HRC: Those Damn Emails by Amanda S. Green

351 thoughts on “HRC: Those Damn Emails by Amanda S. Green”

1. “we would finally see what she really thought about the email controversy.”

   Piffle. We already knew what she really thought: it was none of our damned business and we were almighty impudent for even questioning her.

   The real question is about how much our impertinence and our insolent demands that she answer questions from peasants annoyed her, and what she thought she could fob off on us we ought accept as excuse explanations for those decisions of hers for which we had no right to ask.

   1. Well, she pretty much told us what she thought. It’s everyone’s fault but hers. After all, others had done it before. No one told her she shouldn’t do it. It’s the fed’s fault for not figuring out how to back up her emails for FOIA purposes. Riiiight.

   2. “She notes that when the Benghazi Committee sent a “blizzard of requests for documents” (pg 299), there were approximately 8 emails to or from her that were included in those turned over. “At the time, nobody raised any questions to me about why I was using a non-state.gov account.” (pg 299)”

      I love that she got caught because she is so careless.

   3. I have posted this elsewhere but I’ll repeat it until blue in the thumbs. Someone transferred her classified email to the unclas net and yet No One cares to find out who. Or at least let the rest of us peons know. That’s multiple felonies per message and cries out to be investigated.

      1. Concur

      2. Yup, Whoever moved it committed a federal felony. And if the FBI weren’t so in the in the Bag for Hilary they’d have found that person or persons and worked with the AG’s people to offer them a deal if Hilary asked them to do it. Thats an even bigger felony and would put her in an orange pants suit for likely the rest of her miserable existence. Hell I’m surprised Bill didn’t give an anonymous tip as he’d be free as a bird :-).

         1. They’re not going to have a democrat leader in orange, period. because the democrats need to fool people into thinking they’re pure.

      3. Plus it passes the not going after former political opponents avoiding the “this is what dictators do” cry, no matter how corrupt. It goes after those who did the illegal action, and those who ordered them. HRC may have requested, and benefited, but someone somewhere had to order the people who actually did the actions. If in the future (big IF) someone so ordered may go “hmmm, job/prison, prison/job, …. or SCREAM really loud”; hopefully they will document and scream really loud.

2. Actually, I have imagined a student thirty or more years from now learning about this period of history. Or, rather, imagined what they won’t be taught. And I made note of it in my journals.

   It might be a good idea for others to do likewise.

   1. “and always took classified information seriously.”
      Bald-faced lie (of course.) Her behavior clearly showed that information security rules were for others to follow, not her. At a minimum, she should have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to at least 5 years in Fort Leavenworth, along with about half her staff.

      Benghazi? Funny, but if during the Vietnam War, any commander had done what she did, or more to the point, didn’t do, they’d have been charged with criminal malfeasance, or more likely, fragged by their own troops out of self-preservation.

      Students of history 30 years from now? Depends on whether we go the way of Sarah’s Darkship series or not. Reimagine it with Good Women designed by Hillary. (The bucket is in the corner. Here’s a paper towel to wipe your mouth.)

      1. No, it is unfair to think she did not take it seriously. She was always aware that it could come back to bite her and therefore her negligent treatment of it had to be kept from Congressional Republicans and members of the VRWC, such as Fox News.

         As for students of history thirty years from now, it seems probable that, had she been elected president, they would be learning their history in Pharsi and those damned emails would never come up, the important material focusing on hoe the Glorious Revolution played the Great Satan for fools, stole their underwear and convinced them it was the new fashion.

      2. Either that, or she’s stupid as h*ll. This is “loose lips sink ships” awareness. Laws or not, some things just aren’t done.

         My grim take on history is based on the mainline media serving as the propaganda arm of the Democrats, and that what they reported will form the bulk of what is recorded. Add the leftward stance of some of our institutions, and that’s practically guaranteed. Accounts we leave in journals may well serve as the only clear indication that what is taught is not the full story.

         1. It is not that she is stupid as [unpleasant place rhymes with bell] it is that she believes us to be that stupid. If we would just stop paying attention to that woman behind the curtain and heed the words of Hillary, the Great and Powerful, all would be right in this world.

            1. So you’re saying she’s an example of Dunning-Kruger syndrome?

               1. Example? More like embodiment.

                  See also:
                  apotheosis, archetype, avatar, encompassment, epitome, exemplar, exemplification, expression, incarnation, personification, quintessence.

            2. Yes. And, to be bluntly honest, *enough* people bloody well *were,* she got away with it for basically her whole life. The more I learn of her and her husband, the more vile they appear. The two were not simply consumed with their appetites and ambition, they were *enabled.*

               It isn’t only this unsavory piece of refuse in human form we should be worried about. It is the whole framework that made HRC possible that requires close attention.

               1. Back when Bill was pres, and Whitewater meant more than rapids in a river and Rose Law Firm was in the news, Frontline did a surprisingly up-front piece about Arkansas politics and how Whitewater and commodities trading et al contributed to the Clintons’ rise. One of the main actors, who died in prison, kept saying “Follow the money. Find where the money came from and you’ll find who put Bill Clinton in office.” He never told, but looking back, I wonder if either 1) the same person, through various strings and fronts, put Obama into office or 2) if not the same person, philosophical allies.

                  1. I’d bet on 2, and it might be 1.

         2. She was practicing good information security from the perspective of doing corrupt business while avoiding leaving extremely damning records of her, her boss, and her minions. Okay, it means she left records that are damning in our eyes, but are we to believe our lying eyes?

            1. Bottom line is, the mail server in the bathroom was all about avoiding FOIA requests. Security was not a consideration; controlling possible future disclosure of anything inconvenient to House Clinton was the sole impetus.

               Being caught with improperly protected classified materials on the server was the natural result of the absolute absence of any consideration of handling classified material throughout her organization, from having the maid retrieve and transport classified faxes (pardon me while I guffaw at the term “classified faxes” being used in this century…) to the email stuff, it’s a continuum of grossly negligent classified materials practices.

               Again, this is the type of thing that results in prison time rather than walks in the woods and “More Chardonnay, Huma!” for lesser mortals.

               1. And as to not being a “digital native” … it just struck me. 30,000 emails, supposedly all “personal”, and that’s just the deleted ones. I use email as practically my sole means of communication, and including a zillion newsletters and what I’ve sent myself, I accumulate about 6000/year. Hillary must have done nothing but type into Outlook.

                  1. She had a fairly large staff also.

               2. I don’t disagree with any of that. What I’m noticing is not only did they not cover their tracks well, but the information wasn’t even encrypted. Had it been encrypted, there would have been no text to leak – and it would be safe from everyone except three-letter organizations. Maybe even them.

                  1. Not encrypted? Ten quatloos says the server broadcast unsecured wifi for the HRC and her staffers’ convenience.

                     1. Another 20 quatloos on the speculation of what the hell else her staffers might have been up to, as well.

                  2. I doubt they had patching of the OS or the email software. I also doubt that anyone went through the effort of doing basic server security (turning off unneeded services, changing default usernames, etc). I haven’t even heard of it was firewalled off from the internet. (Another no no. You want to only provide access to ports/services needed for services on the box).

                     Typically the actually e-mail server isn’t even directly touching the internet. Another email server running spam/antivirus typically is at the network edge and it relays the messages that are ‘clean’ to the internal server. (Sorry, IT Security Guy, and yes, there are lots of other things that should have been done and weren’t).

               3. Oh, now, you’re just being MEAN.

               4. Bull-f*cking sh*t – I’m a tad younger than Hills, and didn’t really start having to use a computer to do my job until in my late thirties. Was having to do the whole internet and email thing over the following two decades – and I also at one time had a security clearance. If I had mishandled secure information the way that she did, I’d still be in Leavenworth, instead of having been retired from the Big Blue Machine since 1997.
                  I cannot say how much I despise this woman. Qualified my *ass.

                  1. Abso-frigging-lutely.

                     Not a “digital native”, eh? So, what about all the people her age who, y’know, invented most of the so-called “digital world”?

                     Did she not have a responsibility to master the technology she was using? Should a Secretary of State be a digital ignoramus, or the President?

                     The argument she’s making actually goes to highlight her massive unsuitability for office, especially since it shows how poorly she can adapt to changing times.

                  2. Hillary was the most qualified candidate running, if you accept the default of the Dems and the MSM (But I Repeat Myself) that only a Democrat is qualified.

                     In the last seventy years, have the Dems ever acknowledged a Republican presidential candidate as qualified (and that includes those running as incumbents)?

                     1. Only in passing well after said candidate won the election, and only postmortem.

                        When Bush senior passes, be ready for all the Dem’s ‘he was the bestest R president evah’ soliliquies – they especially like him as he then lost to Billy Jeff.

                        1. I allow as I have indeed noticed the “strange new respect” accorded deceased Republican presidents, typically expressed in terms of regret for how contemporary Republicans fail to rise to the deceased’s high standards.

                           I fully expect that the time will come when Democrats solemnly inveigh about the present nominee’s failure to meet the high standards of statesmanship, comity and deportment established by President Trump.

                        2. Of course they like dead Republican presidents. After all, they now vote Democrat!

               5. I have a more cynical / sinister take on the bathroom server. Combine classified information outside the federal firewall with Clinton global initiative taking in vast amounts of other countries’ money and it becomes a device for selling secrets for cash. “The check cleared, here’s the URL.”

         3. I forget who here said that she was stupid, but cunning.

            1. Could have been any number of us. That sounds like something we’d say.

               1. “Nothing is fool proof because fools are ingenious”

         4. See, the thing that my Liberal acquaintance don’t seem to be able to wrap their minds around is that all of her defenses boil down to “I wasn’t criminal, I was stupid and naive.” and that this ALSO disqualifies her to be President.

