Tag: Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton made a mockery out of the rule of law, so Americans made a mockery out of her and elected Trump

November 9, 2016by Douglas Ernst63 Comments

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The tears may not be dry on the pillows of Hillary Clinton’s most ardent supporters, but now is the time to discuss one of the many reasons why Donald Trump handily defeated the former secretary of state on Election Day. The American people saw blatant evidence that a nexus of cronyism connecting powerful politicians, lobbyists, and federal bureaucrats kept a woman out of prison who clearly — clearly — should be in an orange jumpsuit.

Imagine if you will, dear reader, a case where you are entrusted with Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) intelligence. You want to run for president one day, but you don’t want reporters or congressional committees gaining access to your work through Freedom of Information Act requests and other legal means. You decide to run the nation’s top secrets through a secret email server in your home, and it somehow winds up on the laptop of Anthony “I-sext-teenagers” Weiner.

Question: Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be in shackles in a heartbeat?

Answer: Of course not, which is one of countless reasons why voters revolted against Mrs. Clinton in droves on Tuesday.

President Obama, The Department of Justice, FBI Director James Comey, and the former secreatry of state made a mockery out of the rule of law, so the American people made a mockery out of her.

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Anyone who is remotely familiar with Hillary Clinton knows that she has drooled over the presidency for decades. There was an insatiable craving for power in her eyes that even the writers of Saturday Night Live could not deny. She acted as if she were entitled to job, and so the American people rightly denied her the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world. Her friends in high places may have kept her out of jail, but voters were determined to keep her out of the White House.

This all seems pretty straight forward, doesn’t it? Wrong. To political commentators like like Van Jones, what really happened last night was a “whitelash against a black president.” That may be news to the millions of white voters who voted for Mr. Obama — twice — before pulling the lever for Mr. Trump, but I digress. The point is that no level of electoral punishment is brutal enough to cause many well-known members of the media to engage in serious self-reflection.

Here is the simple truth: If the Democratic Party did not want to lose the 2016 U.S. presidential election, then it should not have nominated a woman who is the epitome of corruption. Case closed.

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts on the election in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

James Comey’s decision on Hillary Clinton: Welcome to Animal Farm!

An open letter to James Comey and the FBI about Hillary Clinton’s missing server Snapchat joke

Hillary Clinton turns over server to FBI — after months — yet campaign still calls story ‘nonsense’

Hillary Clinton used personal email account for all State Dept. business: Laws are for little people

Hillary Clinton turns over server to FBI — after months — yet campaign still calls story ‘nonsense’

R.I.P. America: State Dept. says no emails by Clinton’s top IT aide in 4 years

Podesta’s ‘Spirit Cooking’ ignored by mainstream media while pundits still bring up Nancy Reagan’s astrology

November 5, 2016November 6, 2016by Douglas Ernst28 Comments

Your friendly neighborhood blogger has heard people in political conversations — for years — bring up how “weird” it was that Nancy Reagan believed in astrology and what implications it might have for the country since her husband was the commander in chief. This week, however, the mainstream media ran as fast as possible away from a WikiLeaks reveal that Hillary Clinton’s right-hand man, John Podesta — and his Clinton-bundler D.C. lobbyist brother Tony — are good friends with Marina Abramovic. She is the “performance artist” who has a passion for getting naked, cutting herself, and doing all sorts of bizarre things with sperm and blood.

Translation: Republican wife who thinks there may be something to astrology = Scandalous. Liberal elite rings who think “Spirit Cooking” and blood mixtures painted on golems (clay figures used during religious ceremonies) is normal = non-story.

Earlier this week I was sifting through WikiLeaks files when I ran across an invitation from Tony Podesta to his brother John to attend a “Spirit Cooking” dinner with Ms. Abramovic (i.e., the lady who gets upset on Twitter when she’s accused of being into satanic rituals despite creating an @AbramovicM666 account).

“Are you in NYC Thursday July 9 Marina wants you to come to dinner Mary?” — Tony Podesta, June 28, 2015.

“Dear Tony, I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining? All my love, Marina.” — Marina Abramovic, June 25, 2015.

These people are obviously good friends. This is how you speak with your inner circle. Therefore, it is newsworthy that someone who will literally be able to whisper in the ear of the commander in chief if Hillary Clinton is elected president hangs out with freaks.

