Current Trends by Natasha Sapp

Ever since republican house member Kevin McCarthy unintentionally stumbled into the truth, virtually admitting the special committee investigating Benghazi was contrived to derail future presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton, bragging on national television about how low her poll numbers had gone thanks to their relentless inquiry, the last people looking at Benghazi besides party, conservative diehards stopped taking it seriously. A bad situation for republicans, leading to sullied perceptions questioning their core motivations multiplied exponentially when not 1 but 2 whistleblowers came forward to say exactly that; literally the 8th or 9th committee, investigation of its kind, spending a final total reaching 7 million dollars was indeed more interested in attacking former secretary Clinton on something to do with e-mails, quoting MSNBC— they don’t even know what it is—than criminal level speculated wrongdoing carried out by anyone else, even people who may have helped her, in their minds, spelling the death of our personnel in the region. One man expressly fired, according to both he and his lawyer, precisely because he would not go after Mrs. Clinton with a level of vigor, ruthlessness to satisfy his boss. Instead, people, political analyzers, Capitol Hill watchers right down to members of the average, every day public began paying much more attention to the declared intentions behind another supposed congressional panel, spearheaded by republicans, scrutinizing potentially terroristic deaths at our Libyan embassy including Ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans, digging up allegedly hidden truths about the incident. Not that it hadn’t already been looked at 8 ways to Sunday, viewed from every possible, conceivable angle both by the appropriate committees charged with investigating tragedy in the interests of national security, hopefully preventing reoccurrences going forward, and several prior republican lead governmental groups absolutely convinced something nefarious happened in Benghazi, top level officials were responsible for, resulting in the death of our people. Her 11 hour testimony before the final House exploratory body conforming to many what had been speculated for quite some time, especially on democratic/independent sides, even far preceding the McCarthy gaffe, their pursuit was not of the truth, inner workings that culminated in an undeniably devastating attack on our U.S. embassy in Benghazi, efforts to address slow responses, communication failures between agencies here and persons on the ground rather a witch hunt, a political tool, not to prove incompetence, unfitness to serve in public office, even criminal behavior, though not for lack of trying, but to get at Hillary Clinton any way they could. Since they can’t win on policy, they can’t win on their records of what they’ve done for America, it’s people, fulfilling demands that sent them to Washington in the first place and they can’t win over a majority of the voting populous to their ideas. Evidenced as she kept her cool, calmly answered their questions while they bickered back and forth at times like children wearing business suits but who might as well have been sporting Oshkosh B’gosh and playing in a sandbox. Her e-mail ultimately causing elevated unease, intensified disquiet among the American people because it simultaneously harkened back to 2 all-encompassing themes, why citizens feel they can’t trust her and exposed concerns about technology and privacy, government transparency; remembering Julian Assange, Wiki-leaks, Edward Snowden, questions raised about what our government is doing with our information, what our government is doing without our knowledge and what they are trying to hide from us, the constituency who elected them. Image negatives persisting as benign e-mails started to come out showing a personality, a person behind the often described cold façade. People feeling there was always more to the story egged on by news segments discussing deletions of thousands of e-mails deemed personal by only her and her staff, not a government 3rd party who should determine such things in their opinion, the wrongness, potential danger of a private, insecure server purportedly housed in a bathroom at her New York home. Americans later incredulous agencies, entities from state department, to FBI, to the committee on Benghazi ultimately refused to file charges, though they all agreed on a finding of gross negligence pertaining to Hillary Clinton in her storage of e-mail, use of that private server; seeming to contradict themselves, stating it doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal act. Feeding continuous, lasting decades, tropes Clinton is beyond untrustworthy for one ‘scandalous situation’ piled onto another, onto another over the past quarter century, but also above the law by virtue of her money, power and political connections; underscoring sentiments she should be locked up, jailed for this and many other unscrupulous dealings and actions throughout her career, as our republican nominee puts it, ‘crooked Hillary.’ Yet exasperatingly once again we’ve lost the true narrative, the meat of the story everyone should be unsettled over, worried about in drama and dross; make no mistake there are things about Benghazi the American people should know, deserve to know. It just doesn’t revolve around who gave Susan Rice her talking points, accusations Hillary Clinton was in bed asleep as Chris Stevens was dying, she told military personnel to stand down that night, ignored e-mails, phone calls that were pleas for help, nor is it epitomized in Hillary killed my friends t-shirts, the mother of one of the 4 killed there who blames Hillary for her son’s death, the Hillary Clinton murdered an ambassador twitter meme. You feel sorry for grieving people duped by hype, lied to, yet not by Hillary Clinton rather republicans, members of the latest committee, staunch conspiracy theorists who won’t let their debunked nonsense go; that’s a section of the story worth investigating, worth dragging some names through a very public walk of shame for, in the name of Benghazi effected families/friends. There is an embedded story within e-mail-gate, private server-gate; it just isn’t what she was trying to hide from the American people, what she was trying to hide from her bosses, how many laws she broke or the extreme carelessness with which she handled sensitive, secret, classified government materials, negligence, maleficence and incompetence revealing god knows what level of U.S. intelligence, information, strategy, vulnerabilities to the wrong people. Republican dominated panicked chicken-little-ism masking solid, legitimate questions about parts of our government and do they function well in the modern era, are they keeping up with the modern age, are we providing adequate tools and allocating monies in the right places to ensure they do?