            None of the things we know (as opposed to suspect or fantasize about) about Trump is as strong a disqualification. So, he’s a loudmouthed, vulgar sexual predator. We’ve had those before. They didn’t do too badly at running the country.

            1. Well, he voted for Obama in 2008, and that also should be a disqualification. Just not as significant a disqualification as serving as Obama’s Secretary of State.

            2. “So, he’s a loudmouthed, vulgar sexual predator. We’ve had those before.”

               But we already know she wasn’t going to let Bill govern drive.

               1. Let’s face it, if she was nominally President and Bill wanted to run things, Bill would be running things unless her staff is a LOT smarter than she is. But he probably doesn’t.

                  But as for loudmouthed, vulgar, sexual predators go, we’ve had a bunch. FDR seems to fit, amd JFK certainly does. I’m not sire about Wilson, but he’s so verminous generally that I wouldn’t be surprised. Not sure about LBJ either. Loudmouthed? Check. Vulgar? Double check. Sexual predator? Never heard a hint, amd people don’t like the sumbitch much, so maybe not.

                  1. LBJ apparently did sleep with a lot of different women.

                     1. LBJ is said to have engaged in coitus with a WH secretary on the desk in the Oval Office during the work day.

                        LBJ definitely qualifies.

                        1. According to one article found when searching for confirmation on the LBJ quote cited elsewhere this page, LBJ had a buzzer installed in the Oval Office in order that the Secret Service could alert him that Lady Bird was on her way.

                        2. Well, that’s less despicable than her being under desk, wouldn’t you say? *cough*

                           1. But more work for the WH housekeeping staff.

                     2. Multiple sources:

                        When people told stories about John F. Kennedy’s great female conquests (and they often did), it made Johnson furious. He’d pound his fists on the desk and scream, “Why, I had more women on accident than he ever had on purpose!”
                        (Mental Floss)

                        Although I doubt the word Lyndon used was “women” so much as one which references a type of ladies’ hat recently popular in DC.

                  2. As it happens, this is the realization that tipped me from “How can I vote for Donald Trump the sleaze?” to “How can I not, when Hillary the Crook is the only other choice?” — many of our Presidents (both R & D) have been, um, chastity-challenged without having been thought “unqualified” for the office.
                     Mostly because the MSM of their day kept their secrets.
                     What a heyday for #MeToo if people had only known about FDR and JFK (they did about LBJ but nobody on the Left liked him anyway).

                     1. It is surprising how unremarked were Hillary’s open assertions of intent to rewrite the First* and Second Amendments.

                        Particuary when you notice how hysterical pearl-clutching by so many MSM representatives over Trump’s insults to their integrity.

                        Although, to be fair, Trump’s insults are more a matter of pointing out how they besmirch their integrity.

                        *Overturning Citizens United

            3. Kind of like the “Nixon’s either a crook or stupid” argument for impeachment.
               My, doesn’t he look so much better now, compared to his successors?
               And that’s a terrible thing to say.

               1. Not that long ago I mused that I had not expected to look back with wistful yearnings for Nixon’s honesty and Carter’s competence.

               2. I tell students that, In my opinion, if we only look at Nixon’s foreign policy accomplishments, he’d be one of our better presidents. Unfortunately, …

               3. Third alternative: Nixon was too loyal to his aides. Instead of cutting them loose for an unauthorized action he attempted to protect those he saw as loyal to him. That might be stupid, from the same perspective as the Marines’ refusal to leave behind their wounded and dead is stupid. All of the abuses Nixon was charged with had been committed by LBJ, JFK and likely all presidents back to Adams.

                  The history of the USA indicates that neither stupidity nor corruption are adequate grounds for impeachment; plenty of presidents have been one or the other or both and survived. For all the fancy talk impeachment is merely a political vote of “no confidence.”

                  1. This this this.

                     Reagan did this when the Iran-Contra stuff came to light – cut them all loose, and none of them complained.

                     There’s a reason in Mission: Impossible that every tape, just before it self-destructs, always tells Jim Phelps that if anything goes wrong, the “Secretary would disavow any knowledge of (their) actions”. Obviously the President would too.

                     Nixon, in his loyalty to his minions, failed to disavow, and paid with his Legacy.

         5. Same think about Obama. But note that the “naysayers” about FDR, JFK, etc. didn’t get any public recognition despite the veracity of their memoirs, although that is changing some as time dulls the charisma enough for the tarnish to show up.

      3. But the rules don’t apply to her because she wasn’t a native tech user. We should understand. Besides, most of her official emails went to .gov addresses, so that ought to count for something, right? I swear, the woman lives in her own little world where reality means a completely different thing than it does for the rest of us.

         1. By the way, just what the [Heck] is a native tech user? Is there a country of Technovia whose citizens understand all about using technology? Do they send out immigrants to assist non-natives, such as Debbie Whassername-Schultz*and the House Democrats with IT and used car issues?

            Most consumer technology, such as Blackberries and email, are designed to be intuitive and easy to use, so does HRC’s declaration mean she is not very intuitive? That would explain her faiure to notice how Billy Jeff treated other women.

            *How very appropriate that her hyphen-name so recalls a TV character best none for his avowels “I heard nothink, I saw nothink, I know nothink!”

            1. And age is an issue… ancient beast that I am, I recall once upon a time that it was normal to have wait for ALL the tubes to warm up…

               And then the Glorius Era of Instant-On (that didn’t mean keeping the filaments warm) where solid state did stuff ReallyDamnFast…

               And now the era of.. wait for all tubes to warm up the doped silicon to boot…

               Progress? We’re going backwards in a way…

               But only us Ancient Beasts notice.. and who the H*LL are we, really?

               1. Silicon boots faster than ever. It’s the darn ever growing anti-malware that takes forever to load nowadays.

                  1. Tell that to my alleged TV’s. I suspect metal in a vacuum wrapped in glass was faster starting.

               2. And then the Glorius Era of Instant-On (that didn’t mean keeping the filaments warm) where solid state did stuff ReallyDamnFast…

                  And now the era of.. wait for all tubes to warm up the doped silicon to boot…

                  You forgot the era of waiting for microcode to load from a tape accessed through a serial link. Many are the days I miss the good ol’ VAX-11/730.

                  1. I once had to boot a supermini by kneeling on a prayer mat and entering bytes by flipping toggle switches. Why the idiot designers had made a machine like that – in the 1990s! – and why they put the boot panel just above knee high were never explained.

                     1. Some day some techie is going to have to sit down and explain to me the utility of tiny black buttons labeled in black on a black background, each of which does multiple things depending on which other buttons are being pushed.

                        1. Like the difference between programming a VCR by flipping through the menus with a remote, and programming an old one with four seven-function multimodal buttons with zero feedback. *If* the Chinglish instructions in the manual were correct, which they usually weren’t, you’d find out if you’d made a mistake a day or so later when the wrong thing or nothing was on the tape.

                           1. I recall some nitwit congress-critter saying he didn’t want guns in the hands of people who couldn’t even program their VCRs.

                              Yeah, Jack. Soooooo many firearms are so badly designed that you can unintentionally program them to fire at some random time in the future.

                              Then there were all the jokes about how many VCRs didn’t even have the time set.

                              No surprise there. Combination of little black multifunction buttons and a divide that loses all its programming every time there’s a blackout. After the third time, when you can’t find the instructions anymore, because somebody put them in a safe place, and you just decide “Screw it”.

                           2. Oddly(?) I found the manual buttons & vacuum fluorescent display easier than the supposedly easier on-screen programming. Which button on the remote advances to the next field? How do I confirm entry?

                        2. Production taking the path of least resistance, knowing that no one can hold them to account.
                           Passing a silver Sharpie across the raised letters will make them visible.

                        3. “Some day some techie is going to have to sit down and explain to me the utility of tiny black buttons labeled in black on a black background”

                           Tech people don’t do stuff like that. “Designers” do stuff like that for “aesthetic” reasons.

                           Also, if tech people were running the show, all the jacks and cables would be on the front panel, where God intended them to be, not on the back where you have to be a midget contortionist to get to them.

                           1. German has a word “Kabelsalat” cable salad for the spaghetti spewing from the back of desks, work-tables, and other electronics-infested places.

                           2. I mount all my Cisco networking and firewall gear backwards because of that problem of the cables being ‘on the back’. At least they started putting a second set of attachment holes for the mounting brackets back there in a fit of sanity!

                  2. Luxury… We had to toggle in a boot loader from front-panel switches to permit loading in code on paper tape. Pity the fumble-finger who got the switches wrong one morning. Repeatedly.

               3. Once ReallyReallyREALLYFastMassStorage becomes prevalent, then we’ll be back to nearly instant-on booting again. Probably. Maybe.

                  1. my laptop boots in 12 seconds.

                     1. The computers are ever faster-booting. It’s waiting for various “smart” devices to achieve utility that is the problem.

                        1. Half the lights in our apartment are set up for voice control.

                           1. There’s a lovely scene in Westlake’s WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN where Dortmunder and some associates are breaking into a luxury apartment just as the owner is leaving. There’s a clapping noise and the lights go off. Andy Kelp knows what that is, amd explains about The Clapper. Dortmunder wants to know what happens if they have the TV on and there are applause.

                              “I guess they get a headache.” says Kelp.

                     2. extended: my 9 year old laptop fitted with a now four year old samsung 830 SSD boots in 12 seconds.

