Let’s talk Clinton, Hillary that is. She was supposed to be The Candidate, the Unstoppable One, but nobody told Barack Obama and he spoke so much more eloquently and was smooth as a well-aged single malt scotch. He glistened and his words were lilt with a little jazz and simply reminded all of other great communicators, except Obama had magic that excited the youth, a group not normally excited by Presidential politics and thus they are a game changer. So the queen was put off for yet another eight years and she has reached the now or never point. Let’s face the truth, Hillary is well passed her sell-by date and only Bernie was more stale on the shelf, except he was so stale that it actually rang as new to those young idealists and he could have won had the decision already been made, Hillary or Bust. So the fix has been revealed, nobody was shocked, and nobody other than some still feeling the Bern even after the Bern, Bernie that is, had sold his soul and backed Hillary for a few slots on the Platform Committee which made the news as Cornel West, James Zogby, and Rep. Keith Ellison who demanded that the BDS and pro-Palestinian anti-Israel planks be part of the Democrat Platform but the fix was in and they had none of that. There was not going to be a repeat of voting down the mention of the Divine and recognizing Israel as an ally this time around as in 2012. The Convention was planned right down to the last snap shot and television camera angle, well, all except the one below which got by the planners somehow, or maybe it was photo-shopped (see image below). Even the demonstrations outside the convention were tame compared to what some expected. So, yes, they burned an Israeli flag and a Palestinian flag was presumably held up front and center and was caught by cameras (see image below). And then there was the demonstrations outside by largely Bernie Sanders supporters some of which chose to burn an Israeli flag while chanting “Intifada, Intifada” which is another way of chanting Murder Jews Murder Jews but even this was not condemned as far as we were able to confirm by anybody from the Democrat Party inside (see video below).
Hillary Liar Shot From Convention
Palestinian Flag Waved Democrat Convention Floor
Enough though about the fixed, or apparently fixed primary as both parties had their preferred candidate list and one succeeded in procuring their candidate the nomination and the other failed miserably by, as some have claimed, nominating the biggest buffoon and clown from a field of seventeen, but enough about the Republicans as they were talked over yesterday. Back to the former First Lady from Arkansas, former Senator from New York, and former Secretary of State also from New York and now the Democrat Party candidate for President of the United States. So far her campaign has been seamless and smooth as long as one ignores the little glitch where an aged politician independent not even a Democrat but a self-proclaimed socialist almost pulled the rug from beneath the anointed one to once again spoil her coronation. But with that almost put behind her and soon to be forgotten, bigger challenges of the actual race for the White House now begins in earnest. The polls have been showing Hillary Clinton receiving a bounce from her convention while Trump’s polling has flattened as his bounce wore off and the Democrat Convention took all the air time out from under him. Hillary Clinton has what many are calling an unending cash flow to do any campaigning she desires and in as big and wide of markets as her campaign deems necessary. There are some who have claimed that Hillary Clinton could buy so much air time between now and the elections that the studios might have little if any prime time spots available should Trump ever decide to try and purchase ad time for his spots. There probably are rules concerning amounts of time which one candidate is permitted to take before scheduling begins to appear as solid wall to wall advertising for a single candidate for President with the other candidate basically out in the cold, which would be an interesting situation for research. There may be no limitations on advertising or requirements to make equal time available to the other candidates. The law may simply be the time must be available and for the candidates and first one buying gets the prime times and then the breaks. As near as we were able to research there are few limitations which would prevent one candidate from purchasing significantly greater broadcast time even to the point of nudging the other candidates from purchasing time if they were to put up the predominant amount of advertising time available though with the number of networks and with cable and satellite broadcasts that would be a very difficult and likely impossibility any longer. Still, one candidate could still purchase such a majority of the time that their advertisements would far outnumber the other candidates and that would apparently just be too bad. So, one has to wonder exactly how much television advertising time Hillary and associated interests will be able to purchase before anyone else gets started in thinking of their broadcast dollars and how best to use them. Even with the unusual manner and amounts of funds collected by the Clintons while she was Secretary of State which they knew they could use to finance a Presidential campaign, it is difficult to churn up any pity for Donald Trump on this front as, in his own words, he is rich, don’t you know.
