Maureen Dowd names Hillary the Valkyrie of Libya intervention, accuses her of negligence

Here, still pining for Joe:

'When you are the Valkyrie who engineers the intervention, you can’t then say it is beneath you to pay attention to the ludicrously negligent security for your handpicked choice for ambassador in a lawless country full of assassinations and jihadist training camps. ... [T]here were 600 requests from J. Christopher Stevens’s team to upgrade security in Benghazi in 2012 and 20 attacks on the mission compound in the months before the Sept. 11 siege. ...There were no call logs of talks between Stevens and Clinton, and she said she could not remember if she ever spoke to him again after she swore him in in May. “I was the boss of ambassadors in 270 countries,” she explained. But Libya was the country where she was the midwife to chaos. And she should have watched that baby like the Lady Hawk she is.'

But of course the Valkyrs picked who should die in battle, and who should live. In addition to picking Gaddafi, Hillary also picked four Americans.

45 minutes after blaming Benghazi on a video, Hillary e-mailed Chelsea to say it was terrorism

"YOU LIE!"

She lies like a rug, like the rest of Obama's vermin.

Kim Strassel lays it all out, here:

'At 10:30 on the night of the attack, Mrs. Clinton issued a statement about the violence, blaming the video. ... Here’s what the Benghazi committee found in Thursday’s hearing. Two hours into Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan referred to an email Mrs. Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea, at 11:12 the night of the attack, or 45 minutes after the secretary of state had issued a statement blaming YouTube-inflamed mobs. Her email reads: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” Mrs. Clinton doesn’t hedge in the email; no “it seems” or “it appears.” She tells her daughter that on the anniversary of 9/11 an al Qaeda group assassinated four Americans. ... The next afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had a call with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil. The notes from it are absolutely damning. The secretary of state tells him: “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack—not a protest.” And yet Mrs. Clinton, and Ms. Rice and Mr. Obama for days and days continued to spin the video lie.'

Freedom Caucus cracks up at lightning speed proving they've never had any credibility

• They oust Boehner on Friday but have no one to put forward
• They organize to fire Kevin McCarthy before he even wins the speakership while admitting they have no one to put forward
• They hold Planned Parenthood hearings but aren't prepared for their much better prepared foes
• Kevin McCarthy gives Boehner a B- but gets an F out of the box by handing Hillary a talking point on Benghazi

And it's only Thursday morning

WaPo story continues the Hillary e-mail shell game: It's her CURRENT server which needs to be examined

Reported here tonight by WaPo:

'“Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped,” company spokesman Andy Boian told The Washington Post. “All the information we have is that the server wasn’t wiped.” ... All the e-mails from Clinton’s tenure at the State Department were on the server when the device was taken over in June 2013 by Platte River Networks, four months after Clinton left office. A company attorney has said that all of Clinton’s e-mails were then migrated to a new server. The e-mails were removed from the second server in 2014, with Clinton’s lawyers storing those they deemed work-related on a thumb drive and discarding those that they determined were entirely personal. Copies of 30,000 work e-mails were turned over to the State Department in December and are being released to the public in batches under the terms of a court order.'

All the e-mails were migrated to the current server in June 2013, five months after Hillary's January 23, 2013 testimony before the Oversight Committee and nine months after it asked for her emails about Benghazi on September 20, 2012. They were combed, sorted, some distributed to the State Department in December 2014 and everything  supposedly "deleted". But all that is theoretically recoverable from the current server, which evidently remains in Chappaqua, NY.

Some might also be recoverable from the New Jersey server. And there might be backup servers no one has yet learned about, but it is the current server which needs to be examined.

But just try getting in to Bill Clinton's stuff.

Hillary is still exploiting him for all he's worth, and right now his sacrosanctity is worth everything.  

Hey Hillary! YOU politicized Benghazi by deleting your e-mails!

Video here.

The developing server story distracts from the basic fact that Hillary's Chappaqua server needs to be examined by the FBI

The many moving elements of this story can and do mislead and distract from the basic fact that Hillary late in 2014 set the server which currently sits in the Bill and Hillary Clinton Chappaqua home to save no e-mails older than 60 days. It was from this server that Hillary produced the record of e-mails she says she provided to the State Department. Older servers may or may not retain evidence of those e-mails.

The FBI needs to examine the Clinton's Chappaqua server, to which Hillary's emails were last transferred after June 2013 with the help of the Denver firm Platte River. Hillary has implied she provided e-mails to State from this server in December 2014 and then deleted everything, including her personal e-mails. Her lawyer has stated that the method employed to delete everything was to set the server not to save e-mails older than 60 days. The lawyer's letter to Congress says nothing about wiping the server. Sometime late in 2014 after copying out her State Department e-mails and providing them to State Hillary Clinton stopped saving e-mails on this server according to her testimony.

