical point: the federal government classifies by information, not by marking; that is, if a document contains obvious classified material, ie. information provided by a foreign government, it is automatically considered classified, even if it isn’t marked as such. Mrs. Clinton knew this — or should have.

 Initially she claimed unequivocally that there “was no classified material.” She now says, “The facts are I did not send nor did I receive material marked classified.”

This appears to be the basis for her defense: that some of the documents’ classified markings were removed or changed — without permission — before she saw them. 

By whom? There are only three people who were close enough to her to have had that kind of access:

When Does Protest Cross the Line into Domestic Terrorism?

With Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan openly advocating "killing those who kill us" and #BlackLivesMatter protesters calling for the killing of law enforcement officers, just when is enough of enough? We are not talking peaceful protest anymore. This is media complicit anarchy.

HOUSTON  - Some disturbing graffiti is popping up around town, emojis showing a police officer and a gun.

We’ve seen them in at least four spots in the Washington Avenue area, and we’ve gotten reports of more than that.

As you might imagine, those in uniform say it’s incredibly disturbing to see this just days after a deputy was killed while pumping gas.

HPD Union President Ray Hunt said, “I can’t believe that there are people out there so heartless and so ruthless to put something on there before this deputy is even buried. It does nothing to help to help morale in the police department and does nothing to help the Goforth family.”

Since when has singling out a specific group for assassination not been a form of terrorism? And all the while, the Democrat party extends a hand to these people and the media refuses to call them what they are. 

5 Died Police Officers in 9 Days

The Irony of Steve Wozniak

There was once a very bright young man who hit on an idea of making something useful. He put his mind together with all the opportunities available to Americans and the entrepreneurial spirit that made the nation the technology envy of the world.

A long with a few friends he helped create a revolution. Years later he was to make a deal with another young wiz kid who made software and also took advantage of America's generous capitalistic system. Both went on to become very very wealth. And all without government help or interference. He lived the American dream we all wish for.  But I guess money can change your feelings about how you see the world, and you can lose sight and perspective of how you got there. 

Having a free hand to do as he wished, start a company in a free economy, and help change the world in ways he could not have imagined, I find an irony in the fact this young man, now grown and extremely fortunate because of his successes sees a twisted anti-capitalist political philosophy and America's foremost wingnut advocate of such, in any way inviting......

Apple's co-founder, the man credited with actually building the early Apple computers by hand, has come out in favor of renegade Democrat and socialist candidate Bernie Sanders.

Steve Wozniak took to Twitter to denounce Republicans and Democrats and then used the hashtag popular with Sanders supporters, #FeelTheBern:

Down on Republicans and Democrats, #Bernie2016 #FeelTheBern.

— Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz) September 1, 2015

I'm thinking it's maybe the result of to many Grateful Dead concerts over the years..... 

The Best of The Clinton Email

Monday brought us another end-of-month dump of 7000 Clinton emails from the State Department, and the most important things we've learned so far from this carefully selected batch are: she likes The Good Wife and Parks and Recreation, she wrote the goofiest diplomatic email heading/message in history, and everyone says John Boehner’s a drunk.

Gefilte Fish? That’s almost certainly some kind of term of endearment or code for her boss, the Commander and Chief. 

Then there’s this breakdown of strategy for the 2010 midterm elections sent to Hillary by longtime Clinton toadie Sidney Blumenthal and his rather amusing assessment of a drunken John Boehner’s standing among his GOP peers, which is mostly that he serves as a pissing target:

Poor Mr. Speaker. “He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle” and also “careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody’s enduring loyalty. Who said Repubs and Dems can't agree on anything? 

That said, plenty of evidence has come to light in the past months, making it long past time for a Hillary Frog March straight to jail....and this might just do her campaign in.

NYT's Paul Krugman Proves Once Again Why He is Always in the Running for AssHat of the Year.

Paul Krugman - Two Time Winner of Diogenes' "AssHat of the Year" Award

Hillary's 'Email Thing Doesn't Rise to the Level of a 'Scandal.' 

