November 4, 2015 – HILLARY

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Hillary’s emails show she likes sycophants. Matthew Continetti has some fun.

… I am wading through a sea of flattery and am terrified I’ll drown. It’s a few days after the State Department released another batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary of state. And while there are no surprises as I read these latest documents, they are nonetheless revealing—not only of Clinton but also of her coterie of admirers, courtiers, supplicants, and mandarins.

The emails are also nausea-inducing. The FBI is investigating whether Clinton damaged national security by hosting classified information on her private server. What the FBI has no doubt learned—indeed, what anyone who spends a few minutes reading these emails is bound to discover—is that the former secretary of state loved to hear from lackeys, hangers-on, and loyalists who spent their days puffing up Clinton’s already considerable ego.

What strikes you right away about the Hillary emails is how sycophants describe her in terms more fitting for a religious figure. “My name is Roy Spence,” wrote a Texas Democrat to Clinton in April 2010. “And I love you and…I miss you a lot. I have no idea how you keep on keeping on doing whatever it takes to lift people—everywhere up—championing your Core Purpose of Fighting and digging deep for the opportunity for each person to be able to live up to the God Given Potential. Here and Around the world.”

Spence went on like this for several more badly punctuated and ungrammatical paragraphs, riffing in a patois that’s half campaign commercial and half fortune cookie. “The pursuit for opening doors of happiness for those who struggle with the unimaginable,” he wrote. “The steady. The Steadfast.” Lucky numbers 27, 8, 5, 16, 34.

Spence’s conclusion: “So I say to a beloved and dear love one—that be you—I love you. I respect you. I miss you. I cherish every moment of our remarkable journey together. God Speed. Dear Sis. We shall cross paths soon. And until then. Onward in all things.” Below Spence’s initials are the mysterious words “Ride at dawn.” I wonder what the Russian hackers made of that one.

Spence is a cheerleader, apologist, and promoter. The word stalker also comes to mind. Now, the average person who received such an email would be likely to grimace. He’d become uncomfortable. He wouldn’t know how to respond. Not Hillary. She forwarded it to one of her aides with the demand, “Pls print.” Maybe she wanted to frame it. …

… Petty, silly, insular, back-scratching, backstabbing—the attributes of Clinton and her inner circle are comic when they aren’t disheartening. America faces a dangerous world, slow economic growth, social discord, and cultural fragmentation. And guess what? We’re possibly a little more than a year away from handing the White House to a group of people who make the conniving, selfish, vain, incompetent characters on HBO’s Veep look like FDR’s Brains Trust.

 

 

 

Along the same line, WSJ has the following; Hillary Clinton Emails Show Insiders Embracing flattery

A common thread running through the tens of thousands of emails that landed in Hillary Clinton’s in-box in her time as secretary of state is that aides and assorted advisers believe she is, well, awesome.

With a few exclamation points tacked on.

In notes sent to the private email account Mrs. Clinton used, various advisers routinely heap praise on the person who gave them their jobs or elevated them to her inner circle. Email flattery of this sort is a common tactic in the everyday workplace, but the Clinton emails show how it comes into play at the highest levels of government.

Employees tell Mrs. Clinton she is doing a “spectacular job,” that she has many admirers and that her remarks were “pitch perfect.” They assure her she looks “gorgeous” in photos and commend her clothing choices.

Mrs. Clinton often solicited the feedback, asking aides “How do you think it went?” and “What’s the verdict on the article?” Rare is the response that offered a whiff of constructive criticism.

A cache of 7,000 pages of Clinton emails released by the State Department Friday offered fresh examples of State department officials who adored the boss. State has been releasing the emails on a rolling basis at the end of each month, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests; it has now made public about half of the total. …

 

 

 

Perhaps her employees wish to worship Hillary, but David Harsanyi says she owns the chaos in Libya.

Libya is in chaos. A festering pit of radicalism, anarchy, and death, epitomizing everything that can go wrong when Western intervention has no clear long-term purpose. And the woman who believes she should be president of the United States—ostensibly on the strength of her decision-making abilities as Secretary of State—believes what’s going on in Libya is a success.