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The real lost story of Benghazi centers on things rehashed that weren’t new to government officials having read previous findings, adjacent subject materials, no matter from which political faction, but were rarely mentioned publicly, disseminated to the people over the endless clamor of Clinton’s involvement, her implied overwhelming guilt regarding events at our facilities in Libya. Facts like yes there was available intelligence leading up to the attack signaling compounds there were not safe; what they aren’t telling readers of their report, while stating secretary Clinton and senator Patrick Kennedy should have realized that, is personnel in Benghazi who requested additional security were denied. Omitted completely, republican proposed, later enacted, budgets cuts to foreign diplomatic missions prompted a warning from then Secretary Clinton outlined cuts would endanger our diplomats, workers abroad. Despite Jason Chaffetz (R Utah) admitting on national television (seeing a pattern here) senate appropriations, again run entirely by republicans, prioritized funding “didn’t need to go to Libya” citing gargantuan amounts spent on contractors, ‘Obama’s private army’ in Iraq, economic tough times and equally tough choices. Sounding remarkably flippant about the 2 dozen or so personnel asked for considering the uproar doled out over 4 American lives their own choice caused them to lose, uttered for the first time a month after it all blew up in their faces, metaphor intended. Lo and behold Benghazi happened and republicans escape blame once more, 4 years, millions upon millions of dollars and we’re still discussing it, going round and round the same dumb mountain; that set of facts should make Americans exceedingly upset. When you have military leaders testifying their assets changed clothes 3 times in 4 hours because entities from the state department and the pentagon couldn’t decide whether or not they should wear their uniforms accounting for huge delays between what defense secretary Leon Panetta ordered and getting wheels up; that should make the American people angry. Ignored, there is no indication she was present never mind the one starting, continuing said argument, sat in an acknowledged 2 hour Whitehouse meeting twiddling her thumbs, whistling a tune while others did, as opposed to putting a stop to it, President Obama either as a point of fact. The very same Leon Panetta who was watching in real time, seeing some type of live stream video and still couldn’t accurately interpret what he was viewing, neither could the guy next to him, blindly unprepared for the second attack there; that’s where outrage should be directed and not let up until heads rolled, until high level personnel were fired. Military planes not at the ready, the Tripoli force making their own command decision to deploy themselves in an attempt to rescue and save American lives, no military resources close enough to the region to get there in time, almost regardless of what was or wasn’t on its way, the feel good effort of trying that clearly would have fallen short, that’s what should make the American public angry. Chairman Gowdy saying himself to the Huffington Post he wasn’t going to make the reckless allegation they could have been saved; yes, after giving a press conference over military wasting hours changing clothes and no one asking how the people the Whitehouse thought were going to evacuate compounds in Libya could achieve their goal when it took hours just to get to them, forget extract them. However debunking the Trump executive social media meme accusing Hillary Clinton murdered an ambassador, like it needed much debunking past his own inner circle. Substantial other military deficiencies illustrated in the following headlines taken from video news clips—‘Litany of errors led to U.S. sailors’ capture by Iran, report finds, Trainee’s Suicide Raises Questions About Navy SEAL Training, A Marine Recruit’s Death Spurred An Important Investigation, Coroner to call Navy SEAL trainee’s death “drowning homicide;” this is the armed forces expected to pull people out of Benghazi, sailors who can’t read their instruments and talk too much to the enemy, training so rigorous and caught up in one’s identity individuals who inevitably wash out of the elite group kill themselves because no one bothers to watch them, perform a basic mental health status check, such would imply weakness not allowed in military branches, the recruits death investigation centered around hazing, racism, of the anti-Muslim variety rounded out with training officers so unconcerned about safety they let a trainee drown during a swimming drill? Here’s what should be galvanizing anger, at minimum these command squads, these people serving in our armed forces who can’t seem to tie their shoelaces unaided. If they had been there their odds of success would have been nil before adding in the chaos on the ground, fervor of the people deciding to carry out their attack. Returning specifically to select committee report findings, security so lax they had no evacuation plan in the event of an attack, something as basic as a fire, a rebel threat, a drunk bozo