There is no classified data except for all this classified stuff

Hot Air: "Who’s up for another 150 Hillary e-mails containing classified information?"

Of all the excuses designed to insult the intelligence of an average American, the one that drives me bonkers is that "the information wasn't classified at the time but it was classified later."  All 150 emails in this latest release.

How often does it happen that information becomes classified after the fact?  That is, in what situation would the passage of time make information more secret?  Let's put it this way: I imagine that information on the D-Day landings were somewhat less important on June 7th, 1944.

Travelling in a fried-out Kombi

I've just started a new book called "Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee and came across this line:

"There is an old VW kombi packed in the driveway."

Which immediately evoked the Men at Work song "Down Under":

"Travelling in a fried-out Kombi, on a hippie trail, head full of zombie."

So, of course, I went on the Internet and found out the "kombi" is the Volkswagon "Type 2" which we here in America call the "Microbus", the Brits call a "Camper" but elsewhere is called the "Kombi."

The Coetzee book is set in South Africa and the song "Down Under" is (of course) from Australia.



The more you know!

Democracy!

If you're a big fan of debate and the open exchange of ideas, well, you're gonna love the Democrats: "Wasserman Schultz blocked Iran resolution at DNC meeting."

This would be the same meeting where non-Hillary Clinton candidates complained that the DNC debate rules were designed to facilitate the Hillary coronation.

Because let's get this over with.

Extra - From Hot Air.

The FBI "A-Team" loves it when a plan comes together

Hot Air: "FBI “A-team” getting “extremely serious” on Hillary e-mail probe."  Pay close attention here:

A separate source, who also was not authorized to speak on the record, said the FBI will further determine whether Clinton should have known, based on the quality and detail of the material, that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. The campaign’s standard defense and that of Clinton is that she “never sent nor received any email that was marked classified” at the time.

Emphasis mine.  In my mind, this is the unforgivable crime: Hillary was receiving emails from the NSA and defense departments in charge of spy satellites.  Oh but the email wasn't marked?  You must be joking.

Nothing surprises me when it comes to the media

Gateway Pundit: "WaPo Fails to Identify ‘Close’ Clinton Adviser Used in Ignatius Column to Clear Hillary in Email Scandal."

Ignatius’ lead defense witness for Clinton is one Jeffrey Smith who is given four paragraphs of quotes defending Clinton. Ignatius identifies Smith as “a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information.”
Smith is the only named source in Ignatius’ column.
Ignatius and The Post failed to disclose that Smith served as a ‘close’ national security adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and that Smith has a history with the Clintons going back to at least President Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.

Shame: I always considered the Washington Post to be a good, balanced paper unlike those left-wing hacks at the NY Times.

Dude, you can totally trust us

Hot Air: "Great news: Iran all set to inspect its new Parchin annex any day now."

"Yeah, uh, we didn't find anything wrong."

By most accounts, this embarrassment of a non-treaty will not reach the two-thirds threshold to override a veto so then the new question is when will Israel start bombing.

Sick

The only story today is the horrifying shooting in Virginia, captured on live TV.  I was at work today and sometimes the best place for fast-moving stories like this is Free Republic.  At some point, a poster said: "He's live-tweeting" and, incredulous, I hit the link.  Sure enough, there was a Vine-type video that showed the start of the shooting.  I managed to see it exactly once before Twitter quickly took down the page.

I had never seen this before!

Oh, man....

Not a smidgen of corruption

Washington Free Beacon: "Lois Lerner Used Second Personal Email Under Different Name To Conduct IRS Business."  It only took two years for this fast-moving investigation to discover this tidbit.

It's all about control

Say, there, John Q. Public: what are you spending those loose bills on?  Zero Hedge: "Why government hates cash."

The trouble with triffids

My son wanted to visit the Grey Matter Bookstore here in Western Massachusetts (very nice collection!) and it was there that I picked up from the "Staff Recommendations" table "The Day of the Triffids."

I finished this 1951 sci-fi classic over the weekend and...it was good but not terrific (pardon the pun).  Set in England, a cataclysm makes most of the world blind opening the door for a species of flesh-eating plants to take control.  What I found interesting about this work of fiction is how many aspects of it were co-opted into other sci-fi works.