            2. This has interesting implications – I am old enough that I recall party line phones, personally grew up with a rotary phone that was owned by AT&T in the house, and my first use of a computer was using a teletype and a dial-the-number-then-put-the-receiver-in-the-rubber-acoustic-coupler-cradle-thingee telephone modem. It is not possible for anyone my age to be a “native tech user” – all of us in the post-boomer cleanup generation had to immigrate to the new landscape of the digital era. Moreso for teh boomers like HRC.

               Only those born from, oh, maybe 1990 onwards could possibly be “a digital native”.

               To me, this excuse is one of those “I didn’t personally fight in the Civil War” nonsequiturs.

               So by this “not a digital native”, is HRC actually saying “I am too old”?

               With good humor, this tack can work well – see Reagan’s 1992 convention speech bit referring to Billy Jeff:

               “But listen to me: This fellow they’ve nominated claims he’s the new Thomas Jefferson. Well, let me tell you something. I knew Thomas Jefferson. He … he … he was a friend of mine. And governor, you’re no Thomas Jefferson.”

               But if there’s one thing you can guarantee, it’s the the terms “good humor” and “Hillary Rodham Clinton” will never appear together, so I’m wondering abit at this “not a digital native” approach.

               1. I dunno, Good Humor and Hillary Rodham Clinton both leave me cold.

                  1. There’s this about Good Humor and Shrillary; like the ice creams, she really should be impaled on a stick.

                     But not eaten.

                  2. Both should involve white coats. The sleeves on Hillary’s should be longer, of course.

                  3. Both require bars?

               2. “So by this `not a digital native`, is HRC actually saying `I am too old`?”

                  Remember when the 2008 Dems ridiculed McCain for not using email?

               3. If you decide to get a POTS landline in NY, you’re still given the option of a party line. You;’ll probably be the only person on it- but it will be an option. Required by the regulators.

               4. a dial-the-number-then-put-the-receiver-in-the-rubber-acoustic-coupler-cradle-thingee telephone modem
                  I remember how much trouble it was if you had a newer phone, that didn’t have the proper shape for those modems………………

                  1. Pocket knife and alligator clips.

                     I wonder how many hotel maintenance people wondered exactly WTF was going on with all the vandalized handsets…

                  2. I still have one. It worked a decade or so ago when I last tried it. It might still, but I don’t know any numbers where modems answer, now.

                  3. I once worked in a store where our registers were permenantly hooked up to such a modem. The REALLY weird thing about that setup was that it meant the headquarters (in, I believe, Wisconsin) could access our inventory via computer….but WE couldn’t.

                     Oh, and the Point Of Sale system (that’s usually abbreviated as POS, and for good,reason) was based on OS/2. My Lady, the programmer, informed memthat it was so named because it was about half an operating system.

                     That was Suncoast. Those weren’t the only reasons, or even very important reasons why the parent company (Sam Goody) went tits up, but they didn’t help.

               5. To me it just means that she was making decisions she didn’t have enough information to be making. Instead of asking (or hiring) an expert, she made a VFB decision.

                  If you are a Government employee or have access to classified information you get to take a class. Every. Single. Year. It outlines how to handle classified information, what you can and can’t do with that information, and how to report any potential issues. You sign your name to the fact that you understand the material as it was presented.

                  She knew exactly what she was doing. She made the decision to break the law knowing that the last name ‘Clinton’ would be enough to cover her if it ever came out.

                  1. Given that they still haven’t produced the records for such training or the signed documents showing that she’d read and understood the rules, my take on the matter is that they need to arrest the responsible Security Managers over at the State Department, and put them under the prison at Leavenworth for not properly performing their jobs.

                     If that doesn’t produce either the records or testimony that the Clinton Crime Family refused to follow the rules regarding security briefings, leave the stupid bastards there, under the prison. If I’d been in that job, I assure you that there would have been multiple and redundant Memorandums for Record reporting the lack of cooperation, and my reporting of same to my higher authority.

                     Of course, I seriously doubt that anyone is going to live to make such testimony–There will be a spate of heart attacks and suicides.

                     1. “my take on the matter is that they need to arrest the responsible Security Managers over at the State Department”

                        Paging Mr. McCabe, Mr. Andrew McCabe! You’re wanted on the Amber Phone.

                        Peter Strzok, paging Mr. Peter Strzok! Peter Strzok!

                        1. Sadly, neither of those two idjits were the Security Managers I’m talking about.

                           Somewhere in State, there is either a complete moron working that job, or someone who is very, very frustrated and who would likely sing like a canary given the right cues and promises of safety. If I were the guys in Congress right now, I’d be dropping paper left, right, and center on State to see the records of what the hell Hillary signed, and the training records. If State couldn’t produce that information, then the names of the responsible Security Managers, followed by questions as to why, if they failed to do their friggin’ jobs, they are still employed and not in prison…?

                           Trust me on this: Were you or I the Security Managers in a military organization that allowed things like that server and private email to happen, we’d be looking at twenty-to-life, and be very unlikely to get leniency. Look at that idiot who took pictures of a sub’s internals, with his cellphone, for examples…

                           If Trump insists on looking the other way on Hillary’s BS, then he ought to pardon that poor bastard while he’s at it, just to highlight the hypocrisy of the Obama administration.

               6. My first computer use was much like yours. I was 7 that year, and was using the teletype to connect to the computer at U of Utah, so I could use the ARPAnet to connect to the computer at BB&N where my Uncle had programmed a little arithmetic tutoring program.

                  By doing this, I was using 2 of the 4 computers on the network at the time. That’s right — I was using HALF THE INTERNET!

                  Because my Dad was a computer scientist (professor, entrepeneur, researcher, and eventually venture capitalist), I’ve been on the ‘net continually since 1969. I grew up with computers, networks, and email. By most definitions, that makes me a digital native.

                  So I must disagree with FlyingMike’s assertion that only those born in the 1990s can be digital natives. There are a (very small!) handful of us digital natives who were born as early as 1960. We’re the oldest possible digital natives, as most define the term.

            3. Is there a country of Technovia…

               The Gremlin homeland? Of course, they kinda drove themselves out…

         2. Thing is, she’s not providing explanations for people who are critical of her. She’s providing them for people who are already inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, and are just looking for an excuse to do so. Once they have that excuse, they’ll close their minds again regarding criticism of these issues.

            1. Bingo.

   2. HRC: ‘ Imagine you’re a kid sitting in history class thirty years from now…‘

      Oh my, lets see, what are they teaching about the gentleman elected a little over 30 years ago?  That was 1984, and, if I recall correctly there were many who thought it really was going to be 1984 if the sitting president was reelected.  (In spite of this the opposing candidate set the dubious record of garnering even less electoral votes than McGovern.)  Now what are they teaching about Ronald Reagan, if the class ever makes it that far through American history before the year runs out?  Not much good.  

      Good as in either the accuracy of or the leaning of content.

      1. And in about 100 years, Hillary will be a one sentence footnote.

         1. Nah. She’ll probably get as much attention as Henry Clay–undeservedly.

            1. I think they’ll make movies about her. They’ll be called “Bill and Hillary,” and show as double features with “Bonnie and Clyde.”

3. Good lord? You want to dissect another book? I think you have taken far too much memory cleanser and are probably looking at a second liver at this rate.
   Any how, as to the e-mail question and answer. Other people have gone to prison for a long time for being far less careless then she was. Benghazi? “At this point, what difference does it make?” *spit*

   1. I think we might need to conspire for her to “dissect” a non-insanity-making text of some sort. Hey, I might be a “monster” but that doesn’t mean I’m evil. Alright, at least not that evil.

      1. Ox, that is exactly what I’m hoping you guys would do.

         1. I hereby suggest Leonard Wibberly’s The Mouse on Wall Street. Admittedly not his best work, but even second or third rate from an even halfway decent (I just bet he wrote with at least his shorts on!) author simply MUST be an improvement over this.. this… this… hepatic toxin of a text.

            1. I heartily endorse any Wibberly weadings, although I might propose Beware The Mouse, about the founding of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. It was his last visit to the Duchy and possibly slightly below his wonted standard, but it offers such delights as this:

               From Oxford Sir Roger had taken away only two pieces of learning, acquired out of his own observations. The first was that while the pen might be mightier than the sword, the sword spoke louder, clearer and more effectively at any given moment. The second was that “Aye” might be turned into “Nay” and vice versa if a sufficient quantity of wordage was applied to the problem.

               1. Someone else suggested disbanding State and putting the Marines in charge, but putting Grand Fenwickians in control might do just as well.
                  Or Patrician Vetinari.

                  1. Point of Order: If you are referring to my proposal, it is more as follows. The Department of State is built around the assumption of coexistence with other nations. Addressing AWG will require mass murder and the destruction of many foreign nations. State’s endorsement of Paris is repudiation of State’s core mission. Ergo, we need a replacement organization built to implement divide and ru- XX massacre, and to sequence our wars of extermination. It makes sense to organize this under the Joint Staff.

               2. I hereby change my suggestion to concur with the wallaby as to where to start. Perhaps reviews of all the ‘Mouse’ books, even if ‘Roared’ and ‘Moon’ might be a bit dated now.

         2. *grin* SJWs Always Lie / Double Down?

            1. I’m currently reading those. I fear I’m going to go back and start re-reading Aristotle now, since he bases so much of his argument on Aristotle.

               Although, the staff meeting in “Always Lie” had me laughing so hard… I think Athena T. Cat got nervous.

