Jennifer Palmieri

Bad News For Hillary: Someone At CNN Told Carol Costello To Stop Helping Her, And Clinton’s Talking Points Are Wearing Thin…OK, THINNER

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

This was fascinating. I was trying to decide whether to post today about the latest spin tactics by Hillary’s minions and her dwindling but still formidable media allies  in light of Clinton’s awkward press conference where she insisted that she didn’t do anything “wrong” regarding the mishandled State e-mails. Earlier in the day the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, a usually decent journalist whom it is sad to see succumbing to the  Clinton Corruption Virus (you would think there would be a vaccine by now!), had used this same talking point—and it is a campaign talking point. In a column that could be used in a public service announcement, Cillizza seriously wondered why Hillary was in trouble. Gee, he mused, maybe Hillary just isn’t very good at campaigning! What else could possibly explain why she isn’t cruising to the nomination?

In other words, the fact that she has lied constantly, used her foundation to profit from influence-seeking foreign powers, was a flop as a Secretary of State, put U.S. security at risk and destroyed potential evidence so she could avoid getting caught in her complex political/financial machinations—Allegedly! Allegedly!—wouldn’t matter at all to Democrats, voters or Chris if she was just better at fooling the public. Darn!

“This is Chris, and this is the tragedy of Clinton Corruption Syndrome. Won’t you help?”

Then he wrote, “The appearance here — even if Clinton did nothing wrong (and there is no proof she did at this point) — is terrible.”

What? WHAT? Of course she did things that were wrong. Isn’t lying like crazy wrong, Chris? Isn’t paying people to throw the media off the track and confuse the public using deceit and misrepresentations wrong, Chris?  Isn’t the tactic of smearing the messengers wrong, and sending out statements like the infamous “nonsense” letter wrong? Is intentionally breaking your own Department’s policies wrong? Is sending and receiving sensitive information in a manner that makes it vulnerable to hacking by foriegn governments wrong, Chris? Do you even know what wrong means any more, Chris?

That’s when it hit me, and that’s why I decided I had to post, again, on the Hillary Clinton E-mail Ethics Train Wreck, which is really just part of the The Hillary Clinton Presidential Candidacy Ethics Train Wreck. The Clinton campaign’s current strategy is now to make the public understand right and wrong the way the Clintons do. If it isn’t illegal, it isn’t wrong. (This is on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization list, incidentally: #4. Marion Barry’s Misdirection, or “If it isn’t illegal, it’s ethical.” Marion Berry went to jail.)

Talk about waving a red flag in front of an ethicist! Continue reading →

The Clinton E-Mail Scandal, Part Two: The Corrupter, The Corrupt And The Corrupted

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

corrupted2

Like so many political scandals, the Hillary Clinton e-mail mess has multiple benefits even as it reveals the scabrous underside of the American political culture. Prime among the benefits is that it provides a useful test of who is trustworthy and perceptive, and who is untrustworthy due to an excess of bias, partisan fervor, warped values or just mush-for-brains.

The stunningly cynical and dishonest statement by Clinton communications chief Jennifer Palmieri, dissected in Part One, revealed that the Clinton machine really does have zero respect for the intellect of the American public, that the Clintons still believe that you can lie your way out of anything (even if the lies make no sense), and that a lack of ethics really does eat away at gray matter.

Look: every week, sometimes three times a week, I harangue lawyers about how they are ethically obligated to take careful measures to protect proprietary client information that is stored or communicated through electronic means. They immediately comprehend how it is essential, especially government lawyers. Why? Because the government is the most vulnerable of clients, among those who can be most hurt by careless information technology, and is ahead of much of industry and the private sector in developing policies and methods of keeping information as secure as possible. Hillary Clinton’s casual lies about how her “home-brewed” server was no big deal is literally stunning to these lawyers, because they know that no high ranking government official is as cavalier about official e-mails as Clinton’s repeated statements would suggest she was.  As is a pattern among Democrats during the Obama administration, Clinton’s dissembling is designed to fool the ignorant, because the ignorant are many and useful.  It is based on the assumption that nobody, certainly not the news media, will enlighten them sufficiently to understand the magnitude of what Clinton did, and the breathtaking audacity of her lies. Continue reading →

The Clinton E-Mail Scandal, Part One: Ethics Corrupter For President! Her Campaign’s “Nonsense” Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

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...

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. Continue reading →