This point seems pertinent. So beyond any facts surrounding the American deaths in Benghazi, the blatant lying about her computer servers, or whatever else Republicans may or may not uncover about Hillary, one of the most politically relevant topics examined by the Benghazi Committee is her insistence that Libya was not a “disaster.” Over and over, in fact, Hillary argued that Libyans had elected “moderates” and that democracy had thrived and that all things were peachy (though she does concede there were security risks). And she was still praising the Arab Spring, long after its collapse into violent radicalism across the Arab world.

At first I wondered, how could she maintain something so obviously contestable? Then I realized, how could she not? Rep. Peter Roskam spent his entire time attempting to push Hillary to own the Libya intervention. Democrats joked on Twitter that Roskam had now conclusively proven that, yes, Hillary was Secretary of State. But it was much more. She reiterated that she was the chief architect of the war in Libya. Hillary has to claim that the U.N.-authorized Libyan air campaign in 2011 was a model of successful foreign intervention because Hillary was the one who urged Barack Obama, over the strong misgivings of others, to intervene in that civil war. She brought the Arabs on board. She articulated many of the administration’s arguments.

Later, after the whole thing fell apart, she would falsely blame some obscure video for the whole thing. …

 

 

 

You must wonder what the president thought when he learned Hillary continued her attachment to Sid Blumenthal. Micah Morrison on why it matters that Clinton went rogue.  

After the media inexplicably dubbed Hillary Rodham Clinton the “winner” of the Benghazi hearings, her apologists dismissed a line of questioning into her unofficial adviser, Sidney Blumenthal.

So he was sending her e-mail offering advice on Libya and other matters of state. In the immortal words of Clinton at an earlier Benghazi hearing, “What difference does it make?”

It matters because Clinton flouted President Obama’s authority, secretly employing a man the administration had banned — then Clinton and Blumenthal pursued a rogue agenda often motivated by political favors and payoffs for friends.

Blumenthal was an aide to President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 and one of his most reliable hatchet men. Luca Brasi without the charm, Blumenthal had smeared Monica Lewinsky, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, Republicans — and, when the time came, presidential candidate Barack Obama himself. His nickname: “Sid Vicious.”

E-mails show Hillary Clinton wanted him hired at State. But still smarting from Blumenthal’s attacks during the campaign, the administration nixed the appointment.

Clinton was undeterred. Despite telling the Benghazi committee that Blumenthal was “not my adviser, official or unofficial,” records show the Clinton political machine paid him at least $320,000 a year. …

 

Morrison also provides examples of Blumenthal’s undo influence in Libya affairs.

… In Libya, Blumenthal promoted a deal sought by US defense contractor Osprey Global Solutions. According to its Web site, Osprey offers a wide variety of services — including “security, training, armament” — as well as the sale of assault rifles.

In an Oct. 7 letter to Benghazi committee ranking minority member Elijah Cummings, the panel’s chair, Trey Gowdy, noted Blumenthal “acknowledged a personal stake in Osprey.”

In hundreds of pages of e-mails, Gowdy noted, Blumenthal served as Secretary Clinton’s “primary adviser on Libya” and pushed her hard “to intervene” as Khadafy was going down.

 

But Blumenthal’s real motivation, Gowdy claims, was “money.”

Specifically, a deal to bring Osprey together with the fledgling transitional government in Libya.

Gowdy wrote that “at the same time Blumenthal was pushing Secretary Clinton to war in Libya, he was privately pushing” the Osprey deal in Libya.

Blumenthal lobbied for more aggressive military action. In a March 2011 e-mail, he urged “another round or two of ferocious bombing” of Khadafy’s army. He also advised Clinton to take credit for Khadafy’s eventual fall.

“You must go on camera,” he e-mailed her in August 2011, two months before the dictator’s gruesome death. “You must establish yourself in the historical record.”

Meanwhile, in a July 14, 2011, e-mail cited in the Gowdy letter, Blumenthal wrote Clinton that “Osprey will provide medical help, military training, organize supplies and logistics” to the post-Khadafy government.

