See all-white leaders of Hillary's favorite diversity watchdog

Not a single minority in charge at group often cited by Hillary campaign

The source most often cited by the Hillary Clinton campaign in its effort to brand Donald Trump and his followers as purveyors of “Ku Klux Klan values” is a wealthy organization with a $300 million endowment that has no minorities among its 10 executive leaders, who each make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

It was the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s formulation of what it calls the “alt-right” that provided the grist for Clinton’s attack last week on Trump in a speech in Reno, Nevada, in which she smeared a huge swath of the Republican Party base as white supremacists who are “taking a hate movement mainstream.”

SPLC, founded in 1971 by attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr., describes itself as “the premier U.S. non-profit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others.”

Early on, the group made a name for itself fighting discrimination in the South, but today it is primarily a leftist attack machine that, with the increasingly irrelevance of the KKK, has broadened its scope to attack respected organizations and opinion leaders whose legitimate policy differences put them to its right.

SPLC, founded in 1971 by attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr., describes itself as “the premier U.S. non-profit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others.”
Early on, the group made a name for itself fighting discrimination in the South, but today it is primarily a leftist attack machine that, with the increasingly irrelevance of the KKK, has broadened its scope to attack respected organizations and opinion leaders whose legitimate policy differences put them to its right.

The late left-wing writer Alexander Cockburn wrote a scathing column in 2009 describing Dees as the “arch-salesman of hate mongering.’

“Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC,” Cockburn wrote.

“But where are the haters?” he asked. “That hardy old standby, the KKK, despite the SPLC’s predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted troupe, at least 10 percent of them on the government payroll as informants for the FBI.”

Dees also was scorched in a 1996 letter from prominent civil-rights attorney Stephen Bright, a recipient of the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award and the ACLU’s Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty.

“You are a fraud and a conman,” wrote Bright, citing “your failure to respond to the most desperate needs of the poor and powerless despite your millions upon millions, your fund-raising techniques, the fact that you spend so much, accomplish so little, and promote yourself so shamelessly.”

While SPLC broadens the scope of its “racist” and “hate” label, the organization’s senior executive staff a whites-only club, “just as it has been every single year since the company opened for business in 1971,” notes the Watching the Watchdogs blog.

According to SPLC’s tax return for the fiscal year ending Oct. 31, 2015, 10 senior execs made more than $150,000, with Dees leading the way with $382,692 and President/CEO Richard Cohen making $380,418.

“With nearly 300 employees, more than $54,000,000 in revenues for each of the past two years, and more than $302,000,000 in cash-on-hand, what possible excuse can Messers Dees, Levin and Cohen make for keeping minorities out of the company’s Executive Suite for FORTY-FIVE consecutive years running?” the blog asked.

More criticism from the left

The well-known liberal magazine Harper’s also took SPLC to task.

Author Ken Silverstein, head of the magazine’s Washington bureau, noted in a 2000 story that SPLC’s most beloved nemesis, the Ku Klux Klan, had “shrunk from 4 million members in the 1920s to an estimated 2,000 today.”

Silverstein showed how SPLC nevertheless continued to ply its naïve donor base with hair-raising tales of rightwing hate groups on the march through America’s highways and byways.
A few quotes from the Harper’s exposé “The Church of Morris Dees”:

• Horrifying as such incidents are, hate groups commit almost no violence. More than 95 percent of all “hate crimes,” including most of the incidents SPLC letters cite (bombings, church burnings, school shootings), are perpetrated by “lone wolves.” Even Timothy McVeigh, subject of one of the most extensive investigations in the FBI’s history – and one of the most extensive direct-mail campaigns in the SPLC’s – was never credibly linked to any militia organization.
•  The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors, estimating that the SPLC could operate for 4.6 years without making another tax-exempt nickel from its investments or raising another tax-deductible cent from well-meaning “people like you.”
• In 1986, the Center’s entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees’s refusal to address issues-such as homelessness, voter registration, and affirmative action – that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities, if far less marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK. Another lawyer, Gloria Browne, who resigned a few years later, told reporters that the Center’s programs were calculated to cash in on “black pain and white guilt.”
• In the early 1960s, Dees sat on the sidelines honing his direct-marketing skills and practicing law while the civil rights movement engulfed the South. “Morris and I … shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,” recalls Dees’s business partner, a lawyer named Millard Fuller. “We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich.”