Here is what the New York Times said of Ms. Abramovic on Nov. 1:

“You will need to be able to withstand a great deal of conversation about clairvoyants and tarot cards and didgeridoos and kundalini life forces and monks and gurus and ‘how the soul can leave the body through the center of the fontanel of the head’ to make it very far in this memoir. …

Ms. Abramovic reports in ‘Walk Through Walls’ that under the right circumstances, she can foresee world events,” the newspaper wrote. “‘I dreamed of an earthquake in Italy: 48 hours later, there was an earthquake in southern Italy. I had a vision of someone shooting the Pope: 48 hours later, someone tried to shoot Pope John Paul II.’”

Ask yourself this question: Who are your friends and what do you guys do on the weekend? Do you fill tubs with blood-like goo and naked women and then eat from their bodies, or do you go to a steakhouse and have fun over a few beers?

Ask yourself this question: Why does Hillary Clinton’s inner circle include Anthony Weiner — a man who is under FBI investigation for sexual messages to a teenage girl; Bill Clinton (need I say more?); and people who think Marina Abramovic’s naked self-mutilation and occult “art” is normal?

I wrote a story on this subject for work, but not a single mainstream media outlet covered it. They ignored it. They shunned it, ironically, like the devil. Meanwhile, Twitter and YouTube and other social media platforms exploded with “Spirit Cooking” trends. The traffic for the story was through the roof — and yet, silence.

People like Katie Pavlich over at Townhall, one of the few writers who addressed it, tried to torpedo the story entirely using giant straw-man arguments. Because Ms. Pavlich felt Infowars likened Mr. Podesta to a “blood sucking, hair eating devil worshipper,” then ipso facto there was nothing to cover.

Wrong.

You can tell a lot about a man by who his close friends are, and it speaks volumes that the Podestas receive “all my love” messages from a woman who thinks it’s normal to get naked in front of strangers and cut herself, or to create “aphrodisiac” recipes that require “fresh urine” and “fresh sperm milk” for “earthquake nights.”

For Townhall writers like Ms. Pavlich, it apparently means nothing that Ms. Abramovic a.) sees herself as a mystic, b.) says that performing her rituals at home makes “magic” possible, and c.) told artist James Franco that she hates the studio and loves to “perform” at home.

“If you are doing the occult magic in the context of art or in a gallery, then it is art. If you are doing it in a different context, in spiritual circles or private house or on TV shows, it is not art.” — Marina Abramovic on question about magic via Reddit interview.

Move along. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Oh, and did I mention that the artist now says she called the “Spirit” dinner that because “we just call things funny names”?

What are all the chances that out of all the “funny” names she could have picked, she used “Spirit Cooking dinner”?

rebel-media-spirit-cooking

And here is what she told Mr. Franco:

“I hate studio, to start with. Studio is a trap. Studio is the worst place — the artist should never be [there]. The art comes from life — not from studio.” — Marina Abramovic to James Franco via Wall Street Journal interview, December 2009.

The mainstream media is filled with a bunch of people who are obsessed about losing their place within “The Inner Ring” that C.S. Lewis spoke about years ago.

The mainstream media are terrified about what will happen if they cover an explosive story about Hillary Clinton’s inner circle and then she is elected president. That is why CNN and others had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover WikiLeaks, FBI investigations into the former secretary of state, and the “pay-for-play” corruption of The Clinton Foundation.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong and the Podesta brothers’ buddy-buddy relationship with Marina “Eat the Pain” Abramovic is not worth your time.

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Exit Question: What are the chances that late-night comedians and SNL would have a field day if Donald Trump’s inner circle included an “artist” whose works required her to sit on mountains of bloody bones, stab her fingers, and “eat the pain”?

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Mark Hamill tries Jedi mind trick on Hillary’s FBI investigation, turns to Orwellian Memory Hole when he looks like Sith Lord

October 29, 2016January 9, 2017by Douglas Ernst16 Comments

Someone needs to tell Mark Hamill that the internet is forever. After news broke yesterday that FBI Director James Comey was reopening the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, “Luke Skywalker” tried to play a Jedi Mind Trick with his 1.87 million followers.

“Don’t panic- VOTE!” he wrote, as if that was actually an appropriate response to the news.

