THE PATRIOT POST - ALEXANDER'S COLUMN 08/19/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Alexander's Column Another Teflon Clinton? Hillary's Wall of Shame — Will Any of it Stick? By Mark Alexander · August 19, 2015    "It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." —Thomas Jefferson (1785) (On a personal note: Last week, I concluded my column with an appeal. For the first time since our 1996 inception, we were facing a third quarter revenue shortfall, and we were sweating bullets. We have not raised our budget in three years, though we have greatly enhanced our website, email publications and social media outreach. This week, we have closed the gap with thanks to all and special thanks to a fellow Patriot who has offered a 1:1 match. I am confident that incoming donations will have righted our ship by the end of today. On behalf of your entire Patriot team, thank you!) Pundits right and left are insisting that Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations are in big trouble — at least according to the latest polls. Most argue that the secret email server scandal is driving down her credibility and that is transferring support to her socialist fringe opponent, 73-year-old Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. But questions about her "private emails" and whether this self-spun web of lies will ensnare her are not what is threatening Clinton's candidacy. Nor is it her abysmal record as first lady, senator and secretary of state. Democrats are discontent with their establishment candidate, and that's what's driving up Sanders' stock. If this theme sounds familiar, it's because that's precisely the same discontent driving Donald Trump's stock to new highs. It's not so much that Democrats trust Sanders or Republicans trust Trump; it's that the messages of these two outliers resonate with grassroots voters on their respective ends of the political spectrum. Those voters perceive, accurately, that their party leaders have no spine and are accomplishing nothing good. An editorial in the uber-leftist rag Daily Kos — Three Big Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President — aptly sums up why the Left doesn't like her: "She has zero record of accomplishment. She's a terrible role model for women. And she's kind of dumb." The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that when it comes to the general election Demos will vote for any braying jackass (or jenny) with a "D" by their name, no matter how much baggage they have in tow. When it comes down to it, they don't care about all the scandals; they're totally dependent on government, and they want to keep the free stuff flowing! The irrevocable fact is, as Mitt Romney accurately (if inartfully) claimed in 2012, "There are 47% of the people who will vote for the [Democrat], no matter what ... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That’s an entitlement, and the government should give it to them. And they will vote for [the Democrat] no matter what." Republicans, on the other hand, will divide and conquer themselves, and if Trump breaks ranks to run as an independent, enough conservatives will follow him right down a rat hole, ensuring the White House will be in Democrat hands for four or eight more years, and the failed domestic and foreign policies of another leftist will continue to undermine Liberty and free enterprise. However, what will stick to Clinton are felony charges, and now that another 300 emails have been recovered from "lost" State Department servers that appear to have classified content and went through Clinton's private server, felony counts may be coming. Of course, the real reason then-Secretary of State Clinton routed all her email communication through a private server in a closet of her New York home was not as she claimed: “I thought it would be easier to just carry one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.” The private email server ensured she could protect her communication from public scrutiny, thus protecting her future political ambitions. Or so she thought. When challenged about the server, Clinton now insists, "I won't pretend that this [email scandal] is anything other than what it is — the same old partisan games." (Shades of that "vast right wing conspiracy"!) She added, "There is an unfortunate tendency to try to make partisan a tragedy in Benghazi, which I just fundamentally disagree with. I don’t think it’s right, and I will not participate in it. ... I won't get down in the mud with them. I won't play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost." Ah, yes, Benghazi — a case study of how Clinton "played politics with national security and dishonored the memory of those who we lost." I encourage you to review the details of Hillary Clinton's Benghazi cover-up. Fact is, she spit on the graves of four Americans in order to protect Obama's 2012 re-election bid. She lied, claiming the attack on our embassy was inspired by an obscure Internet video rather than a well-planned and executed al-Qa'ida assault on the anniversary of 9/11. When challenged about this fabrication, she replied in testimony before the Senate, “What difference, at this point, does it make?” Recall that at the time Obama was continuously crowing about how al-Qa'ida was "on the run." Given that his domestic economic and social policies had been an abject failure, all he had to frame his 2012 campaign upon were the patently false claims of victory in Iraq and the defeat of al-Qa'ida. Everything Clinton did to protect Obama's 2012 election was to ensure her own 2016 ambitions, and the false narrative about Benghazi is a key case in point. Having control over her communications about the Benghazi charade is precisely why she wanted her email maintained on a private server. It provided her the ability to erase half of the 60,000 emails contained therein, before she "voluntarily surrendered" that server to federal authorities. (It never plays well in the media when FBI agents show up at a presidential candidate's home with a search warrant.) As to the thousands of communications she had already deleted prior to turning over the server, I can assure you that Clinton did not write 30,000 emails about her yoga sessions or where to get the best price on fluorescent pantsuits. She insists, "We turned over everything that was work related — every single thing." In other words, she turned over "every single thing" that would not disable her 2016 campaign. And for the record, who is "we"? Who reviewed 60,000 emails, who determined what to erase and who erased and reformatted her server drives? This week, the State Department reported that 305 of Clinton's "found emails" (about 5% of those examined thus far) probably contain classified information, prompting veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to register his views on the erased emails. According to Woodward, "[This] reminds me of the Nixon tapes: Thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his. ... 60,000 emails and Hillary Clinton has said 30,000 of them, half, were personal and they were deleted. Who decided that? What's in those emails? ... The big question about Hillary Clinton is, who is she? ... The answers are probably not going to be pretty." As you recall, it was Woodward and fellow Post reporter Carl Bernstein who unraveled the 1972 Watergate DNC break-in, ultimately determining that knowledge about the cover-up of that break-in extended right to President Richard Nixon. In that case, Nixon erased 18 minutes of more than 3,700 hours of Oval Office conversations. That's 18 minutes versus Clinton's 30,000 emails. Ironically, in 1974 a young attorney named Hillary Rodham was a member of the impeachment staff advising the Democrat-controlled House Committee on the Judiciary on the precedents for impeachment. A year later, Rodham would marry the Great Prevaricator, Bill Clinton, who himself would go on to dodge an impeachment conviction as effectively as he dodged the draft. Nixon famously proclaimed, "I'm not a crook." Clinton should try that one on for size! Regarding the newly found emails, Clinton attempted to make light of matters, saying, "You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account. I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves." When asked about wiping the email server drive, she deflected the question with this snarky response: "What, like with a cloth or something? No." Those standup bits went over as well as when Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a giant “reset button” prop with “Peregruzka” stamped on the front, which actually translated as “overcharged.” (That epic fail is a fitting metaphor for Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.) As for where this email investigation will lead, Clinton concludes, "We’ll see how this all plays out." Indeed we will, and, if felony charges are filed, let's just hope another ancient establishment candidate like Joe Biden steps in, and not another younger more vibrant candidate like Elizabeth "Honest Injun" Warren, who would, despite her own proclivity for falsehood, be a much more formidable candidate. Of note, Bill Clinton was vacationing with the now-rich and famous Obamas at their exclusive Martha's Vineyard resort last weekend, and the White House press corps released photos of Bill and Barack golfing — a subtle shot over Biden's bow to keep clear of Hillary. Bill Clinton is fond of reading passages from literature to his friends. Here is one from Scottish historian and writer Sir Walter Scott: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!" Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis