I’m just making an analogy here–I’m not saying those tentacle-shooting vamps in The Strain are Clinton supporters. That doesn’t mean they aren’t, though…
Portraying the currently developing scandal regarding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails while Secretary of State as just politics and the “kind of nonsense” that “comes with the territory,” Clinton flack Jennifer Palmieri sent out a detailed message to Clinton supporters and Democrats. It is designed to mislead them about the critical issues raised by this matter, which are certainly not nonsense, to coordinate with the news media, which is trying desperately and unsuccessfully to embargo this story because it is damaging to Democrats (more on this in Part Two), to make the public dumber about how leadership and government works, and to provide slick rationalizations to those Clinton supporters inclined to be part of the disinformation campaign.
This is sinister and disgusting stuff, the essence of ethics corruption. For an unethical leader, like Clinton, to gain power, she must make a large proportion of the public insensitive or outright ignorant of basic ethical principles, and, if possible, as unethical as possible. The effort to trivialize this serious example of what’s so wrong with Hillary Clinton as just another “vast right wing conspiracy” is part of this process.
Palmieri’s document is remarkable. It repeats the deceit and denials the Clinton camp has offered before.”Hillary didn’t send any classified materials over email,” Palmieri says. “Hillary only used her personal account for unclassified email. No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them.” As Jonathan Turley points out, this is deceit. The only reason many of the e-mails weren’t marked classified is because Clinton was sending them and receiving them on her private server. ANY government business-related message coming to or from the Secretary of State is preemptively classified until a decision is made that it is not. Moreover, even this carefully parsed version, designed to deceive, is factually false. We learned today that State says at least one message marked “Top Secret”—satellite photographs—were received by Clinton, and someone on her staff inappropriately removed that designation.
Then Palmeiri tries this gibberish:
“What makes it complicated: It’s common for information previously considered unclassified to be upgraded to classified before being publicly released. Some emails that weren’t secret at the time she sent or received them might be secret now. And sometimes government agencies disagree about what should be classified, so it isn’t surprising that another agency might want to conduct its own review, even though the State Department has repeatedly confirmed that Hillary’s emails contained no classified information at the time she sent or received them.”
Yes, that’s why the policy at State and throughout the government is to take care that such potentially sensitive materials are secure and in government hands from the start. Stating that “the State Department has repeatedly confirmed that Hillary’s emails contained no classified information at the time she sent or received them” is a lie. The information in the documents is the same before and after it is officially determined to be sensitive and requiring classification. The e-mails certainly contained classified information. She just delayed—by violating security protocols—the process whereby that designation could be made official. That’s not a defense. That is obfuscation.
This is worse than obfuscation:
“To be clear, there is absolutely no criminal inquiry into Hillary’s email or email server. Any and all reports to that effect have been widely debunked. Hillary directed her team to provide her email server and a thumb drive in order to cooperate with the review process and to ensure these materials were stored in a safe and secure manner.”
The FBI demanded Clinton’s server. Here is the mission of the FBI:
“The mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners.”
Here is what the FBI investigates: crimes. Nothing but. To say that an FBI investigation is not a criminal investigation is to assert an impossibility. If it is investigating a matter, it is because there is reason to believe crimes have been committed.
Now the Clinton Communications Director gets into deep deception:
“What about the Benghazi committee? While you may hear from the Republican-led Benghazi committee about Hillary’s emails, it is important to remember that the committee was formed to focus on learning lessons from Benghazi to help prevent future tragedies at our embassies and consulates around the globe. Instead, the committee, led by Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, is spending nearly $6 million in taxpayer money to conduct a partisan witch-hunt designed to do political damage to Hillary in the run-up to the election.
Hillary has remained absolutely committed to cooperating. That’s why, just as she gave her email server to the government, she’s also testifying before the Benghazi committee in October and is actively working with the Justice Department to make sure they have what they need. She hopes that her emails will continue to be released in a timely fashion.”
The first paragraph echoes the infamous “What difference, at this point, does it make?” statement Clinton made during the first set of hearings. Well, Americans still don’t know why Clinton continued to say that the attack on the Libyan outpost was the fault of a YouTube video long after she knew otherwise. Was it a cover up? Was it part of a desire to manipulate the news to assist the president’s re-election? The public needs to know, and Gowdy’s committee appropriately has not allowed the Obama administrations stalling tactics to stop its inquiry. The second paragraph, however, takes a lot of gall. Clinton destroyed thousands of e-mails before they could be subpoenaed, but knowing they would be. That’s not “cooperation.” That called “spoliation”—destroying evidence. In a criminal investigation, doing this is a crime. It is always unethical, and inherently suspicious.
Finally, this highly paid liar resorts to rationalizations and false equivalencies:
“It’s worth noting: Many of the Republican candidates for president have done the same things for which they’re now criticizing Hillary. As governor, Jeb Bush owned his own private server and his staff decided which emails he turned over as work-related from his private account. Bobby Jindal went a step further, using private email to communicate with his immediate staff but refusing to release his work-related emails. Scott Walker and Rick Perry had email issues themselves.”