‘Smearing billions of Christians and Jews worldwide’

Former Boston Herald writer Don Feder wrote in 2007 that what makes SPLC “particularly odious is its habit of taking legitimate conservatives and jumbling them with genuine hate groups (the Klan, Aryan Nation, skinheads, etc.), to make it appear that there’s a logical relationship between, say, opposing affirmative action and lynching, or demands for an end to government services for illegal aliens and attacks on dark-skinned immigrants.”

Matt Barber, then vice president of Liberty Counsel Action, said after a 2011 protest at SPLC headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama, that SPLC “has moved from monitoring actual hate groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis to slandering mainstream Christian organizations with that very same ‘hate group’ label.”

Barber was part of a coalition of black pastors and pro-family organizations holding the protest.

“By extension, the SPLC is smearing billions of Christians and Jews worldwide as ‘haters,’ simply because they embrace the traditional Judeo-Christian sexual ethic,” he said.

Among SPLC’s targets has been former GOP presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson, who was labeled a hater because he defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

From the SPLC website: “Ben Carson rapidly ascended as a far-right political star after publicly scolding President Obama, whom he sat a few feet away from, at a National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. Carson’s reproach of Obama for his health care and tax policies went viral, unleashing a flood of adulation from right-wing media and hate groups.”

Labeling Carson “anti-gay,” SPLC quoted the famed neurosurgeon’s views on marriage: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality – it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition.”

In response to being branded an extremist by SPLC, Carson issued a warning.

“When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong,” he said. “It is important for us to once again advocate true tolerance.

“That means being respectful of those with whom we disagree and allowing people to live according to their values without harassment. It is nothing but projectionism when some groups label those who disagree with them as haters.”

Feder, in his column, noted that in a 2006 speech at Arkansas’ Fayetteville State University, SPLC’s founding president, Julian Bond, charged that the Republican Party’s “idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika (sic) flying side by side.”

The American Enterprise Institute, without explanation, Feder said, was described by SPLC as part of “an array of right-wing foundations and think tanks [that] support efforts to make bigoted or discredited ideas respectable.”

Last year, SPLC branded the World Congress of Families – a respected international Christian coalition that opposes same-sex marriage, pornography and abortion – as an “anti-LGBT hate group.”

SPLC also blasted the Drudge Report for covering “black crime,” charging the highly influential Internet news aggregator had been “rife with what the online publisher calls ‘scary black people’ stories.”

Ben Shapiro, then a Breitbart News editor, was accused on SPLC’s “Hatewatch” pages of quoting FBI “hate crime statistics” to show there are about the “same number of attacks on Jews in this country as there are homosexuals.”

In October 2015, SPLC tried to interfere in the running of the Values Voter Summit, which annually features leading conservative voices gathered to discuss issues of faith and public policy.

SPLC wrote letters to GOP presidential candidates urging them not speak at the conference, because the organizers have “an extensive record of vilifying gays and lesbians with falsehoods – portraying them as sick, evil, incestuous, violent, perverted and a danger to the nation.”

The organizations describe their position differently, explaining they are simply adhering to biblical standards regarding sexual behavior.

Nothing about the imams?

Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer, in a 2014 column for Frontpage Magazine, called SPLC’s hate groups list “a cudgel, a tool for the use of leftist enemies of the freedom of speech.”

He noted that when he is invited to speak, often “leftists and Islamic supremacists avid to shut down honest discussion of jihad terror and Islamic supremacism contact the event organizers, tell them that the SPLC classifies us as ‘hate group leaders,’ and all too often, ignorant or cowardly officials, unaware of or indifferent to how they’re being played and anxious to avoid “controversy,” cancel the event.”

“It works like a charm, in just the way it was intended to work.”

