Mark Simone: Hillary is what happened

Hillary bought the home next door in Chappaqua in August 2016 for her future White House staff

The story is here.

The best laid plans of mice and femen.

Hillary against the dreamers in 2014: “We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay"

The video is here.

It looks more and more plausible that both Trump and Ayotte lost in NH due to Democrat vote fraud

From the story here:

But more than 80 percent of voters who registered on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, or 5,313 of them, neither had a state license nor registered a motor vehicle almost 10 months later. Double voting is illegal, and 196 people are being investigated for casting ballots in New Hampshire and in other states. In the presidential race, Democrat Hillary Clinton defeated Republican Donald Trump in New Hampshire by 2,736 votes. In an even tighter race, for the Granite State’s U.S. Senate seat, Democratic challenger Maggie Hassan defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by 1,017 votes.

Book by Hillary pastor pulled after publication, found to be "riddled with plagiarism" not just one instance

WaPo reports here.

Peter Berkowitz agrees with us that Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate since Mondale

Here:

Although Hillary Clinton won the 2016 popular vote, her Electoral College loss—the only result that is constitutionally relevant—to Donald Trump inflicted a trauma for Democrats comparable to 1984. True, Mondale’s margin of defeat was enormous, but he ran against a popular incumbent president and gifted politician whose policies were credited with reviving a moribund economy. And yes, Clinton fell a mere 70,000-combined votes short in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But the embarrassing scandal for Democrats was that a race between their former secretary of state/former senator/former first lady and the major-party candidate with the highest disapproval ratings and the least political preparation in American history was even close.

But losing 20 states in 2016 to your party's loser from 2004 isn't just embarrassing. It's a sign of popular revulsion. 

He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.

Methodist pastor, dead ringer for election thief Al Franken, admits to plagiarizing parts of book containing devotions he shared with Hillary Clinton

Story here.

Kleptocrat, rhymes with Democrat.

stole words

stole an election

The country's become more liberal as "moderates" decline 21% since 1992

Gallup reported in January here that the country's moderates have declined from 43% in 1992 to 34% in 2016, a decline of nearly 21%.

At the same time the country's liberals have risen in number from 17% in 1992 to 25% in 2016, an increase of 47%.

Meanwhile conservatives are still stuck at 36%.

This means the country has become more polarized along the conservative-liberal axis as a huge part of the squishy middle has converted to the left.

My hunch is that the real story is that as the older generations have died off, what has been exposed is the more liberal elements of the Baby Boom generation and especially of their children and grandchildren, who were all indoctrinated in liberalism by the public schools, which were gradually taken over by the left after the 1960s.

I experienced this first hand in my high school in the early 1970s. I remember how two new young teachers freshly minted from college stuck out like sore thumbs compared with the old guard of my teachers. They wasted no time and immediately introduced us to the work of such luminaries as the Marxist Bertolt Brecht and the gay counterculture revolutionist Charles A. Reich, a teacher of both Bill and Hillary Clinton at Yale. Meanwhile I learned useful things from my lunkhead economics teacher, like how to do my taxes, but the textbook for the other parts of the class was the socialist Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers. Fortunately for me, my American History teacher loved America and the US Constitution. His name was Walt Anderson. I think now he saved me.

I survived to become a conservative, but obviously, most of you didn't.    

Laugh of the Day: Hillary's newest cause

Seen here.

The US State Department never searched its own system for requested Benghazi e-mails

'[State] has not, however, searched the one records system over which it has always had control and that is almost certain to contain some responsive records: the state.gov e-mail server,' [Judge] Mehta wrote.

Read the whole thing, here.

To get compliance and transparency from the Obama administration, you had to spell it out for them every time, otherwise you'd get bupkis. 

That was the MO of the Obama administration: slow-walking, foot-dragging, infinite parsing and obstruction.

Fusion GPS at heart of Democrat collusion with Russia against Trump, McCain their useful idiot

Kim Strassel sets the table in her column today, here, from which these excerpts:

Fusion GPS. That’s the oppo-research outfit behind the infamous and discredited “Trump dossier,” ginned up by a former British spook. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson also was supposed to testify at the Grassley hearing, where he might have been asked in public to reveal who hired him to put together the hit job on Mr. Trump, which was based largely on anonymous Russian sources. Turns out Democrats are willing to give up just about anything—including their Manafort moment—to protect Mr. Simpson from having to answer that question.