NewsBusters

Paul Krugman's Monday New York Times column hit all of the sweet spots that make liberals smile, defending both President Obama and Hillary Clinton while bashing President Bush and the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. And what of the Democrats? Well, Hillary's "email thing doesn’t rise to the level of a 'scandal.'" Meanwhile, "the modern GOP is basically anti-rational analysis; it’s at war not just with the welfare state but with the Enlightenment."  

Plus: Last week, after being annoyed that he was being treated by some as a partisan hack, despite his stellar "analysis and track record," he insulted libertarian economist Stephen Moore on his nytimes.com blog. 

After claiming Monday that none of Obama's alleged "Katrina" moments were disasters after all, and marking Obamacare as "a huge success," he turned viciously on the tenure of President George W. Bush.   

"Beyond that, Katrina was special in political terms because it revealed such a huge gap between image and reality. Ever since 9/11, former President George W. Bush had been posing as a strong, effective leader keeping America safe. He wasn’t. But as long as he was talking tough about terrorists, it was hard for the public to see what a lousy job he was doing. It took a domestic disaster, which made his administration’s cronyism and incompetence obvious to anyone with a TV set, to burst his bubble...."   

On Hillary Clinton keeping sensitive government documents on her personal server while serving as Secretary of State, well, that doesn't even deserve the term "scandal." 

"I know, now I’m supposed to be evenhanded, and point out equivalent figures on the Democratic side. But there really aren’t any; in modern America, cults of personality built around undeserving politicians seem to be a Republican thing. True, some liberals were starry-eyed about Mr. Obama way back when, but the glitter faded fast, and what was left was a competent leader with some big achievements under his belt – most notably, an unprecedented drop in the number of Americans without health insurance. And Hillary Clinton is the subject of a sort of anti-cult of personality, whose most ordinary actions are portrayed as nefarious. (No, the email thing doesn’t rise to the level of a “scandal.”)...." 

An August 28 blog post at nytimes.com found the esteemed-economist turned Democratic hack in an arrogant and defensive mood, calling the tech elite "stupid" for failing to see the badness radiating in waves off the Republican Party and its medieval mindset. 

....In fact, policies that the tech elite support, like carbon taxes, are supported only by the left wing of the Democratic Party; the entire Republican Party is controlled by climate denialists, and anti-science types more broadly. And in general the modern GOP is basically anti-rational analysis; it’s at war not just with the welfare state but with the Enlightenment.  

READ MORE 

Cheetos vs. Strawberries: NAACP Attempts to Explain Man Made Global Warming Racism

 The Genius of Black America's Leadership

Global warming is why cops arrest black people who break the law. Global warming causes black children to get suspended from school for misbehaving. Global warming is why it’s easier to get Cheetos than strawberries in black neighborhoods.

Note: No Government Cheese was Harmed in the Making of this Post

DownTrend

Madeleine Taylor is Executive Director of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP. Today she wrote a column for Cleanenergy.org, in which she tries to make the case that man-made global warming is racist. I know, it sounds crazy enough already, right? There’s actually much much more lunacy to be had. It turns out the NAACP has an official policy concerning global warming and one of the “racist” impacts they claim is the lack of strawberries.

Here is what Taylor says is the NAACP’s position on man-made global warming:

"Climate Change is about Katrina, Rita, and Ike devastating communities in Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, Climate Change is about our sisters and brothers in the Bahamas who will be losing their homes to rising sea levels in the coming few years. Climate Change is about people in Detroit, Ohio, Pennsylvania..."

Yes, because we all know that no white people live in the Gulf Coast region and therefore they did not feel the impact of the aforementioned hurricanes. And of course there’s no white people in Detroit, Ohio or Pennsylvania. Okay, I’ll give ‘em Detroit.

"Climate Change is about sisters and brothers in West Virginia who are breathing toxic ash from blasting for mountain top removal. Climate Change is about our folks in Thibodeaux, Louisiana who are being forced to move within the next 10 years because rising sea levels will result in the submersion of the coastal land that is their home currently."