               1. I have to reread Always Lie, and yes, Aristotle.

               2. The theory about why SJZs constantly seek out conflict is actually fascinating, and answers the ‘why do these crapheads keep seeking out conservative blogs and such to troll?’ in a very logical manner.

                  1. What theory would that be?

                     1. That part of the reason is that they need to ‘confront the enemy’ in order to feel good about themselves, and they NEED their narrative and social justice identity to deal with their own emotional pain (that constantly threatens to overwhelm them.)

                        SJWs are creatures of pain. They are in a near-constant state of mild psychological distress, which is why so many of them are in therapy or on various psychotropic medications. This is why they are so sensitive, so fragile, and so prone to angry, incoherent rants for reasons that often seem inexplicable. They might well be pitied, were it not for the behaviour that their suffering inspires in them.

                        Now, it may seem bizarre that individuals whose primary objective is to mitigate their emotional pain would make a habit of seeking out conflict, much less generating conflict where none previously existed. But that is because you are a normal, psychologically healthy individual whose normal state is not one of internal distress. It is only through conflict that the SJW can generate the feelings of moral superiority he requires to drown out his steady state of emotional pain. This is why the Narrative can never stop mutating, and why no solution will ever suffice regardless of how perfectly complies with SJW demands.

                        It also explains why SJWs are so relentlessly critical of others. … Compared to normal people who do not make a habit of accusing others of crimethink and other moral failures, accusers are perceived by others to have higher ethical standards. In one study, it was found that the act of making accusations increased trust in the accuser and lowered trust in the target. This is precisely the purpose of the disqualify and discredit routine that they utilize so often.

                        …

                        In other words, SJWs transfer their own emotional pain into making themselves feel more positive about themselves while simultaneously elevating their social status at the expense of others and at the cost of group harmony. This is why group after group, organization after organization, find that acceding to the demands of the SJWs in their midst inevitably generates more conflict, not less.

      2. I’m thinking one of the Cthulhu tomes might be less madness-inducing……

         1. Biden’s Promise Me, Dad, and Rather’s What Unites Us would probably be less insanity inducing.

            1. Just knowing they exist makes me want to own to a flamethrower.

               1. Once upon a time, I read portions of Chung and Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story. Failed my roll to disbelieve and lost SAN. True story, no shit.

         2. Amanda:

            Do you hear the faint sound of “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” while reading that book?

            1. Either that, or “Ouroborindra! Ouroborindra! Ouroborindra! Ba-ba-hee!”

   2. Hey, I didn’t say it had to be another book like this one. My only requirement is it has to do with politics or history and be something that will be interesting for all of us to discuss. I may be a masochist but I’m not that much of one.

      1. In that case, might I suggest Mr. Marx’s famous manifesto? It would be far more attached to Reality than the current book and likely a livelier read.

         1. Groucho wrote a manifesto?

            1. That would probably be worth reading.

            2. Harpo Speaks!.

               

               1. I need to get that for my library. Loved his scenes in the movies.

                  1. It’s a pleasant read, enhanced by his tales of the fellows of the Algonquin Round Table.

            3. I once named a server array Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Karl.

               1. Harpo, Chico, and Groucho did all the work and Karl was the load balancer? }:o)

                  1. Karl was a hot spare, therefore did no useful work…

      2. @esotericcd has recently claimed on Twitter that Eric Foner is a decent historian. As in not a Zinn style revisionist. I’m somewhat interested in testing that claim.

         1. The gap between “decent historian” and “Zinn style revisionist” is large enough to drive an M1 Abrams through without worrying about scraping the fenders.

            1. Feh, I bet you could drive an entire star system through THAT gap and not even scrape Oort clouds.

         2. Foner’s good. He’s upfront about his biases, but plays it straight with the information and story. I read him for grad school and my biggest gripe was the small print in the book, not his approach to the history of labor in early national New York City.

            1. Reconstruction is one of my areas of interest, and I have peculiar theories. It sounds more and more like I need to check him out directly.

               1. It’s on my professional reading list, once I get through some other things that got presented to me last month and this.

            2. Any particular recommendations?

      3. How about the various anti-Federalist papers? Seems those were the predominant reason why we even have a Bill of Rights today.

      4. May I suggest THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN by Paul Johnson? It’s almost the antithesis of Shrillary’s little exercise in mendacity; engaging, well written, and full of ideas.

         1. This is the second time today I’ve come across a recommendation for Johnson’s book, which I had never heard of before.
            Third time makes the charm?

            1. It’s quite good, and covers a period of history little-discussed by most authors.

            2. Johnson’s thesis is that the period from 1815 to 1830 saw the birth of a lot of tropes and ideas that plague us today. he makes an interesting case, too. His dissection of the origins of the narcissistic Art World and the cycle of political idiocies in South and Central America are matters that stuck with me particularly.

         2. Is this it? It’s got a different title and I’m not sure if it’s the same book.

   3. So, for the next book, do I feel malevolent or benevolent?

      If malevolent, then “Dreams of My Father”.
      If benevolent, then “Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America”.

4. MomRed’s reading Donna Brazile’s account of events. Once you accept that Brazile lived (and lives) in a slightly different plane of reality in a slightly different culture, the book is a beautiful cultural anthropological study. And Mom’s feeling a little sorry for Brazile – apparently she really did try to keep things going and to sort out the financial mess the party was in.

   1. I have come to the {horrifying, maddening, sad} conclusion that these.. personages.. are more disconnected from Reality than I am. And I’m mythical, so…. ouch!

      1. Orvan disconnected from reality implies there is some intellect to attach to reality. I’ve seen more intellect in a sunstarved fontema than most of these high level democrats show. Zombies would starve to death if all they had to work with was the democrat members of Congress…

         1. Considering some of the crazy lashups I’ve seen (and some I’ve committed!) that is perhaps the scariest thing I’ve read yet.

   2. That is actually one of the books I’m considering. I’m curious to see her take on the election, especially after she took over the party leadership, as compared to HRC’s distorted view.

      1. Wasn’t there a Politico published book on the election? Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign or something of that sort? It might contrast amusingly with the HRC “It Wasn’t My Fault! It Wasn’t Fair! I Was Supposed To Walk In To Office! tome.

         1. I think I have that one already. I need to check. My TBR pile keeps getting bigger and bigger.

      2. Oooh, that might be interesting, actually.

5. Thanks. But, I just can’t anymore. Too much derp.

6. Actually, I wouldn’t expect anything coming from her to be “open and honest.”

   1. Not even trusting sores and wounds… like they’d happen or be admitted.

   2. I know. My only excuse is I wrote it before coffee. 😉

7. C4c

   1. C4c as I catch up but I bet this is still getting lots of new comments 2 days latter 😉

8. HRC still has plans for political office or appointment.

   Hey, there’s precedent: I refer the attention of the house to the (ultimately failed) rehabilitation ambitions of His Nazi Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor in the 1950s (why yes, I am watching season 2 of The Crown, why do you ask?), and for an American example, see U.S. Ambassador to Japan Walter “Fritz” Mondale, he who made his name via attempted murder of the U.S. space program and then as sidekick in chief in the disastrous Jimmeh presidency, made our Ambassador by Bill Clinton, even though Fritz had commited the high leftist sin of failing so miserably to dethrone Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election.

   Note however there are limits: There has been no Dukakis Ambassadorship.

   1. I could see some possibilities for a Hillary Ambassadorship. I’m trying to figure out which country we hate enough for that to be a good idea. Iran or North Korea, perhaps? Syria, maybe?

      Of course, there might be a certain poetic justice in appointing her to be the Ambassador to Libya.

      1. They might demand we close our embassy there before accepting her as ambassador. After all, if we don’t want her, why would they?

         1. We could always point to the popular vote! Surely chubbles-in-a-starving-North-Korea would appreciate that?

         2. That would be interesting. Somewhat Poetic.

      2. Yeah, but then you risk her using the position to screw up things more.

         I sometimes advocate for a process of shutting down the Department of State, and transferring the few remaining essential duties to other organizations.

         I think she should be made a non-State-department ambassador to Westeros.

         1. I think there may be an excellent position open for her as cornerstone for a monument to Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods.

         2. East-Asia, with whom we have always been at war!

         3. Nit: Dep State is constitutionally mandated, IIRC.

            1. I don’t think any of the executive departments are named in the Constitution, although about four of them were first created under the Articles of Confederation Congress. Once upon a while ago, I was looking over the Congressional Record for the First Congress and saw where it adopted them. The old Department of Foreign Affairs was renamed the Department of State.

               1. I don’t see specific mention by name in the constitution, but I’m skimming.

                  1. Don’t waste your time. It’s not there.

                     1. And that’s what I get for posting without checking my sources first.

         4. I could see sending her somewhere small and out of the way with a note (and a staff including the ‘real’ ambassador). “Keep her busy will you? Here’s your aid check. For actual issues see X person we also sent along.”

            1. Only if person X is code-named “Retief.”

            2. I’d send her to Benghazi.

               1. Concur. But, ouch. What did the staff and “real” ambassador do to get punished? Think bonuses offered will be good enough?

               2. Then tragically loose connection and coincidentally have popcorn on hand.

      3. Yes, THAT would be poetic.
         And Trump could declare it to be “reaching across the aisle”, “acknowledging her experience”, and “burying the battle-ax hatchet”.

         1. I’ve always wondered about the expression, “Burying the hatchet.” Just where, precisely, is it that you’re burying that weapon? In Hillary’s skull, perhaps?

            1. You bury the hatchet when you think they’ll drag the river.

            2. “Not in your pointed head, boy.”

               The idea is that you’re burying it in the ground, so it can’t be used against either party.

