An Open Letter to Secretary Hillary R. Clinton

Dear Madam Secretary:

I Implore you:

PLEASE, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Very truly yours and with all my love and respect,

Comrade Misfit

Kind of Hard to Not Use the Words "Attention Whore;" Lewinsky Ed.

Monica Lewinsky said Monday that she decided to participate in a new documentary series about her infamous 1990s affair with then-President Bill Clinton so that she could ensure that her experience "never happens to another young person in our country again."

So, for two decades, Lewinsky has wanted to be a rivate person, notwithstanding her 1999 interview with Barbara Walters and her starring in a documentary in 2002.

When she walked out of an interview two months ago, one has to wonder whether she chose to do so because she already had a deal with A&E, instead of any actual butthurt.

One might reasonably suppose that we're going to be hearing about this, off and on, for the next forty years.

It would be interesting to know who put up the money for this.

Political Operatives are Doug Feith-Level Stupid

With Election Day less than two months away, Democrats are increasingly worried that Hillary Clinton has not built a formidable lead against Donald Trump despite his historic weaknesses as a national party candidate. ... Clinton leads Trump by three percentage points, having fallen from her high of nine points in August, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. That tightening has frustrated many Clinton allies and operatives, who are astonished that she isn’t running away with this race, given Trump’s deep unpopularity and his continuing stream of controversial comments.

How is this a mystery to anyone? There has been plenty of polling data about the high negative numbers for both candidates and that their chief pitch has been "I'm not as despicable as my opponent".

To not see that this would be the situation takes some real professional-grade stupid. Hasn't it been obvious for a year or more that Trump can say all manner of hateful and outright false shit and it doesn't slow him down a whit?

And only now the Clinton campaign is understanding this? Did they hire these guys?

Drought and Trump

First off, this is from Monday's drought monitor:

Keep an eye on the Adirondacks of NY, as well as upper New England. Those areas are sometimes referred to as "the fireproof mountains", because the climate is wet enough that there isn't the same sort of fire risk as there often is out west. If they dry out, there will be a lot of fuel and the fires may be epic.

Now to Donald Trump. As you've probably noticed, Hillary Clinton has been keeping a low profile. Part of that is from the old adage of "never prevent an enemy from making mistakes" and, YDAFL knows, he's been campaigning as though he enjoyed stomping on Bouncing Bettys.

But it seems that she has been campaigning: Among the rich.

At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”

“I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.

Mr. Trump has pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s noticeably scant schedule of campaign events this summer to suggest she has been hiding from the public. But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour, according to a New York Times tally.

If Clinton wants to lose this election, I can see no better way, right now, than making the argument for Trump that she is a willing tool of the Oligarchy, that she will look out for the interests of the very people whose interests the politicians have been putting first for the last forty years.

This issue has been driven home, at least to me, by some conversations with some bright people who I would have never pegged for Trump voters, but who are voting for him. They all despise Trump's racism and xenophobia. They think that he is a despicable narcissist. They think that it is an absolute horror that he won the nomination. Frankly, they despise him.

But they despise the system more. They have said, in varying words, that the system is rigged against everyone but the ultra-rich. As one person told me, "if you don't have a billion dollars, they won't do shit for you." St. Louis was going to build a football palace for Stan Kroenke, who is worth several billion dollars, but good fucking luck finding the money to fix the inner-city schools, for reasons that border on the nefarious.

The system is rotten. The only person on the political horizon who even remotely promises to rip it down is Trump.

And yes, a goodly number of them would have voted for Bernie Sanders, for the same reason that they'll now vote for Trump.

If the Trump campaign had any smarts, they'd now be blaring that Hillary is the candidate of the rich. Because nobody who is not already a Trumpanzee is going to give a fuck about Benghazi or her email server. But tar her with being a tool of the billionaires, and maybe Trump might gain some traction.

Fortunately for Clinton, there're are few signs that the Trump campaign has any smarts.

Hacking the NSA (Plus, Your Daily Donald)

A bunch of hacking tools developed by the NSA are now out in the wild. There are claims that the NSA has been hacked. I'm a bit skeptical, more likely somebody did something stupid and either stored the files in an insecure location or something like that. As the old maxim goes: "Never attribute to cupidity that which can be attributed to stupidity."

But we'll all probably know more in the coming days.

Meanwhile, The Donald is shaking up his campaign.

Donald Trump moved to overhaul his troubled campaign on Wednesday, hiring the head of conservative website Breitbart News as chief executive officer and promoting a seasoned political operative to a senior role.

Stephen Bannon, the combative executive chairman of Breitbart, was named CEO, the Trump campaign said in a statement. It also said Kellyanne Conway, who has been an adviser, will take on the role of campaign manager.

Other than demoting an alleged Russian operative, I don't know what is served by putting a former Goldman Sachs bankster and professional loudmouth in charge. If the recent polling is akin to reports of icebergs, Trump just rang up a flank bell.

Hillary Clinton has some real problems. Problems a seasoned pol would have no trouble exploiting. But The Donald is not a professional pol, but a professional huckster, a con artist. He can't count on Clinton to make stupid unforced errors.