The Denver firm Platte River reportedly started work for Hillary in June 2013, removing the old server from the New York home to New Jersey after transferring everything to the new, present server. So this means the Denver "bathroom servers" we all went crazy over in recent days are irrelevant because those long pre-dated Hillary and had nothing to do with this story. The only relevant server Platte River had was the server removed in 2013 to New Jersey and now in the possession of the FBI. 

The New York Post reported here on August 13th:

"Platte River says it began work for Clinton in June 2013, after she left office, to upgrade, secure and manage her e-mail server. The company retrieved the server from her New York home and housed it at a data center in New Jersey, said company spokesman Andy Boian."

The Washington Post had reported here on August 12th:

'Before it was taken to the data center in New Jersey, the server had been in the basement of the Clintons’ private home in Chappaqua, N.Y., during the time she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the Clintons’ e-mail network.

'After she left government service in early 2013, the Clintons decided to upgrade the system, hiring Platte River as the new manager of a privately managed e-mail network. The old server was removed from the Clinton home by Platte River and stored in a third party data center, which are set up to provide security from threats of hacking and natural disaster, Wells [representing Platte River] said.

'Platte River Networks has retained control of the old server since it took over management of the Clintons’ e-mail system. She said that the old server “was blank,” and no longer contained useful data. ...

'The Clinton’s private e-mail system passed through different hands. In 2008, responsibility for the system was held by Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to former president Bill Clinton who served as a special assistant helping the former president with his books. ...

'Those briefed on the server setup say the device installed for Bill Clinton was deemed too small for the addition of a sitting Cabinet official [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton]. Instead, a server that had been purchased for use by Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign was installed at the Chappaqua home.

'With the new server came an additional specialist who had worked as her campaign’s Internet technology director and later went to the State Department as an IT specialist.'

It's that 2008 server which ended up in New Jersey in 2013 when Platte River Networks entered the picture and helped Hillary transition to the post-Benghazi environment (9/11/2012).  Remember, it was early in 2013 immediately after she left the State Department that Hillary all of a sudden decided to upgrade the system hide the evidence.

Hillary needs to answer why a server upgraded to be suitable for a sitting US Secretary of State had to be replaced for a retired one. As surely as the sun also rises, the new 2013 server has not been wiped and must be investigated before it is.

The pea is under shell three.

Hillary's e-mail still exists: She admitted in March only that she set her server in 2014 "to retain only the most recent 60 days of e-mail"

An atypical report from last March had it that way here:

'Clinton's attorney has confirmed to a House committee on Benghazi that, after handing over work-related email to the State Department, the politician both "chose not to keep" personal messages and set a 60-day limit on what the server retains. In short, she effectively wiped it clean. There's no going back to mail from her Secretary of State days beyond the 30,490 messages on the record, or roughly half of what the server held during the period.'

But notice that Hillary wouldn't answer affirmatively yesterday that the server was wiped when she was directly asked. That's because it wasn't, and any such statement would conflict with her counsel's statement.

Hillary's position was stated clearly in March through her attorney's letter to Congressman Trey Gowdy here:

"After the review was completed to identify and provide to the Department of State all of the Secretary's work-related and potentially work-related emails, the Secretary chose not to keep her non-record personal e-mails and asked that her account (which was no longer in active use) be set to retain only the most recent 60 days of e-mail. To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic, I have confirmed with the Secretary's IT support that no e-mails from hdr22@clintonemail.com for the time period January 21,2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server. Thus, there are no ... e-mails ... on the server for any review . . .."

That means that the e-mails are still recoverable. The unsaved mail would have to be overwritten actively to be truly deleted.

There has not been any statement by Hillary that the server was wiped. It's only been the assertion of the press, probably by design to buy time and throw investigators off the scent, and only by inference from her lawyer's letter, also intended to stymie further interest.

It also means that the server now revealed to be in Denver and seized by the FBI was likely the backup, and that the main one is still in the house located at 15 Old House Lane, Chappaqua, NY 10514, or perhaps it's really at 3067 Whitehaven Street NW, Washington, DC 20008.

Let's have some search warrants already, looking for evidence of obstruction of justice.

Obama State Department stonewalls everybody on FOIA requests

Story here. No mention that this is the State Department's long record of behavior under Hillary Clinton, let alone under her successor John F. Kerry, who served in Viet Nam.

At least the judge is as pissed as he can be.

I guess they are too busy over there at State securing Obama's legacy, and covering up Benghazi:

Parsing the meaning of Libya email: Oh we thought you just wanted the BENGHAZI email, you want the Libya too?

Hillary better hope the State Dept. has all the same email Sidney Blumenthal has just turned over.

From the Politico story here:

'House GOP Benghazi investigators have discovered additional Libya communications between Sidney Blumenthal and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a congressional source told POLITICO — suggesting that either the State Department or the 2016 Democratic presidential contender withheld correspondence the panel had requested. ...

'At the crux of the back and fourth is whether the committee specifically asked State for all Clinton’s Libya emails or only Benghazi-related emails. State says the panel initially asked for Benghazi material and only recently expanded that request to include all correspondence on the Middle Eastern nation. But the initial requests for information from Clinton did include all Libya correspondence, according to the congressional source.'

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Obstructing justice. The Hillary gift that keeps on . . . er . . . not giving.

Hillary Clinton promised full cooperation with Congress in 2012, but still withheld at least 850 pages of Benghazi emails

Byron York reports:

[W]hen Clinton's secret email system was exposed this year, she turned over about 850 never-before-seen pages of Benghazi-related documents to the State Department, which in turn gave them to the House. Those documents had been under a request from Congress since the September 20, 2012 letter. The former secretary of state let more than two years pass before producing the information.

Take Clinton at her word that she turned over everything on her secret system related to Benghazi. The 850 pages still show that she withheld information from Congress for more than two years.

Concealing information from Congress is not a minor offense. The law allows for fines and punishment of up to several years in jail for anyone found guilty of doing it. Three examples:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the rest, go here.

Hillary Clinton and her merry band of secretive aides all used private email to avoid leaving a public trail, contrary to what she claimed

Jake Sullivan

From The New York Times here:

Huma Abedin

"Mrs. Clinton’s top aides at times corresponded with her about State Department matters from their personal email accounts, raising questions about her recent assertions that she made it her practice to email aides at their government addresses so the messages would be preserved, in compliance with federal record-keeping regulations. ...

Philippe Reines

"Mr. Gowdy’s committee is also likely to press Mrs. Clinton on why her advisers occasionally used personal email accounts to communicate with her. At least four of Mrs. Clinton’s closest advisers at the State Department did so, including her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; senior adviser, Philippe Reines; personal aide, Huma Abedin; and Mr. [Jake] Sullivan."

Cheryl Mills

Stupid things heard on the Steve Gruber Show radio program last week

Both the AM drive-time host, Steve Gruber, a libertarian for whom every opponent is taken as a challenge to his manhood, and his weekly punching bag guest, Liberal Lee, last Tuesday agreed that the middle class in America is basically . . .  intact!

Which just proves that ideologues are impervious to the destruction which has been all around them and that libertarians and liberals drink from the same cup. Both camps are too heavily invested in the political gangs they support to say otherwise, for if the one did it would mean George Bush and Alan Greenspan would have to be blamed, and if the other, Barack Obama, Larry Summers and the rest of the Clinton re-treads which steered the economy through the latest depression to give you . . . nearly $90 billion in costs for over 500 failed banks, over 5 million homes lost to foreclosure, full-time jobs still 4 million below the 2007 peak seven years ago, ObamaCare's lies, higher costs, poorer coverage and limited networks, the deaths of Americans at Benghazi, IRS targeting of conservatives, the most imperial presidency in our history, 30 million prime working age people not working, a lawless executive, and 1.8% GDP, the worst in the post-war.

For his part, Gruber basically gave over a segment on his show every week this fall to the reelection campaign of Congressman Tim Walberg, a conventional Republican who normally votes with the majority of his caucus, but who did vote against making the Bush tax cuts permanent for the vast majority of Americans. Walberg notably just rewarded his radio benefactor who opposed Cromnibus with a vote for it, in keeping with his past voting record for sweeping spending bills which avoid the traditional appropriations process in order to take the politics out of spending the people's money. Hey, thanks Gruber.

The Steve Gruber Show is unfortunately heard on many small market radio stations during morning drive throughout Michigan, which through August 2014 was the top state for completed foreclosures among non-judicial states for the prior twelve month period. But the show's best rank is only #3 in the Lansing market according to dar.fm, and #31 in the mornings overall, here. The best thing that can be said for it is that the stations it is on are typically low-power, like its commentary. 

Flashback 9/12/12: Obama Lumped-In "Acts Of Terror" In General With The "Brutal Acts" Of The Benghazi Attack

Mitt Romney famously overlooked the phrase "acts of terror" from President Obama's Rose Garden remarks the day after the Benghazi attack during the second presidential debate of 2012: "You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you're saying?"

It came up again here recently discussing a new documentary about Mitt Romney's campaign:

"How bad was it?" asked one Romney family member in the green room immediately after the debate, but before Romney himself had returned.

"It wasn't good," said another.

"Who briefed him on [Benghazi]?" one of the sons asked. "Someone got it wrong."