Here is an embarrassing truth: Mr. Hamill wants Americans to vote early for a woman who is under an active FBI investigation. Does that sound like something a Jedi wold do? Tsk, tsk.

When principled men and women started pointing out the absurdity of Mr. Hamill’s advice, before long the tweet was deleted.

The problem for Mark is this — guys like me will go deep into the Memory Hole with a digital spelunking helmet on and pull that sucker out — no matter how long it takes.

Mark Hamill knew that it looked really bad to tell people to ignore the implications of voting for someone who could be indicted by the FBI, so he deleted the evidence. He doesn’t ever want to come across like a blind ideologue, because once that happens he begins to lose influence. He needs you to believe that he is just a “swell” guy like you — when the truth is far different.

Here is a truth bomb for Mark Hamill: He is the type of partisan hack who dehumanized Mitt Romney in 2012 and now wonders why Donald Trump is popular with millions of voters.

Here is what “Luke” said in July 2012:

“You look at Romney and I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but he’s like The Thing. He only imitates human behavior; he’s not actually human himself. Do you know he had lemonade on the campaign trail and he said ‘Lemon … wet … good.’ Gwwaaaahaha!”

When even decent candidates are dehumanized and mocked by cultural influencers, it is only a matter of time before a man like Donald Trump is embraced.

Mitt Romney was tarred as the Batman villain “Bane” for his work at Bain Capital.
Mitt Romney was framed as a guy who didn’t care if women got cancer and an architect of the so-called “war on women.”
Mitt Romney’s running mate — another good man — was portrayed as someone who would literally push his own grandmother over a cliff.

Guys like Mark Hamill treat morally upstanding men like punching bags, but Donald Trump is not a punching bag. He is a lot of things that I do not agree with … but he is certainly not a pushover. And instead of admitting the role that he played in bringing about our current political and cultural wasteland, Mr. Hamill tells his Twitter followers to vote — as soon as possible — for a woman with a perpetual cloud of corruption over her head.

Mark Hamill may play a Jedi on the big screen, but in reality he is filled with hate and anger. When it becomes obvious for all the world to see, he tries to cover it up with the ‘delete’ button.

Unfortunately for Mark, the internet is forever.

Bill Clinton calls Obamacare ‘crazy system,’ just as people who understand basic economics said since 2010

October 3, 2016October 3, 2016by Douglas Ernst9 Comments

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A really weird thing happened in Flint, Michigan on Monday: Bill Clinton criticized The [not so] Affordable Act just as Republicans have since 2010.

This blog said years ago that anyone who understood basic economics could predict exactly what would happen with the passage of Obamacare — and now the former president is on the campaign trail for his wife sounding like your friendly neighborhood blogger.

Here is what he said:

“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

I worked for three different organizations since The [not so] Affordable Care Act was signed into law, and the cost of insurance plans spiked at all of them. Early on, I was trying to live inside the Beltway on less than $40,000 a year while trying to pay off students loans from USC and American University. (Try making that work with a morning commute into the city while paying rent.)

“The people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies,” Mr. Clinton added at one point.

Indeed! I and millions of other hard-working Americans knew the feeling all too well. And, yes Mr. Clinton, I was working well over 60 hours per week at the time.

The funny thing is, the next step will be to call for a total takeover of the health care system by the federal government. Republicans claimed that Obamacare was a Trojan Horse for socialized health care, and they were called conspiracy theorists. But that is exactly what is happening.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sept. 13:

It looks like 2017 will be ObamaCare’s worst year yet. The three major insurers, along with many smaller plans, are largely exiting the health-insurance exchanges, leaving more than half of U.S. counties with only one or two health-plan choices, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly 36% of ObamaCare regions may have only one participating insurance carrier offering plans for 2017, according to health-care analytics firm Avalere Health. Data from analysts at Barclays and Credit Suisse project that health-insurance premiums are expected to rise at least 24% in 2017.

To rescue President Obama’s health-care law, Hillary Clinton has proposed resurrecting the “public option.” This failed idea—a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers—can’t save ObamaCare. But introducing it across the country would move the U.S. much closer to the single-payer system progressives have always longed for. …

In 2011 Vermont tried to use this waiver process to introduce a public option, only to abandon it three years later when it became clear that the scheme would yield skyrocketing taxes on small businesses.

