After recently announcing the reopening of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, FBI Director James Comey has now announced he atill won't recomment pressing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton et al. All this after having outlined Hillary's criminal behavior in his press conference in July.
I have been mystified since July over the discrepancy between the facts summarized and the recommendation made. Maybe this explains it:
Ruben Navarrette summarizes this year's presidential race rather succinctly in his column in today's Albuquerque Journal. He says
The best reason to vote for Clinton is not because you believe that she cares about you or will keep her promises; it's to stop Trump. And the best reason to vote for Trump is not because you believe that he'll change a system that made him rich and famous or will keep his promises; it's to defeat Clinton.As for me, I remain "Never. Never." I've chosen this path because I see the truth in the meme I read recently that described Trump as representing "everything that is wrong with our culture" and Clinton as embodying "everything that is wrong with our government."
That about covers it.
Cartoonist Michael Ramirez sums up how Navarrette and a large part of the country's population feel.
This additional Ramirez cartoon puts the choice we face a little bit differently.
Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clinton's is like putting a shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger. And not voting at all is just giving up.As Sowell also says, "Nobody said that being a good citizen would be easy."
Consider carefully. After all, one of these two people will end up living in the White House next year. Are you going to vote for a chance at life or for a guaranteed disaster?
The state of the nation seems very much like this:
The labels on this cartoon say Mondernism and Tradition, but they really are Progressives and Conservatives. The Progressives really don't comprehend the strength and stability Conservatives provide — strength and stability the Progressives really rely on.
This might well do it.
Of course, the remaining federal employees will be overworked — at least until other changes are made.
Last week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump confirmed his belief that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, and noted that the original story had come from the 2008 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
The major media outlets — including the AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS — quickly produced their agreed view on the issue. (The Wall Street Journal cites here the varying wordings of that agreed viewpoint by the AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN. I heard the reporting by ABC, NBC, and CBS myself, and read the AP account in the Albuquerque Journal.) The way the agreed media story was put in the Albuquerque Journal is this:
WASHINGTON – After five years as a promoter of a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, Donald Trump abruptly reversed course Friday and acknowledged the fact that the president was born in America. He then immediately peddled another false conspiracy.If memory serves, Hillary started denouncing it as false about the time she was named to be Obama's Secretary of State.“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” Trump declared, enunciating each word in a brief statement at the end of a campaign appearance. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
But as the GOP presidential nominee sought to put that false conspiracy theory to rest, he stoked another, claiming that the “birther movement” was begun by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. There is no evidence that that is true.
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” Trump said.
While the question of Obama’s birthplace was pushed by some bloggers who backed Clinton’s primary campaign against him eight years ago, Clinton has long denounced it as a “racist lie.”
Note that this agreed media story on the issue appeared in the media's news stories, not just in their editorials.
This writer suspects that Trump picked up legitimate discussions of and questions about Obama's birth that were running around the country (no, not just "some bloggers") in 2008. Some questions continued for a time even after the White House finally released a copy of the original long-form birth certificate because of perceived discrepancies in it.
But, frankly, that's not of concern. What is of concern is that the media have agreed on a single viewpoint, across news and editorial departments and across organizations, that is at odds with the verifiable facts — both as stated currently and as can surely be verified in news reports from 2008. Multiple members of Hillary's 2008 campaign, including her senior advisor and close confidant Sidney Blumenthal, are the ones who took this story to various reporters — a story that was supported by Obama's own statement in a collegiate biography that he was born in Kenya. Indeed, Blumenthal's deep involvement in spreading this story may be the reason President Obama absolutely forbade the hiring of Blumenthal in the State Department by Secretary Clinton, and order Hillary followed in its letter but not in its intent as he was clearly still working for her at the time of the Benghazi Attack.
But I'm reasonably sure of this:
It's not a conspiracy. It's worse. It's a consensus.
Perhaps the actual issue for this presidential campaign is that Donald Trump was gullible enough to really believe what he read in the media in 2008.
Hillary Rodham Clinton showed her true colors early in the Administration of President William Jefferson Clinton. (She had done so back in Arkansas as well, but not nearly so publicly or on the national public record.) This former First Lady, former New York Senator, and former Secretary of State engineered what would become known as Travelgate:
It was the first big case in which she showed poor judgment, a cool willingness to mislead, and a level of political aggression that gave even those around her pause. It was after this mess that her critics said she’d revealed the soul of an East German border guard.What showed up in Hillary's Travelgate actions? She took vindictive actions that were intended in part to funnel government funds to her friends and associates. Those actions included, in that case, not only the dismissal of all the members of the White House Travel Office, who had worked for a series of presidents both Democrats and Republicans, and having criminal charges lodged against them which she knew to be fabricated and false. She made a long series of false statements, attempting to hide her mendacity behind a long series of changing stories. And she misused and subverted a whole series of government files and departments.The Clinton White House was internally a dramatic one, as George Stephanopoulos later recounted in “All Too Human,” his sharply observed, and in retrospect somewhat harrowing, memoir of his time as Mr. Clinton’s communications director and senior adviser. He reported staffers and officials yelling, crying, shouting swear words and verbally threatening each other. It was a real hothouse. There was a sense the gargoyles had taken over the cathedral. But that wouldn’t become apparent until later.