The reverse, so far, isn't true. Against a non-batshit crazed candidate, Clinton would be in a serious fight and would stand a good chance of losing.

Oh, and Republicans should give up their fantasies about sending her to jail. If she does lose, you can bet your paycheck on whose name is going to be on a presidential pardon on the morning of January 20th. It'll be one last "mic drop" aimed at the GOP.

Jesus, Bernie, Wake Up!

It's fucking over. You made a valiant try and went far further than anyone thought you would.

You've lost. Fold your tent and go the fuck home, already.

One Down, One Not

Ted Cruz hoisted the white flag. The #NeverTrump campaign has slipped beneath the waves, leaving only the wreckage of a national party.

Bernie beat Hillary in Indiana.

The Hits Keep Coming for Hillary

Fuck Benghazi, this one about her and her husband's link to a for-profit college may have legs. A college which paid Bill $4 million a year to serve as an "honorary chancellor".

Let's hope that our choice this year is not between a Foul-Mouthed Fascist (with his own involvement in for-profit diploma mills) and the First Couple of Sleaze.

(H/T)

Clinton's Delegate Lead

(I'm not putting up a link, as it won't survive over time.)

Hillary Clinton supposedly has a significant lead in delegates. However, most of them are "superdelegates" of which there are 712. They are all party loyalists, of course, and most have said they support Clinton, whi is the candidate of the establishment.

However, that support is as firm as overcooked pasta. In the words of Sammy Tonin: "You want to survive in this business, you have your money on the horse that's out front." If it appears that Bernie Sanders is going to win the nomination, the superdelegates will abandon Clinton. They might not like Bernie, but they'd rather be seen as coming in late than not at all.

Nice Work If You Can Get It, Hil.

In the 18 months before launching her second presidential bid, Clinton gave nearly 100 paid speeches at banks, trade associations, charitable groups and private corporations. The appearances netted her $21.7 million - and voters very little information about what she was telling top corporations as she prepared for her 2016 campaign.

Her standard rate for a single speech was nearly a quarter-million.

Clinton's not disclosing the content of her speeches. My guess is that if she did that, she'd have to whomp up another speech. She likely has a set variation of them and once they're public, well, who's gonna pay to listen to a rerun?

Sort of like the old Vaudevillian who had an act that he toured the country, performing in one place or another. One act, one shtick, and he did it for decades. When he decided to retire, he went on the Ed Sullivan Show, did his bit, and that was it.

Still, both Hillary and Bill have raked in a cool $153 million in speechifying since 2001. That's in addition to his pension (currently about $200 grand) and the salaries that Hillary pulled down as a U.S. Senator from 2001 to 2009 and then as a cabinet officer from 2009 to 2013.

Iowa: Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Little?

Clinton effectively lost and Cruz won.

Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the establishment and, a year ago, it was pretty well presumed by the People in the Know that the nomination was effectively hers. Now it isn't. When you're the candidate with the support of your party's establishment and you've raised enough money to buy a couple of new 737s before a single vote is cast in the nomination process, a tie is a loss.

As to Rafael Cruz, it's worth keeping in mind that Frothy won Iowa in 2012 and Huckabee won it in 2008.

The game is afoot!

Oh, almost forgot: O'Malley quit the race. As if anybody gives a shit.

Update: Huckabee also quit, saying "the voters are sick of me." He might have been joking, but it was damned accurate.

Clinton Suports Gun Control, Only Because She Thinks It'll Get Her Votes

Eight years ago, she was trying to persuade votes that she was pro-Second Amendment.

This time around, she's taking the opposite tack.

Clinton is about as pure an electoral politician as there is this time around. She will say and support anything that she thinks will result in a net increase in votes. Clinton would barbecue and eat parrots.

I think her time has passed. But then again, I think that the time of any establishment candidate has passed.

If You're a Democat and You Own Guns

You'd best go down to the polls/caucus sites in the primary season and vote for Bernie Sanders.

Calling Clinton “a true national leader and advocate for the safer nation we all want and deserve,” the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Dan Gross told voters gathered in Ames that Clinton is the only candidate in the 2016 truly committed to gun safety.

Don't sit on your hands, go vote. Show the Bloombergians that their approval is "the kiss of death" in electoral politics.

Republicans who can cross over and vote in the Democratic primary should do that.

"No-Fly Zone" Chowderheads

Almost all of the GOP candidates want to establish a no-fly zone (NFZ) over Syria, except Rafael Cruz, Rand Paul and The Donald. Hillary Clinton also wants to establish one.

They are all idiots.

Syria is, like or not, a sovereign nation. The United States has no legal authority to proclaim a NFZ over another nation. Doing so is an act of war. The Unites States has as much right to declare a NFZ over Syria as the Russians have to declare a NFZ over Ukraine.

The Strategic Lunatics of Ft. Fumble, as Well as the Clinton/Bush Administrations

Based on a series of "table-top" war games, it's becoming clear to the Pentagon that if the Russians go into the Baltic states, there is little NATO can do to stop them.