So far the NAACP rant is trying to take things that happen to everyone and make it seem like they only affect black people. Essentially they are saying it rains harder on black people than white people. If that doesn’t seem crazy enough, there’s this:

"It’s about the fact that race–over class–is the number one indicator for the placement of toxic facilities in this country. Climate change is about the fact that in our communities it is far easier to find a bag of Cheetos than a carton of strawberries."

The only thing I can think of is that blacks have become so accustomed to blaming all of their problems on racism that now that they think global warming is racist. They are throwing in every grievance they can.

Read More 

Bayou Renaissance Man Just Thinking Out Loud

A Presidential election hypothesis . . .

Just thinking aloud here. Bear with me.

FIRST: Donald Trump seems to either scare the crap out of, or piss off, most of the Republican Party establishment. So far, so good. Anyone who does that to those ***holes can't be all bad.

SECOND: I suspect the Republican Party establishment will move heaven and earth to nominate anyone but Trump as that party's Presidential candidate for 2016. They'll use every trick in the book, and a few that no-one's ever written down, to accomplish that. They want someone they can control, who'll parrot their message and be faithful to the moneybags that fund them.

THIRD: I suspect Trump will be pissed off enough that he might just do a Ross Perot and run as an independent candidate for the Presidency.

FOURTH: I suspect most Democratic Party establishment figures now agree, whether openly or not, that Hillary Clinton is 'damaged goods'. She's carrying so much baggage, actual and potential, that she can be taken down by any one of a number of scandals spinning out of control. She's also 'old guard' Democrat, out of step and out of touch with a growing liberal/progressive surge (that's behind the rise of Elizabeth Warren and other further-left figures).

FIFTH: I suspect the Democratic Party establishment will move heaven and earth to nominate an 'old guard' Democrat (for example, Joe Biden) as that party's Presidential candidate for 2016, because they're afraid of someone they can't control. Elizabeth Warren is unlikely to get their nod, as is anyone wanting to move out of the path set by President Obama (who's been reliably controllable on most issues).

SIXTH: I suspect an 'establishment' candidate will piss off enough Democrats that an independent left-wing candidate becomes a real possibility. What about Michael Bloomberg? He, like Trump, can afford to spend what he likes of his own money to get into the White House, and raise a middle finger to the establishment in doing so. He'll also attract a lot of left-wing/progressive support, particularly if he asks Elizabeth Warren or someone like her to be his running mate. The liberal urban enclaves, where most Democratic voters are concentrated, would be a shoo-in for them.

So, we may see a match-up between two main political parties AND two independent, rich, self-made candidates who don't care what their respective party establishments think - a four-way fight. Wouldn't that be interesting? Both Trump and Bloomberg have very high name recognition, and very large pools of voters who are probably favorably disposed towards them. I wouldn't be surprised if both of them polled higher than the 'establishment' candidates in an election - and with 'spoiler' candidates on both sides of the fence, the result would be very hard to predict.

The 2016 elections might become a whole lot more interesting than I'd thought . . .

(Bayou Renaissance Man)

A Good Monday Morning

The Perfect Product

Pretend you’re the scam artist. You’ve found the perfect product. 
Your product is invisible, nobody can see or taste it. You don’t need to hire employees, because you don’t need to make your product,  it's already made. You don’t need to ship your product because it's already everywhere. No shipping or handling.

Your product never fails because it’s fictional. Nobody can publish a review of your product, since they can’t actually touch it. This protects you from the pesky folks at Consumer Reports. They can’t road-test your product and find flaws, because your product doesn’t exist.

Getting billions of people to buy your imaginary, non-existent product is like getting them to feed a unicorn. They never actually meet the unicorn, but they pay each day and pay extra when you announce the unicorn is “sick.” If they refuse to give money for the unicorn, you pass laws (taxes and fees) forcing them to. Then, you heap guilt on top – since anyone NOT feeding the unicorn is bad.

Everyone's A Customer.

Most scams target a person or group. But Global Warming targets everyone on earth because everyone breathes air and uses electricity. If you don't live in a tree house, you're using gas/electricity for heat. And everyone owns a light bulb. Since these things are “sins,” the crooks get you – just for being alive.