In its smearing of groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition and Young Americans for Freedom, Spencer wrote, what’s “missing is any mention of a Saudi-funded mosque, a rabid imam preaching jihad or a Muslim group with ties to terrorism.”

“Imams telling the faithful that Jews are “the descendants of apes and pigs,” community leaders calling for holy war against the infidel, American Muslim groups shouting hooray for Hamas –all urban legends, as far as the Southern Poverty Law Center is concerned.”

Spencer noted groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, Abu Sayyaf and the Algerian Armed Resistance are known to operate in the United States.

“Which is a greater threat to America – to the physical safety of you and your loved ones? 1. An octogenarian Klansman with tobacco juice dribbling down his chin, 2. A balding Hitler-wannabe who can barely fit his Sam Browne belt over his paunch or 3. A foreign-funded member of Martyrs’ Mosque plotting the next 9/11?

“But with its politically correct blinders firmly in place, the Southern Poverty Law Center sees no hatred in Jihad Nation, or on the left generally.”

Death threats

As WND reported, SPLC has demanded Internet giants Amazon and PayPal blacklist bloggers and websites that don’t fall in line with its leftist agenda.

Headlined “Financing Hate” in its Intelligence Report publication, SPLC listed 91 “hate groups” ranging from those clearly on the fringe to mainstream bloggers and websites such as Catholic Family News, Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, WND and the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC.

Noting that some of the organizations it opposes utilize Amazon, PayPal and other retail services to sell products, SPLC said it contacted Amazon in September 2013 about the participation of “hate groups” and “hate sites” in Amazon affiliate programs that earn commissions for the groups.

Amazon said it would assign “appropriate teams to investigate, review applicable policies, and take appropriate action.”

But SPLC lamented that some of its targets “were still earning commissions through Amazon.”

A leader of one of the targeted organizations, William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, or ALIPAC, wrote an open letter to SPLC, asserting the “demonstrably false” claims have led to death threats.

Gheen’s organization opposes illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal immigrants in the United States.

“This letter is to inform you that we have Internet posts and emails containing threats and death threats against my life and the lives of my family members in reaction to your false claims that we are a hate group,” he said.

“The threats we have received specifically cite SPLC claims that suggest we are somehow motivated by racism and advocating violence against minorities, both of which are demonstrably false.”

Gheen said SPLC knows full well that ALIPAC is “racially inclusive … and that a substantial percentage of our supporters are minorities.”

Because of their biblically based opposition to homosexuality, SPLC also lists the American Family Association and the Family Research Council in the same category as groups such as Aryan Nations.

Judson Phillips, whose Tea Party Nation also was listed, said SPLC is “the ultimate left-wing hate group. This is a group that is somewhere to the left of Karl Marx, and they hate real Americans.”

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah, who has been personally targeted by SPLC, along with the news site he founded, said SPLC “is hardly a credible watchdog on so-called ‘hate groups.’”

“In fact, it is a hate group. But, sadly, with its budget of hundreds of millions of dollars and its cozy relationship with government and the media elite, it has more power and influence than most Americans realize. Its hateful finger-pointing at companies and organizations has actually resulted in real acts of violence, as is the case of the Family Research Council shooting attack. I actually consider it a badge of honor to be targeted by the SPLC. But their attacks do come at a price, because they actually do place real targets on the backs of their enemies.”

Domestic terror

Farah was referring to the August 2012 attack on FRC headquarters in Washington by Floyd Lee Corkins II, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for domestic terrorism after informing the FBI that he selected FRC because it was listed as a “hate group” by SPLC.

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, the executive vice president of FRC, wrote in a commentary, “Nothing speaks to the SPLC’s inhumanity as its behavior after the shooting at FRC.”

Boykin asked: “How would you react if you had created a map that was used by a terrorist to attempt to kill dozens of people? Wouldn’t decent people conclude instantly or quickly or maybe even slowly that you were fortunate to have escaped being forever linked to mass murder? Wouldn’t you change course?

“Of course, that is what decent people would do, but decent people do not run the SPLC,” he said.