Here's a partial list off the top of my head:

Blindness by Jose Saramago - everybody in the world goes blind
Guy wakes up alone in a hospital - "28 Days Later" and "The Walking Dead."
Man-eating plant - "Little Shop of Horrors"
Implacable, unstoppable, masses of semi-sentient beings looking to feast on human flesh - every zombie movie
Mysterious disease kills everyone - "The Last Ship" and "The Stand."
You ladies better have some babies to save the species - "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Seveneves."

Fake Labor Party leader - Fake Indian 2016

Legal Insurrection: "Biden-Warren 2016".

In case you forgot about Joe Biden's plagiarism, here's an article from Slate insisting we should not forget his crime.  Watch Slate embrace a policy of amnesia (for the greater good!) if Biden is the nominee.

Acceptance? Never.

Bookworm Room: "Hillary and the five stages of grief."

That being the case, Hillary’s last line of defense can only be, as her supporters in the USA Today argue, that she was too stupid to recognize classified information. Good luck selling that one to the voting public or a jury.

Also, she was too stupid to figure out how to run two email accounts out of a single device, and has no idea what you mean when you wipe a computer as opposed to just deleting emails.  Dead candidate walking.

Let the trees burn

Maggie's Farm: "Why do we fight forest fires?"  I was wondering the same thing.

God bless the United States Marines

Fox News: "3 injured on Paris-bound train after gunman armed with AK-47 opens fire."

The suspected gunman was overpowered by off-duty U.S. soldiers when the train stopped in the northern French city of Arras, La Voix du Nord reported. He was later arrested.

This Telegraph report identifies the soldiers as Marines.  Early reports are filing in:

The identity of the gunman and the motivation for the attack is unknown, officials said.

Yeah, right.  Take a wild guess.

But did he have to talk about racism?

Boing Boing: "How a jerk scams a free quadruple espresso at Starbucks 365 days a year."

"Born classified"

Reuters: "Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest."  Here's an eye-opening section:

In an email from November 2009, the principal private secretary to David Miliband, then the British foreign secretary, indicates that he is passing on information about Afghanistan from his boss in confidence. He writes to Huma Abedin, Clinton's most senior aide, that Miliband "very much wants the Secretary (only) to see this note."

Nearly five pages of entirely redacted information follow. Abedin forwarded it on to Clinton's private email account.

For all to see.  Sorry guv'ner!

Extra - From Hot Air.

Wiper no wiping!

Shot:

The federal judge handling the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch said Thursday that Hillary Clinton violated government policy by using a private email server. He also ordered the State Department to confer with the FBI and Department of Justice to find out if those agencies had recovered any additional Clinton emails from the server and a thumb drive that was turned over by her attorney earlier this month.

Chaser:

On June 16, 1994, Judge Sullivan was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve as United States District Judge for the District of Columbia.

LOL.

Speaking of jokes

Charles C.W. Cooke: "The comical dishonesty of Clinton's email press conference."

I'm just a befuddled, old grandma: elect me President.

This joke Iran deal

Right Turn: "The latest Iran revelation is utterly humiliating."

Here come the water-carriers

If there was ever any doubt that the mainstream media would start to cover up for Hillary's crimes, here's Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker: "Hillary's problem: The government classifies everything."

Here's a taste of Toobin's argument:

In one case, according to media reports, one of Clinton’s potentially classified e-mail exchanges is nothing more than a discussion of a newspaper story about drones. That such a discussion could be classified underlines the absurdity of the current system. 

Geez, what's the big deal everyone?  Well, maybe that discussion included information like "hey, this news article is talking about our secret base outside of Karachi."  Nobody can say at this point but the Inspector Generals seem to think it's serious enough.  In the next sentence, Toobin concedes:

But that is the system that exists, and if and when the agencies determine that she sent or received classified information through her private server, Clinton will be accused of mishandling national-security secrets.

Yes it is, which is why the State department has it's own servers, presumably with better security than computers stored in a Denver bathroom.  But since Hillary's email was almost certainly hacked by foreign agents, it's time to declare it's all meaningless info:

This is nonsense on several levels, beginning with the fact that the Secretary of State does not have the authority to unilaterally reclassify material on her own whim.
The point behind having laws that put people in jail for mishandling top-secret material is to ensure that rogue employees don’t decide to overrule the entire intelligence apparatus and decide that TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN material is really just silly fluff that anybody should be able to read.