In short, Global Warming scammers sell an invisible product thats everywhere and used by everyone.

It's the perfect scam.

When folks discover the scam, the thieves change its branding from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change.” This way, their sales pitch covers everything that could possibly happen. Socialists know that “Green is the new Red.” In other words, if they can’t sell you Communism, they’ll gain control via Environmentalism. So government tells us cars/people are making the planet hotter and demands trillions in new taxes to “fix” this problem.

The notion that governments scam you is troubling. So troubling, that most folks don’t want to think about it or worse yet, do anything about it. Since you wouldn’t murder your neighbor, you have trouble imagining other people murdering their neighbor. Yet every year, a handful of people, for various reasons, murder their neighbor. It keeps happening even though you have trouble imagining it. This tendency to assume “what’s true for me is true for others” makes sense in many cases. But in some cases, that belief is totally false. 

Con artists exist. And some aren’t after your wallet – they’re after everyone’s wallet.

Complete Text of Obama's Statement on the Houston Police Officer's Execution:

Middle Finger Symphony Theater

* No Tuxedos Required *

Pulled from the comments - H/T BluesJunky

Fearing a Repeat of 2008, Team Hillary Looks to Chop Off Joe Biden’s Pair.

As Uncle Joe searches for a battle helmet harder then his own head and contemplates jumping into the Presidential race, and with crazy Bernie hot on her heels, Hillary's coronation robe continues to get muddier by the day. Barry's recent blessing of Joe may piss on her parade again by unleashing the attack dogs on her ass in order to put his thumb on the scale for Biden.

DownTrend

If you listened to the Clinton political machine back in early 2008, the queen in waiting was as invincible as the 18-0 New England Patriots who only had to beat the upstart New York Giants in the Super Bowl to make history. (we all remember how that turned out). Just a little more than four months after the Pats collapsed, Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic party nomination to a young hustler from Chicago named Barack Obama. It was a crushing humiliation to an anal retentive narcissist who was hellbent on making history as the first female U.S. president and haunts her to this day. 

Now, with the Dems having made what in hindsight appears to be a catastrophic decision to go all in on Hillary even though she would take the whole party down with her if she imploded again, history is on the verge of repeating itself.

Beset by problems of her own creation as well as her not exactly being a likeable person (translation: bitch on wheels), Hillary is going down in flames and the Hillemmings are frantically looking to lay their hands on fire extinguishers. With Vice President Joe “Foghorn Leghorn” Biden having received Emperor Obama’s blessing to challenge the Clinton crime family for the nomination, Hillary is going into full out bitch mode. It’s like that line from the Clint Eastwood western The Outlaw Josey Wales about getting “plumb mad dog mean” and Mrs. Clinton is ready to chop off old Joe’s balls with a pair of rusty garden shears before he gains any sort of momentum.....

The AP: Clinton sends Biden a message....

In ways both subtle and blunt, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign is sending a message to Vice President Joe Biden about his potential presidential campaign: This won’t be easy.

While Clinton and her team speak warmly of Biden in public, they have taken steps to make clear how they’ve taken control of the party’s establishment in hopes of discouraging the vice president from entering the race.

The latest came Friday in the most public of settings: the Democratic National Committee summer meetings. In a speech to the party’s most committed activists, Clinton cast herself as its standard-bearer and vowed to win the presidential race and rebuild the party from the ground up.

“We are building something that will last long after next November,” Clinton told party officials gathered in a Minneapolis ballroom. “Other candidates may be fighting for a particular ideology, but I’m fighting for you and your families.”

The speech came after her team rolled out a string of high-profile endorsements in early-voting states and scheduled an onslaught of fundraisers across the country in the effort to ice a Biden bid before he even gets started.

Behind the scenes, they’re pressuring donors and delegates to pledge their loyalty to Clinton. Her team sent a slate of top aides to the meeting this weekend armed with pledge cards asking party delegates to commit to Clinton. - READ MORE

Cornered and growing increasingly shrill, and despite the DNC running defense for her, I suspect Barry has the goods on Her Majesty, and is prepared to use them....