It’s “worth noting” if you are trying to get away with a false and unethical argument. They haven’t done the “same things,” now have they? They weren’t handling classified information, risking national security by exposing critical information to hacking, they didn’t destroy e-mails knowing they would be subpoenaed, they didn’t have a dubious mega-non profit that appears to have been seeking money from foreign governments (in violation of a signed pledge), and they weren’t Secretary of State. Even if they were, the best this can be called is a “they do it too!” argument, which excuses nothing. Fine, let’s stipulate that neither party nominate anyone who used a private server, since it is irresponsible and creates the appearance of impropriety. Deal?
Every American, Republican or Democrat who hasn’t been corrupted by Hillary Clinton and her minions already—you know, like the Walking Dead, or like that alien DNA that is making Halle Berry eyes all weird on “Extant,” or like those vampires on “The Strain” who shoot blood sucking tentacles out of their mouths and have a common consciousness, kind of like Clinton supporters—-needs to be capable of explaining to their imperiled neighbors, family members and colleagues why Palmeiri’s e-mail is so dishonest, and why this scandal isn’t “nonsense.”
After all, they don’t want tentacles shooting out of their mouths, do they?
Ethics Alarms 
“What makes it complicated: It’s common for information previously considered unclassified to be upgraded to classified before being publicly released. Some emails that weren’t secret at the time she sent or received them might be secret now. And sometimes government agencies disagree about what should be classified, so it isn’t surprising that another agency might want to conduct its own review, even though the State Department has repeatedly confirmed that Hillary’s emails contained no classified information at the time she sent or received them.”
What is especially stupid about statements like these is the assertion that documents need to go through a process to be considered classified. It asserts that someone could Email troop movements and because at the time the Email was generated it hadn’t yet gone through the procedure of classification that those troop movements are unclassified. The fact of the matter is that the normal procedure for classification is to assume something is classified until it is requested, then at the time of request it is put through the process of designation and redaction. By virtue of Hillary being the Secretary of State, it was more reasonable to assume that every Email she sent was classified, including her trips to IKEA, until told otherwise as the alternative to assuming that every Email she sent wasn’t until she was told otherwise.especially since having not gone through the state department, there was no process to classify those documents ever.
Yes, and why isn’t this obvious? It had Turley, who is amazingly calm at all times, coming close to a meltdown. I was stunned the first time I heard it the first time. It’s a stupid, stupid, ignorant argument, and for a former Sec. of State to be behind it is Orwellian—don’t Democrats object to being treated like they lack the ability of critical thought?
This is exactly why then Joe says that he thinks Liberalism should be in the DSM I don’t call him out on it. This is the shite that Liberalism puts out…. It’s insane. It holds no resemblance to reality. I personally won’t fling that tidbit out myself because I want to have productive conversations every now and again…. But I can at least understand where he’s coming from. Shit like this is like Valerie Solanas and SCUM is to feminism and what “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” is to black equality…. If you can’t at the very least be reasonable enough to rebuke your liars and crazies, then where the hell do you get off bitching about a lack of real discussion?
It already is in the DSM-5. It’s called Narcissistic Personality Disorder. If you want to read about it, here’s the criteria: http://www.mentalhealth.com/home/dx/narcissisticpersonality.html
I find the “liberalism is a mental illness” trope offensive and faintly totalitarian. It is also a favorite quote by the awful Michael Savage, who makes Rush look like Pat Moynihan. I see the argument, and there are extreme liberals who I regard as irrational and deranged by ideology unhinged to reality, like Melissa Harris Perry and, yes, Bernie Sanders. There are crazy conservatives too, of course.
“Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.”
What I wish for most is a few Liberals willing to call out their crazies. This isn’t necessarily a purely partisan issue, the GOP DOES have its crazies too… And so I don’t think that’s the point, it’s not which side is crazier, it’s the reaction to the craziness. GOP crazies are relegated into obscurity, and Liberal crazies are put on a pedestal and worshipped. There are still people in here that think that if faced with a tough choice, Clinton is where their vote is going.
It’s like… I can’t even put this in to words properly, but it’s like somewhere along the lines, winning became more important than integrity…. We can’t hold our people accountable, because that gives the other side the edge, we can’t just not vote because we don’t want the other side to get ahead. The candidates didn’t matter, the policies didn’t even really matter, what mattered was beating the GOP. I remember hearing a feminist say once in response to a question on how she could support Bill Clinton, a serial abuser, as a feminist; She said that as long as he put the right policies forward, she was willing to look the other way on his indiscretions. That’s honest… at least. But ick. ick ick ick.