We've only scratched the surface and already we're up to 300+ classified emails.  Hillary belongs in prison.

Extra - Hot Air: "Latest pro-Hillary spin: Classifications are dumb, y'all."

Cue the mariachi band

Not gonna lie, I laughed out loud at this.  Reddit: "What conspiracy theory do you believe?"

Swiper and The Map are in cahoots.
Think about it: How does Swiper always know where Dora will be?
And who is telling Dora where to go?
WAKE UP SHEEPLE.

It all makes sense now!

California - 'nuf said

Washington Examiner: "No one showed up for California's green jobs rush."

Don't touch Social Security

There's an old joke about a guy hitting himself over the head with a hammer.  His buddy asks him why he's doing it and he responds: "Because it feels so good when I stop."

Every election cycle the Republicans offer solutions to fix Social Security and every time they're accused of pushing Grandma over a cliff.  So I'm with Jazz Shaw: let's never touch FDR's sacred program.

There is, of course, one other alternative. As unpleasant as it may sound, we could just let the system go broke. Continue to reject huge tax hikes while offering packages which would fix it and allowing the Democrats to either block the measures or wait for the President to veto them. Then, when the first set of checks go out which are more than ten percent short the voters will be outside the halls of the powerful with pitchforks and torches. At that point all you can do is wander out to meet them, shrug your shoulders and tell the angry hordes to go speak to the Democrats.

I don't know where Shaw gets the 10% figure because it's well-known that when the SS Trust Fund is exhausted, benefits will be cut by around 25% by law.  From the Social Security's Trustees report:

Thereafter [after 2034], tax income is projected to be sufficient to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through the end of the projection period in 2089.

At which point, I assume the Democrats response will be something like this:

Sorry not sorry

The Hill: "State Dept. turns up thousands of emails from top Clinton aide."  There was a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed last year and the State Department said they couldn't find anything.  But now they've uncovered 17,855 emails that fall under the request.  Here's the State Department's explanation:

The State Department did not explain the reversal in the court document, nor did it return a request for comment.

Screw you and your FOIA request.

Hillary wants to send million-dollar paychecks to the Koch brothers

You heard me.  WashPost: "Clinton is open to raising Social Security taxes on six-figure earners."

Increasing the cap would ensure that wealthy workers pay "their fair share," said Christian Weller, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Just how much that fair share should be is hard to say. Retirees' Social Security benefits are calculated based on how much they've paid into the system, not their total earnings over their careers. While it might seem odd that the wealthy don't pay taxes on their earnings above a certain amount each year, it's important to keep in mind that they also don't receive benefits on those earnings later on.

And now they will!  And since the wealthy like Bill Gates and Paris Hilton tend to live longer, they'll be collecting fat paychecks well into their nineties.

Oh, but wait: since Social Security is a universal benefit - a kind of "social insurance" - we can't just take those "earned" benefits away.  So belly up to the bar, Donald Trump.  Your government check with your returned "fair share" is on the way.

Talk about spreading the word

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” - Sid Ziff

MassLive: "'Literary litterbug' admits tossing 600 books from car."

They realized they suck without Roger Waters

Consequence of Sound: "R.I.P. Pink Floyd, legendary psych-rock band is officially broken up."

Hillary belongs in prison

Wall Street Journal: "Clinton Defies the Law and Common Sense - The question of whether Hillary Clinton’s emails were marked top secret isn’t legally relevant. Any cabinet member should know that."

Extra - Bookmark this: "Understanding just how serious Hillary’s server problem really is."

Uh, no

Hillary: "People should and do trust me."

Fox News: "Fox News Poll: Voters say Clinton lied about emails, put US at risk."

It's all downhill from here.

The ongoing struggle

Zero Hedge: "19-Year Old Sets Own Ferrari On Fire Because He Wanted A New One."

Plot twist: not an American!

The FBI has Hillary's server

I'm thinking the drip-drip-drip is going to open up to a rivulet of scandal.  Fox News: "FBI has Hillary Clinton emails from home server, official says."

The FBI has taken possession of thumb drives containing Hillary Clinton's emails, some of which have been deemed to contain highly sensitive classified information, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.

Not just classified but Top Secret:

The inspector general for the Intelligence Community notified senior members of Congress that two of four classified emails discovered on the server Clinton maintained at her New York home contained material deemed to be in one of the highest security classifications – more sensitive than previously known.

