The Bookworm Beat 8-18-15 — the “Hillary is toast (and other stuff)” edition
Hillary is unfit to be president
My friend Scott, the same one who wrote this excellent time line and analysis about Hillary’s criminal malfeasance, continues to follow the Hillary saga closely. In a recent email to me, he wrote:
I can pretty much assure you, I and everyone else who ever held a security clearance and dealt extensively with classified documents did a spit take when we heard Hillary conducted all of her email as Sec. of State on a private address and server. That she would be involved with not just classified information, but the most classified secrets of our nation was inevitable.
Go here, watch former CIA Agent turned CNN analyst Bob Baer just rip into Hildabeast as unfit to be President. He’s right.
I agree with Scott, and have only this to add: I think that the more that is revealed, the more it’s clear that she’s unfit to be president. It’s not just that she’s paranoid, arrogant, dishonest, spent too much time sending personal emails on the job, and didn’t give a hang about America’s national security. The underlying problem, one that should be apparent even to her fans, is that she’s dumb as a post. Can we really have someone this staggeringly stupid in the White House?
The recent revelation about Hillary’s offsite server only adds to the impression of someone with a low two-digit IQ.
Oh, and Scott adds that Eugene Robinson unintentionally sums it all up for the left. “He bemoans her decisions, dispenses with her excuses as ridiculous, then says that she’ll be our next President, but we won’t love her quite as much as could have. And I love how he mentions having classified data on her server as a ‘technical violation of the law’ while still crediting the charge of ‘partisan witch hunt.'” Says Scott, “I so detest people who are not intellectually honest.”
The only people with lower ethics than lawyers and snakes. . .
. . . are Democrats posing as journalists. So says Scott, who is following Carly’s ascension as a counterpoint to Hillary’s rapid decline. What caught Scott’s attention is Dem columnist Ruth Marcus’s claim that Carly is actually a Hillary fan, making everything she’s said or done in 2015 a hypocritical lie. The basis for Marcus’s assertion is an off-the-record, off-mic conversation she allegedly had with Carly in 2008:
At which point Fiorina, then a campaign surrogate for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, offered some unprompted praise for Clinton: If Fiorina hadn’t been backing McCain, she told me, she would have been for Clinton.
“That’s off the record,” Fiorina immediately added.
Here a pause for a discussion of journalism ethics. The commonly understood rule governing when quotations are not for the record requires the source to state that position in advance, so that the reporter can agree to the limitation or not. . . . .
Now is different, for two reasons. First, Fiorina’s praise of Clinton then contradicts her attacks on Clinton now. Second, Fiorina is no longer a surrogate; she’s a candidate, for the highest office in the land.
[snip]
Fiorina’s shifting stance on Clinton is striking: She has gone from stealth fan to Public Enemy No. 1 — the (not coincidentally female) face in the crowd who is willing to slam Clinton most ferociously as a lightweight and a liar.
One potential answer: Fiorina once was impressed but became disillusioned with Clinton’s performance as secretary of state. But “that was then, this is post-Benghazi” is not an explanation that would sit particularly well with the conservative voters Fiorina is wooing.
Another possible explanation: Fiorina then was busy sucking up to Clinton voters, trying to woo them for McCain. So she got carried away. But this interpretation poses a variation of the classic trial lawyer’s question: Which time were you being disingenuous?
Carly’s camp says that, while Carly has no memory of this conversation, she does agree that, if she had been asked to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, she would have chosen Hillary, making her consistent with most conservatives who then viewed Hillary and Barack as Left and Lefter. (Today, of course, Hillary is trying to woo the Obama coalition by out-lefting even Obama.)
Here’s where Scott chimes in:
Marcus’s cite for Carly’s attack on Clinton is a Guardian article:
Hillary Clinton “lies”. Hillary Clinton’s “character is flawed.” Hillary Clinton “has blood on her hands”. Fiorina is constantly hitting Clinton with sharp, well-chosen jabs.