Of course, the video of the president's remarks in the Rose Garden shows that the "acts of terror" statement was simply the obligatory cya type of generalization he had to make in a situation like that. The whole tenor of the ensuing weeks' comments from the regime blaming Benghazi on an anti-Muhammad video was set at the outset of the president's Rose Garden remarks when he stated rather abruptly and intrusively without mentioning that video: "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." The attempt to shape the event in that way looks increasingly like a diversion in light of the number of CIA on the ground in Benghazi revealed last summer and the military's ignorance of the annex just recently revealed in the Senate's report on the incident. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney, those things came out way too far after the election to do him any good. Something obviously still stinks in Benghazi.

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

(at about 4:18, here)

Is Obama's Interminable Recourse To Racism Charges Marijuana-Induced Paranoia?

Obama recently blamed the sudden drop in his popularity on racism in the country, a surprisingly paranoid response from someone who has won two national elections rather decisively.

Maybe he's still smoking more than cigarettes in the White House (on the night of Benghazi, perhaps?):

Christian Thurstone, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado and the head of the teen rehab center Adolescent STEP: Substance Abuse Treatment Education & Prevention Program, told ABC News recently that 95 percent of patient referrals to the program are for marijuana use.

“Anecdotally, yes, we’re seeing kids in treatment here who have paranoia and seeing things and hearing things that aren’t there,” said Thurstone. “Adolescent exposure to marijuana [raises] risk of permanent psychosis in adulthood.”

For more from this story, go here.

Hypocrite Hillary Tells Heckler The Future Doesn't Include Yelling

Here, even though her past sure did, and even her very recent past.

2013:

"We have to be willing to come together as citizens to focus on the kind of future we want, which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking with one another," Clinton said in response to the heckler to huge applause from the audience.

2003: 

HILLARY 2003 (screeching): I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, "WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!"

Early 2013:

What difference does it make?!

Hillary Has More Sooty Baggage Than A 90-Car Freight Train

So says Camille Paglia, here:

'It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts. I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi.'In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was. Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. It’s even a key motif in “King Lear.” As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood.'

Hillary's Reign Of Mayhem At State Besides Benghazi Deaths: Sexual Assault, Prostitution, Drug Dealing, And . . . Cover-Ups

Cover-ups? WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!

CBS News, here:

'CBS News' John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General's memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries" -- a problem the report says was "endemic."'

Stupid: Well, There It Is

P.J.O'Rourke, here:

Call a man, best of all, wicked and you get to don the sacramental vestments, climb into the pulpit and thunder forth with such a sermon as to bring him weeping to the font of righteousness or cause the Lord God Almighty to strike him with a thunderbolt in his pew or something fun like that. But call a man stupid and . . . there it is.

And there it is: Dopey stimulus, obtuse bailout, noodle-headed Obamacare, half-wit Dodd-Frank, damfool IRS Tea Party crashers, AP and Fox News beset by oafish peeping Toms and the Benghazi tale told by an idiot. One could go on. Stupid is a great force in human affairs. And the great force has a commander in chief.

Boston Herald Calls Obama And Company Biggest Bunch Of Liars Ever

Here:

"Surely there has never been a bigger bunch of liars than the crew currently occupying the White House and the now-departed secretary of state. The steady drip, drip, drip of the Benghazi scandal is now a torrent — one that cries out for a special congressional Select Committee to put it all together email by email, revelation by revelation and lie by lie. ... For eight months the lies have continued. ... There surely must be a special place in hell reserved for those who cried crocodile tears at the death of our ambassador after doing nothing to help keep him safe and everything to cover up the true nature of the attack."

Sarah Palin Is Still A Box Of Rocks

Sarah Palin thinks monetary policy under Obama has been inflationary, and will continue to be, here:

"Predicting the future has never been easier because here we are! Already we see higher taxes, a stagnant economy, the same inflationary monetary policies, Obamacare looming like a dark cloud over small businesses, yet another demand for 'debt ceiling' increases, continued stonewalling about the tragic Benghazi attacks, a Secretary of Defense nominee who has a history of being antagonistic to our ally Israel, and the attack on our Second Amendment rights by an administration that has no respect for the Constitution or the separation of powers."

Let's see.

The CPI level was 174.2 in November 2000. In November 2008 it was 213.074. And in November 2012 it was 231.025.

That means under eight years of George W. Bush inflation was up 22.32%, for an annual factor of 2.79.

Under four years of Obama inflation was up 8.42%, for an annual factor of 2.11.

The difference between the two is that under Obama the rate of CPI increase has been reduced almost 25% compared to Bush.

It should stop being an article of conservatism to ignore the difference, because insisting on being wrong about it won't help sell the other points.