with a knife, even though they were in a volatile area and had made repeated requests for additional security; they had to depend on Gaddafi former guards. That should make the American people angry along with how little Hilary Clinton, secretary of state though she was, had control over any of it because of who did have control; first and foremost people on the ground in Libya, the only ones truly capable of assessing the situation where they live/work, the holders of the purse strings i.e. republican controlled committees and the military. Not what she said in a press statement, who edited Susan Rice’s talking points versus what she said to her daughter in an e-mail, what she told the Egyptian Prime Minister; culprit there already established to be the CIA responsible for the ‘wolf tale’ meant less to keep America in the dark, keep it off ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox news and more to keep it from being front and center on Al Jazeera, Arab TV while they attempted to track and apprehend the bad guys, the terrorists who did it, oh my. Information contained in the house intelligence committee report, also compiled by republicans, released Friday before thanksgiving week 2014, dumped there chiefly because it didn’t support so much as 1 wildly spun out of proportion theory republican conspiracists had been touting since it happened. Independent assertions by select committee leader Trey Gowdy his focus wasn’t Hillary Clinton, he did what the Benghazi families asked him to do, the reason gritty reality never reached the American people about actual incompetence in Benghazi and by whom, the sole reason it has been politicized 8 other ways from Sunday is directly thanks to comments like Kevin McCarthy’s, Gowdy’s own reaction to whistle blower 1 (to call his accusations a “damn lie” on national television), repeatedly asked questions about what Hillary Clinton was hiding, her negligent behavior that was a prelude to cataloged carnage in Benghazi where American citizens, diplomats died; remember these are the same ‘investigators’ who broke her e-mail story, shouted about her use of a private server, vowing to get to the bottom of what was going on, threatening subpoenas they had no authority to issue, thinking there at least could be a smoking gun related to Libya. Surprise there wasn’t; true we are lucky more didn’t die, fault lying with the military, poor communication between government agencies and people present there than anything remotely connected to her. They had information, if you believe statements made at their press conference for the report’s release, to suggest the firing of Leon Panetta, were he still serving as secretary of defense, even to recommend, fight for him to be bought up on charges in the 4 deaths, but that’s not the story they were telling. They have grounds to certainly suggest, fight for the firing, criminal charging of the pentagon and state department persons arguing over uniforms, but that’s not the story were telling. They uncovered more evidence to charge the military leaders who didn’t have those planes ready, but that’s not the story they’re telling either. That’s not even the scope of their investigation, a power they hold, none of the committees investigating held, apart from perhaps the first, only bullet points for what to do next time; keeping in mind none of this information gathered was new, covered in some aspect via the 7-8 previous reports commissioned and completed by several agencies, partisan, bipartisan, democrat, republican. All they functionally succeeded in doing was showcasing what fellow republicans, in particular, had failed to focus on adequately before, expose drastic understatements that while leaders’ actions were flawed referencing Benghazi, they were not malicious or derelict, quotes taken verbatim from the Huffington Post regarding those nearly forgotten republican committee based conclusions. Incapable of erasing also uncovered facts about significant shifts in witness lists scheduled to appear before the select committee on Benghazi, dropped witnesses from the DOD (department of defense), pentagon exchanged for anyone to do with Hillary Clinton, including speech writers; witnesses suddenly added back last minute to hastily throw together their findings then release the report as maximum political bombshell according to log jam mass amounts of requests piling up at the pentagon a mere 2 months before the release, response letters sent to the select committee. But democrats jumped the gun issuing a counter report wrongly assuming it would discredit Clinton un-huh (that’s not the story either); not to mention we have proof positive republicans, their select committee are responsible for more smear heaped upon Hilary Clinton, observe how many public comments on videos, news clips came to just such a conclusion, who still believe she is guilty, her poor job performance meant the death of American citizens, believe the report proves their long held mantra she belongs in jail, her e-mails had something to do with this when they didn’t.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/02/the_benghazi_slow_walk_how_to_drag_out_an_investigation_for_maximum_political_impact/