“Instead, the SPLC is run by the sort of political ideologues who can dissociate their actions from the humanity of the people they harm. There has been no change to the Hate Map, nor will there be. There was never any concern expressed directly to Leo Johnson after the shooting, nor will there be. They apparently see the Leo Johnsons of the world as collateral damage on an inexorable march to a better world freed from religion.

When SPLC applied its hate label to the non-profit legal group Liberty Counsel, LC Chairman Mat Staver fought back, arguing that under the standard SPLC uses to call groups “hate” organizations and individuals “haters,” the Catholic Church would qualify, along with virtually every major Christian group in the world.

SPLC’s “hate” label also would have applied to President Obama and Hillary Clinton before they “evolved” to become ardent supporters of same-sex marriage, Staver said.

God bless,

JohnnyD

Clinton Offenses Challenge Media Bias

From: USA Gov Policy

Journalists are, of course, human, and all humans have their own points of view, and their own biases. But there are times when professional reporters and media executives need to at least partially put aside their personal support and provide some semblance of fairness and objectivity in their reporting. For many, that is becoming an extraordinary challenge in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Most of the media tilts heavily Democrat . That’s not an opinion or allegation; it is an established fact. Many reporters have not been shy or subtle about their leanings.  To cite just one example, in a nationally televised 2012 presidential campaign debate, moderator Candy Crowley  acted more as a partisan for President Obama than an impartial referee. The contributions of major media companies tilt heavily Democrat.

The candidacy of Hillary Clinton poses a unique and extreme challenge. Never before has a presidential candidate, not even Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, had such massive and solid evidence of both major personal incompetence and deeply significant personal wrongdoing on several levels than Ms. Clinton. Her part in matters such as the devastating “reset” with Russia, the attack in Benghazi, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq that led to the empowerment of ISIS are key examples.

Those dire failures are accompanied by equally worrisome ethical violations. Perhaps the most extreme example comes from the devastating evidence that Ms. Clinton personally profited from the massive sale  of uranium—the basic ingredient in nuclear weapons—to the Russians, despite overt and intense evidence of Moscow’s militarization and aggression.  That incident alone would have instantly disqualified any other individual who sought the presidency.

Even Bernie Sanders, who, despite his competition for the Democrat nod, soft-pedaled his criticism of Clinton, stated  “Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships?…Yeah, I do have a problem with that.”

But that major violation was eventually followed by revelations that, while serving as Secretary of State, Ms. Clinton was, to put it as mildly as possible, negligent in the handling of classified information, in a manner that was overtly against regulations and law. Indeed, other individuals who committed offenses of this nature that represented only a fraction of the scale committed by Clinton were indeed punished and drummed out of government positions.

Ms. Clinton, however, not only avoided liability, but did so in a manner that was, in of itself, illegal.  Husband Bill Clinton inappropriately met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch shortly before the decision not to indict was made public. This was followed by Ms. Clinton’s remark that she would consider retaining Ms. Lynch as Attorney General should she win the White House.  The fix was in, and no penalty was assessed.

Ms. Clinton’s misdeeds were not restricted to her role as secretary of state. They also took place in her campaign for the nomination. Much of this category in the long list of Clinton’s ethical violations directly ties into her incestuous relationship with a media that increasingly appears to be less involved in the business of journalism than it is in being a shill for her campaign, and the fiduciary and possibly criminal misdeeds of the Democrat National Committee in heavily tilting the primary competition in Ms. Clinton’s favor.

WikiLeaks provides numerous examples.  Among the most salient, as outlined by The Gateway Pundit :

• DNC Hillary supporters infiltrated  Sanders campaign.
• DNC discussed  their relationship with NBC/MSNBC/CNN and how to get better treatment.
• Super PAC paid young voters to push back online Sanders supporters.
• Offering to send interns out to fake  a protest against the RNC.
• Bringing up Sanders religion to scare the southern voters.
• Possible money laundering by moving money back and forth to bypass legal limits.
• Politico writer sending his stories to the DNC before he sends them to his editor.
• DNC feeding CNN the questions they want to be asked in interviews.
• Creating a fake job ad for a Trump business to paint him as a sexist.
• Hillary for America Raised $26.4 Million in April, Began May with More than $30 MillionCash on Hand.
• Democrats using interns to organize fake “protests.”