He and his colleagues, Blumenthal wrote, “acted as honest brokers, putting this arrangement together through a series of connections, linking the Libyans to Osprey and keeping it moving.”

“Got it,” Clinton wrote Blumenthal. “Will follow up tomorrow. Anything else to convey?” Clinton forwarded the Blumenthal e-mail to a top aide, Jake Sullivan. …

 

 

Noah Rothman has more on the Blumenthal connection.

… Blumenthal was a Clinton confidante long before Hillary Clinton went to work at Foggy Bottom. She appealed to the Obama administration to allow Blumenthal to join her staff as a speechwriter, but the request was declined. Blumenthal had developed a reputation as a partisan flamethrower – a fixer, of sorts, who was not above getting his hands dirty in order to protect the Clintons. Nevertheless, as Hillary Clinton’s secretive emails revealed, Blumenthal continued to work closely with Hillary Clinton, sent her numerous communications related to the sensitive ongoing workings of the American government, and was compensated for his performance.

How many communications would that be? In the case of Libya, a conflict zone the committee established Clinton lost interest in after the Gaddafi government was overthrown, a lot. In an open letter to his Democratic counterpart on the committee, Gowdy revealed that approximately half of all the email messages Clinton received relating to Libya were sent from Blumenthal. Gowdy called him “Secretary Clinton’s primary advisor” on that North African trouble spot.

Worse, one of those email communications from Clinton that was forwarded to Gowdy contained classified information – information that was apparently sensitive enough so that it was redacted when the committee received it. That email contained the name of a CIA operator, and its transmission on an unsecure cable could literally have put that person’s life in danger. “She is exposing the name of a guy who has a clandestine relationship with the CIA on her private, unprotected server,” former CIA Mideast officer John Maguire, who noted that the revelation should trigger the creation of a “crimes report” in the Department of Justice. …

  

 

The Weekly Standard has a short on the Secretary of State’s availability to large Clinton Foundation donors.

Hillary Clinton always makes time for friends at the State Department—especially those who have money.

In a newly released email from the State Department, an official sends Clinton her schedule. On that schedule, one sees the entry, “3:10 pm (t) PRIVATE DROP-BY — DANNY ABRAHAM (T).”

Abraham isn’t just an old friend, he’s also founder of Slim Fast and a big donor to the Clintons. He has contributed between $5 and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, and almost a million in hard and soft money to the Clintons.

In 2010, Clinton said, “I don’t know how many times Danny called my husband in the 1990s … or how many times he called and said he had to come see me in the Senate or come see me in the State Department.” 

But remember, Clinton says she’d support a constitutional amendment to get rid of money in politics. 

“We have to end the flood of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political system, and drowning out the voices of too many everyday Americans … Our democracy should be about expanding the franchise, not charging an entrance fee.”

  

 

We’ll leave it to Thomas Sowell to sum up Benghazi.

… Meanwhile, there was an American presidential election campaign in 2012, and Barack Obama was presenting himself to the voters as someone who had defeated Al Qaeda and suppressed the terrorist threat in the Middle East.

Obviously the truth about this attack could have totally undermined the image that Obama was trying to project during the election campaign, and perhaps cost him the White House. So a lie was concocted instead.

The lie was that the attack was not by terrorists — who supposedly had been suppressed by Obama — but was a spontaneous protest demonstration against an American video insulting Islam, and that protest just got out of control.

Now that Hillary Clinton’s e-mails have finally been recovered and revealed, after three years of stalling and stonewalling, they showed explicitly that she knew from the outset that the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and others was not a result of some video but was a coordinated terrorist operation.

Nevertheless, Hillary 2.0, along with President Obama and national security advisor Susan Rice, told the world in 2012 that the deaths in Benghazi were due to the video, not a terrorist organization that was now operating freely in Libya, thanks to the policy that got rid of the Qaddafi government.

Yet that key fact was treated by the media as old news, and what was exciting now was how well Hillary 2.0 outperformed the Congressional committee on television. If the corruption and undermining of the American system of Constitutional government eventually costs us our freedom, will the media say, “What difference does it make now?”

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