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/16/the_benghazi_farce_deepens_the_gops_conspiracy_hunt_is_undermined_from_within/

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/19/trey_gowdys_tough_week_the_farcical_benghazi_committee_keeps_bumbling_along/

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/29/the_sunset_of_the_benghazi_scandal_endless_gop_investigations_and_no_smoking_gun/

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/29/the_benghazi_farce_is_finished_partner/

A much bigger piece of the puzzle better explaining why Hillary Clinton’s email, use of a private server, non-government account is less the issue it has been made out to be stems from history, reality that she was far from the only one implicated by FBI or state department investigations. Their scathing reports respectively also named names; Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were 2 officials holding her previous job opting for both a government and personal account; Ambassador Caroline Kennedy too used exclusively a non-government account. Findings subsequently laying into the state department itself for allowing private e-mail use under those former secretaries of state, for failing to have a comprehensive policy in place and effectively communicating aforementioned policy to state department staff—to say nothing of ensuring it’s implementation, worker compliance while we’re at it. These facts should be what’s riveting everyone’s attention; that the state department is so electronically out of touch they don’t have a policy, they didn’t notice for her entire tenure as secretary of state she was using a non-government account and look into it, not deleted personal e-mails about her daughter’s wedding, doctors’ appointments and vet visits for any Clinton pets. Highlighted violations of public records law discovered when the national archives began plugging a records gap stretching all the way back to Madeleine Albright clearly didn’t just affect Clinton, report calling it systematic weaknesses; records requests to which, conveniently swept under republican carpets and beyond their amnesiac memories, she readily complied. These facts should be what’s riveting everyone’s attention; that the national archives is so bad at record keeping, complying with known law itself, it didn’t notice for 2 years, in Clinton’s case, it was missing documents, 17-18 years if you start at the beginning of Ms. Albright’s term in the position. Systematic weaknesses should be raising a lot more red flags among people than why Hillary Clinton did this especially taking a passing glance at nightly national news to hear about hacks, successful hacks at the pentagon, Whitehouse non-classified computers, the military’s twitter account; signifying a much bigger problem than Hillary Clinton’s private server by contrast never successfully hacked, subject to periodic shutdowns to prevent hacking sure, warning e-mails from staff about what not to send her via e-mail at that time, sure. Because someone was assigned to watch it, to do exactly what they did in the event of a cyber threat; understanding this wasn’t a run of the mill e-mail account, instead ran by a security firm specializing in exactly what they set up for Hillary Clinton. FBI’s ability to retrieve 30,000 thought deleted e-mails further eliminating any mystery as to what was or wasn’t kept on her server; if the FBI didn’t share that information, uncovered materials with the inspector general at state, take it up with said FBI, get all pertinent facts and render a decision. Her spokespersons correct phishing e-mails prove she received spam like the rest of us and followed the advice given to everyone, by not opening them; key facts that matter. Dovetailing into ‘shocking’ claims by interviewed notorious hacker known simply as Guccifer, identified as the first to expose Hillary Clinton’s use of a private sever according to NBC news; this man is in a Romanian prison and we’re supposed to believe him, Hillary Clinton press secretary on to something, if he had hacked her server like he claimed, why didn’t he release the e-mails, pattern MO with all his other victims? If he had indeed gained access to her server why didn’t he give a layman’s rundown of how he did it; if he had actually found contents housed on her server why not offer up juicy tidbits of personal information, classified documents he saw, interesting headers to e-mail threads, because he’s doubtlessly lying to get just what he got, himself on TV, people saying his name. Similarly contradictions between Clinton’s statements and FBI/state department on what was classified at the time, 110 separate e-mails containing classified details, a fraction of that out of almost 100,000 total actually marked, what should have been deemed classified therefore not on a home server, reverts back to what analysts said the claims where and always will be, interagency posturing, reread about the 30,000 above; key contexts that matter. These are the things that should be riveting everyone’s attention, not beating up on Hillary Clinton for orchestrating an electronic situation, in all probability, more secure than the Whitehouse has to offer. Realistic truth being there was little chance of Hillary Clinton ever being indicted, criminally charged regarding her e-mail, private server regardless of how it differs from a basic, private account usually found in home offices, known e-mail services google mail, those accompanying an ISP, owing