The Guardian‘s link to “lies” in turn refer to this debate statement:
FIORINA: Hillary Clinton lies about Benghazi, she lies about e- mails. She is still defending Planned Parenthood, and she is still her party’s frontrunner. 2016 is going to be a fight between conservatism, and a Democrat party that is undermining the very character of this nation. We need a nominee who is going to throw every punch, not pull punches, and someone who cannot stumble before he even gets into the ring.
The Guardian‘s “character is flawed” link goes to a Blaze article about a Fox News Sunday interview in March:
On “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace,” Fiorina challenged several Clinton comments, including saying she used a personal email account for State Department work because it would be easier to carry one device than two. She said such statements raise a confidence issue about the former secretary of state, senator and first lady.
Fiorina also said Clinton is not candid. She said that “suggests [Clinton’s] character is flawed.”
Lastly, the Guardian’s reference to Fiorina’s claim that Hillary “has blood on her hands” was a simple tweet about Benghazi.
In other words, Fiorina’s attacks on Clinton challenge her veracity over the e-mails, her performance and judgment as Sec. of State, her Clinton foundation corruption, etc., Wow! All of those things happened after 2008. Marcus is every bit as much a snake as Hildabeast herself. One thing Marcus does not do in the remainder of her column is itemize those “contradictions.”
So when Marcus says “One potential answer: Fiorina once was impressed but became disillusioned with Clinton’s performance as secretary of state,” Marcus is in fact stating what she knows to be the answer. But then she goes trolling to tell conservatives how they should feel about that: “But ‘that was then, this is post-Benghazi’ is not an explanation that would sit particularly well with the conservative voters Fiorina is wooing.”
Why not? Are we supposed to be like the usual Democrat prog shills and feel viscerally hostile to Hillary, without regard to facts, because she’s the enemy, or are we supposed to evaluate new facts as they come along? Throw Zell Miller or Patrick Moynihan as the Democratic candidates and I could well pull the lever for them. I couldn’t for most other on the left based, I must say, on my evaluation of their actions. And my evaluation of Ms. Marcus leads me to conclude that she is a particularly scurrilous and noxious piece of human waste.
Indeed, take a look at Marcus’s second potential answer. “Fiorina then was busy sucking up to Clinton voters, trying to woo them for McCain. So she got carried away. But this interpretation poses a variation of the classic trial lawyer’s question: Which time were you being disingenuous?”
How about never. Marcus knows that what Fiorina said — if she in fact said it — was off the record. So how does a thought not expressed publicly translate into an effort to “suck up to Clinton voters?” Wow, this woman is toxic.
Well said, Scott. Well said.
You can hear Carly for yourself here, at the Ace of Spades podcast.
Bobby Jindal has the best summation yet of illegal immigration
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s been a while since the first Republican primary debate, but I haven’t forgotten that Bobby Jindal had the best line of the night, and one that it behooves us to remember:
“Immigration without assimilation is an invasion.”
Japan was not going to surrender
In my home, on my TiVo, we have two HBO documentaries about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both of which of course are obsessed with the suffering of the Japanese people — and those who survived the two blasts did suffer terribly. What distresses me so much about these documentaries is their inability to comprehend that the Japanese people would have suffered just as much without the bombs, and that American troops would also have been slaughtered in great numbers. Dropping the bomb was the lesser of two evils. Here are two articles that address the Japanese cultural inability to surrender and its insistence, right up until the bomb was dropped, to fight to the last woman and child:
Watching the Atomic Bomb Blast as a POW Near Nagasaki
How The End Of World War II Almost Didn’t Happen
The Iran deal has redoubled Obama’s narcissistic conduct
Since Obama appeared on the scene, I’ve said that one of the hallmarks of a malignant narcissist is his compulsive need to show that he is the superior person in all situations and that anyone who is not a follower is both stupid and evil. Bret Stephens notes that, even as Obama consolidates power, the Iran deal sees him once again abusing those who won’t climb on his bandwagon:
Much has now been written on the merits and demerits of the Iran deal. Not enough has been said about the bald certitude of its principal sponsor, or the naked condescending disdain with which he treats his opponents. Mr. Obama has the swagger of a man who never seems to have encountered a contrary point of view he respected, or come to grips with the limits of his own intelligence, or figured out that facile arguments tend to be weak ones, if for no other reason than that the world is a complicated place, information is never complete and truth is rarely more than partial.