And I've noted this before: Hillary was receiving emails from the CIA, NSA, and various intelligence sources that don't even want the public to be aware they exist.  Why wouldn't you automatically assume that these messages were classified?  That's what Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III said: these emails were classified at the time of reception, time of retention, and time of transmission.  Which means that Hillary broke the law:

"Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both."

Hillary should be in prison.

I did it for you, America

The Corner: "This is really the spin on the e-mail scandal now?"  "Hillary Clinton’s campaign is now resorting to the defense that her using a personal, private e-mail server in contravention of government rules was a good idea because . . . sometimes government servers get hacked, too."

Unpatriotic traitors who only want war

Now with more Democrats!  Federalist: "Shock Poll: Only 41% Of Democrats Want Congress To Approve Obama’s Iran Deal."  So much common cause with the hardliners.

Free speech Seattle

The Hill: "Protesters shut down Bernie Sanders rally."  "Protesters who claimed affiliation with the Black Lives Matter movement stormed the stage during a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Seattle on Saturday, taking over the microphone and forcing Sanders to leave without ever speaking."

The people there to listen to Sanders seemed paralyzed to stop three protesters, for fear of being accused of racism.

Extra - Maggie's Farm: "Good grief."  The video is something to behold.

Amy is late

This always makes me laugh:

Happy warriors

I wasn't going to watch the GOP debate tonight but the Red Sox lost in record time, so I turned it on.  It was much better than I thought it might be.  The candidates were on-point and good-natured towards each other, less so towards Hillary.  There was a lot of "I'm the only man on this stage..." but Ben Carson stole the night when he said "I'm the only man on this stage to separate Siamese twins."

Extra - Matt Continetti says "Rubio wins."  Yeah, he was good.

George Will was wrong

This past Sunday, Will said that Senator Chuck Schumer would make a public display of appearing anguished over the Iran deal just before he falls in line behind Obama.  HuffPost begs to differ: "Chuck Schumer Planning To Break With Obama, Oppose Iran Deal."

Prediction: Obama will characterize Schumer as just reacting to AIPAC since nobody in Obama's world could disagree with him in good faith.

Extra - From Twitchy.

Awaiting the coronation

Me, two months ago: "This is a genuine question: does Hillary intend to participate in Presidential debates?"

Answer: yes, but just the bare minimum head-nod to democracy.  Weekly Standard: "O'Malley blasts Democrats for limiting debates."

Baltimore mayor isn't going to let the unfolding disaster get her down

C'mon everybody, get happy!  Breitbart: "Baltimore mayor says 'I'm not going to resign' despite city's most violent year."

But the mayor then complained that too many citizens were “harping on the negative.”

That would include requesting federal intervention to quell the spiraling violence, the largest drop in housing prices among the country's top 100 metro areas, and a steady erosion of jobs.  But hey, there's going to be lots of money for "recreation centers" because they're fun.

Here come the Obamacare rate hikes

Hit and Run: "Why the Obama Administration’s Latest Gambit to Keep Health Insurance Rates Down Won’t Work."

Extra - From Instapundit.

The government is here to help

Hit and Run: "Study: Yes, Student Loans Are Making College More Expensive."

America on Iran deal: it sucks

Hot Air: "New Q-poll shows Americans oppose Iran deal 2:1."

The more that the American people get a chance to look at the nuclear deal with Iran, the less they like it.

I'm not sure that's the issue at all.  Instead, I think it's the very fact that Americans have no idea what kind of a rotten deal we're getting mixed up in, and are justifiably repulsed at a secret deal with a regime that still calls for the destruction of America and Israel.

Gas makes a car go

I know that NASCAR isn't everybody's cup of tea, but today's race at Pocono was both exciting and hilarious.  Brad Kesolowski ran over his pit crew, Kevin Harvick exploded his engine, and Kasey Kahne hit a pit road wall, sending helmets flying into the air.  In the final three laps, the top drivers ran out of gas - one by one - leaving the field open for Matt Kenseth and his slightly-better fuel-saving strategy.

Double-dipping and time-card punching

Huma was on the Clinton gravy train, natch.  Powerline: "Clinton aide and confidante was overpaid at State department."  So was Hillary, amirite?