               1. You have to kill the bury-ers, so nobody knows where to dig it back up.

                  1. so Hillary has already had the hatchet buried? That explains a lot of those sudden deaths

      4. How about Hillary as Ambassador to Hell? I don’t hate any country’s people bad enough to inflict her on them. After her representing us in Hell, perhaps the damned will be comforted by only having to deal with Satan and his minions instead.

         1. U.S. Ambassador to Antarctica, perhaps? With a 15 year term?

            1. Why do you hate penguins?

               

            2. US Ambassador to aliens? Send her back to her own people?

               1. Sheesh. They’d definitely write us off as a planet with no intelligent life.

                  1. Anyone out there observing the SJZ REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE would’ve already.

               2. And endure the risk of further preservation?

         2. Why would you inflict that on the Lord of Lies. He’ll probably have to put up with her whining for eternity anyways… The Author is infinitely just.

      5. Air drop Her Shrillnessinto North Korea. Without a parachute. Try for a minefield, to make sure.

         1. from orbit?

            1. She isn’t quite worth the effort.

               1. but its the only way to be sure…

   2. You named pretty much the same examples I thought of as I read the chapter. The only difference would be, I’m afraid she knows where enough of the bodies are buried to make it possible for her to try to mount a comeback. The key will be if she decides to finally listen to Bill and some of his advisors about what she should do. We’ve been fortunate that she dismissed most of what they said during the election.

      1. I am betting that between the desperate efforts of the D elite to prevent an HRC comeback tour in 2020, and her health, or rather the increasingly futile efforts to cover up her failing health, the next Clinton we will see in politics will be Chelsea.

         1. And Chelsea will go pretty much nowhere- safe house seat at best.

            1. Poor kid. If she had the sense the good Lord gave a turnip, she’d have changed her name and her face and gone into hiding long ago.

   3. I do feel a bit sorry for Mondale – the only man in one of the major parties to lose in all fifty states.

      But only a bit. 😛

      1. uh, didnt he win his home state?

         1. Yes, barely. I recall Mark Russell describing election night as a sea of one color, with MN uncertain and DC blinking (to appear more obvious on TV) as if, ala The Fly, to say, “Help me! Help me! Help me!”

            1. I remember watching a live interview with a distracted George McGovern, who kept looking at something and smiling. Finally the reporter asked what he was looking at.

               “The election map. I’m not the big loser anymore.”

9. “it was what she did later, when she was asked to turn over all her emails, that caused raised eyebrows and questions about what she might be trying to hide.”

   Heh. I am imagining the MSM and Democrats (But I Repeat Myself) complacency if Trump tried pulling a trick like “I had my lawyers review my server for all docuents relevant to Russian communications and turn them over to the investigators, then I had the server wiped, digitally shredded, smashed with a hammer and ground to dust because the only remaining material was about Yoga lessons, parties for Barron and similar personal trivia.”

   I believe it, I believe it.

   1. But, but, but, the MSM was harder on her than it was on Trump. She tells us it’s so. That means they’d embrace anything he did and tell us how wonderful it was.

      I swear she wasn’t present for the same election I was.

      1. I assume that it was in a universe where the only “media” was Sean Hannity and the Breitbart website.

      2. Yipe! That’s more fictional than I am!

      3. I swear she wasn’t present for the same election I was.

         I believe it, I believe it.

         Not the one I lived through either.

         I think we have established that she lives in an alternate reality, and no one here wishes to contemplate it for any length of time. After doing so we point and make fun as a means of seeking relief. I admire your fortitude in plowing through the book.

      4. To HRC, anything but fawning adoration is “being hard”. Even the carefully lobbed softballs that were the merest pretend figleaf of “objective” was too tough for this woman.

   2. Just ask Nixon about what a difference less than twenty missing minutes of audio tape can make.

      1. Leave us keep in mind that Hillary was on the investigating team trying to fry Nixon for that.

         Of course, we all recognize that Nixon was guilty — of BRWP (Being Republican While President.)

         1. And Hillary got kicked off for illegally tampering with the evidence.

            1. one of the “She’s that stupid or (embrace AND) thinks we are!” signs was she and/or her people used that presence as one of her “qualifications” when all it actually showed was how long she was “Crooked Hillary”

10. HRC still has plans for political office or appointment.
    UN Secretary General. (0bama? Pfft, they’ve already had a real African UNSG. They don’t need the Lightbringer.)

    She thinks a simple, “I’m not a native technology user” should be enough to excuse her.
    You know… if you’re not a “native technology user” then shouldn’t that militate even more that you use the government tech that is provided, so the experts can handle that for you?!?

    And this one just chaps my hide:
    always took classified information seriously
    I don’t see how this one doesn’t stop the earth’s spin, it’s so patently untrue.

    Now, I don’t think any of the classified emails in her trove originated with her. I don’t think she actually placed classified info into an unclassified medium. But she most certainly had others do it, and send that classified info to her. And not once – because she was on a private server, not the official servers she should have been on – was her server ever treated for a classified spillage. NOT ONCE.
    I have had to deal with potential classified spillages at work at least three times in the last 10 years. They disrupt your work for days, they can cause loss of work information, they make for a lot of grief. And all of those were minor, inadvertent incidents. But, we dealt with it because we take that whole thing very seriously.
    And, yeah, she still doesn’t grasp why people like me were upset about it.

    1. …she still doesn’t grasp why people like me were upset about it.

       This. The whole “If I did that I would be in federal prison right now” thing is what tripped it for me and made 2016 a syphilitic camel election – the “laws are for the little people” and “how dare you question me – me!” reactions made it clear she was the least qualified nominee in my lifetime.

       1. Why yes, of course. The Good Men can do whatever atrocities they want with impunity. Their whims are the law. Your desires to fair and equal treatment under the law are irrelevant and inconsequential.

          In a fair universe, you’d have equal authority to impose punishment on those in power who caused harm. Well, it is a fair universe, and you really do have equal moral authority to impose punishment on them. It’s just that it’s only natural law, and not legal under federal, state, or local laws. However, the consequences can be a real problem. They can act with few to no consequences. We can not.

    2. “And this one just chaps my hide:
       always took classified information seriously”

       Her definition of “classified information” is probably the phone number of her “Cleaner/Fixer/KGB Handler”. That’s the important number….

       1. I’ve been pondering the story of those two deep cover KGB agents in “The Americans” with a fast forward to today: Moscow Center stopped calling back in 1992 after the last message of “You’re on your own, Comrades”, and they’ve been living their cover in the U.S. ever since, finishing up raising their kids and saving up for retirement.

          Then the FSB rings up using their last set of recognition codes and says “We have to meet”.

    3. Excellent! I’m so glad I’m not the only one who expected the earth to stop spinning on its axis. You also hit it out of the part with your comment about his she doesn’t grasp why we’re so upset about it all. Worse, she never will. Whether we’re beneath her or she so completely lacks empathy, I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t care. I just want her to go away.

       1. I think she does grasp why we are so upset about it, she just doesn’t grasp why that should matter. I think in her head, when you run for election, you tell the Proles who they should vote for, and they do, and you win. It simply never occurred to her that enough of the proles would do anything other than what they were told to.

       2. I just want her to go away.

          Here here! And not just her – the whole Clinton edifice. No Chelsea ascendency, no more dynastic politics. The Bush and Kennedy stuff, and the various hereditary Senate seats, have been bad enough. Enough aristocracy.

          1. Wait, is it “Hear hear!”?

             1. Yup. Equivalent to “Listen Up!”

          2. And yes the whole rotten ruling class and their infantile title affectation. We have gained the trappings of aristocracy over time. This whole referring to ex presidents(governor, senator etc.) as President(governor senator etc) so and so. No he (or she or xhe for that matter) has that title while in office. Once you leave office you no longer have the position and should no longer be afforded the title/job description. Only one title is forever (Lord) and that is because its possessor is eternal. In a republic the title is tied to the job.

             1. And I had expletive deleted in pointy brackets between the second and third words (yes and the). But WordPress seems to have eaten it as HTML. WordPress delenda est!.

                1. That’s not just WordPress but almost every site. Few translate < and > to text – and then you have the problem that HTML doesn’t work when want that.

                   So, how did I just do that?
                   < & l t ;
                   > & g t ;
                   just without the spaces.

             2. It looks more ad more like the proper way to address a former Democrat Officeholder is “There goes the sonofabitch!”

                1. B*stard might be appropriate although that would be an insult to those of unclear parentage…

       3. I’m half tempted to say, this is the problem with letting the mentally ill out on the streets… That, and/or federal prison are the specific terms of away I would accept. Dammit, the rule of law exists, or bloody well *should,* for good reasons!

11. I spent 25 years in Federal Civil Service with a small independent agency.
    A lot of what I dealt with was what was termed SBU (sensitive but unclassified). Documents all had an easily recognized cover and had to be kept in a locked drawer or cabinet when not in use. If I stepped away from my desk all SBU material had to be locked back up. I was required to have password protected login and screen saver on my computer before loading any SBU files on it.
    First violation of these security measures and it was a mandatory two week suspension. Further violations meant possible termination. And that was just for SBU, a major step below true classified material. You can I hope understand how those of us who dealt with government regulations regarding sensitive data have precious little sympathy for an official who obviously deemed herself above such picky rules.
    I would also note that once we got government e-mail, yes I did live through that whole process and was an integral part of it for my agency, I could access both my work and personal accounts from my government computer. No big deal, but there were procedures in place such that it was impossible for work data to migrate over to personal storage. I would have had to go through several hoops intentionally to violate that firewall and had I done so and been discovered would have faced termination and possible criminal charges.
    And for at least the last ten years there I had to take a mandatory training set detailing all the security rules and regulations I was subject to. At the end of the session I was tested on what I had retained from the instruction and if I failed the test was required to repeat it.
    Didn’t know any better? Just broke a few silly rules for personal convenience? What a steaming pile of self absorbed bull pucky!