This situation rests on the shoulders of the Clinton Administration, which entered into talks with the Baltic nations about them joining NATO, and with the Bush Administration, which signed the deal in 2004.

For the casual observer may wonder why it took the running of a series of war games to show that the Baltics are damn near impossible to defend. One might think that all it should have taken was to look at a fucking map.

The planners, faced with the inability to muster enough forces (and to keep them supplied, a topic that is almost never mentioned in the press), are talking about the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

That is insanity on a very great scale.

For the nukes would have to be detonated over Baltic territory. Using them against Russian forces on Russian territory is asking for a larger nuclear response. The Russians aren't going to say: "Oh, they nuked us, but those were tactical nukes." No, Gentle Readers, they are going to take that as an attack on the motherland and if there is anything more sacred in the Russian Oligarchy than money and power, it is the motherland, the Rodina.

The Russians will regard a nuclear weapon being detonated on their soil in the same way that we would.

Need I go on from there?

Let the Country Bottom Out?

A writer at Slate is arguing that maybe what needs to happen is that the GOP wins next year, and then we'll see just how bad things can get.

A Hillary [Clinton] presidency, we believe, would do very little to address wealth inequality, and the situation in the middle and working classes would continue to deteriorate. Republicans would have another villain to turn their base against — maybe even a better villain than Obama, if such a thing is possible — and a means of escaping accountability yet again. Maybe they’d win the next presidential election, and if not, they’d at least stir up enough hatred and backlash to maintain their ironclad grip on Congress and state-wide offices. When 2020 came, they’d gerrymander the hell out of every district in the country to ensure another decade of legislative dominance. It’s status quo all the way, and the status quo doesn’t work.

But! If Hillary lost because progressives abstained from voting, it’s possible that Republican incompetence would be laid bare, and that they’d run the country into the ground over the next four years. If that’s what it takes to show the people that a leftist political revolution is the only viable way forward, it will have been worth watching Hillary bite the political dust. Come 2020, we could be looking at a landscape where progressive politics can finally gather enough momentum to sweep the country, and usher in a new era of FDR-esque reforms.

I understand the argument. But that is playing around with dynamite and hoping that one escapes the blast.

First off, there is a non-zero chance that the GOP's nominee would be Donald Trump. Trump is a fascist. That is not an insult in this case, it's a statement of fact.

Trump has a history of not taking no for an answer. He will use every tool at his disposal to achieve his goal. He will proclaim that as one of the three branches of government, that he has the power to do what he wants. Even moreso than Andrew Jackson, he would likely disregard any court orders or injunctions with some pithy observation of how the Federal cops and the military answer to him, not to the judges.

Some of the other GOPers are only a little less crazy. Rafael T. Cruz is smarter than Trump, but that seems to be his only distinction. His track record (such as it is) in the Senate is one of a man who operates on the principle of "my way or no way". Indeed, his entire adult history, from college to today, is one of being an arrogant bully, convinced of his own superiority and unwilling to entertain any dissenting opinion on any subject. As much as Hillary, Cruz would roast live puppies on a spit and eat them if doing so resulted in a net increase in votes.

However, it is at least probable that, if a President Cruz lost an election or a court case, he'd abide by the outcome. I have so such belief about Trump as president.

Electing Trump president on the belief that things would get so bad that change for the better would happen would be akin to playing around with the inner working of an atomic bomb. Which is never a good idea.

A Reverse Patrick Henry: "Give Me Slavery and Give Me Life!"

One of Hillary Clinton's billionaire supporters who would rather live in chains than die a free man. Maybe he thinks that, with all of his money, he can buy padded manacles.

There are terms for such people throughout modern history: Quislings. Collaborators. Useful idiots. Running dogs. Cowardly snake.

This clown needs to be mocked through the tubes of the Internet.

(H/T)

Hillary Guiliani

So Hillary Clinton justifies taking money from Wall Street because 9/11?

She also obfuscated her source of money by claiming she had hundreds of thousands of small donors. Which is wrapping a lie with a veneer of truth, because most of her money comes from large donors.

Hillary's House Hearing

Unless you've been living under a political rock, you know that today is the day that Hillary Clinton is testifying before the House Witch-Hunt Benghazi Committee.

And you also know that the basic issue has nothing at all to do with the events of Benghazi. The Republicans are out to torpedo Clinton's presidential campaign, as they have admitted, and Clinton's out to not let them do that.

UPDATE: It's apparently quite the clown show, with the Tools of the GOP filling up the Clown Car, yet again.

UPDATE 2: 11 hour hearing. The score: Hilary 11, Tools 0.

Hamlet Bows Out

Vice-president Joe Biden ended months of speculation on Wednesday about whether he would run for president, appearing in a hastily announced White House address to say that his window of opportunity to “mount a winning campaign for the nomination” had closed.

I'm not surprised. The party establishment has anointed Hillary Clinton, provided, of course, that those pesky voters in the early primary states can be made to see it that way.

Which is sort of where we were eight years ago, but some upstart Senator from Illinois then ruined the plans of the party bosses.