Monday, August 31, 2015

Is it Obama vs. Hillary AGAIN?

Many more of Hillary's emails have been deemed classified by the State Department. I'd like to say that this news is driving the right-wingers batshit crazy, but I can't. They were that way to begin with.

You have to read well past the headlines to discover the key point: None of these emails were classified at the time. Since we can't see the documents in question, we have no way to determine whether the texts are being over-classified. I feel quite certain that they are.

Many on the right (and some on the left) have compared Hillary's email debacle to the case against General David Petraeus. Anne Tompkins, one of the prosecutors in that case, pooh-poohs any claim of similarity:
As the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, I oversaw the prosecution of Gen. Petraeus, and I can say, based on the known facts, this comparison has no merit. The key element that distinguishes Secretary Clinton’s email retention practices from Petraeus’ sharing of classified information is that Petraeus knowingly engaged in unlawful conduct, and that was the basis of his criminal liability.

The facts of Petraeus’ case are a matter of public record. During his tenure as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, Petraeus recorded handwritten notes in personal journals, including information he knew was classified at the very highest levels.
These journals contained top secret and even more sensitive “code word” national defense information, including the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities, diplomatic discussions, and quotes and deliberative discussions from National Security Council meetings, including discussions with the president of the United States.
When questioned by the FBI, Petraeus lied to agents in responding that he had neither improperly stored nor improperly provided classified information to his biographer.
Hillary is guilty of none of these things.
Indeed, the State Department has confirmed that none of the information that has surfaced on Clinton’s server thus far was classified at the time it was sent or received. Additionally, the Justice Department indicated that its inquiry is not a criminal one and that Clinton is not the subject of the inquiry.
Fox News (of all venues!) just published an interesting take on all of this by Paul Goldman. His piece more-or-less admits that the charges against Hillary are mostly hooey. But in today's political world, mere reality doesn't matter:
The point being: After all that has transpired to date, perception may have already become reality to most Americans, indeed most commentators, not to mention defenders and detractors, on both sides. Or put another way: Another batch of emails isn’t going to change the bottom line.

The drop in Clinton’s support from 69 percent among Democrats nationally when she announced in April to now only 45 percent in one recent poll surely has some cause and effect relationship to the email issue.
Here's a worrying possibility: What if Hillary is being undermined by the Obama administration?

This theory would explain a lot.

After all, Obama is the person ultimately in charge of the State Department, which suddenly deemed 150 emails on that server to be classified. A mere two days ago, those very same missives were thought to be non-sensitive. The State Department took this step knowing full well that misleading headlines would convey the impression that the emails were classified at the time.

Obama favors Biden. That much is clear.

Added note: There are smears and then there are smears. This piece in Forbes (by one Paul Coyer) achieves full-body smeargasm. Example:
Hillary’s comments at her Friday press conference just repeated the behavioral patterns that the Clintons have long been known for – a non-apology apology and carefully parsed denials that do nothing to dispel the broadly-held view that this scandal is merely further evidence, if any were needed after nearly a quarter century of seeing Hillary’s pattern of behavior in public life, that Hillary (like her husband) has a pronounced penchant for dishonesty and dislikes playing by everyone else’s rules.
It is highly unlikely that Hillary’s use of private email servers (and her private email account had no encryption at all for the first few months of her tenure as Secretary of State) were not penetrated by foreign intelligence, particularly the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians, all of whom would see such a target as high priority, and that such emails did not provide such hostile foreign powers a critically useful insight into foreign and national security policy decision-making at the highest levels of the Obama Administration.

The combination of the intelligence gleaned from Edward Snowden and from Hillary’s emails are likely to have contributed to Putin’s aggressive course of action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
This inside knowledge told the Kremlin that the Administration was not likely to take forceful actions that would raise the costs to Moscow of such actions to unacceptable levels, but would be limit its response primarily to economic sanctions. Putin, who has a long-term horizon, has calculated that the Russian economy (and his regime’s stability) can withstand these sanctions, no matter what the short to medium term consequences on the economy.

And the intelligence coup to Moscow provided by Hillary’s emails says nothing of what the benefit may have been to other American opponents, including Tehran as it prepared for the critical nuclear negotiations with the Obama Administration, and Beijing as it made decisions regarding how far to go in attempting to coercively alter the status quo in the South China Sea. It is a certainty that America’s opponents knew far more about the Obama Administration’s attitudes and decision-making processes and about what Hillary and Mr. Obama were doing than did the American people or the Congress.
"It is a certainty..." Oh, for chrissakes...

None of the emails were classified at the time. Nothing indicates that any of this material was discussed. Nothing indicates that Russia or China or Tehran considered Hillary's email server to be of great importance. (Perhaps needless to add, nothing links the Ed Snowden revelations to any of Putin's actions vis-a-vis Ukraine. Snowden's material was entirely about the NSA.) This Forbes piece is the kind of over-the-top propaganda that even the John Birchers would have considered crude and bombastic.

This nonsense is illustrated with an ominous photo of Huma Abedin. Apparently, we're supposed to think that she is some sort of Mata Hari employed by the dreaded Russia/Chinese/Iranian conspiracy.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the former Secretary of State had followed the proper procedures, none of this would be happening. If she had shown any respect for the appearance of propriety, none of this would be happening. If she had shown any respect for the wishes of the President under whom she served, none of this would be happening.
I haven't heard any legitimate explanation why a Secretary of State, or a Secretary of Defense, or an Attorney-General would think that he/she ought to conduct the government's business on a computer system not controlled by the government itself.
The fact that she could not foresee the consequences of her actions, or felt that she could laugh and smirk her way around them, is to me a total disqualification of her for any office.