    1. This exposes a portion of the ignorance of HRC & her pet MSM. This country probably has tens of millions of veterans, bureaucrats and federal contractors who damned well know what the requirements for handling of sensitive material is, and know that anybody but HRC would have been fried for such abuses as she casually dismisses.

       It is not simply her gross negligence, it is her contempt for those who recognize it for what it was. “Smart” people often fail to appreciate how little they know, and how much “the little people” do know.

       1. And the same goes for Comey’s (and the other lackeys on that investigation) BS rationalizations.

          1. That word “investigation” – they keep using it. I don’t think it means what they think it means.

             Starting out with the conclusion and then looking for facts to support it is more along the lines of, oh, I dunno, a “whitewash” maybe?

       2. I’m one of those veterans and I am well aware that if any of us handled classified materials that way we’d be spending the rest of our lives in prison.

          1. And then she has the nerve to complain about people waving “Hillary for Prison” signs.

       3. I am not a veteran, nor have I ever worked for the government (though my ex was in the Air Force for ten years of our marriage) and even I am well aware of handling procedures for classified documents. Hillary Clinton has no excuse, and as you said, she’s stupid to think that the people of this country aren’t aware of her culpability.

    2. I believe State has never been able to locate their records documenting that HRC ever completing the mandatory classified materials training, either.

       Nor for Huma Abedin.

       Just a recordkeeping issue, I’m sure.

       1. How the hell did they ever give Huma a clearance? She isn’t from the US and has family in the Muslim Brotherhood. When I was in the Navy I found out I couldn’t get some schools because they required a TS clearance and I couldn’t get one. I was born here in the US but my mother wasn’t. She wasn’t born somewhere considered hostile to the US, like Iran, either, she is from Canada (I could understand it if I was involved in hockey plans or maple syrup stockpiles, but I just did cruise missiles).

          1. This may be connected to the “new” revelations in Politico on how far Obama went to avoid dissing his best-buds in Iran.
             https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/12/mainstream-media-silence-on-politico-report-that-obama-allowed-hezbollah-drug-running-to-appease-iran/

          2. Question: How the hell did they ever give Huma a clearance?
             Answer: She … has family in the Muslim Brotherhood
             and 0bama was President, with Valerie Jarret in charge.

       2. Has there ever been a period since WWII, even as long as a year, when we would not have been better off if we had disbanded the State Department and turned its duties over to the Marine Corps?

          1. Let me think about that….

          2. When George Marshall was Secretary of State, for a certainty. The rest…eh, I can’t completely get on board with the idea, but I can understand why someone might think so.

             1. I’m not saying the Marine Corps would be the BEST option, just that they would be better than the stripped-pants brigade out of Yale. If nothing else, Marine officers are expected to write concise and clear reports.

    3. Not only that but others had done it as well, so it must be all right. I read that and heard my mother’s voice in my head asking 5-year-old me, “If all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you do it?” I have to say, HRC’s answer to that question is probably something along the line of, “If it serves my purpose and I can have someone at the bottom to break my fall, you bet.”

       1. The thing is, others did not, or if they did got caught and jerked up short.
          As I pointed out, I regularly co-mingled work and personal e-mails on the secure protected government equipment. What HRC did was precisely the opposite. She brought sensitive files over onto an unsecured private server. That alone would in a fair and honest world disqualify her from any further government service, let alone the Presidency. As for her actions in regards to Benghazi, there is a special place in Hell for those who abandon those they are responsible for. The mere thought of her as commander in chief is an abomination and a travesty.

12. This time I had someone else make a Martini (they went with a vermouth rinse, Tanqueray gin, and three olives, fwiw. A bit shy on the vermouth, IMO, but still easily one of the rare times I ordered a Martini and got something worth drinking – normally I need to mix such at home to get something worthwhile) as I started to read… when the drink was gone, so was I… but still not that far into the post. Figured it best I walk home BEFORE finishing the post… otherwise finding home.. and perhaps walking… might become problematic. Ox might be slow, but slow isn’t quite the same as stupid.

    1. Way back when I did a few turns as bartender between real jobs. I quickly learned that most folks who ordered a martini were trying to sound sophisticated, but what they really wanted was straight gin or vodka. Just shake the booze with ice and wave the vermouth cork over the glass for effect. That said, any mixologist worth their salt ought to be most willing to mix any drink you order to your specifications, just let them know you want a real martini, not what most order.

       1. Heh. This is one of the reasons I quit cooking for other people for the most part. When it was my job, the waitresses would get so… teched that I’d keep asking (okay what kind of medium-well do they *mean*? Just ask ’em how much pink and bloody. I can do that. What I cannot do is read minds).

          1. Personally, I prefer my red meat medium rare. The difficulty is as you point out in the vast difference in how that term gets defined. It’s not just the restaurant, but also who happens to be doing the cooking at any given time. Same restaurant, one day (or one shift) to the next, my order of medium rare can reach my table anywhere from bloody to medium well.
             So it’s come to the point that if I want a good steak cooked to my liking I either need to know the chef well or cook the hunk of meat my own self.

             1. Daddy defined “rare” as “slide it across the grill, turn it over, slide it back, it’s done.” Former Sister-In-Law’s definition: “Wave it at the grill and scare it. As long as it is not still mooing, it’s done.”

                1. Walk the cow past the fire and I’ll rip my piece off……..

             2. A friend worked one summer as a server at a posh restaurant. Whenever a patron sent back red meat as being “too rare”, the chef would dip it in the pot of “au jus” until brown, and send it back out.

          2. My answer to “How do you want that steak done?” Is always “Medium. Dead, but not carbon.”

             1. *grin* Medium is going to satisfy most people. Bit of pink in the middle, internal temp around 145 give or take. Browned on the outside, still juicy, no char.

                A proper well done is the hardest, and longest, generally speaking. Low and slow. You want well done, it’s going to take a while. A lot of folks who ask for well done don’t really know what that is.

                And don’t get me started on poorly cut steak. That’s pot-meat, not steak! *grumble*

             2. “Wipe it’s ass, saw off the horns, and trot it past the fire.”

             3. My husband and I went to a restaurant once that offered “Extra Well” with a disclaimer beneath that boiled down to “We OFFER it; we don’t RECOMMEND it.” Me, I am a reasonable woman and perfectly happy with anything from “pink in the middle” to “we pointed a hairdryer at it”.

             4. I don’t mind knocking a little carbon off the edges.

                Animals eat raw meat. I want mine cooked.

13. and I think I threw up in my mouth a little

    Pet peeve time. Where else would you? Yeah, into the bushes, or into the commode, I suppose. But still… I tend think things like, “Well, so few throw up into their spleen or into their rectum.”

    1. I accept the idiom as indicating the quantity of spewage: “I threw up, but not so much I couldn’t contain it.”

       A trifle poetic, perhaps, which excuses the abuses of logic.

       1. “I threw up a little, but I caught it all in my left hand,” perhaps?

          Note I’ve personally witnessed parents of infants make the Olympic beach volleyball diving save move to try and contain spewage from their offspring in the adjacent high chair, so I “I threw up and tried to catch it all, but failed” would be a possible saying as well.

          1. I have generally found “I threw up in your hat” does not engender the sympathetic response for which I hoped.

             1. Unless they’ve been hoping for some reason to be rid that particular hat. This data point tends to never be transmitted at/before the time such might be needed,

                1. One memorable young man who came under my tutelage once claimed to have thrown up into his *shoe.* He was pretending to be sick, y’see. And hadn’t he experience of me to know how well my bullfaeces meter was calibrated. *chuckle*

                   Considering his was wearing both of his shoes at the time, his breath had no smell of vomitous, the lack of sweat upon his brow, the lack of random ejecta hastily cleaned from his clothes, et cetera… I chose to disbelieve. I believe the lad was quite miffed at the time.

                   It continues to amuse and amaze me how (some of) the younger generation seems to believe it is the *first* one to discover such things as alcohol, sex, and creative interpretations of the truth. Speculations upon just how I came unto this knowledge and what silly crap I pulled in *my* hedonous youth are, of course, verboten. *grin*

                   1. After one day of “boys being boys” at summer camp and getting called on it by volunteer leaders; just being silly and pushing safety, young scouts. Number of the boys wanted to know why the adults always seemed to know what they were up to, when they weren’t around. Overhearing, figured I’d point out that their leaders had been their age, and there was nothing they could think up or do, that their adult leaders hadn’t already thought up or done. Made the rest of the week so much easier. Granted others might have taken that up as a challenge, unfortunately for this group, their leaders would have been that type of youth too, so they were ahead of them there too.

                      1. That always surprises boys when they get caught red-handed by adult males. The usual question was “How did you know?”…

                         1. Exact words used by the Scouts!

                            Certain adult leaders (cough, cough, hubby) were NOT allowed to share youth war/back-when stories around the campfire. This is a guy that got his first traffic ticket at age 8. 13 year old brother was on the motorcycle, he was driving the go cart, on public streets. They then got escorted home. Then there was the time they were speed shifting some equipment of their dad’s, and something broke, older 19-year-old sister assisted with that cover up. Then …

       2. Made perfect sense to me.

          “I caught it in time. Barely. But a little of the taste is still back there…”

    2. It can go into your nose instead, I think. It may be that my physiology is a little bit abnormal, so I may over estimate how easily it could happen.