There are clear abuses of law, regulation, ethics and decency, some of which—the uranium sale to Russia and the negligent handling of classified material—clearly led to substantial harm to U.S. interests. Nevertheless, expect most of the media to downplay these deadly offenses in their inappropriate partisan relations with the Clintons.


God bless,
JohnnyD

From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer

More than half of the people outside the government with whom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met were also donors to the Clinton Foundation.

From: The Atlantic

by -David A. Graham - Aug 23, 2016

Here’s the case against the Clinton Foundation, in a nutshell: If Bill and Chelsea Clinton are leading a powerful private philanthropy while Hillary Clinton holds a high-ranking government post, it is guaranteed to create at least the appearance of donations to the foundation in return for access to the government.

Conscious of this danger, the Obama administration extracted an agreement from the foundation to disclose its donors, as a prerequisite for Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. That disclosure does not seem to have prevented potential conflicts of interest—but it does undergird two important stories Tuesday.

The Washington Post, using emails revealed as part of a lawsuit by the conservative accountability group Judicial Watch, traces the paths from foundation donors to State Department supplicants. Often, the requests seem to have come through Doug Band, a foundation official and close aide to Bill Clinton, and arrived with Huma Abedin, a close aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department. (At the end of her time at the State Department, Abedin received a special classification allowing her to also work for Teneo, Band’s consultancy.)

The requests highlighted by the Post run the gamut. Bono, a frequent Clinton Foundation presence, wanted help streaming U2 concerts to the International Space Station. (Neither Abedin nor Band any ideas.) A Los Angeles sports executive who gave $5 to $10 million to the foundation sought help getting a visa for a British soccer player with a criminal record. (“Makes me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask,” Abedin wrote to Band. “then dont,” he replied.) An activist who gave between $100,00 and $250,000 wanted to set up a meeting between Clinton and an executive at Peabody Coal. “Huma, I need your help now to intervene please,” she wrote. “We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months. This is, by the way, my first request.”

Others of those involved seem unusual. The crown prince of Bahrain, an American ally in the gulf, got a meeting, though he requested it both through official channels and through the Clinton Foundation side channel. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace laureate whose Grameen Bank gave six figures, met with Clinton to discuss his persecution by the Bangladeshi government.

In total, the Associated Press calculates:

More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money—either personally or through companies or groups—to the Clinton Foundation…. At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press.

As questions about the Clinton Foundation mount, the organization announced last week that it would not accept foreign or corporate donations if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. (On Monday, Donald Trump called for a special prosecutor to look into the foundation.) But these stories show why that measure probably should have been taken before Clinton became secretary of state, and why it’s insufficient if she’s president.

Even if every one of the meetings that Secretary Clinton had with foundation donors was a meeting she would have had anyway, the impression that one can pay to play means that there’s no tidy way to wall the two off. If the Clinton Foundation hadn’t existed and been taking these donations, no one would look askance at Secretary Clinton meeting with many of the principals. Barring corporate and foreign donors, while important, seems incomplete if Clinton is president, in charge of not only foreign but domestic policy. Does anyone believe wealthy executives can’t figure out how to give a personal donation and then try to leverage that for corporate aid? This is why there’s an increasing drumbeat for the Clintons to shut down the foundation entirely, or perhaps to mothball it. Any future findings that suggest pay-for-access will only magnify those calls—and hurt Clinton politically.

And not nearly all of Clinton’s State Department emails have been made public. On Monday, the Post reported that during the course of its recent investigation, the FBI found nearly 15,000 new and unreleased documents that Clinton did not turn over to the State Department. It’s not yet clear what’s in those emails, like how many are personal and how any are work-related and must be made public. In a court hearing on Monday, a federal judge deemed the State Department’s timeline for sorting them and determining that too slow, and demanded a faster plan.