PhilK

Joseph Cannon said...

This is nonsense, Phil. The whole thing was set up so that Hillary could talk to friends and intimates without her emails being subjected to Judicial Watch-style examinations. Your "laugh and smirk" comment is right in step with the right's propaganda line.

That is your cue to pretend that you are not a rightwinger and not a troll.

Anonymous said...

"driving the right-wingers batshit crazy, but I can't. They were that way to begin with."

Look _dude_, your site is on my (very) short list of sites/blogs that I check most every day. I have seen some pretty good insights, and a lot of *really* interesting commentary here. Otherwise, I wouldn't be interested in it and it wouldn't be on my short list.

But, c'mon - By many measure, I am very right-wing, and I am NOT batshit crazy. Well, at least *I* don't think so. You do both yourself, and your readers, a glaring disservice by buying into the left/right on/off crazy/sane 0/1 binary model of political awareness where the people that believe as you do are rational, sane, and good...while those who do not believe as you do are irrational, insane, and evil...'batshit crazy' peeps.

I also hold many left wing beliefs sacred as well.

I also hate both formal Republican and Democratic parties with the greatest passion you can imgaine, as they are both corrupt to the core.

Then again, I grew up in an area of Oregon where the Christian fundamentalist loggers got baked on weed and listened to the Grateful Dead and Bob Marley as they chopped down old growth doug firs, before getting off work & going shooting w/their semi-auto rifles at beer cans up in the woods, and then in summer drove their VW bus to the Oregon Country Fair so they could buy some free-range egg omelettes, pick up some nifty leather goods and candles for the ranch, then go check out the latest solar panel developments, and finally ogle some bare-breasted hippy-chicks to boot.

So, maybe I am the exception to the rule.

But seriously, to call a whole class of people 'batshit crazy' is beneath you. You are smarter then that...you have proven *that* by most of your previous posts & good content.

Don't ruin a good thing, eh? :)

Alessandro Machi said...

The attacks on Hillary Clinton are generally from the batshit crazy neo cons and progressives. As for the Forbes article, it is a guest columnist, or should I say "Guessed Columnist".

Anonymous said...

I guess we don't say bat Shit progressives even if they are

Perry Logan said...

If Obama wants to undermine Hillary, all he has to do is endorse her. Baddabim, baddaboom, Hillary is out.

Anonymous said...

If people who are attacking Hillary on the emails issues are genuine, they would have gone against the whole administration. After all its all one body. He is her boss he knew about this for four years. It is well known practice that heads of an organization resigns because someone below them did something wrong. Also the heads of home land security, the FBI CIA they were sleeping on the job. But they won't because it's made up scandals they pretend, reclassify, leak and whatsoever their conniving little brain can come up with. And the public who's brain long ago fried by reality tv is soaking it

Gareth said...

The odd thing about the Hillary email "scandal" is that I read about it everywhere online and the talking heads can't stop babbling about it but when I'm out in the real world I hear absolutely nobody mention it. The politically obsessed are very concerned but ordinary people don't give a shit.

Gus said...

I can't be completely sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Joseph has used "batshit crazy" to describe certain progressives. The left has never been spared criticism and insult by Joseph if it was warranted. Of course, the right almost always gets that treatment, but Cannon has never pretended to be objective when it comes to left and right, and the two dominant political parties. He's a Democrat lefty, and I think he's mentioned before that if you don't like it, you can go to some other blog. For myself, I agree with Anon 10:01, that both parties are corrupt to the core. I'm more of a lefty myself, with a few conservative leanings, so Cannonfire usually covers things I'm interested in. I don't always agree with Joseph, but that's my problem, not his (it's his blog, his establishment, if you will). Besides, I worry if my view agrees with a bloggers 100%.....

Muffin said...

I'll grant you the right wing crazies and the Obama administration as being terminally hostile to Hillary, but I would add certified neocons to the list as a separate category from the crazies. I'm no fan of the Clintons, but go to frontpagemag.com and read the piece by Daniel Greenfield titled, "Last Days of Hillary." A crueler, more vicious hatchet job would be hard to devise. Torpedoes are being fired into Hillary's campaign on a daily basis, and it's been going on all summer. There's more going on than just a right wing conspiracy. I'll leave it to others to analyze who and why.

James said...

If the criticisms of the HRC email scandal were legitimate and not partisan in nature, then they would be referenced in the context of the GWB/Karl Rove email scandal. For those who may not recall, the Bush administration relied heavily upon private email servers and intentionally deleted 21 million emails prior to their departure from office. Adding to the intrigue, Michael Connell, the tech-guru who ran the company responsible not only for maintaining those email servers but also for handling the counting of Ohio votes in the 2004 election, conveniently died in a small plane crash immediately before being deposed in the Ohio election lawsuit.

But Hillary's scandal is definitely much more serious.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, James, for bringing up Michael Connell and his IT work for Karl Rove. I had forgotten about the plane crashed that killed Connell, and his bizarre involvement w the Ohio election website in 2004. For those interested, Maxim did a great story on him after the crash, raising lots of questions. We'll never know if Rove stole the Ohio election, but Connell's very involvement in the vote counting is astonishing enough.

Anonymous said...

@James : 2:04 PM
Thank You, it was exactly what I was going to reference.
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