       1. That is most certainly true. And even more certainly irritating. I doubt that your physiology is truly abnormal.

       2. Yes. And a definite possibility if you’re trying to NOT blow into your oxygen mask while flying.

          1. That exercise potentially risks throwing up into your inner ear, a truly horrid thought.

    3. “Well, so few throw up into their spleen or into their rectum.”
       Unless they have their head up their ……..

    4. I have, just once (thank Providence) had food poisoning, and it feels like you ARE throwing up through every orifice. Anus specifically included. Imwas kind of surprised to find that nothing had come out my ears.

14. I really need some rum after reading that—

    1. I was about to ask dark, light, golden, spiced and then upon a mickeymikes-second’s thought realized the answer was, “YES!”

       1. Well … yes 😀

    2. Therefore, if you were to mix a drink, and have no fruit allergies or such, perhaps the best answer is the Zombie. Of course, there is VERY sound reason that places that serve such have a limit of TWO per customer – lest they turn into such.

       1. Sounds like I could only tolerate an ounce of that drink. 🙂

          1. But you likely need at least TWO ounces of the drink per ounce of HRC’s book.

             I have the suspicion that HRC’s book won’t even burn well – compared to other books (and books in general do NOT burn well, really – don’t ask).

             1. Oh a Fireman 😀

                1. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Fireman. In either sense.

                   Let us just say that us (note: am not including you unless you wish to be so included.. ladies, age, etc.) Ancient Beasts often Know Things that might not be Common Knowledge and can, at times, cause some/many to wonder just how that peculiar knowledge was acquired. Usually it was acquired in a far more mundane manner than imagined…. which means imagination is oft not corrected.

                   1. In your case, would not that be a fireminotaur?

                   2. or listening to the old folks. Damn I am now one of those old folks 😀

             2. Get it,dry. Dried dung usually burns pretty well.

             3. Soak in spirits first. No, not the good stuff; That’s for drinking. The stuff that can double as grease remover. Phillips vodka comes to mind . . .

15. Regarding your sum up of the entire chapter, I think you forgot to include ‘The Republicans are great big meanies’,  ‘Why is everybody is picking on me?’ and ‘Oh, yes, did I mention yet that Trump is evil?’

    1. True, but I figured you guys could fill all that in. After all, it has become her mantra. 😉

16. I have – astonishing as it might seem – NOT resorted to the ouzo. This time.

    1. Believe it or not, Ox, I did that post on half a mug of coffee and a glass of OJ — no booze involved at all. That might be an indication I need to finish this up soon, before there is permanent brain damage done.

       1. Good Heavens! To quote Douglass Adams via Zaphod Beeblebrok, “Put your analysts on Danger Money, baby!”

17. “HRC still has plans for political office or appointment. Nope and nope and nope again.”

    Not strong enough. “H*LL No, OMG H*LL No.”. On the other hand, should the leftist be so stupid, she is the gift that keeps on giving to the more conservatives of us; this instance anyone close to the middle on the left to far right. HRC won’t ever get that west coast, New York, etc., does not rule the country, no matter how badly they think they do; but who wants to take the chance? Don’t get me wrong, I was surprised as heck when Pres. Trump won, thankful, but was standing up and shouting to the TV “OMG! OMG! OMG!” If it’d been up to the state I live in, even the county (thanks big cities), it’d been HRM HRC.

    1. A Veiw Inside the Voting Booth:

       “Hillary.. or… an addle-pated drunken monkey’s version of a random number generator..?”

       Hrmmmm.. HRC.. awww, screwit, how bad could a drunken monkey code?

       1. Kratman lost a lot of his paternal family to the Holocaust. His evaluation of Hillary versus actual literal Hitler was something like: I’m only a quarter Jewish, how bad could it be?

    2. Thank a founder for the Electoral College… and if you haven’t seen the real election map, well, here it is!

       http://www.vividmaps.com/2016/12/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago.html

       1. Thank you. Have not seen that one. I’m just south of Albany Island. 🙂

       2. That makes me wish for more global warming…………….

       3. I’m guessing there’s information buried in the dirtcolor, but being color blind, it might as well be on Facebook.

    3. I have friends that I know will vote for her in a heartbeat if she runs again. The only thing that *might* make them consider voting for someone else is if there’s another woman in the Democratic Presidential Primary.

       /sigh

       1. The only thing that *might* make them consider voting for someone else is if there’s another woman in the Democratic Presidential Primary.

          There. FIFY.

       2. I have a friend who adores everything she stands for and loves this memoir. I have a wide variety of friends.

          1. Have you considered involuntary commitment?

       3. /double sigh

          I have friends, and a few neighbors, like that too. And some relatives too. Relatives know how our household voted, but neighbors and some of our friends don’t either. Just not worth the melt down. They are good friends and neighbors otherwise.

          1. If they would melt down knowing your political position, they are neither good, friends, nor neighbors in anything other than the geographical proximity sense.
             But I understand why you (we) keep our private lives private.
             It’s not worth the melt down.
             Which is why the Left rules the world.
             And why they got Trump.
             It’s all connected.

             1. And why there’s an overturning in progress.

             2. Family you are stuck with. I have a lot of extended family; and we are all over the political spectrum. Friends who I don’t discuss politics are more spouses of friends, more of the acquaintance category, or until recently co-workers. Not that I am likely to talk politics period, or do that much talking at all. But still.

18. HRC: ‘…least competent President our country has ever had.

    We have yet to see, but I am sure that her mind is made up and whatever happens won’t change it.

    Still, I think it would be hard to beat James Buchanan on that score.

    1. And that last fellow sure gave it the “Old College Try”!

    2. In her analysis I think “least competent” means “least likely to heed the editorialists at the NY Times.”

       1. HRC’s plaint of “least competent” remind me of nothing so much as the Liberals’ denunciation of George W Bush as arrogant because he wouldn’t follow their advice.

19. Wall St Journal Oct 2016:

    The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.
    ————-
    Matthew 12:33:

    Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

20. She says that we were more likely to hear about the emails than the so-called “real” issues but notice she doesn’t say in what way we were hearing about them.

    She also has yet to realize that for many that email controversy was a very real issue.  It indicated her bad judgement.  It demonstrated her disregard for the security regulations of her own department.   It displayed her inability to take responsibility for her own mistakes.  It illuminated her lack of perceptiveness on oh so many levels.  It screamed she was … incompetent.

    1. You left out “totally and completely untrustworthy.”

21. “always took classified information seriously” says the woman who got her maid to go get classified documents from her printer at home.

    1. In fairness, we do not truly know what her understanding of “seriousness” might mean.

    2. Was that the one hooked to her aide’s husband’s laptop?

       1. BTW, if it was hooked to that laptop, I can understand sending the maid to get printouts. Eeeeewwwwww. I wouldn’t touch that thing with a 10-foot pole.

22.  … how this issue ballooned into an election-tipping controversy.

    And not Benghazi?  Nor the growing problems with government run health care?  Nor climate control with the statement in West Virginia about how you were going to put people out of work at a time when jobs were already scarce?  Nor growing government intrusion in our lives?  Nor calling calling much of the electorate deplorable?  

    The whole thing hinged on the emails?  

    Really woman!

    1. Then there’s …
       Clinton Cash
       Uranium One
       Pay for Play
       So what if my aide’s mum has Muslim Brotherhood ties and is a security risk?
       Or even the simple fact she was not competent enough to get the right Russian word on a photo-op prop button?

23. Of a prior scandal involving missing information Arlo Guthrie argued that it was the President, the man who the people elected who was ultimately responsible. He responsible for the people with whom he surrounded himself.  Guthrie wrote in The Presidential Rag:

    You said you didn’t know,
    That the cats with the bugs were there,
    And you never go along with that kind of stuff no where,
    But that just isn’t the point man,
    That’s the wrong wrong way to go,
    If you didn’t know about that one, well then what else don’t you know,
    You said that you were lied to,
    Well that aint hard too see,
    But you must have been fooled again by your friends across the sea,
    And maybe you were fooled again by your people here at home,
    Because nobody could talk like you,
    And know what’s going on,
    Nobody elected your family,
    And we didn’t elect your friends,
    No one voted for your advisors,
    And nobody wants amends,
    You’re the one we voted for, so you must take the blame,
    For handing out authority to men who were insane, …

    I would note that by Hillary’s own statement it was known throughout the government that she was using improper email procedures. Not only that, but so were others. Since it has also become known that the White House received emails from her through improper accounts, and therefore they should have been aware. The mess was not small, nor just hers.

    1. “The buck stops here.”
       — Harry S Truman

24. HRC: “Republicans turned the deaths of four brave Americans into a partisan farce.” 

    From the woman who on being confronted about the exposed lies she told after Benghazi asked, ‘What difference at this point does it make?’

    1. The correct answer should have been “If it contributes to keeping you from being elected President of the United States, Madam Secretary, then ‘All The Difference In The World’.”

    2. Sonny Jesus on a flaming pogo stick, will you look at that self-important twunt! All she needs to complete her resemblance to the Wicked Witch of the West is for somebody to jam a broomstick up her ass.

25. For one thing, crackers are loaded with carbs!

    Don’t Let Your Children Be Parrots
    By Sarah Hoyt
    Learning isn’t fun.

    Don’t all shout at once. I am aware that learning is its own kind of fun, the kind of fun that you learn to have as an adult. I learn for fun all the time, though I’ll admit I’m not very disciplined and not very good at doing it assiduously.