Read the whole thing. And if you can’t get the WSJ link, try linking through Google.
A few more links on the Iran deal
Daniel Greenfield argues that those Democrat Congresscritters who believe that the Iran deal is a bad deal but who nevertheless follow their party leader in supporting it are committing treason against their country.
If you’re in Marin, you might want to send a polite missive to Rep. Jared Huffman, who’s still struggling with this decision, reminding him that he owes his duty to America, not to President Obama. Huffman could be said to have a personal stake in the matter since Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, lived in Marin and is currently about to be convicted before an Iranian kangaroo court on manifestly false espionage charges. Obama’s “deal” doesn’t address Rezaian’s fate.
David Brooks, the New York Times’ court “conservative,” earned my permanent disdain when he opted for Obama because of the crease in Obama’s pants. (More accurately, Brooks went for Ivy League Leftism because the Ivy League part meant that Obama was “one of us,” with “us” being the intellectually deficient but still arrogant New York coterie of over-educated, under-informed ignorami.) Still, he occasionally comes out with something intelligent, as he did when he categorized Obama’s proposed Iran deal as the third in a series of three ignominious American defeats:
Wars, military or economic, are measured by whether you achieved your stated objectives. By this standard the U.S. and its allies lost the war against Iran, but we were able to negotiate terms that gave only our partial surrender, which forces Iran to at least delay its victory. There have now been three big U.S. strategic defeats over the past several decades: Vietnam, Iraq and now Iran.
I don’t usually say this, but if you haven’t already read Brooks’ article, you should.
Ray Takeyh says that Obama’s belief that, if he makes nice with the Iranians, they’ll make nice with everyone else, is an enormous gamble:
Although Western pundits and politicians are fond of invoking China as a model for approaching the theocratic regime, China’s evolution is precisely what Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his disciples are trying to avoid. A state that abandoned its revolutionary inheritance for the sake of trade and profits holds no attraction for men seeking to preserve their republic of virtue. Indeed, the Islamic republic’s foreign policy has long been fashioned to sustain its ideological character at home. The clerical rulers appreciate that their revolution can survive only if Iran remains isolated from subversive Western influences. A confrontational foreign policy rooted in anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism not only affirms the regime’s values but also ensures its continued estrangement from the West. To this elite, Obama’s promise of global integration is not an invitation but a threat.
The Obama administration may hope that a benign Iran at ease with the prevailing norms will emerge after the agreement expires. Khamenei, however, sees the future differently. “According to Koranic principles, fighting against arrogance and global imperialism is never-ending, and today, America is the very epitome of arrogance,” he insisted recently. The Islamic republic is an outlier that has defied the normative patterns of how revolutionary regimes evolve. A segment of the conservative elite, commanding key institutions of the state, has forged an aggressive foreign policy designed to preserve the ideological foundations of the regime.
Takeyh is being too kind insofar as he imputes good motives to Obama. I believe that Obama’s motives are to create a new world power, one consistent with his love for Islam and Valerie Jarrett’s love for Iran. I also think he’s looking to see the United States reduced to one amongst many, preferably cowering before Iran. And I think he would be perfectly okay with Israel’s nuclear annihilation. Kevin Williamson doesn’t go as far as I do, but he too suspects Obama’s motives.
The economic benefits of bad news
Glenn Reynolds, known for his intelligence, recently wrote one of his smartest columns ever, and it’s all about bad news. You see, when it comes to the economy, bad news is a good thing and, in socialist countries, bad news is the one thing the government never lets you hear:
It is simple really: When the “Great Leader” builds a new stadium, everyone sees the construction. Nobody sees the more worthwhile projects that didn’t get done instead because the capital was diverted, through taxation, from less visible but possibly more worthwhile ventures — a thousand tailor shops, bakeries or physician offices.