What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility. ...

What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign [that hired Simpson]? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?

Meanwhile the transnational Max Boot is upset that the Boy Scouts love Trump, hate Hillary

Very telling, that.

He must read WaPo tweeter Jenna Johnson here, and NY Magazine here, which omit references to the loud sustained boos by Boy Scouts for Obama but focus instead on the boos for Hillary.

Well, they emphasize what's important to them. Since they are Clinton advocates and Trump opponents and want to make the story a story about Trump's inappropriate partisanship, the fact that Trump was contrasting himself with his predecessor, not Hillary, has to be ignored.

Most stories have been about the boos for Obama.

Here is Boot:

At one point he actually had the boys booing Clinton, a former secretary of State, former first lady and the first female major-party presidential nominee in U.S. history. This is an offense not only against good taste but also against the Boy Scout rule forbidding any political activities in uniform.

Deep state swamp: Federal workers gave Hillary 95% of their political contributions

The Department of Education is the worst, but the whole damn thing has to go.

Story here.

Great point Mr. President: Don Jr. hands over his emails, Crooked Hillary deletes hers . . . BY THE THOUSANDS

I wish this bag under my eye would just go away

Politico's real story from January was that the DNC, the Hillary campaign, Alexandra Chalupa, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, journalists, government officials and intelligence operatives all colluded with Ukraine to take out Manafort and disrupt Trump's campaign

You should read it to appreciate the four fingers pointing back at the Democrats every time they point at Republicans yelling "collusion".

The whole article was designed to run interference for Chalupa and the Democrats, putting the best spin on it they could after uncovering the dirty details. The heart of the story begins seventeen paragraphs in, after trying in the first sixteen to make what follows not say what it says, here:

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. ...

Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”

She said she shared her concern with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the operative’s ties to Trump since he didn’t believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.

That all started to change just four days after Chalupa’s meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation. ...

Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych. While the embassy declined that request, officials there became “helpful” in Chalupa’s efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. “If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with.” But she stressed, “There were no documents given, nothing like that.”

Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. ...

Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said [Shulyar] instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”

Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort’s hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, “It didn’t go anywhere.”

Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a “touchy subject” in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.

Kaptur’s office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate “possible outside interference in our elections.” The office added “at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections.” ...

In [an] email [released by Wikileaks], which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she’d been “working with for the past few weeks” with Isikoff “and connected him to the Ukrainians” at the event.

Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.

Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share “offline” with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including “a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” Explaining that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about “state-sponsored” hacking on her account, explaining, “Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often.”

Dillon and Miranda declined to comment. ...

The [Financial Times] noted that Trump’s candidacy had spurred “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election,” and the story quoted Leshchenko [Ukraine's parliamentarian] asserting that the majority of Ukraine’s politicians are “on Hillary Clinton’s side.” ...

[A]n operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.

“It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to,” said the operative. ...

Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country’s ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump’s campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump’s leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.

“We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict,” said Telizhenko. “I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump,” he said, adding, “The ambassador said not to get involved — Hillary is going to win.”

This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, “The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows — this is from the Ukrainian side.” He called the strategy “bad and short-sighted.”

Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump’s team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.

“It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Artemenko said. “They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. … I think that they simply didn’t meet because they thought that Hillary would win.”

Yes, yes you are

Kevin Williamson of National Review, CNBC's kind of conservative, tries out for job with better liberals, calls Trump a coward and a fool

Here, saying Trump is no different than Obama for being all talk and no action.

Williamson is unhappy that Trump hasn't yet started a shooting war with North Korea, which makes Williamson actually little different from Trump, who gave China all of two months to get North Korea under control.

Williamson has a BA in English from UT-Austin. Travis County Texas, home of UT, went for Hillary over Trump by nearly 66% to 27% in 2016, and gave libertarian crank Gary Johnson over 4.5% of its vote.

Loretta Lynch may have testified falsely before the House in July 2016, may have spoken with Amanda Renteria

From the story here:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has launched a bipartisan investigation into Lynch for possible obstruction of justice, recently learned of the existence of a document indicating Lynch assured the political director of Clinton’s campaign she wouldn’t let FBI agents “go too far” in probing the former secretary of state.