to a lack of intent, a lack of flagrant violation of the law. Nor did they expect to find anything; their primary function looking into the case was routine ruling out of legal violations, avoidance of the appearance of impropriety. Legal precedent and the existing standard saying both flagrant violation and overt intent/knowledge of wrongdoing must be found to warrant prosecution; contrast her behavior to David Petraeus, who gave classified materials, military secrets to his mistress. Detailed by the FBI director during his unprecedented press conference announcing no charges against Clinton, this was government documents, of many types, passing back and forth between people authorized to have them. Justice department’s determination she was well within the law to delete personal e-mails, sans 3rd party involvement, had they been on a government account or a private account, in this instance how is that much different from a private server, apparently irrelevant. Bringing us to the political optics, legal truths still valid, operational notwithstanding who met who on a tarmac and who might have been trying to influence the outcome of an investigation; like Loretta Lynch, current attorney general, was supposed to tell President Clinton to get off her plane, run screaming down that same tarmac fingers in her ears, onlookers catching snatches of sentences about conflicts of interests and impropriety—that wouldn’t have made headlines at all. Pretending republicans, people determined to hate Hillary Clinton, a public equally looking for something wrong, something to pounce on wouldn’t have turned it into a news story if the 2 planes had merely been on the tarmac together, occupants having no interaction whatsoever. But because they spent X minutes trading stories about grandchildren, travel sites and activities of mutual friends, it’s suddenly irregular for an attorney general to follow recommendations suggested by the FBI in an investigation of this kind— please. If President Clinton were seriously trying to influence the final decision of his wife’s investigation why would he do it so publically, so openly where people were bound to make a derogatory, tabloid worthy headline out of it; let’s face it we didn’t find out about Monica Lewinsky until well after the fact. No, this is exactly what both said it was; a chance meeting, a meet and greet, hello, trading unrelated stories passing time waiting for completion of plane maintenance or their turn in a line on the tarmac for takeoff. Lynch’s move called incredibly dumb; no, what’s incredibly dumb is letting non-stories distract from the important things, important things that made Benghazi, e-mail-gate, sever-gate possible, when publically there are plenty of eye-popping incidents of bad, unwise, e-mail use, surpassing the content, related to security when you are a high level government operative, holding a significant government job, deleted, lost e-mails that shouldn’t have been lost, were lost under dubiously convenient conditions. Upholding corruption suspicions President George W. Bush’s Whitehouse lost millions of e-mails gaining notice caught up in the firings of 8 U.S. attorneys under investigated potentially politically motivated circumstances. Not only that but top officials including one Karl Rove had been using a private e-mail affiliated with an RNC server for Whitehouse business; his defense at the time when confronted about improperly archived e-mails, he thought they were being archived. Sound familiar, it should it’s almost exactly what Hilary Clinton said about a 90th percentile portion of her ‘missing’ e-mails, believing they were being archived; when you have 2 different persons from 2 different decades, opposing political parties saying the same thing about the same piece of technology, you have a structural problem that goes beyond either person, there’s the story, there’s the focus. And Donald Trump, for all his hammering of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, has his own history of deleting e-mails potentially pertinent to legal proceedings; one stands out where a Trump business was the plaintiff and lawyers for Trump organizations told a disbelieving judge they didn’t keep e-mails for the period 1996 till within the last couple of years, said couple of years circa 2006. Judge not having heard anything so preposterous in his 24 years on the bench. Public comment consisting of Trump is not a government official calling the comparison a fail, unfair, but Bush was sitting exactly where either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be sitting come January 2017; pardon me, a registered voter, if I think it does. Again going to intent, Hillary Clinton’s e-mail issue carries all the markers of a mistake in comprehending used technology, a preemptive security move even, surrounded by a confusing backdrop of conflicting laws, policies, guidelines and statutes; Donald Trump’s smells of an outright lie or negligent business practices mandating further scrutiny either way. Same concept applied to we’re supposed to subscribe to the thinking Hillary Clinton and Karl Rove’s situations were different because you had 2 sets of aids, in his case, trying to comply with countermanding laws, one about not using government computers for political campaigning, one on archiving records; proving the point for readers, a desperate need for comprehensive, clear policy and knowledgeable people to carry it out, none of which they had/have at any level.

