Emails, Initiatives and Lots of Hot Air

 

The latest releases from Wikileaks have created a tsunami of accusations by GOP sycophants as well as a deluge of whining from Democrats who love to whip their own butts. I watched this morning as GOP pundit Joe Scarborough spent a large segment of his show, on how the latest email release revealed that Robbie Mook and John Podesta were worried about the repercussions of the information therein. Of course they were worried. They know how assholes like Scarborough can blow nothing up into a complete governmental crash just by talking about it long enough so that people start to think it’s real.

The fact is that if you go over what has been revealed so far you will see, as Al Hunt has stated on camera with Andrea Mitchell, that there is not one single line that speaks to wrong doing. What there is, is a lot of discussion on what to do about the problem of media types who look to create problems out of nothing. When you see what has been done by Scarborough and his hysterical sidekick, who spend hours each morning interrupting guests and creating stories out of thin air, you will understand this fear, but there is really nothing   that amounts to anything that points to any wrong doing.

If the Joe Scarborough’s of the media can’t come up with one actual shred of proof of anyone using Hillary’s emails to hurt this country or of anyone getting some actual reward for their gift to the Clinton Initiative, then they should just shut up. There is so much to talk about that is really wrong with this country right now that wasting even a minute on this ridiculous garbage is almost criminal.

To go back to the actual server there is certainly the accusation of carelessness, inappropriately made by Comey, but there isn’t a single instance of anyone being able to show where any email has released classified or even important information to anyone who wasn’t supposed to have it. There is not one single piece of evidence that Clinton’s server was invaded by anyone. This is as opposed to the DNC server, any number of government departmental servers, even FBI servers, all of which have been hacked. Remember this when you read the last portion of this blog relating to James Comey’s latest blunder.

So the accusation that Clinton was putting classified information at risk by using a private server is pure unadulterated bullshit. It’s just another pathetic attempt by the GOP mud machine to smear anyone they can’t legitimately beat. Yes, it’s the loser’s way of dealing with defeat.

I find it depressing that in the last quarter of a century, since the beginning of Bill Clinton’s administration, the concept of a party of grown-ups that could lose an election, yet still work hard for the success of the country and go on from there to compete with honor in the next election has completely disappeared. The idea that the GOP can lose an election without becoming muckrakers and traitors to their electorate no longer exists. The concept of the loyal opposition, a group or a party that loses an election but still works hard for the good of the country, has disappeared, ground into dust by the sore losers, the Republican Party. This aberrant behavior is exemplified by the traitorous actions of a small but well organized group of sleazebags whose first loyalty is to the Republican Party, not the country.

The other big take that comes from the Wikileaks revelations has to do with the Clinton Initiative and how some of the money raising will look when the GOP pundits howl to the moon about it somehow being wrong. Okay. How? There is absolutely no evidence of any quid pro quo. The idea that the Clinton’s are doing something illegal or wrong is a perception without fact. And the biggest noise seems to be about how much the Clinton’s got paid to talk to Wall Street and industry groups. Let’s look at that idea in contrast to Hillary’s opponent, Donald Trump. The Clintons charge the rich guys a hell of a lot of money to rub shoulders with them. Trump screwed the small contractors who were too small to fight him on payments for work done. Which one of these candidates do you want on your side, the Clintons who take money from the rich or Trump who steals money from the working man?

Let’s face the facts. The Clintons took a lot of money from a bunch of very rich guys; guys who make millions each year for heading up very profitable companies that mostly didn’t pay any taxes. Who better to take money from? What did they do with that money? Well, some went into their pockets, but much of it went into the Clinton Initiative, which saves lives all over the world and which is one of the five or ten top charities extant. Trump has a charity too. It raises money from people to buy paintings of Donald to grace the entrances of his golf courses. A truly laudable goal, if your name is Trump.

Have the Clintons given any real quid pro quo for any of the gifts to the Initiative? I don’t know, but with fully half the media in the world searching, none has, as yet, been uncovered. So what’s all this noise about, the appearance of impropriority? With so much actually going wrong in the world do we really have time to look at appearances? Are we willing to overlook all the real problems and listen to the GOP muckrakers, or are we going to demand some kind of proof of all these accusations?

John Heileman points out repeatedly that there has been a great deal of “skeezy” behavior in the raising of money for the Clintons but absolutely no point where anyone can identify a single crime. In fact this column can’t even see much skeezy behavior. The people who are raising money for the Initiative are doing humanity a huge service and they rightly pre-suppose that what they are doing is just as important as any potential political campaign. Their job is to put as much money in the Initiative coffers as they can. It makes no difference where that money comes from or what strictly legal favors must be done to get it. In this case the end more than justifies the means.

And just to make this farce of an election, even more ridiculous than anyone would have thought possible; on Friday FBI director James Comey announced that he is reopening the FBI’s case on the emails. This proves only one thing. Comey is definitely a Republican. No, not because he is doing something that might be politically detrimental to Hillary’s run, but because only a certain type of Republican could display such world shattering stupidity and incompetence. Incompetent in that he already conducted a full blown investigation that took months and cost millions, which delved into everything possible before announcing that much as he’d like to, he could find nothing with which to indict Hillary and stupid in not realizing that in reopening the investigation days before the election he looks like a GOP stooge. How dumb is this guy and why doesn’t Obama fire him for stupidity and for trying to influence the election?

Meanwhile, the GOP, like any group of losers, seeing their hopes disappearing down the drain, have unanimously jumped on this FBI blunder with a vengeance. Trump has gone bananas with joy, trumpeting his illogically changing opinions to the sky. He’s wrong as usual but once again he points up the fact of just what kind of president he will be, jumping at any straw, drawing incomplete conclusions, acting like a child offered a candy bar. His reaction is that of a completely lightweight loser. Once again he is proving what a disaster he would be as president.

The big question being asked by all the media is why did Comey do this now and why did he do it, seemingly without sufficient evidence in hand to make an actual accusation? The Democrats are busy pointing out that Comey is a Republican and that he absolutely did this, with this timing, to affect the election. The Republicans, who had been screaming for his scalp but who now want to have his babies, will swear to the necessity of this information hitting the front pages right now. But the problem is, there’s really nothing but innuendo in anything that Comey has said so far. What he should have done, because he had to do something, was move ahead at lightening speed with a full scale race to get all the emails read and analyzed before the end of the weekend and then, when he had some idea whether in fact he had some kind of case or just hot air, make the decision of whether to make the move he did, or ignore what he didn’t have.

Whether he intended to or not, Comey, by his blundering move, has affected this election, possibly in a huge way. If he turns out affecting the seemingly inevitable Democratic march to victory and it turns out that he had nothing, losing his job should be the best thing that happens to him. The problem here is that even if he has something and it turns out to be more of what he had before, he still has, by his own previous admission, nothing!