If you think health care is expensive now, then just wait until it’s “free.” And if you don’t think that will happen, then simply take a step into the the Douglas Ernst Blog Time Machine and consider the following: There will always be men like Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber on call for the next Democrat president.

Mr. Gruber told an audience at the University of Pennsylvania in November 2014:

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. So it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in — it made explicit the healthy pay in and the and sick people get money — it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Yep. That actually happened — and it’s only a matter of time before the next “Gruber” gives it a shot with socialized health care.

Democrats like Jonathan Gruber need people to be stupid to get signature pieces of legislation passed. They want people to be stupid. Consider that as you walk into the voting booth in November, and then again when your Democrat neighbor bashes charter schools.

Harvard professors who championed Obamacare now livid over rising health care costs

Harry Reid acts as if the Internet doesn’t exist: ‘All’ Obamacare horror stories are untrue

Listen to Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber and then think about Obama’s call for Net Neutrality

Robert Downey Jr. and friends tell U.S. to vote for woman who called black kids ‘super predators,’ was excoriated by FBI

September 21, 2016September 21, 2016by Douglas Ernst30 Comments

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There was once a time when Robert Downey Jr. understood that telling people how to vote was not something pretend superheroes should be doing. Marvel’s “Iron Man” inherently knew that intelligent swathes of the public will gladly make guys like him a millionaire for doing a good job standing in front of green screens, but they have no desire to hear his thoughts on domestic and foreign policy. That has changed.

RDJ’s millionaire buddy Joss Whedon — the guy who said Mitt Romney was the type of guy who would bring forth the zombie apocalypse — now wants us to believe that Donald Trump will presumably usher in the super-duper zombie apocalypse.

Mr. Whedon created a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC called “Save the Day” to push the message and enlisted Hollywood actors to star in the group’s ads.

Weirdly enough, Mr. Downey Jr. and the other actors acknowledge how pathetic and condescending projects like “Save the Day” are while essentially saying, “Yeah, we’re still going to shamelessly influence dumb people, anyway.”

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Here is what director Joss Whedon told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday:

“Whedon acknowledges that ‘no one really cares what an actor’s opinion is,’ but he says that’s not the strategy. ‘Seeing somebody famous makes people stop. Seeing something funny makes people stop. Seeing something with emotion makes people stop,’ he adds. ‘Those are the ways you can get to people.'”

The problem for Mr. Whedon and Don Cheadle, who said Donald Trump is a “racist, abusive coward who could permanently damage the fabric of our society,” is that a.) it was Hillary Clinton who called black males “super predators,” and b.) it was FBI Director James Comey who raked her over the coals for nearly 15 minutes for her “extremely careless” handling of America’s most guarded secrets.

CBS reported on April 14th of this year:

Bernie Sanders slammed his rival’s 1996 use of the term “super predators” Thursday evening, calling it “racist” on stage at the Democratic debate in Brooklyn.

Asked why Sanders had criticized Bill Clinton’s defense of his wife use of the phrase “super predators,” Sanders responded: “Because it was a racist term and everybody knew it was a racist term.”

In the 1990s, while President Bill Clinton was promoting a tough-on-crime agenda, his wife — then-First Lady Hillary Clinton — was gathering support for the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act. In one speech, given in 1996, the first lady warned against the rise of “super predators,” touting the ’94 bill as one line of defense against such at-risk youth.

“They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators,'” she said at the time, going on to describe them thus: “No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”

It’s pretty hard to tell people to vote for the allegedly awesome Democrat when Bernie Sanders called Mrs. Clinton’s “super-predators” remark racist. Again, in years past Robert Downey Jr. seemed to understand what a fool he would look like by appearing in these campaigns, but somewhere along the line he decided to join the parade of politically correct narcissists for election-year virtue signaling.

Question for Mr. Downey Jr.: How does it feel to spend all the good will you’ve built up over the years by staying out of politics on a woman who should be wearing an orange jumpsuit in a federal penitentiary? I suppose that doesn’t matter, now that your “Save the Day” appearances guarantee years of swanky parties thrown by millionaire hypocrites like Joss Whedon. Sad.

Typical ‘progressive’ reactions to terror attacks on U.S. soil provide unintentional comedy

September 19, 2016September 21, 2016by Dave Huber10 Comments

Here we are again, dealing with yet more instances of radical Islamic terror, and “progressives” in politics and in the media are, again, figuring out how to handle it all. ( I use quotations on the word “progressive” because all too often it is a contradiction in terms.)

We’ve already seen how some of our usual “buddies” have dealt with it, like our pal Dan Slott slamming GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump for having the unmitigated gall to refer to the bombing in New York City as just that — a “bombing” — before, allegedly, all the facts were in. He even retweeted a tweet from a transgender activist who said Trump was “actively rooting” for the bomb to be terror-connected. Nice.

But … where is Slott, et. al. regarding Hillary Clinton doing the same thing — not to mention the mainstream media, in the form of CNN this time, covering for her by selectively editing out where she referred to the attack as a “bombing”??

The polls not going her way and desperately seeking an opening, Hillary upped the ante today, spewing the typical “Trump’s rhetoric is giving terrorists an excuse” nonsense:

I don’t want to speculate but here’s what we know and I think it’s important for voters to hear this and weigh it in making their choice in November… We know that a lot of the rhetoric used by Donald Trump is being seized on by terrorists… Wea [sic]also know from the former head of our counter-terrorism center, Matt Olson, that the kinds of rhetoric and language that Mr. Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.

“Aid and comfort?” Why, that sounds like … treason!

Naturally, in cases like these (CNN Clinton assistance aside), the media provides no shortage of qualifiers — like “potential”:

The FBI is investigating the stabbing attack at a Minnesota shopping mall as a “potential act of terrorism” https://t.co/HgHDlBZeo1

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 19, 2016

This is where we are in early 21st century America with the Left, folks: For offering solutions to Islamic terrorism, however unpalatable they may seem to some folks, Trump is helping groups like ISIS.

All the while the Fourth Estate is busily helping Trump’s opponent.

I am no fan of Donald Trump. I never thought his candidacy would last, that he would poll lousy and eventually drop out. I don’t believe he is really conservative, and given many of his statements and his temperament, he potentially could make Barack Obama’s abuse of executive authority seem like our first African-American president is the greatest constitutional adherent ever.

But the Left really has no one to blame but themselves for the rise of Trump. It is comical to watch the disbelief coming from the Left: “How can anyone support this guy?” they angrily exclaim.

Even though many on the right have reservations about the GOP candidate, they are weary of the last eight years’ collection of lies, obfuscations, political correctness, and outright criminal activity.

Not to mention, when the media ponders how they’re having little effect on Trump’s outrageousness, one only has to look at how they treated the two George Bushes, John McCain, and worse, Mitt Romney. When a guy like Romney is portrayed as evil incarnate, it’s going to be rather difficult to make people believe what you have to say in the future … even when it is warranted. Like with Trump.

To coin a cliché, “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf.'”

So, I, for one, am enjoying watching Trump take on the ridiculous PC which has overtaken us, and thumb his nose at the mainstream media. By the media and the Left routinely giving average Americans the middle finger — calling them “bigots,” “hateful,” and “xenophobes;” refusing to call “radical Islamic terror” just that; championing “sanctuary cities” while belittling those who want immigration laws followed and enforced — they’ve helped make Trump the very manifestation of the reaction to that middle finger.

Side note: I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Doug for allowing me to voice my thoughts here now that it had become impossible to keep The Colossus of Rhodey updated regularly. As Doug mentioned, you can catch my regular writings over at The College Fix.

Hillary Clinton calls millions of Americans ‘deplorables’ because Democrats can be ‘grossly generalistic’ without media destroying them

September 10, 2016September 10, 2016by Douglas Ernst14 Comments

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Imagine a situation where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gave a speech to donors and said, “I don’t hate all Muslims. I just oppose those who I lump into a cultural ‘basket of deplorables.'” How long do you think it would take before the collective might of the U.S. media crushed him under the weight of his own “grossly generalistic” words?

Answer: Mr. Trump would be mercilessly beaten day in and day out by pundits, political action committees, Hollywood celebrities, and campaign attack ads. There would be no respite from withering criticism until his reputation was ground into a million pieces and thrown into the dustbin of history.

Now consider Hillary Clinton’s “grossly generalistic” claim that roughly 50 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables.”

CNN reported Saturday:

Hillary Clinton told an audience of donors Friday night that half of Donald Trump’s supporters fall into “the basket of deplorables,” meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic.