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Branching out from there, an increasingly relevant story in America’s modern era, increasingly global technology age surrounding e-mail outrage, private server controversy, accusations Hillary Clinton ‘horrifyingly’ approved drone strikes from her cellphone, implying a most unprofessional manner considering the seriousness of the latter, is broad sweeping deficits confronting, assessing technological capabilities in the United States government, in the Whitehouse itself, in the state department, going all the way back, in some respects, to Lois Lerner and the IRS, further still spanning decades. A government report entirely detached from inquiries into Clinton on various levels uncovered government run missile installations, facilities, government programs a-la social security currently using floppy disks, technology circa the 1960’s running a 60 billion dollar tab on taxpayers. What now squawking republicans aren’t telling you while using America’s much talked about decline as a political platform, reminiscing about the Manhattan project during WWII (praising nuclear weapons when their creators were the most avid against their use from the party of Reagan), foundations of the internet brainchild of our military, the Apollo space program putting one of Ohio’s own on the moon, and how far we’ve ‘fallen’ technologically, is their party champions it’s cheaper to maintain it than replace it. What they’re not telling you is things are in the state they’re in because republicans refuse to allocate the money to do technological upgrades, infrastructure repair, rebuild and creation projects, saving a few bucks is how we got the Flint water crisis, national government funding cuts canceled the space shuttle program pushing said space flights into the private sector, including supply runs to the international space station. What they’re not telling you is of course Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed, because who knows how old it was; of course they recycled it according to policy, a policy Paul Ryan knew nothing about while yelling at the IRS commissioner, because republican’s singular talent is finding scandals where none exist or singling out one person and ignoring the larger problem. Of course records were missing because their system didn’t back up anything longer than 6 months; after that it necessitated physical, manual printing to meet archival requirements. What they’re not telling you is that there was a reason for the excess review, prolonged wait times given to sudden tea party, republican, conservative 501c4 filings, a direct outcropping of Citizens United and ensuring they would not be used for covert, illegal political campaigning, or in the end, totally apart from the scandal, the grilling, Lerner’s resignation, they all got what they were seeking, designation as non-profits, no one found to be subverting campaign laws, disclosure of donor rules, meaning the screening process worked as designed. Returning to Hillary Clinton, questions broached in my second piece on Benghazi, e-mails and how it all fits together, or doesn’t, astutely asked— where was the person on the first day in her office, using her office, not simply moving furniture in, showing her established security protocols, e-mail encryptions, condensing a probably 80-100 page document on material handling do’s and don’ts separated by designated classification, sensitive, top secret, classified, general, personal? Answer, there was no such person because they, management at the state department, don’t have that structure set up; just like they didn’t have a person on her last day in office collecting records for state or the national archives, anyone noticing they never did security, encryption updates for her email, because there was no one assigned to do so. Glaring reason she never asked anyone for permission to use a private account ‘let alone’ a private sever, ‘even though she had an obligation to do so,’ wasn’t fear she could be denied, foreknowledge she was doing something wrong, dubious, but identical to the reason she had to, should have gone out and gotten a .gov., Whitehouse, government account instead of one easily and expediently being provided for her upon taking office. There was no one to ask, no one tasked with providing such IT services to government personnel. And if there was a state department IT team, why didn’t they issue Mrs. Clinton a .gov. account; because, the accusation that’s never been laid is she was provided a .gov. e-mail address and, refused, chose not to use it, rather the admonishment was she should have gotten one, deliberately sought one out. Dissecting the CBS evening news video below, if IT staff were available and concerned about secretary Clinton’s private e-mail, why was it never reported; who were these ‘higher ups’ rebuffing questions, telling them the matter wasn’t to be discussed further, telling them never to bring up Clinton’s server again? Are you alerting America Clinton aides had the power, thought they had the power to bully Whitehouse IT staff; higher ups implies a greater authority, more significant title than top aide(s), spokesperson, press secretary, even when your boss is Hillary Clinton, yes that Hillary Clinton. Moreover if you are being bullied on something rising to the level of national security why not report it; especially with Wiki Leaks and Bradley/Chelsea Manning unfolding beneath you, Edward Snowden came forward with his information in 2013, Clinton’s last year as secretary of state. But it was 2 years and part of the Benghazi investigation before anyone heard a peep; if there’s anything there is grounds to prosecute, bar from sensitive materials, political support positions those higher ups. Speaking of affiliated people worthy of examination for possible prosecution perhaps before getting to Clinton herself, according to Evan Perez CNN justice correspondent’s report some of the sensitive material mentioned in select e-mail chains started on state department unclassified computers and wound up on Clinton’s private server; wait there were people starting should have been classified conversations on unclassified computers/areas that landed in Hillary Clinton’s electronic lap and she’s your target? FBI recommending no charges for Clinton maybe should have charged leaders at the state department for the also reported lax environment, the common problem of bleed through, classified content leaching over into the unclassified system. Yes Hillary Clinton used her phone to give a final yes or no on operations needing deadline contingent answers including drone strikes, used opaque terms to discuss ‘the CIA drone program;’ maybe someone should also refresh their memory on the definition of opaque since they seem to be losing it because the FBI clearly divined what they were talking about. They quickly deciphered the probable topic because being FBI, being government intelligence, they too knew about the CIA drown program. Again, what they’re not telling you is this has antiquated, outdated software written all over it and absolute dinosaurs who possess zero understanding of technology running around telling workers how to archive their work materials, work related electronic communication, top secret, classified, sensitive documents; another case of would be laughable if it wasn’t a matter of national security, protecting our sovereignty and critical information. Even older dinosaurs running around trying to find someone savvy enough to give them a basic tutorial in how all these gadgets work, one of the lighter Clinton e-mail threads was getting an i-pad for Christmas and asking her daughter to teach her how to use it, translate policy into plain English so you can follow official guidelines. What they’re not telling you is they don’t have a mobile workspace for someone as well traveled as a secretary of state, no clue how to create one, no interest in creating one, confining people to rules, regulations that are chronologically last century. Mystifying is why we are still trying to use people where machines, computers have demonstrated themselves to be 1,000 times better from the outset in storing, cataloging information, information retrieval, so why are we continuing to rely on people who will forget, who will get distracted, who will get sick effecting job performance, memory recall during a secondary job duty like periphery records management, who will misunderstand, fail in comprehension of the new old system, lie, try to cover things up, to log information when nearly every place has a sever of some kind, varying data storage capacity, when what we want is massive data storage, when big data is the new thing in analysis, in trend determination, pattern recognition? There should have been systems set up that did periodic dumps form Hillary Clinton’s state department computer, a step beyond that even, her e-mail address to the national archives, state department archival systems and backup, from Lois Leaner’s computer to whatever archival system the IRS had, should have had already in place. The United States government should be first in getting private sector creations that enhance cyber security, facilitate data storage, increase ease of transmitting information while keeping it to safe standards surrounding national security. And if we don’t have it let’s build it, let’s invent it, but instead of having this conversation with the American people it’s let’s demonize ‘un-trustable’ Hillary Clinton because she wanted to keep her personal information private, desired convenience, could only keep track of 1 mobile device at a time, recognized the security mess at the state department and went about devising her own fix so she could do her job well avoiding the slow wheels of Washington, trying to change things. FBI finding the whole of the state department’s approach to security lax, lax going back years if you examine both technology policies and practices through mentioned secretaries of state, but Hillary Clinton is on the hook alone.

