In the latest display of his utter lack of a sense of irony, Barack Obama says that world leaders are “rattled” by Trump’s “ignorance” and “cavalier attitude.”
Pretty rich coming from the guy who’s very life has been a textbook example of the Dunning–Kruger Effect in action. Which is why Obama likely has no idea that Trump is his doppelganger.
Yup.
A long-awaited State Department inspector general report on the impact of personal email use on recordkeeping at State is expected to be made public any day. And as many Americans prepare for the traditional Memorial Day kickoff to the summer season, longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills is scheduled to sit for a sworn deposition Friday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch.
Mills’ testimony would be the first known time a member of Clinton’s inner circle has been questioned under oath in the email controversy. Another top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, is set to testify next month. And Clinton herself is awaiting a judge’s ruling on whether she should be required to give a deposition.
No matter how that comes out, Clinton also faces an ongoing FBI investigation into the email set up. Some of her aides have already been questioned. She’s expressed a willingness to sit down with investigators — something they’re expected to take her up on in the next few weeks. Unless it takes place in complete secrecy, such a session would be the highest-profile legal spectacle the former first lady has faced since she testified 20 years ago before a federal grand jury investigating the disappearance and reappearance of Whitewater billing records.
“I think the [Office of Inspector General] report is going to be of interest and the testimony is going to be out there,” said Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton. “I think the courts will take action this summer….I don’t see any of this going away.”
Nope, no matter how much the media and the corrupt Democrat Party want it to.
[Update a while later]
The media is desperate to resurrect Hillary’s campaign.
For those too young to know what Whitewater was, here’s some inoculation to forthcoming media spin about it. No, she wasn’t “exonerated.”
[Update on Thursday morning]
Hillary’s problem isn’t her emails; it’s her dishonesty:
In this case, her dishonesty evolves from lying to potentially criminal activity.
Hence the FBI investigation, with the possible crimes including serious, fundamental breaches of the laws implemented to protect national security secrets. Hillary Clinton decided to retain personal control of her government-related communications, and the OIG report speaks to this seeming crime. Hiding her government-related communications from legally-required scrutiny served Ms. Clinton’s own personal political interests—more important, to her, than obeying the law. Even worse, her actions prove more important than protecting the American people.
The Federal Records Act has penalties for government employees who do not comply—of course, the Department of Justice has to enforce them.
Apparently, Ms. Clinton never requested permission to operate her own private server system. She certainly refused OIG requests for an interview. Great quote (footnote 152, document page 38): “Secretary Clinton declined OIG’s request for an interview. The former Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations has not responded to OIG’s request for an interview.” Yes, more than one key Clinton aide refused to grant interviews to OIG investigators. (See footnote 7 on document page 2.)
A close reader of the document will note that current Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to an OIG interview. So did former Secretaries Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright.
But, but, but…THEY ALL DO IT! TU QUQUE!!!
If the FBI concludes it has evidence of crimes, the DOJ must proceed. If it doesn’t, Congress must seek a special prosecutor.
Yes. Or there is no rule of law.
[Update a while later]
Obama snaps at a reporter who asks about Hillary’s emails.
#ProTip to journos: Don't ask about her "emails," ask about multiple felonies of public corruption and mishandling. https://t.co/KfB8kLzC0a
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) May 26, 2016
[Update a while later]
Game over, it’s not a right-wing conspiracy, and the FBI will get to the bottom of the mess:
The State IG report, weighing in at over 80 pages, is crammed full of bureaucratese yet paints an indelible and detailed portrait of things going very wrong at Foggy Bottom—especially under Hillary Clinton. It can charitably be termed scathing, and it leaves no doubt that Team Clinton has lied flagrantly to the public about EmailGate for more than a year.
That the State Department’s IT systems were a mess for years was hardly a secret, and the IG report makes painfully clear that State has had a difficult time transitioning into the electronic age. Several recent secretaries of state used email in a manner that would be judged inadequate, and perhaps improper, by today’s standards, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who served under President George W. Bush.
That said, only Hillary Clinton simply refused to use government email for government work—she repeatedly denied requests from State security and IT to use state.gov email—and she systematically dodged federal regulations on electronic communications and records preservation by setting up her private email server of bathroom infamy. Damningly, while several former secretaries of state cooperated with the IG in this important investigation, Ms. Clinton refused to.
…Hints are now emerging that Ms. Clinton’s neglect of basic security may have damaged more than her political reputation. A new report suggests several U.S. counterterrorism operations went awry thanks to Hillary’s slipshod communications security. This serious accusation is unsubstantiated yet plausible, given how easy it would have been for foreign spies to access Ms. Clinton’s email — as well as how much classified information she and her staff routinely put in “unclassified” emails. Counterintelligence officers will be investigating EmailGate for years, searching for clues about clandestine operations that went wrong, possibly due to Hillary’s IT misdeeds at Foggy Bottom.