In an effort to explain the support behind Trump, Clinton went on to describe the rest of Trump supporters as people who are looking for change in any form because of economic anxiety and urged her supporters to empathize with them.
“To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” Clinton said. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.”

Republicans are never allowed to be “grossly generalistic.” Just ask Mitt “47%” Romney.

If a Republican makes a generalization about any issue that might make some minorities look bad, then he or she is a racistbigothomophobe. If a Democrat makes a generalization that makes millions of white people look like racistbigothomophobes, then we are supposed to accept the claim as a general truth. Classic!

Surprisingly, CNN pointed to a new Quinnipiac University poll on Saturday showing that most people who are voting for Mr. Trump are doing so because they do not like Mrs. Clinton. She is such an unlikable and untrustworthy politician (Dare we say, “deplorable”?), that tens-of-millions of Americans will essentially vote against her instead of “for” Mr. Trump.

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America, give or take a few percentage points each election cycle, is politically split. There are about 40 percent who will always vote for Republicans, another 40 percent who will always vote for Democrats, and then another 20 percent who are up for grabs even though they may heavily lean in one direction. Therefore, saying that “half” of Mr. Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables” is politically tone-deaf.

It will be very interesting to see how much this comment affects Mrs. Clinton’s support in the weeks ahead. Regardless, independent voters should ask themselves why it is that one political party gets to generalize about millions of law-abiding Americans, while the other is not allowed to do so with law-breakers and terrorists.

FBI shreds credibility with Hillary Clinton document dump before holiday weekend; NYTs wonders why Americans love WikiLeaks

September 3, 2016September 3, 2016by Douglas Ernst7 Comments

Hillary Clinton CNN

It was only one month ago that FBI Director James Comey stepped in front of television cameras and raked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the coals for her “extremely careless” handling of the nation’s most sensitive documents — before stating the bizarre conclusion that no prosecution was warranted. In short, Mr. Comey confirmed that the rule of law in the U.S. is a joke — Washington “elites” really are above the law.

Friday’s document dump by the FBI — a political move right before Labor Day weekend to minimize the fallout to a presidential candidate — demolishes whatever credibility the agency had left and demonstrates why millions of Americans do not care where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gets his information from.

CNN reported Friday:

Washington (CNN)Hillary Clinton repeatedly told the FBI she couldn’t recall key details and events related to classified information procedures, according to notes the bureau released Friday of its July interview with the Democratic presidential nominee, along with a report on its investigation into her private email server.

Clinton told the FBI she “could not recall any briefing or training by State related to the retention of federal records or handling classified information,” according to the bureau’s notes of their interview with Clinton. The documents indicate Clinton told investigators she either does not “recall” or “remember” at least 39 times — often in response to questions about process, potential training or the content of specific emails.

What the network chose not to mention is that Mrs. Clinton literally linked her inability to recall operational security training to a concussion she suffered during a fall in 2012. The entire 58 pages are worth reading because they make clear — especially when coupled with Mr. Comey’s public statements — that Mrs. Clinton would be sitting in a jail cell if she had a different last name.

When the highest reaches of the FBI are no longer independent and it blatantly behaves as as political pawn, then America is in dire straits. I warned readers in April 2011 that Donald Trump was a canary in the mineshaft, and now he is the 2016 Republican presidential nominee. That is important because it is only when one understands how bad of a predicament we are in that he or she can put the acceptance of WikiLeaks into proper perspective.

Wikileaks Julian Assange

The New York Times wants Americans to shun Julian Assange because they see him as a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin:

The newspaper wrote Aug. 31:

From the outset of WikiLeaks, Mr. Assange said he was motivated by a desire to use “cryptography to protect human rights,” and would focus on authoritarian governments like Russia’s.

But a New York Times examination of WikiLeaks’ activities during Mr. Assange’s years in exile found a different pattern: Whether by conviction, convenience or coincidence, WikiLeaks’ document releases, along with many of Mr. Assange’s statements, have often benefited Russia, at the expense of the West.

Among United States officials, the emerging consensus is that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But they say that, at least in the case of the Democrats’ emails, Moscow knew it had a sympathetic outlet in WikiLeaks, where intermediaries could drop pilfered documents in the group’s anonymized digital inbox.