    But learning can’t always be fun, particularly not when you’re a kid just starting out and you simply don’t have the fund of knowledge or the background to know how to learn easily.

    This used to be understood. Kids were made to memorize multiplication tables, verb tenses and other parts of the underlying structure of most disciplines.

    Once past that, they would, of course, find it easier to acquire other knowledge because they had that fundamental base established.

    And the base lasted a long time. I once amused my kids by saying the multiplication tables under my breath in Portuguese, while trying to figure out the layout of a complicated parquet floor I was installing. That knowledge, painfully acquired, is not even remotely logical (I can, like most sane human beings arrive at the multiplication tables by adding, but it takes longer when in the middle of a complex task) and is memorized “as is” in my native language. So even though my Portuguese has grown rusty, and I think almost exclusively in English (unless I’m reading in another language at the moment) the multiplication tables will always be in Portuguese for me. But they are there and they’re accessible.

    The “let’s make all learning fun” thing seems to have invaded all levels of school the last thirty to forty years. It’s like someone decided that since learning – once you had the basics done – is often interesting and the most fun thing ever for a certain number of us (and we might be broken) then all learning should be fun everywhere, and if it wasn’t fun you weren’t doing it right.

    This is roughly the equivalent of saying that because most humans enjoy chocolate cake throughout life, everyone should live on chocolate all the time.

    It’s not only not logical, but actively detrimental.

    I first became aware of what I will call “the parrot syndrome” when I was hired in the late eighties as a German instructor at a local community college. …

    1. Funny that we went from “must memorize!” through “must be fun!” to “must memorize!”.

       But, what’s your beef with chocolate cake, Sarah? It’s full of healthy stuff: flour, eggs, milk. Right? And we know that chocolate is good for us. Especially dark chocolate.
       Unless you mean we should be adding red wine to that diet, as well……

    2. > papers that get turned in to his class. “They have random sentences jumbled together, not forming any meaning, but trying to pretend they learned something.”
       —
       Uh… yeah. And where did they learn to do that? Have you looked at the so-called textbooks some of those poor kids have been using? Word salad, jargon, and drivel that looks like it came out of one of those online “content generator” programs.

    3. I just had to say, “Wow!” at the anecdote about your son’s 12th grade teacher. I had an extraordinarily bad group of high school English teachers, but I think that lady might beat even those “gifted” individuals.

    4. Cue Bill Cosby’s “Chocolate Cake for Breakfast” monologue…

26. “What book would you like me to dissect next?”

    Nooooo! Don’t do it, Amanda! Stop while you still have your sanity!

    1. Go ahead, but use a cleaver this time, Amanda!

       1. I’ve a double axe that’s getting on to working sharp (restoring with hand tools is *not* quick, folks). The chopping edge would be a bit much, but the splitting edge ought to work just fine for this sort of softer material.

27. > As an attorney, you’d think she’d understand.

    As an attorney, she understands the law is a weapon attorneys use against other people, not something they’re particularly bound by.

28. > What book would you like me to dissect next?

    “Trekonomics.” Unlike Hillary’s screed, you could have fun fisking that one.

    “The Federation is great because it is Communist, and if we work hard, we can become Communists too!”

29. Hillary isn’t the big question.
    How the email got to and from the Secure Network and Her Server IS the big question.
    Just think about that. How did they do it?
    Did they put her server on the Secure Network? Sorry, I can’t believe that happened.
    24/7 coverage. People to move the emails from the Secure Network to send to her and then receive emails from her and move them to the Secure Network.
    Maybe 30 supervisors and worker to cover 3 shifts.
    Did they have security Clearances? I don’t think so. If you know anything at all about Security they were committing multiple felonies every day. What they were hired to do was a Felony.
    So WHO were these people? How were they vetted? They were given access to the Sec States Email, the Secure Network, and were moving stuff from the Secure Network to the Internet. A spy’s wet dream.
    They were doing this, then what else were they doing?
    Was anybody paying any attention to security at all?

    Not reporting this was a felony. Think about the Security Officers. They had to have know about this, reported it up the chain and got just ignore it back.
    HOW do you CYA for this??

    1. In most cases, it’s known how she got the classified documents. IIRC, there’s more than one e-mail that basically says, “Get a copy of the document, cover up the Classified stamp on it, and fax it to my e-mail.”

30. Again, I am reminded to be truly greatful to both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, for keeping that malevolent sociopath out of the Oval Office.

    1. Well if you insist. Thank you President Obama for keeping HRC out of the Oval Office.

       I mean this one. Thank you President Trump for keeping HRC out of the Oval Office, again, and for the process of dismantling of predecessors activities. Well there might be a few I would rather you left alone, but I have to figure out which ones.

       1. i really wish he’d lift the executive orders concerning the import of items manufactured by Molot and the former Ishevsk.

       2. Trust me, there are none you want left alone. It was part of Obama’s modus operandi that even sensible sounding things had a barb in the tail. Being a red diaper baby, he was thoroughly confused about that whole good and evil thing.

31. There’s another issue with her handling of official business communications.

    The federal government has been having severe issues with mishandled classified material being released to terrorists in very damaging ways. Wikileaks.

    With such a drastic need to address the matter, even an otherwise competent candidate might be disqualified had they made an honest mistake, come clean, and taken their lumps.

    The DNC release capped things off. 1) The largely indifferent would find it evidence of private IT insecurity. 2) No one reading the emails would believe that many of the same people would suddenly have a clue about secure messaging discipline when it came to government business. 3) Yeah, maybe it was our Chinese or Russian adversaries. The Obama administration wasn’t dealing properly with them in the first place. There’s a plausible theory that it was our Islamic adversaries, with those agents we suspect had access to DNC and House IT infrastructure.

32. How long should a man’s legs be?

    How Long Should a Novel Be?
    By Sarah Hoyt
    Recently in one of the many groups I belong to, we got the question of “what is a novel?” and “What is a viably commercial novel?”

    This is an interesting question, in the same vein as “Why is a mouse when it spins?” but the answer is much more complex than it seems at first sight.

    It used to be easy, and I suppose still is, if your goal is to sell to one of the big four traditional publishers. For reasons of economics having to do with print, transport, and placement on shelves, they prefer novels larger than eighty thousand words, and sometimes larger than a hundred thousand words.

    Note that length has absolutely nothing to do with what readers want, or what readers will buy, except in the sense that as the price of paper climbed and the price of books went up, people buying the book as a physical object wanted to see some heft and hold.

    If you go back to books from the “Golden Age” of science fiction or even romances from the sixties and seventies, you find that they were much, much thinner. Back when I was trying to round out my Clifford Simak collection, we received a book in the mail – I want to say it’s The Fellowship of the Talisman from 1979, but it could be a different one – and my husband was amused at how thin it was. So he counted the words on a page, then multiplied by the number of pages, and realized the “novel” was probably under forty thousand words I remembered reading it as a kid and didn’t remember its feeling particularly short.

    Going back still further, the reason that the National Novel Writing Month people decided the goal was fifty thousand words was that most novel-length books averaged about that.

    Sure, there was a growth in book length as we moved from writing with pen on paper to typewriter and then from typewriter to computer. However, those were almost “individual” growths. As in, some authors that were well known stopped being edited. It’s also a matter of careful picking because Dumas wrote books long enough to compete with the bloated products of the nineties fantasy series. So did Dickens, for that matter.

    However, classics like Pride and Prejudice, Animal Farm and countless others pegged at around fifty thousand words. …

    1. long enough to reach the ground

       1. But there’s a reason that they say of certain women, “Her legs go all the way up.”

33. I can put together a strike team of military special operators to do an intervention and do a snatch and grab to save Amanda. Just provide me a location and we will work out the details. We can save her. And yes there will be alcohol available on the way out and during the recovery.

34. “We get hints that she isn’t done yet. If that isn’t enough to keep you awake at night, I don’t know what is.”

    Oh, I don’t know. I suspect that if Herself is still trying to peddle her cynical piffle in 2020 it’ll only make life more difficult for the Dems.

35. I think, based on the rabid denunciations of the Trump Tax Reform (TTR) that had Hillary been elected taxes would not be being cut. Jim Geraghty of NRO’s Morning Jlt notes this from the Wall Street Journal today:

    “AT&T Inc.’s promise to give bonuses worth $1000 to more than 200,000 employees once President Trump signs the tax overhaul might save it $28 million, writes WSJ’s Theo Francis. That however depends on Mr. Trump signing the bill before Dec. 31.

    “Making the payment now would let AT&T record the expense in 2017, resulting in a $70 million deduction under the current 35% tax rate. Once the new tax rate is in effect in 2018, the bonus expense would mean a $42 million deduction. Should the president sign the bill after Dec. 31, AT&T stands to lose 40% of the tax deduction it could have claimed.

    “Similar calculations are currently being made for other companies that have pledged tax-bill bonuses, charitable donations or other year-end expenses ahead of the changes in the tax law.”
    https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2017/12/22/new-tax-law-makes-timing-vital-for-companies-bonus-payments-spending-plans/

36. Given Hilary’s explanations, she was either stupid, incompetent or corrupt, or a combination. She couldn’t even run a department in accordance with regulations and the law, she was responsible for the entire state department’s compliance, not just herself.
    Not much of a recommendation for a president.
    We really did dodge a bullet.

    1. “Dodged a bullet.”

       More like a world killing asteroid! I believe she would have gotten us into WW3.

       1. The next world war may already have been a certainty anyway. It may be more of question of whether we go into it intending to win or not.

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