There’s been a fresh development in the controversies covered here almost daily for the last week. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Clinton would have to testify in writing about her email system (though in a victory for her she will not be deposed in person). Also last week, the FBI handed over documents from its investigation of the email system to Congress, as Republican members tried to cajole the Justice Department into charging Clinton with perjury. The week before that, another set of emails revealed by Judicial Watch showed Band and Abedin communicating about business that crossed the Clinton Foundation-State barrier.

The emails represent something of a classic Clinton scandal. Although the House investigation turned up no evidence of wrongdoing on her part with respect to the attacks themselves, it was durimg that inquiry that her private email use became public. This is a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlighjt since Bill Clinton's first run for office, in 1974. Something that appears potentially scandolous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into it reveals different questionable behavior. The canonical case is Whitewater, a failed real estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. Although no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to President Clinton's impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

With Hillary Clinton leading the field for the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to the State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—have fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

The Clintons’ Private Email Server

What? During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal. 

When? 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; top aides including Huma Abedin

How serious is it? Very serious. A May report from the State Department inspector general is harshly critical of Clinton’s email approach, but Loretta Lynch announced on July 6 that the Justice Department would not pursue criminal charges, removing the threat of an indictment that could be fatal to her campaign. But the scandal will remain a millstone around her neck forever. Comey’s damning comments about her conduct—“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”—will reverberate throughout the campaign. Also unresolved is the question of whether Clinton’s server was hacked. Comey said the FBI did not find any proof, but he also said that “we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence.” GOP members of Congress are questioning the FBI’s decision, and have tried to convince the Justice Department to charge Clinton with perjury for answers she gave them in October 2015.

Clinton’s State Department Emails

What? Setting aside the question of the Clintons’ private email server, what’s actually in the emails that Clinton did turn over to State? While some of the emails related to Benghazi have been released, there are plenty of others covered by public-records laws that are still in the process of being vetted for release.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Serious, but not as serious as it was. While political operatives hoped for embarrassing statements in the emails—and there were some cringeworthy moments of sucking up and some eye-rolly emails from contacts like Sidney Blumenthal—they were, for the most part, boring. More damaging is the fact that 110 emails included classified information at the time they were sent or received, even though Clinton had insisted she did not send or receive anything classified. Meanwhile, some emails remain to be seen. The State Department, under court order, is slowly releasing the emails she turned over, but there are other emails that she didn’t turn over, which have surfaced through court battles. In August, the FBI reported that it had found some 15,000 documents during the course of its investigation that Clinton did not turn over to the State Department. State is now negotiating how and when to release those materials.

Benghazi

What? On September 11, 2012, attackers overran a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton failed to adequately protect U.S. installations or that she attempted to spin the attacks as spontaneous when she knew they were planned terrorist operations. She testifies for the first time on October 22. 

When? September 11, 2012-present

How serious is it? With the June 28 release of the House committee investigating Benghazi, this issue is receding. That report criticized security preparations at the American facility in Benghazi as well as stations elsewhere, but it produced no smoking guns or new accusations about things Clinton could have done the night of the attacks. Although some conservatives will likely continue to assail her, the biggest damage is likely to be iterative—the highly damaging private-email story was revealed during the course of the House inquiry.

Conflicts of Interest in Foggy Bottom

What? Before becoming Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills worked for Clinton on an unpaid basis for four months while also working for New York University, in which capacity she negotiated on the school’s behalf with the government of Abu Dhabi, where it was building a campus. In June 2012, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin’s status at State changed to “special government employee,” allowing her to also work for Teneo, a consulting firm run by Bill Clinton’s former right-hand man. She also earned money from the Clinton Foundation and was paid directly by Hillary Clinton. In a separate case, ABC News reports that a top Clinton Foundation donor named Rajiv Fernando was placed on State’s International Security Advisory Board. Fernando appeared significantly less qualified than many of his colleagues, and was appointed at the behest of the secretary’s office. Internal emails show that State staff first sought to cover for Clinton, and then Fernando resigned two days after ABC’s inquiries. Judicial Watch released documents that show Doug Band, a Foundation official, trying to put a donor in touch with a State Department expert on Lebanon and to get someone a job at Foggy Bottom.

Who? Both Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin are among Clinton’s longest-serving and closest aides. Abedin remains involved in her campaign (and she’s also married to Anthony Weiner).

When? January 2009-February 2013

How serious is it? This is arcane stuff, to be sure. There are questions about conflict of interest—such as whether Teneo clients might have benefited from special treatment by the State Department while Abedin worked for both. To a great extent, this is just an extension of the tangle of conflicts presented by the Clinton Foundation and the many overlapping roles of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Sidney Blumenthal

What? A former journalist, Blumenthal was a top aide in the second term of the Bill Clinton administration and helped on messaging during the bad old days. He served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and when she took over the State Department, she sought to hire Blumenthal. Obama aides, apparently still smarting over his role in attacks on candidate Obama, refused the request, so Clinton just sought out his counsel informally. At the same time, Blumenthal was drawing a check from the Clinton Foundation.

When? 2009-2013

How serious is it? Only mildly. Some of the damage is already done. Blumenthal was apparently the source of the idea that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, a notion that proved incorrect and provided a political bludgeon against Clinton and Obama. He also advised the secretary on a wide range of other issues, from Northern Ireland to China, and passed along analysis from his son Max, a staunch critic of the Israeli government (and conservative bête noire). But emails released so far show even Clinton’s top foreign-policy guru, Jake Sullivan, rejecting Blumenthal’s analysis, raising questions about her judgment in trusting him. 

The Speeches

What? Since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, both Clintons have made millions of dollars for giving speeches.

When? 2001-present

Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Chelsea Clinton

How serious is it? Intermittently dangerous. It has a tendency to flare up, then die down. Senator Bernie Sanders made it a useful attack against her in early 2016, suggesting that by speaking to banks like Goldman Sachs, she was compromised. There have been calls for Clinton to release the transcripts of her speeches, which she was declined to do, saying if every other candidate does, she will too. For the Clintons, who left the White House up to their ears in legal debt, lucrative speeches—mostly by the former president—proved to be an effective way of rebuilding wealth. They have also been an effective magnet for prying questions. Where did Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton speak? How did they decide how much to charge? What did they say? How did they decide which speeches would be given on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, with fees going to the charity, and which would be treated as personal income? Are there cases of conflicts of interest or quid pro quos—for example, speaking gigs for Bill Clinton on behalf of clients who had business before the State Department?

The Clinton Foundation

What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in 1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for … well, everything. With projects ranging from public health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

When? 1997-present

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.

How serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose. The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest: How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches? How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? Did the foundation steer money improperly to for-profit companies owned by friends? The second, connected question is about disclosure. When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it harder to answer those questions.

The Bad Old Days

What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Travelgate. Vince Foster’s suicide. Juanita Broaddrick. 

When? 1975-2001

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters

How serious is it? The conventional wisdom is that they’re not terribly dangerous. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But the January 2016 resurfacing of Juanita Broaddrick’s rape allegations offers a test case to see whether the conventional wisdom is truly wise—or just conventional. On May 23, Donald Trump released a video prominently highlighting Broaddrick’s accusation.

God bless,

JohnnyD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Wouldn’t Take Driving Advice From People Who Don’t Own Cars, Would You?

From: Bearing Arms

by Bob Owens - August 26, 2016


Imagine if you will meeting an individual with incredibly strong negative feelings about a large group of people.

This individual has a laundry list of complaints about the group. You immediately notice that the complaints seem to be as thin as onion-skin and just as transparent.

Curious, you start asking the individual questions about his experience with that group.

You quickly discover that the individual’s first-hand experience with that targeted group is virtually non-existent. He’s seen them at a distance, but once he identifies someone as belonging to that group, he curses them, and runs away. He’s found solace in an insular clique of like-minded souls, and they likewise have next to no experience of their own with the group they collectively hate so much.

You point out that you have considerable experience with that targeted group, and point out that their stereotypes are both shallow and contrary to actual documented facts that are easily proven. The individual and his clique brands you as a “nut” and asserts that your ability to understand and find common ground with the other group is due to some shared sexual perversity, not actual cultural knowledge, education, and shared experience .