In an interview on Wednesday with The Times, Mr. Assange said Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats were “whipping up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria about Russia.” There is “no concrete evidence” that what WikiLeaks publishes comes from intelligence agencies, he said, even as he indicated that he would happily accept such material.

Let us ask the following question about Mr. Assange by ironically quoting Hillary Clinton: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

The Obama administration as a whole, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the FBI have obliterated the rule of law to protect Mrs. Clinton. Countless media outlets downplay or ignore the story, and other cultural institutions (e.g., academia, the entertainment industry), look the other way as corruption consumes us.

Does it really matter if WikiLeaks gets its information from Russia if it is one of the few organizations willing to expose corruption?

Vladimir Putin made this very same point in an interview with Bloomberg News on Friday — again, on the same day the FBI did whatever it could to protect Hillary Clinton.

Putin

The Russian president said September 2:

“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?” Putin said. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public. There should be discussion about this, and there is no reason to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some side issues with the search for who did it.”

It is with great sorrow that I find myself in agreement with Vladimir Putin on this issue. We used to rightfully lash out at Russia for spreading outright lies for its propaganda purposes; we now complain that Mr. Putin is responsible for truthfully exposing our own corruption. If this does not convey just how far we have fallen, then nothing will.

An open letter to James Comey and the FBI about Hillary Clinton’s missing server Snapchat joke

Hillary Clinton turns over server to FBI — after months — yet campaign still calls story ‘nonsense’

Hillary Clinton used personal email account for all State Dept. business: Laws are for little people

‘Ghostbusters’ endorses Hillary Clinton; Sony opts for Orwellian Memory Hole after backlash

July 29, 2016July 29, 2016by Douglas Ernst8 Comments

Ghostbusters is the gift that keeps on giving. This week Sony decided to get so weirdly political that it allowed the official Ghostbusters account to give Hillary Clinton’s campaign an endorsement with the #ImWithHer hashtag on Twitter. The company then went full-1984 and flushed the tweet down the Memory Hole when the Internet called the company out on its actions.

Imagine a world where every company acts like Sony’s Paul Feig. You would have Frosted Flakes commercials along the lines of, “They’re grrrrrrrrreat! (for Republicans).”

Perhaps you would have Schick razor commercials “for him” that are really “with her,” (i.e., Hillary Clinton). The possibilities are endless.

Check out the video below to see how this decision totally undercuts the claim that Ghostbusters was not made for politically correct reasons, and why Sony’s Orwellian actions afterward are important to remember.

James Comey’s decision on Hillary Clinton: Welcome to Animal Farm!

July 5, 2016July 5, 2016by Douglas Ernst18 Comments

Hillary Clinton Snapchat email joke

Americans everywhere should do themselves a favor and buy George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” today because FBI Director James Comey made clear this afternoon that we are living in it: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

There really is no way to describe the Twilight Zone-like press conference Mr. Comey gave today regarding Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The man personally and professionally destroyed the former secretary of state for nearly 15 minutes and then concluded with, “no reasonable prosecutor” would seek charges in this instance.

Consider just the following snippets from Mr. Comey’s address to the nation:

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent. …

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it. …

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. …

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

Objective Americans know that if they were guilty of a fraction of the negligence shown by Mrs. Clinton during her time as secretary of state that they would be rotting in a jail cell this very moment. The fact that nothing — nothing — will be done to the woman is proof that our country has gone over a cliff. It’s over. The future of the United States is going to be a very dark place, even if there are countless citizens who do not realize they are living in a very real version of Animal Farm.

There are millions of Americans right now who are a.) so blindly partisan that they do not care how dangerous this moment in history is, or b.) so stupid and lazy that high-speed internet streams of NFL football, cat videos, and naked women keep them placated. It would take a miracle of epic proportions to save the country at this point, but at the same time it is right and just for America to reap what it has sown.

This afternoon I tried to discuss the FBI’s decision with a friend and instead of getting visibly angry my eyes just teared up and I thanked God I was behind a computer screen. My wife and I live comfortable lives and we know that we are fortunate to be the right kind of “animal” on this Orwellian estate. My tears are not for myself or the woman I love, but for the generations of Americans to come who will live in country where there are special rules for the elite and well-connected, and then there are rules for everyone else.

If you have a moment, then watch Mr. Comey’s press conference from earlier today. If it turns your stomach, then feel free to throw up your feelings in the comment section below.