All of which could have been ripped from this year's current headlines. It just goes to show that absolutely nothing has changed.
Last week, President Barack Obama jumped into the presidential race. Supporting Hillary Clinton, he asserted that Donald Trump is "unqualified to be president" unfit to be president, lacking the necessary temperament and preparation for the office. His statement hit the news, as they say, big time — even though he's been saying the same thing for a long time, including in an interview reported in May.
My reaction on hearing Obama's latest outburst was this:
POT . . . KETTLE
We know what the last 7½ years have done to us. We know what Hillary has done in every area she has touched, and what kind of disaster she has been in those areas. Trump doesn't have that kind of record — or any government record. That's why Obama is calling him unqualified; he doesn't have his government "union card". Translated, that means we know how bad Hillary would be, but Trump is an unknown and we're left with guesswork.
Thomas Sowell may be right when he asks, "How did we get into the predicament where our choices for President are narrowed to a candidate who inspires distrust versus a candidate who inspires disgust — and where both are dangerous?"
In an earlier column, Sowell says "Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clinton's is like putting a shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger. And not voting at all is just giving up." As Sowell also says, "Nobody said that being a good citizen would be easy."
It's on the wrong track, naturally. (What would you expect?) Following the track well-established for her by her party and her (she hopes) predecessor.
Once again, Trever hits it out of the park!
Of course it's not quite that simple. The prosecutors that will review the information developed by the FBI could still choose to bring indictments against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her illegal activities as Secretary of State.
Of course, FBI Director James Comey said that "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." That caused me to wonder just what he meant. Did he mean that the evidence didn't support criminal charges — the impression Comey worked terribly hard to convey? Or did he mean that no "reasonable prosecutor" would proceed with such a case because they would know they would be cashiered by DOJ political appointees if they did?
Actually, Comey said more. He said that
To warrant a criminal charge, Mr. Comey said, there had to be evidence that Mrs. Clinton intentionally transmitted or willfully mishandled classified information. The F.B.I. found neither, and as a result, he said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”This is wrong in multiple respects. Here are two:
And of course General Petraeus was cashiered for far lesser transgressions.
There are a couple of "take-aways" from this situation. One is part of what else the FBI director said.
After announcing his no-charge recommendation, Comey added:Another likely inference is this: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.In other words, laws are for little people.
Clearly "All men are created equal", but some are more equal than others.
Here are some images I find interesting. First is a proposal for our southern (and western) border.
These are just a little off the wall. But good.
As noted before, dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) is a pretty dangerous chemical.
Here's an interesting question.
And then, inevitably for this year, there's politics. I think I agree with this guy.
Here are a couple of examples from this year's campaign.
And this one is good, no matter how you slice it.
In the past few days, I've run across a number of cartoons pertaining to the state of politics in the United States today. These few cartoons vary across existing programs and the presidential campaign. There is also an image of much more general applicability.
One cartoon has to do with our president and the economy he and his regulators run.
This one is an historical comparison of current events to events from long, long ago. Why can't some people follow the rules?
Here's another variation on the question of why can't some people follow the rules?
Of course, all of this makes us think (or at least makes me think), along with Mark Twain, that
Yes, socialism — in all flavors — is something that sounds great, especially to youngsters. That's because the young haven't yet learned enough knowledge and logic to see that it's a chimera, a mirage. It has never worked and never will, because it violates human nature.
The problem with this, of course, is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. And then the system (1) backs away from socialism, (2) completely breaks down, or (3) goes full totalitarian.
Despite what President Obama said on his trip to Cuba and Argentina, there is a HUGE difference between capitalism and socialism.
Socialist illogic has showed up multiple times in the current presidential campaign. Here's an outstanding example.
I find it shocking that that people can reach such heights with no concept of either basic economics or human nature.
Michelle Obama has decided to make an endorsement in the race for the Republican presidential nomination — expressed, as usual, in a hashtag.
There's also a much more detailed statement from Michelle, explaining her endorsement.
OK, they're obviously both photoshopped. But I still like them, especially because there is now so much mess to clean up.
“Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. . . . It’s not just that [Donald Trump] could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes. . . . America’s Weimar-lite democratic dysfunction is plain to see.”
Wall Street Journal, Best of the Web
quoting Roger Cohen, New York Times, March 1
There's been a lot running around about our problems if Donald Trump is either nominated or elected to the presidency. And all that is true. But there's another side to this problem, and it is shown in the bumper sticker below.
I'd say this is absolutely the best bumper sticker of this election cycle. And I think it is highly unlikely to be improved upon.
And then there's this — from Ramirez:
(installed July 22, 2007)