Welcome my world as a firearms news journalist who frequently finds himself in debates with supporters of gun control.

Let me be very clear in that I don’t hold myself to be a gun “expert.” I know far too many actual experts to consider myself to be one. I do however, have some relevant education and experience in my lifetime.

I’ve been through simulators both day and night, have participated in force-on-force scenarios with Simunitions, and even participated in mock assaults on “enemy” positions with live ammunition. I’ve also been a big game hunter for more than 20 years, and a concealed carrier for a number of years. I’ve shot with the best shooters in the world (Julie Golob, Jerry & Kay Miculek, Rob Leatham, Dianna and Ryan Muller, SWAT team members and commanders, Navy SEALs, MARSOC Marines, Army Special Forces).

I also have solid industry contacts with experts, in case I need to ask and answer specific questions.
What I haven’t been able to find is a similar level of expertise and training among those who support gun control.

Not. One. Soul.

The closest I’ve been able to find to a group with some level of training is a small subset of the gun control group Americans for Responsible Solutions calling themselves the “Veterans Coalition for Common Sense” that appears to be made up of a literal handful of military officers.

Other that this one subgroup of six named men (out of 320 million Americans), the most prevalent supporters of gun control seem to have no discernable firearms training or experience at all.

Does it strike anyone else as odd?

Michael Bloomberg’s various gun control projects, including Everytown, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Moms Demand Action, and The Trace, don’t have a single soul in a position of responsibility that appears to have any discernable level of firearms training. The same holds true for the Coalition the Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, the Law Center to Stop Gun Violence, the Violence Police Center, and other gun control groups. This widespread ignorance also applies to progressive think tanks, mainstream media outlets, and left-wing politicians.

Like the individual in our hypothetical example, the leaders and followers in these groups have very strong opinions driven by biases, ignorance, and bigotry, but it is very difficult to find individuals in these organizations who have taken even basic gun safety classes, much less developed any proficiency or first-hand experience.

People who are well-trained and experienced with firearms rarely support gun control.

People who have no experience at all, or who have a singular limited experience with armed criminals, form the backbone of the gun control movement.

I simply want to know why American citizens should listen to people who opine on a subject they aren’t educated enough to understand, and who lack the relevant training and experiences to see beyond their deep-seated and irrational bigotry.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Hillary’s HOPING To God You DON’T SEE This Video

From: Clash Daily - August 25, 2016


Quick, before it’s banned from the internet! Make sure every voter in AMERICA sees this NOW!

In 2010, Hillary recalls fondly her ‘friend and mentor’ Sen. Robert C. Byrd, ‘true American original, a man of surpassing eloquence and nobility’. She will remember him for ‘many things’… but apparently not for his KKK affiliation.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd was not just a Klansman in West Virgninia, he was a recruiter, brining in 150 new members. 

While in Congress, Sen. Byrd famously filibustered the Senate for 14 hours on the shameful… 1964 Civil Rights Act.

But wait, there’s more!

In a letter written in 1945, Byrd complained about the integration of blacks into the military:
“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

Oh, that Senator Byrd! Just look at that legacy…

Long after Byrd claimed to disavow the KKK, he caused controversy and had to apologize for using the phrase “white niggers” in an interview. “There are white niggers,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time, if you want to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I’d just as soon quit talking about it so much.”

Clinton’s embrace of Byrd during her time as a U.S. Senator — both literally and figuratively — has been a prominent meme among Donald Trump’s supporters at the Reddit community r/The_Donald. Members have creatively found ways to present a picture that shows Byrd’s Senate portrait photoshopped on an image of a man in Klan regalia — placed side by side with a 2004 AP photo of Byrd drawing in Clinton for a kiss. Read more: Breitbart

Watch Hillary’s ‘touching’ tribute to Sen. Byrd here:



Hillary’s camp has put out a new attack ad that shows White Supremecists supporting Trump. 

Oddly, it doesn’t have one image where Trump is being kissed by one, let alone locked in a creepy embrace:

 

Must’ve been an oversight.

God bless,

JohnnyD