Politics, Government & Public Policy: August 2015 Archives
Democrats are growing frustrated that Hillary Clinton isn't making the controversy around her private email server go away.
Rosalind Wyman, a veteran Democratic national committeewoman from California who is also a Clinton supporter, said Mrs. Clinton had not shown enough urgency in battling questions about her judgment, and complained that the campaign's responses to the controversy -- and the federal inquiries that have followed -- were becoming only more muddled."The only thing Hillary can do, I think, is get out there in front of reporters and take five hours of questions -- if that's what it takes -- until people understand her, at least, and hopefully believe her," Ms. Wyman said. "And we have to have people who are talented, independent experts on classified secrets defending her on television, rather than who we have now."
But Hillary can't just say "sorry" and answer a few questions when her apology will constitute an admission of guilt to a series of crimes. She has to dodge and weave to try to avoid prosecution.
In Kentucky, where a hard-fought governor's race will be decided in November, some Democrats are privately fretting that Mrs. Clinton's problems could damage the party's brand. The departing Democratic governor, Steven L. Beshear, said he believed that Republican attacks over Mrs. Clinton's email use would continue through the fall and beyond -- and that the Clinton campaign had to devise a strategy of more effective countermoves."Honestly, at this point there isn't any great way to handle it," Mr. Beshear said. "While Hillary Clinton has been straight up from the very beginning, the Republicans will not let the issue die, and they will conduct as many witch hunts as possible. She will really have to start addressing those attacks as the campaign becomes more active."
Beshear is delusional or lying. It's President Obama's DOJ and inspectors general who are investigating, and they're hardly Republican hatchet men. Hillary isn't being "straight up", and she can't be without going to jail.
Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) writes about Donald Trump, clown genius. Adams is now predicting that The Donald will be our next president.
Allow me to describe some of the hypnosis and persuasion methods Mr. Trump has employed on you. (Most of you know I am a trained hypnotist and this topic is a hobby of mine.)For starters, Trump literally wrote the book on negotiating, called The Art of the Deal. So we know he is familiar with the finer points of persuasion. For our purposes today, persuasion, hypnosis, and negotiating all share a common set of tools, so I will conflate them. ...
For example, when Trump says he is worth $10 billion, which causes his critics to say he is worth far less (but still billions) he is making all of us "think past the sale." The sale he wants to make is "Remember that Donald Trump is a successful business person managing a vast empire mostly of his own making." The exact amount of his wealth is irrelevant.
When a car salesperson trained in persuasion asks if you prefer the red Honda Civic or the Blue one, that is a trick called making you "think past the sale" and the idea is to make you engage on the question of color as if you have already decided to buy the car. That is Persuasion 101 and I have seen no one in the media point it out when Trump does it.
Via an anonymous journalist who writes to Instapundit, thoughts on Hillary's vulnerability to blackmail:
WHAT NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT BUT WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUTHillary will be totally blackmail-able if elected. Here's the logic:
1. It's safe to say that there were things on that server which could cause Hillary tremendous harm politically - which is why she destroyed the evidence that would have been exculpatory if you believed her explanation. In my mind, it's also why she used a private server to begin with.
2. She is lying about what was on that server, potentially to include while under oath in her upcoming congressional testimony.
3. If someone had all the copies of her emails and those of her staff, they could readily blackmail her because of the above. They'd have proof of her wrongdoing and her lying about it.
4. Hillary Clinton, as both a future Presidential candidate and a sitting Sec. of State would have been one of the Top 100 intelligence targets in the world and probably one of the top 10.
5. It's thus certain that the Chinese and Russians would each have had a team focused on accessing her communications.
6. Every security expert I know of has said it's a virtual certainty the Chinese and Russians both gained access to her server and all her emails. From what I know about their capabilities, I'd agree.
There are probably a bunch of folks in China and Russia who are praying (even if they're atheists) for Hillary to be elected. If she wins, they own the President of the United States. I can just imagine in a meeting with Putin, Hillary being told to back off supporting Ukraine or he'll release her emails (as he hands her a folder containing the most damaging ones for her to peruse). Put in that position, would Hillary fall on her sword or sacrifice a country like Ukraine? I don't know, but I wouldn't want to be living in Ukraine...
Someone with that kind of vulnerability to blackmail shouldn't be allowed to sweep the floors of the NSA, much less run our country.
The inspector general investigation into Hillary's use of a private email server for top secret communications has expanded to her top aides, and Hillary is no doubt looking among them for a scapegoat with enough importance to distract the public from her misdeeds. Who will be sacrificed so that Hillary can go free?
As pressure builds on Hillary Clinton to explain her official use of personal email while serving as secretary of state, she faced new complications Tuesday. It was disclosed her top aides are being drawn into a burgeoning federal inquiry and that two emails on her private account have been classified as "Top Secret." ...At least four top aides have turned over records, including copies of work emails on personal accounts, to the State Department, which is collecting them in response to a subpoena from Capitol Hill, according to the department. Lawmakers have demanded records, including personal emails, from six other aides, but it's unknown whether they used personal email for work.
And now Hillary has decided she has no choice but to surrender her email server to investigators. A proper forensics investigation will help us understand the use, configuration, and breaches that occurred on the server over the past six years, but it will also be interesting to see what is discovered about about the cover-up that's been going on for the past few months.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign casts her decision to turn over her personal email server to the Justice Department as cooperating with investigators. Her Republican critics suggest that the move and new revelations about classified information points to her malfeasance as secretary of state. ...Federal investigators have begun looking into the security of Clintons' email setup amid concerns from the inspector general for the intelligence community that classified information may have passed through the system. There is no evidence she used encryption to prevent prying eyes from accessing the emails or her personal server.
Will the three million gallons of toxic waste spilled by the Environmental Protection Agency at Gold King Mine slow down the Obama administration's pseudo-environmental agenda? Maybe we'd be comfortable with government regulation if the regulatory agencies were competent. Unfortunately, they're staffed by fallible humans (just like us!), which is why we shouldn't give them so much power.
The political fallout from last week's toxic spill at Colorado's Gold King Mine intensified Monday, with critics saying the incident has exposed clear hypocrisy within the Obama administration while threatening the credibility of the Environmental Protection Agency at a crucial moment.Rather than express outrage as it has done in the wake of previous environmental disasters, the White House would not comment on the spill and instead directed all questions to the embattled EPA.
The agency, meanwhile, remains under intense fire after its contractors accidentally breached a dam at the mine last week and sent toxic sludge flowing into the Animas River. The contaminated water has spread to New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, and EPA officials were forced to concede that more than 3 million gallons were released into the river -- a much higher amount than the agency's initial estimate of 1 million gallons.
The fluid contains lead, arsenic and other heavy metals.