We may never know just how much damage she did to national security, and how many operations failed and operatives lives were lost.
[Update a while later]
With the IG report, will Bernie finally muster up the gumption to take Hillary down?
We’ll see if he campaigns in California on it. A loss here would be politically devastating to her.
Tim Carney: You don’t have to choose the lesser of two evils:
As a conservative, I weigh the candidates against each other by considering the worst-case scenarios. On that score, there’s an irony: Hillary’s time as secretary of state — especially her disastrous and illegal war in Libya — doesn’t suggest supreme competence; Trump’s rhetoric, meanwhile makes many people think of fascism. But the “fascism” threat (an overblown word, of course) is probably greater with Hillary, and the incompetence threat is far greater with Trump.
They’re both incompetent fascist wannabes.
The Delta is not a way to replace RD-180s.
I can’t figure out if McCain is stupid, venal, or both.
Their foreign-policy guru is apparently proud of the number of lies they told to shove it through.
[Late-afternoon update]
.@JRubinBlogger It's like Lincoln's 'Team of Rivals', except with more grad poetry school dropouts and campaign van drivers.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 5, 2016
[Friday-morning update]
More thoughts from Ace:
So where is the media on this? This is not an accusation; this is an admission by Ben Rhodes as well as some of the key players in his shop. Who named themselves — they’re not anonymous. They admitted these things.
So we have lies, schemes to deceive, willing stooges in the media eager to transmit those lies (as they have no expertise of their own to offer, except what the failed novelist Ben Rhodes puts in their heads), and all over an inarguably major subject — foreign policy, and specifically, the nukes Obama gave Iran.
Where.
The F**k.
Is the Media?
As usual — covering up for their dirty-dealing colleagues.
As noted, follow Tom Nichols on Twitter for a good analysis.
And note the bottom line from Lee Smith:
For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe–they are.
Yup.
White House flunky taunts press as servile lapdogs for fawning coverage. Only @DPRK_News forthrightly criticizes gangster Obama government.
— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) May 6, 2016
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
Well, over at Foreign Policy, Thomas Ricks certainly doesn’t pull any punches, beginning with the headline.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The meanest thing you can do is compare someone to Holden Caulfield, the worst character in American fiction.
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) May 6, 2016
[Update a few minutes later]
Meet the flim-flam man behind Obama’s foreign-policy initiatives.
…will be a Muslim who called moderate Muslims “Uncle Toms.”
On the up side, there’s a good chance that Boris Johnson will be the next Prime Minister.
The world needs to know what happened.
Unfortunately, those in power don’t want us to know. Too inconvenient to the narrative.
OSTP is recommending it be given to the FAA. I disagree, and will have a piece about this soon.
…than any previous Republican nominee (discounting the fact that he’s not really a Republican):
We know, from his deeds, words, and even his pronouncements in this campaign, that Trump offers nothing to conservatives – worse than nothing, he would evict us from any position within our own party. He gets his foreign policy ideas from Michael Moore and Code Pink (or worse yet, from Vladimir Putin); his abortion views are grounded in his sympathy with Planned Parenthood; he supports socialized medicine in the form of single-payer healthcare, higher taxes, more government spending, and Herbert Hoover’s trade policy. He’s never met a bailout or a crony-capitalist deal he didn’t like, or a Democrat he wouldn’t donate to. He’s astonishingly ignorant, emotionally unstable, and wholly incapable of saying no to Democrats. Trump is a spoiled, entitled rich kid who shows not the slightest understanding of the American way of up-by-the booststraps striving to better yourself; in Trump’s world, the rich get richer by having the right friends, and everybody else is a serf who needs the government to protect them from foreign competition.
Let’s compare Trump to some of the prior Republican presidential losers, and I’ll throw in Rudy and Newt for good measure since I’ve written on this site in their defense before…
RTWT.
[Update a while later]
In short: yes, you can find an example of many of Trump’s flaws in prior Republican presidential candidates. But not one of those candidates combined the total package of Trump: the unfitness to be Commander-in-Chief; the total lack of accomplishments, sacrifices or even efforts over his lifetime for any cause we believe in, combined with repeated efforts to assist the other team; the manifest lack of political principle, personal character or demonstrated political character; the ignorance; the catnip for white supremacists; the toxic effect on the brand of both the party and its ideas.
A vote for Trump, even in the general election, is a suicide note for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I will never vote for Hillary Clinton, but I cannot in good conscience ever give aid and comfort to Donald Trump and the poison he represents.
That’s my current attitude. I don’t know whom I’ll vote for — it will depend on what I see on the ballot.