Whether you believe, to quote Bill Maher, she was elderly and didn’t understand the e-mail situation , isn’t good with technology (mirroring the rest of her generation, all digital immigrants,) who needed a private server because the government servers are inefficient, a wonk who needed something that worked, Peter Thiel above who told audiences at the RNC it’s kind to say government software works some of the time, because most of the time it doesn’t work at all, in short phrases government servers are slow and suck, or take [paraphrasing] Chris Mathews’ stance—she had just come off of running for president, needed a safe place to keep her political contacts, her political network with an eye toward 2016 or not, didn’t want it subjected to FOIA (freedom of information act), nor should it be, have been. It doesn’t make Hillary Clinton a candidate for jail/prison even the FBI said so, catchy as Hillary for prison 2016 sounds to some people. Maher is right, of the known things exciting right wing politics: emails, Benghazi, voter fraud, Planned Parenthood, building a wall, who can go to the bathroom where, they’re imaginary, they’re not real, they don’t affect anybody’s lives, they’re not actual issues. And while they’ve been running around chasing phantom scandals, drumming up faux outrage based on what the government has done, solutions get thrown by the wayside; foreign diplomatic missions continue to be cut, that there was at least one report saying Ambassador Chris Stevens himself turned down offered security from a neighboring area is irrelevant because it doesn’t serve the goal of eliminating a political rival in Hillary Clinton. Highlighting something else Chris Mathews said in his hour long cohosted show with Maher, all the American people, and by extension the Benghazi families, wanted to know was she did her best, the people handling the crisis that night did their best, and if a person or persons didn’t do their best they would be punished, but throughout all the hearings, especially their most recently concluded one, he’s correct, they never asked the questions to get a minute by minute, hour by hour account of what she did from the moment she heard about what was happening in Benghazi, knew her friend, her friend, these people so full of righteous indignation in Washington didn’t even know him, Chris Stevens was in trouble until the moment he was reliably conformed among the dead, probably putting aside her grief to see what could be done to save the remaining 2, 3 guys over there who might still be breathing! While her e-mails may have the potential to affect people’s lives in terms of jeopardizing our national security, raking her over the coals may discourage the use of private e-mail accounts, private servers but it won’t shore up the security of government systems that have already been hacked repeatedly, it won’t change the work culture at the state department, get workers there on all tiers to take security more seriously, it won’t devise better security programs. It doesn’t address you need a mobile workspace in the 21st century to function in almost any developed nation’s job setting, one of the lighter e-mail chains again was calling Whitehouse snow days silly, I said the same thing breaking down the primary debates when Marco Rubio talked about developing 21st century jobs concurrently being taken to task, justifiably, for not showing up for work, not being present for key votes, too busy out running for president to complete his existing job. Directly following I said we know they broadcast congressional floor activity on C-span, why can’t he get a feed of that on an i-pad, phone, computer and develop a secure way for him, any candidate, to cast his vote remotely when the time comes; expounding on that why not provide a closed circuit feed to senate, house members of floor activity, committee meetings, things that fall under the scope of their job duties using a variation of Skype, FaceTime so they can listen, provide, input, cast votes remotely when their plane is stuck due to weather, they are campaigning for the next job up the political ladder, seeking reelection? Why can’t we do that, why is the Whitehouse so far behind every other technology required workplace in America; to put it in perspective, Marissa Mayer banned telecommuting at Yahoo, sent shockwaves through the entire professional world nationwide, reaching far past Silicon Valley, tech giants, into every corner of the workforce, receiving untold backlash from no shortage of working parents who depend on telecommuting to keep their jobs, to say nothing of the freelance, work from home, work anywhere with a phone/internet connection economy, had the whole world watching and still didn’t save the company from being bought out by Verizon. And if Mr. Maher is right and there are hundreds of workers at state using private accounts and/or private servers because the government servers are unusable, that deserves more attention than efforts to fit Hillary Clinton for an orange jumpsuit, neither should they be Fed Xed to prison rather given the hero status many believed Edward Snowden worthy of for exposing a potentially dangerous problem. What the hell are we doing chastising Hillary Clinton for discussing the CIA drone program in euphemistic terms on her phone, ‘approving drone strikes on her phone’ instead of chastising the state department, the Whitehouse, the United States government’s collective IT thinkers for not giving workers at her level secure phones, blackberries, tablets; it’s time to take the kids from Hack the Pentagon and Ready, Set Hack government sponsored hacking competitions meant to improve security and put them to work on projects like this. Bill Maher certainly hitting it out of the park a second time (2nd video below) comically demonstrating the absurdity of the media’s 25 year hate fest obsession with a Hillary Clinton politician, president’s wife, her own strong woman, they’ve largely made up then flayed her for being guarded. To quote the Salon.com article (also below) “…they assess her pantsuits, her hairdos, her gestures, her expressions, her “grating” voice. [Who remembers the Clinton cough stories, how unbelievable it was to people as she was giving all those speeches, shouting and rousing up crowds her voice got slightly worn out?] They assume that there is always some ulterior motive or calculation to everything she says and does — as if there isn’t for any presidential candidate. Whether you like Hillary Clinton or not, she labors under the media’s presumption of guilt. Suppose Clinton, like Trump, hurled ad hominem insults at opponents. Trump seems to get away with it because it is just “Trump being Trump” — which is another media meme altogether. You pretty much know that if Clinton did so, the media would be calling her “desperate” or “mean” or “unladylike.” Suppose she got all teary-eyed, the way John Kasich used to do. You know the media would say that she is a “phony” or “too soft.” Suppose she parroted the same lines again and again, the way Rubio did. You know the media would call her “programmed…. Hillary is accused of being too hawkish. But if she weren’t hawkish, she would be accused of being too passive — which is to say, too womanly. As Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Hillary supporter, put it on CBS’s Face the Nation, “If she was a man, all this stuff wouldn’t be at the same level.” Despite media claims, Ben Carson trying to associate her with the devil, Hillary Clinton isn’t evil incarnate, a bloodless automaton or a 3 way split between Lady Macbeth, Cruella Deville and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, a serial killer, traitor, terrorist mastermind, sex addicted lesbian (is it the pantsuits). Remember this is the same media who sparked the Whitewater nothing investigation with their bad, shoddy reporting “that led federal investigators to spend several years and millions of dollars chasing Clinton misdeeds all over Washington and Arkansas. That all those investigations ever turned up was the president lying about a blowjob is one of the more absurd spectacles in the long history of absurd spectacles in American politics.” The same media who comes up with ‘the dress that broke the internet,’ foods, shoes, shirts, fury animals and other benign pictures that go vial dominating certain circles of conversation for days; now we’re longing for the days of Mr. Clinton, of budget surpluses, actual passed legislation, measurable things achieved the country can tangibly calculate. Proving once and for all sexual moral compasses of the religious right and failure to live up to them doesn’t preclude an ability to wield political acumen; sexual morality and job performance have nothing to do with each other even when your title is president of the United States. Never mind JFK had more mistresses than he had body hair and the Kennedy’s are still American royalty. We will never know the ‘real’ Hillary Clinton behind her created persona, the box they forced her into with their endless streamed criticism based more on her gender, the stock things always said about women who try to break glass ceilings, compete with their male counterparts on an unfair playing field, interesting is why we are again making that her fault along with all the other falsely attributed things that have nothing to do with the content of her character, rather her possession of a vagina and an unwillingness to go down the laundry list of imaginary rabbit holes pointed out by Bill Maher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxc3PwjRcoo