The problem with trying to judge Hillary Clinton on many of what are often displayed as character faults is that it is next to impossible to honestly claim the high moral ground as how does one place themselves even theoretically in her place to claim they would have handled the position any more honorably. It is easy to claim that her lying to the families of those who died in Benghazi when we were not working for a President who was pushing hard to win reelection and who had demanded that nothing be permitted to counter the claims of ending terrorism in Libya and much of the world just a few weeks before that very election, a crucial point before the election bearing down on everybody pressing all the President’s people to follow the given script. How can any of us claim we know for certain that we would have done the noble and correct thing and turn against the orders of the President who had appointed us. The same is true in many of the instances where people have claimed that either or both of the Clintons, remember that they are a two for one deal, you vote for one and get both when they win, had acted immorally or even illegally. People get kind of weird when you start talking billions and possibly trillions of dollars sitting right there for the taking if only you commit this one little favor, tell this simple ‘white lie’ or even just look away for a moment when everything is on the line. Would we really act any differently knowing that if we can just hold everything together for a few more months, weeks, whatever and we could very well get ourselves a return trip all expenses paid return to the White House, the biggest prize we have always aspired to hold. Can any of us even begin to understand the temptations? We ran a unicorn’s dream of a campaign for simply a Congressional seat in the House of Representatives and you like to believe you ran a perfectly honorable campaign but even when in the thick of the race without a prayer’s chance of winning you still tell yourself that you could be the real Mr. Smith Goes to Washington if only the right opportunity presents itself and you get enough traction that all the voters get to hear you and really get to decide on some fair manner what you stand for. You know in the back of your mind that your fifty thousand dollar campaign cannot honestly compete against two candidates spending around five million dollars each on their campaign but when an interviewer asks you if you really and honestly think you have any hope of winning, you bet the answer is, “Yes, all I need is a fair chance and a moment of clearly stating my principles.” You know that is a dream and a step beyond reality, but you tell yourself that the possibility is out there, and maybe there really are such miracles. We look at the elections of 2010 and realize our shot was only a decade out of step with the right conditions and who knows, maybe our campaign was the flapping of the right butterfly’s wings that brought on the tsunami politically a decade later as in that election there were people rising from obscurity to win seats in the House of Representatives and even the Senate. But when being outspent two-hundred-times-over you honestly cannot hope but against hope and reality that you can come from nowhere and make it on the big stage. We should be honored that we even made it onto the ballot, and we are now, but then we hoped to dream the big dream, even if only for that moment. So, trust us when we claim that it starts with that little lie to yourself that you are the anointed one who will start the revolution and bring integrity into politics and afterwards realize that politics makes anything possible even if only in your own mind. The Clintons just happen to operate in a different world than the one we live in and they do dream and believe they will make it happen, and who knows, maybe they will be the first husband and wife team to have both spouses serve as President and maybe even Chelsea with make it a family trifecta some day. They do dream big and who knows how we ourselves would act in similar circumstances.
The Benghazi affair is but one of the misdeeds being leveled against Hillary and the Clintons. Then there are the e-mails where she used an unapproved server and mail system from which to operate her time as Secretary of State. There are claims that by doing so she endangered the United States and allowed sensitive, top secret information to be potentially leaked to America’s enemies. There may be validity to this charge but it also remains to be revealed if the servers utilized by the Clintons were any more or less secure than the servers at the State Department. The first admission that need be made is that there is no such thing as a secured computer or especially secured system. Hillary’s e-mails may have been more easily protected on her private server than they would have been if she had used the State Department servers and secured devices. Think Edward Snowden and the NSA files and other data he procured while in government service and how he is now safely ensconced in Russia and playing with American secured information and we must assume that he gave the Chinese and the Russians a copy of every bit of information he has. Were any of the government servers safe from his prying little keyboard? Obviously, they weren’t, not one iota. Further, many former Secretaries of State had also used their own private servers for their e-mails and their use of such was never called into doubt over their security, so why is Hillary Clinton’s use of the same type of systems becoming such a serious breach of protocols? Could it be because she is a serious candidate for the Presidency and this is just more political opportunism? Again, this is a difficult judgement call and many will make the call for or against the Clintons directly parallel to their political leanings. Can any of us honestly claim to be completely impartial when things concern the Clintons; the most powerful and strongly liked and hated couple on the planet? Are we really able to be that fair and just judge that even many of the Judges from Biblical times failed at being, can we claim to be any better than these? We are all playing politics to some degree.
