Tag: Hillary Clinton

The renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails

The renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails

On Friday, October 28th, the political world of the US was shocked to read that the Director Jim Comey was investigating new emails in the Hillary Clinton investigation.

As you may remember, Director Comey ended this investigation several months ago. It is utterly amazing that he would announce a renewed interest in more emails. This could easily affect the vote for the President of the United States, and surely Director Comey understands this implication.

And therein gives us our first understanding of what is going on with the investigation. It is very doubtful that these emails have anything to do with Ms. Clinton’s yoga classes or seating arrangements at her daughter’s wedding. The emails, numbering more than 1,000, were found on a computer used by both disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to law enforcement officials with knowledge of the inquiry who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

In short, as famed reporter Carl Bernstein hypothesizes, I think we can assume that Director Comey already knows enough about these emails to suspect that this is a significant and major problem. To put the American electorate into a frenzy on a whim would be irresponsible of Director Comey. While I disagreed with Dir. Comey on his earlier conclusions, I do think that he is smart enough to know that he just caused Ms. Clinton a lot of pain and possibly destroyed her chances of being elected.

We probably will not get a solid explanation from the FBI in time for the election. We probably will have to choose our next President of the United States without knowing if the FBI thinks that she is a traitor. We definitely will not have a trial by a jury of her peers in time for the election.

What will the American electorate do in a world of uncertain choices and incomplete information and significant innuendo? We will know in just a few days.

Jim Comey’s Clinton Standard

Jim Comey’s Clinton Standard

The most revealing words in FBI Director James Comey’s statement Tuesday explaining his decision not to recommend prosecuting Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information were these: “This is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.”

So there it is for everyone to understand: One standard exists for a Democratic candidate for President and another for the average citizen. No wonder so many voters think Washington is rigged for the powerful.

The following remarks are taken from the press release issued by the FBI

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A Bernie Sanders supporter called me last night

A Bernie Sanders supporter called me last night

I live in Ohio, so I wasn’t surprised that last night I received a call asking me to support a Presidential candidate. I was surprised that the candidate was Bernie Sanders.
I almost felt sorry for him but in the end, I did suggest that when he hung up that he should leave the volunteer center and go home and stop trying to ruin America now that he had received a lesson in economics and voting record.

What I was most amazed at was that this young man thought that Bernie Sanders would “fix Wall Street.” I wasn’t surprised that the young man liked Bernie’s call for socialized healthcare and extremely high minimum wages. We discussed these topics for several minutes, and I explained economics to him, but it didn’t surprise me that the young man liked Bernie’s ideas – after all, who doesn’t want something for nothing! However, the uninformed young man didn’t realize that when it came to Wall Street, Bernie is quite simply lying when he says that he will “fix it” simply because the fixes that Bernie already supported CAUSED the financial crisis that has hurt so many people. In fact, I am simply amazed that any low to middle-income person in the US would want to support Mr. Sanders simply because his lack of judgment has hurt so many poor people already.

bernie sanders photoThe caller had no knowledge that Mr. Sanders actually voted FOR the legislation that ultimately caused the “too big to fail” banks and limited the regulation of financial derivatives (the Financial Services Modernization Act) that was passed under Bill Clinton. He was also completely uninformed that this massive bill that dramatically changed banking in the US was primarily supported by Democrats (and Mr. Sanders as an Independent) while the majority of the Republicans voted against it. That is correct, the party of those that will “fix Wall Street” are primarily the ones that “broke Wall Street”. For those that are keeping score, Republicans 58-131, Democrats 182-1, Independent (Sanders) 1-0.

The young man was also uninformed as to the second major contributor to the financial crisis of 2008. That was The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. This act forced home loans to people that were very unlikely to pay back the loan. This created the bad loans which then the banks wanted to sell to get them off their books which caused the problems because of lack of control in the Sanders’ supported Financial Services Modernization Act. Mr. Sanders also voted for The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. In fact, so did 95% of the Democrat Congressman. Unfortunately, the Republicans are not as clean on this as 75% also supported this ill-fated bill.

In true transparency, Mr. Kasich was also serving at that time, and he voted for The Housing and Community Development Act and voted against the Financial Services Modernization Act. Mr. Cruz was too young to hold federal office. Mr. Rubio was too young to hold national office. Mr. Trump was not in public office and was probably dealing with his first of several bankruptcies which occurred at about this time. Ms. Clinton did not hold public office at that point, but was the First Lady and likely supported both bills as they were both signed by her husband, President Bill Clinton.

What is the lesson to be learned here? There are two. The first is that Bernie Sanders had a helping hand in creating the situation that caused the 2008 financial crisis so saying he can now fix it is a stretch of the imagination. The second lesson is that if you are going to call me to have me support your candidate, be prepared to have to defend the candidate with solid facts and reasoning otherwise it won’t be an enjoyable phone call for you (even though I will probably enjoy it immensely).

Photo by origamidon

She Knew All Along

She Knew All Along

 

Mrs. Clinton complained in her testimony on Capitol Hill that past Congresses had never made the overseas deaths of U.S. officials a “partisan” issue. That’s because those past deaths had never inspired an administration to concoct a wild excuse for their occurrence, in an apparent attempt to avoid blame for a terror attack in a presidential re-election year.

The early hints that this is exactly what happened after the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans cast doubt on every White House-issued “fact” about the fiasco and led to the establishment of Rep. Trey Gowdy’s select committee.

Count on the Obama administration to again resort to blaming “confusing” and “conflicting” information at the time for its two-week spin. That was Mrs. Clinton’s flimsy excuse at the hearing. But her own conversations prove she was in no doubt about what happened—while it was still happening.

What that House committee did Thursday was finally expose the initial deception.

Source: She Knew All Along

Clinton’s Email Evasions

Clinton’s Email Evasions

The FBI is finally looking into Hillary Clinton’s handling of email as Secretary of State, but her campaign says not to worry because it’s not a “criminal referral” and she followed “appropriate practices.” The relevant question is why isn’t it a criminal probe?

Congress asked Charles McCullough III, Inspector General for the intelligence community, to evaluate whether classified information was transmitted or received by State Department employees over personal email systems. His office sampled 40 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, determined that four contained classified intelligence, and passed that finding to Justice for review. This was merely a first step, and now we know the FBI is investigating the security of Mrs. Clinton’s private server.

The McCullough findings at a minimum rebut Mrs. Clinton’s claim in March that there was “no classified material” in her personal email. Extrapolate the McCullough finding of four of 40 classified emails to the 30,000 emails Mrs. Clinton gave to State, and thousands could contain classified information. State has already redacted and withheld dozens of Mrs. Clinton’s emails from its monthly, court-ordered email releases, having deemed them confidential.

She knew the rules, yet she chose to break them for her own political benefit. In the process she put state secrets at risk. This is gross negligence in the pursuit of gross self-interest.

Source: Clinton’s Email Evasions

Hillary’s Friends in High Places

Hillary’s Friends in High Places

Those in the business and financial world, after all, understand how the Clintons operate: pure Arkansas, purely transactional. You scratch my family foundation; I’ll scratch your government problem. They’ve spent a lot of money getting on Mrs. Clinton’s right side (and they certainly don’t want to be on her wrong side) so expect the corporate cash to now flow toward her election effort. Yes, Mrs. Clinton has, and will continue to have, lots of amigos in the private sector.

Left out in the cold, of course, are all those Americans who would like the straight story on Mrs. Clinton’s emails and her foundation before they have to make a decision about whom to vote for next year. Problem is, unlike Hillary, they don’t have friends in high places who can force those answers into the light of day.

Source: Hillary’s Friends in High Places