At the same time, markets deliver the bad news whether you want to hear it or not, but delivering the bad news is not a sign of failure, it is a characteristic of systems that work. When you stub your toe, the neurons in between your foot and your head don’t try to figure out ways not to send the news to your brain. If they did, you’d trip a lot more often. Likewise, in a market, bad decisions show up pretty rapidly: Build a car that nobody wants, and you’re stuck with a bunch of expensive unsold cars; invest in new technologies that don’t work, and you lose a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. These painful consequences mean that people are pretty careful in their investments, at least so long as they’re investing their own money.
Bureaucrats in government do the opposite, trying to keep their bosses from discovering their mistakes.
VDH explains why I’ll be leaving California
I’m not going to leave California in the next year or so, but I definitely won’t retire in this State. Why? Because Dem policies mean there’ll be no state left in which to retire. VDH explains, while I plot my move to a more sane environment.
VDH also explains why Obama is no racial healer
You and I knew all along that Obama’s 2004 speech was the one and only time in his career when he didn’t play the race card for political advantage. VDH explains just what damage has occurred to race relations on Obama’s watch.
This will not go well for blacks. They currently have some momentum, but in the long run, they just don’t have the numbers or infrastructure to take over in a meaningful way. It would have been so much better had blacks embraced conservative cultural values (education, marriage, jobs, family, in that order), and stepped up to full self-realization, rather than allowing themselves to be slaves on the new Democrat welfare plantation.
San Francisco’s dilemma
I’ve written for years about the homeless insanity in San Francisco, something that’s been a part of my life ever since the end of the summer of 1967. Back then, so many of those bright-eyed hippies who came at the beginning of the summer, by summer’s end were drugged out homeless people lying in their own filth on the Haight-Ashbury sidewalks.
The situation was made worse when both Left and Right under Reagan agreed to do away with institutionalizing the mentally ill. These forces were correct that the institutions were a cruel disgrace, but they were wrong to throw the baby out with the bath water.
That was then. Now, I blame the horrors of urban homelessness entirely on the Democrats, who have worked hard for forty years to keep the homeless on the streets. For a brief while, ordinary San Franciscans were able to be heard and the city tried to improve the quality of life, but those days are over. San Francisco’s streets have gone from bad to worse, a blight that is cruel for both those with homes and those without.
If I ever commit a crime, I want Captain Justice for my lawyer
During a trial in Tennessee, a state that really doesn’t feel the love for big government, the prosecutor’s trial team (which is sometimes referred to as the “general”) filed a motion with the Court asking that defense counsel stop referring to the prosecution as “the government” on the ground that it could prejudice the jury. Defense counsel was incapable of taking this motion seriously:
Justice fired off his own motion in response. It included conventional references to case law, the First Amendment — technical stuff that one would expect in a court filing.
And then he got creative.
If the court sided with Rettig, he demanded his client no longer be referred to as “the Defendant,” but instead be called “Mister,” “the Citizen Accused” or “that innocent man” — since all defendants are presumed innocent until a judge or jury finds them guilty. As for himself, clearly “lawyer” or “defense attorney” wouldn’t do him, well, justice.
“Rather, counsel for the Citizen Accused should be referred to primarily as the ‘Defender of the Innocent.’ … Alternatively, counsel would also accept the designation ‘Guardian of the Realm,’ ” Justice wrote.
And since prosecutors are often referred to formally as “General” in court, Justice, in an effort to be flexible, offered up a military title of his own.
“Whenever addressed by name, the name ‘Captain Justice’ will be appropriate.”
Gathering steam, he went on to say that even “the defense” wasn’t adequate and that “the Resistance” would be far more appropriate.
He then concluded his motion, returning to the formal language of court documents — sort of.
“WHEREFORE, Captain Justice, Guardian of the Realm and Leader of the Resistance, primarily asks that the Court deny the State’s motion, as lacking legal basis.”
The internet showcases stupidity
People used to be stupid in private. Thanks to the internet, their stupidity is on display.