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/07/we_have_hillary_all_wrong_americans_hate_a_politician_of_the_press_imagination_partner/

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/29/kudos_to_hillary_for_playing_the_woman_card_if_people_are_going_to_call_her_a_witch_shell_tell_them_shes_hermione_granger/

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/18/the_new_york_times_blew_this_big_time_an_epic_reporting_fail_with_dire_national_consequences/

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/22/the_press_has_not_done_its_job_three_ways_the_media_has_failed_our_democracy_in_covering_the_election/

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/26/are_you_really_surprised_the_dnc_email_leaks_only_confirmed_what_we_already_knew/

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/26/the_ominous_trump_russia_link_what_happens_if_moscow_really_is_meddling_in_the_2016_race/

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/26/corruption_for_decades_that_time_when_the_mafia_almost_fixed_the_democratic_national_convention_partner/

It follows public interpretation of shakeups within the DNC, removal of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, resignations, as this goes to press, of the CEO and 2 top adjacent positions after an alleged Russian hack exposing e-mails, proving in the court of public opinion at least, DNC operatives favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. However show us, Bernie boo-birds, as one author called them covering the unexpected dissent at the democratic convention last week, that e-mails discussing Sanders being Jewish, rumored atheist, describing how they can play that in states where faith is highly important to constituents, substantiates anything other than 2 DNC low level staffers being idiots on e-mail, 2 DNC staffers wanted the candidate they liked to win as much as the boo-birds wanted Bernie. Next challenge, prove they actually took the step(s) to implement their biased strategy of spreading ideas he wasn’t Christian, didn’t have a religious faith period, didn’t believe in god; followed closely by show America it made a substantial difference at the ballot box, at the polls in terms of who turned out to vote, who stayed home, who checked a box beside a different candidate based exclusively on information that ‘scandalous’ e-mail contained. Thirdly show us it derailed Berne’s chances to win over people who weren’t going to vote for him unless he was a Christian, unless they knew his faith affiliation, show us one voter, forget more, who says they didn’t vote for Bernie because they ‘had heard’ he wasn’t a Christian or was an atheist; show us it dented his numbers with people who were always going to step into voting booths across the country and check a box next to Hillary Clinton, precisely because it would make her the first woman president, a powerful, powerful symbol he couldn’t escape or compete with frankly. Information not available because it doesn’t exist, counter to DNC screaming about a rigged system, shouts Clinton and her ‘devil-et in training’ Wasserman-Shultz stole the election process, cheated the American people. And for the record, the DNC didn’t have to tell intelligent voters Bernie’s campaign was a mess, a conclusion they came to all on their own; proceeding comment found on an article calling out the media for so called bias against Sanders and for Clinton pretty much tells it all: “I agree that the media failed us but you have the context backwards. Sanders never had a chance. He was never a serious candidate. He lacked the support from Democratic voters, he had never put any effort into building the relationships and support needed to mount a successful campaign. The media failed to tell us that. They went along pretending he could win because it made for a better story. They always want to tell the horse race and they loved Sanders because he allowed them to talk about “what is wrong with the Clinton campaign.” Even after her sweep of the Northeast in March when the primary was effectively over they kept up the charade. This is how they failed us. They supported the delusions of Sanders supporters even when there was no chance of victory.” [Sic] Let’s also talk intelligently about the machinations of the DNC money grazing machine, to quote ABC’s Brian Ross, A- it has been in existence for decades, was not new or just rolled out because either Bernie or Hillary decided to run, B- cataloged perks, rewards are what you get if you raise X dollar amount not limited to if you write a check for that amount from your ‘deep pockets;’ explain to everyone reading please how that’s different than school fundraisers where you get Y for selling so much wrapping paper, Z boxes of girl scout cookies, I went to a church camp one summer where the kids who brought the most friends got a huge thing of M&M’s, how does it differ from sales jobs that work on commission? And the people painted as calling for their perks, wanting an upgrade like greedy children, where is the proof in these e-mails, leaked DNC documents they got what they had their ‘grubby’ hands out for; the cancer patient bumped from a Whitehouse event, edged out by a bigger donor, ABC reported it themselves—falls at the feet of Jordan Kaplan jerk extraordinaire, judge him as you will based on his behavior there, no proof the ill man was actually bumped from the event, sitting next to the President. Worth clarifying too, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz is not the whole of the DNC, neither are other leaders jumping ship in a flurry of resignations, staffers responsible for generated e-mails exposing ‘the seedy underbelly of politics;’ nor is Hillary Clinton wholly defined by the DNC, synonymous or responsible for actions of the DNC. So why are they, redundancy after redundancy, angry at her, of course asking that is like asking them to understand what a primary really is, which is like asking the average citizen to differentiate between a direct democracy and an indirect democracy, a democracy and a republic, correctly articulate which one we have—good luck. Josh Zepps assertions of obviously open bias aside, he’s right on the money in saying primaries where never democratic in and of themselves rather, “A primary is just a way for a private organization to pick its nominee…“But Clinton still won almost fair and square—she won the biggest states and the most votes, and she trounced Sanders among African-American voters (by almost 50 percent) and among Democrats (by almost 30 percent).” By those metrics what do you mean almost, where was the unfairness, cheating, ridged system we’ve heard so much about? Finally you got what you wanted, ouster of ‘devil-et’ Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, in a concerted effort to make democratic something that wasn’t supposed to be democratic until people cast their ballot for offered choices, they moved majoritively to adjust super delegate rules tying more of them to primary results from their state, reflecting what voters decided. After November, well before either the midterms or the 2020 election cycle they plan to form a commission: goal, make process more transparent, fair and democratic; they’ve done all they can do now to answer voters, plan on doing more, what more do they want apart from finding a way to give the nomination to Bernie Sanders, which of course didn’t happen. All topics funneling into the same distorted perspective not of proffered scapegoats’ lying, cheating hiding, but what’s lurking behind agenda driven stories reviving that old saying: there are 3 sides to every story his, hers and the truth somewhere in the middle.

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