Why offensive? Because it hurts feelings, or because you honestly don’t believe it’s true? Why else would people fight so hard to put MORE government in place; one that caters to their every need, and promises absolute safety at the price of freedom, if there wasn’t some sort of pathological insecurity involved? More government, freedom from responsibility (including all those tricky personal decisions), come hell or high water, despite how many times this way of doing things has resulted in bloodbath, and no actions or behavior or too low to achieve these ends. Look at all the logical contradictions, hypocrisy, means justifying the ends, stifling of language, selective interpretation of the Bill of Rights. What else do you call a group of people who are willing to do pretty much anything, and stifle everyone else’s freedom (while absurdly claiming to be the champions of freedom) to create their own safe little cocoon, where nobody stubs their toes, nobody’s feelings are hurt, no risk is incurred, and by God they’ll have you thrown in jail if you’re not getting with the program? What else is this but a manifestation of pathological insecurity?
Well said, Joe. By any honest definition, liberalism is- at the very least- a mild form of insanity. But mild or full blown, it has become a political movement that endangers not only America, but all of civilization. Insanity is a communicable disease… and a corrupt liberal media is the disease vector.
You know, I really do try to not offend if I can, usually, but in this case, I won’t, for two reasons. 1:because they are moving towards criminalizing speech they find offensive, and 2: My KIDS are inheriting this nightmare that these lunatics are working tirelessly to construct. Yep, I’m finding it harder to bite my tongue with each new horror they unveil.
they’ve got at least until January 2017 to unload every insane and despotic idea they’ve ever entertained on us.
Just because the Left has been trying to classify Conservatism as a mental illness for ages now, doesn’t mean we should be trying to do the same. That’s just Rationalization #7 (“Tit for Tat”) in action. Though I admit it is tempting.
It’s not fit for that. Its a sound argument. When you examine what liberalism is, and the behavior of those rigidly attached to pretty much every tenet of the ideology, it most arguably IS an illness of varying magnitude that has its roots in maladaptive childhood schema, primarily a failure to develop healthy ego boundaries that give rise to an adult looking for a parental surrogate in government. There’s much more to it than that, but that’s a big part of it. I’ve never listened to Michael savage, and don’t care to. I don’t say it to insult. Read” The Liberal Mind” by Lyle Rossiter, M.D., a psychiatrist with close to 50 years in the field. He makes a very enlightening, and pretty much airtight case, for this proposition. If you can read that and remain unmoved, I’ll eat my words. Sure, there are crazies in both sides, but saying that there are crazy conservatives is not the same as saying the conservative ideology is a manifestation of a mental illness or childhood trauma. All sorts of people are attracted to conservatism, including crazies, and I don’t think you’re necessarily crazy if you’re attracted to liberalism, for a time. But liberalism itself was borne of an antisocial, emotional underdevelopment pathology, and remains a political and sociological ailment due to some critical mass of people who are suffering from it.
Damnit! It’s not tit for tat! Stupid autocorrect.
Kit for bat?
Writ for rat? (Quiz: Source?)
Mitt for cat?
Shit for shat?
Zit for zat?
True Grit ! “Outside is place for shooting”!
Chin Lee!
It seemed obvious to the University of Illinois.
http://news.yahoo.com/trustees-committee-rejects-400-000-bonus-u-wise-211732405.html
But I am beginning to think this is a vast right wing conspiracy. The left wing isn’t doing it. I have seen no liberal news source that has said what Hilllary Clinton has done is wrong. They may admit that her actions have created an appearance of impropriety. They may admit that she wasn’t supposed to be using a private e-mail server and that her explanations are hard to resolve with the facts. They may state that her actions may negatively affect her campaign. None of them, however, have said what she has done is wrong. None have said that she is blatantly lying to the American people, that she is destroying evidence of her wrongdoing, that her charity’s operations are improper, and that her advisors were paid improperly and are also destroying evidence on her behalf. Only the right wing is doing that. Only conservatives seem to think this is wrong. I guess she is correct, this IS a vast right wing conspiracy.
That doesn’t mean it is a bad thing, though. I wish this conspiracy were even more vast, that there were even more people that thought this was wrong. I wish so many people in this country thought that this kind of behavior was wrong that they demanded that Hillary Clinton drop out of the race, that the Clinton Foundation be closed and investigated for fraud, and demanded that colleges stop using taxpayer money to poison the minds of our young adults, that the Clintons would move to Russia or Cuba or some other place more to their tastes. They don’t, however, and that is a shame.
My money’s on them moving to Azerbijan or Tajikistan or some other kleptocracy they’re already tight with through, you know, their work with the Clinton Foundation. Will they please take Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner and Terry McAuliffe and Lanny Davis with them? Please? And maybe that Cheryl Mills woman, you know, the legal genius from Stanford and Hogan & Hartson who had her lawyers advise a sitting federal district court judge she was going to begin destroying evidence.
I’m starting to think I got into the wrong field. Why should I learn to program computers and understand complex mathematics, so that I can spend all day slaving over a keyboard helping to create something that contributes in some small way to society, when I could have learned to become a paid liar?
I’d only have to sell my soul to Mephistopheles Clinton.
Somehow, I missed learning the term “spoliation” along the way. I’ll remember it. It seems to sum up Hillary’s entire career of “public service”! Thanks, Jack.