Finally we get to the one item where we just might be capable of being that honorable judge, let’s get to the money collected by the Clinton Foundation whilst Hillary was Secretary of State and is now potentially the next President of the United States. Can we honestly hold to claim there is the stench of impropriety stemming from many of the donations which coincided with favorable decisions made by the State Department as well as others appearing right before, during or immediately after one or both Clintons visited certain Middle East oil sheikdoms? Obviously there is the smell wafting on the air that there is a good deal of smoke, but is there actual fire at the center of all the smoke? We will have to again admit that our politics plays a role in our suspicions and the degree to which we claim where there is smoke there is fire. We cannot honestly claim that there is no smoke, only that the amount is less than being touted by the Clinton’s adversaries. So a closer inspection of these fundings should be investigated and are being investigated by the FBI. Right, we hear you screaming that we cannot trust the same FBI which has found nothing more than potentially unprofessional and careless activity by Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State concerning the e-mail scandal which was possibly nothing more than a partisan swipe throwing charges at the wall and none of them stuck. Perhaps it is time to move on to the next scandal de jure. Perhaps all of these charges are simply political maneuverings to discredit Hillary as a candidate for President and just a blatant use of the investigatory arms of the government to make so much noise it blots out the quiet whispers of truth floating innocently on the air hoping to be heard above the din of political maneuverings. Perhaps all of these charges are simple power politics with the media feeding on the juiciest tidbits found all over the ground around these charges. If there was impropriety and cash to play monies donated to the Clinton Foundation, one would be tempted to claim that such should be evidence comparing certain “favors” against the donations made to the foundation, a school child could determine such with even a cursory inspection. Either there are direct linking dates on deposits corresponding to immediately before or after State Department actions which are also easily traced back to the Secretary of State or there are none. That part of the investigation should have easily been determined and if there are then perhaps this is one which demands a Special Prosecutor to be appointed as there have been claims that the Justice Department has worked with the State Department to obscure misdeeds and clear the Clintons of any suspicious activities. Somebody somewhere has to have made a date chart showing the correlation of deposits to State Department interventions or decisions and show either the slight odor of impropriety or there is little if any real evidence that monies were spent to curry favor from the Clintons, really, somebody, a simple chart is all we need and let the people see what the evidence shows. We all know that there will likely never be a trial with Hillary and/or Bill being marched off in handcuffs.
Things in real life rarely echo movies that closely, and talking about movies, the release of the Dinesh D’Souza movie, some would claim hit piece containing more fancy than fact, titled, “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party,” (it should be Democrat Party and not Democratic Party) sure was released at a time when it could peak right before Election Day. If nothing else, this was great market timing for maximum effect and highest possible cash for the making. I guess the Clintons are not the only capitalists capitalizing on political events. Perhaps they could hold movie night for Congress and have an official viewing and then get quotes the day after, it would make for a great review of the film just as unbiased as any other critique. Talk about movies reflecting reality or reality reflecting movies, it is difficult to judge here, but does not the descriptive title of this movie not but reflect a campaign piece produced for the Republican Party or is the movie more balanced than the title. There are numerous versions of this movie or book reading found on You Tube through a simple search of the title.
Finally we get to the central fact and the meat to the whole fiasco. We will not learn the truths about Hillary and William Clinton in our lifetimes as it will take at least a century to place sufficient distance between the politically driven legacy of this political couple and even then it will take either a saint or a truly disassociated individual to present just facts with proof and a detailed accounting of everything these two touched. Such a production should be interesting but what is required is something far less titillating, the real and honest truth. That is what at least a few of us would like to see but too many interested parties would preclude such an eventuality. Perhaps such an accounting will be made in the future but for the immediate, well, the coming election will be a huge indicator of how the average American voter feels about Hillary and trusting her with the power of the Presidency. If somebody as imperfect and flawed as Donald Trump who has thusfar yet to even pretend to run an national campaign and instead appears to be making cameo appearances around the country to raving fans where his appearances resemble more an AC/DC concert than political theater, or perhaps this is how elections will be run in the future or at least our immediate future. The Republicans are lamenting that if they had even a flawed politician facing off against Hillary there would be no contest and that Hillary Clinton presented the most easily defeated candidate the Democrat Party could have fielded and they may have missed the boat. Meanwhile, there have to be Democrats feeling the same about Donald Trump as the Republican standard bearer who could only win against a corruptively flawed candidate such as Hillary Clinton and that is whom they are stuck with representing them in what should have been the most lopsided victory in political history. The United States had both parties look through their rolodexes and seek out the least probably of candidates and they both found just what they were looking for, the most easily defeatable candidate from their stables and that was who they each chose. Both sides in the coming election for President will be running campaigns that basically say less about their candidate and stress more on would you really want their candidate in the White House? So what we have is the anti-Trump candidate against the anti-Hillary candidate, you choose. Sometimes it is less laughable to be an Israeli and we thought our election system was unacceptable, the Americans are making the case for monarchy; at least then you know who is coming next and how to prepare. How does one prepare for Hillary or The Donald? It really is not all that recommended to elect a President when they are running on their first name and that makes them identifiable by the majority of the world and well past the United States. Any combination of these two people’s names works to identify them. Remember when we were worried to death of having another Bush vs. Clinton race for the White House? How does that choice sound now? Right, not exactly better but far more predictable. Saddle up as we’re in for a wild ride to November and the real rough ride begins the third week of January 2017; prepare for the worst and what best can we expect?
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 