Angry Hillary and her advice for Joe B.

Hillary Clinton urges Biden not to concede in close election

"Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out and, eventually, I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side," Clinton said in an interview with Showtime's "The Circus."

Clinton, who won almost three million more votes than Trump overall in 2016 but lost to him in the state-by-state electoral college count, suggested that the Republicans are hoping to get the result they want through in-person voting on the day -- and not necessarily wait for any delayed mail-in ballots to be counted.

Her comments follow warnings from both sides that the result of the election may not be known on the evening of November 3.

Republicans "have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting," she said.

"They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college on election day," Clinton said.

She called for Democrats to mount a "massive legal operation."

"We have to have our own teams of people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are going to put outside polling places," she said.

Republicans have reacted by saying the Dems are undermining an eventual Trump win in advance and will reject a Trump win as crooked.

They say the same about Dem complaints about the Post Office and Trump's refusal to give it money.

Not so much for Pete as against Bernie

How the Democrats handled Iowa.

The panic of leading talkers at Democratic media at the prospect of Bernie being the nominee.

The shrill insistence that he can't win disguising the desire to keep him and his agenda (not really socialist but really progressive) out of the White House, or anyway from gaining more traction in the Democratic Party.

Some You Tube commentators flatly characterize this as class war within the Democratic Party, with neolibs of the Clintonista variety, old and new, old and young, denouncing Bernie and his supporters as an ideological cult, a cult of personality, a cult of purity, loony lefties far more committed to taking over a party they despise than actually driving out Trump.

His Democratic enemies pretend pushing Bernie aside is all about beating Trump.

But are they just using the necessity of beating Trump as a smokescreen for class war?

Well, yes, of course there's that.

But for some of them, anyway, both concerns could be real.

Did Mayor Pete lie to kill a poll that would have embarrassed him?

Did he demand a recount to deny Bernie a clear win?

MSNBC more and more open to such skepticism about Bernie.

Super Bitch: Willing to see Trump win again rather than forego her revenge.

Axelrod and the Clintonistas of yesteryear share the attitude.

Amid Clinton attacks, Sanders tries to move past 2016

For the umpty umpth time, the voters chose Hillary. She has the mandate of the people.

The Electoral College chose Bozo.

He has their mandate.

The mandate of, what?, 538 low flying political noodles?

Odd, which mandate cuts ice, eh?

The most usual defense of the EC and its power to defy the preference of the actual voters is that it is thus empowered to save us from the people's choice of some dreadful demagogue, making president in his stead some at least harmless politician, if not some admirable statesman.

I guess we won't hear much of that defense, any more.

But another might be that the EC, like the equal representation of states in the senate, intentionally insulates our political branches and institutions from all always or usually being overwhelmed by the same popular passions at the same time.

If we did not have such braking devices, imagine how much more power horrors like Trump might obtain from "wave" elections dominated by his supporters.

Or how much power underlying popular phenomena like the existence of so many deplorables all supporting the same sort of politician or agenda might gain in a single election or sequence of federal elections if they were all equally or too close to equally responsive to the - hopefully transient - passions of deplorable voters like the Trumpist Republicans.

Maybe that's an argument for both the EC and unequal representation in the senate that potentially survives the counter-example of Trump?

Hillary's letter is hilarious!

'Don't be a dick, OK?' Hillary Clinton tweets parody of Trump Erdoğan letter

Hillary tweets a bogus letter from JFK to Khrushchev during the missile crisis.

Dear Premier Khrushchev, 

Don't be a dick, OK? 

Get your missiles out of Cuba. Everybody will say, ‘Yay, Khrushchev! You’re the best!’ But if you don’t everybody will be like ‘what an asshole’ and call your garbage country ‘The Soviet Bunion’. 

You’re really busting my nuts here.  

Give you a jingle later.  

Hugs,



John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

Tulsi vs Hillary

Like president Trump, Tulsi Gabbard is objectively pro-Russian and Putin's agent.

But unlike Trump, Ms. Gabbard has not yet comported herself in public in such manner as to lend overwhelming credence to the proposition that she is also subjectively pro-Russian and Putin's agent.

Interesting question which Hillary actually meant to assert.

Tulsi Gabbard on Hillary Clinton claims: "She knows she can't control me"

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) responded to Hillary Clinton's suggestion that she is Russia's "favorite" 2020 candidate, by saying Clinton was attempting to "undermine" her campaign, and that she "knows she can't control me," reports CBS.

Not a denial and not a defense.

Hillary Clinton implies Tulsi Gabbard is "the favorite of the Russians" in 2020

"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians."

The truth is Hillary did not name her at all.

But everybody knew whom she meant, since she was neither the only nor the first to point out the problem.

Tulsi Gabbard on the issues, in under 500 words

No! No! No!

Please, God, never again!

Hillary Clinton To Stump For Andrew Gillum In Florida Governor’s Race

It will never be her turn.

From GW on down to local pols, they all lied to everybody

They said it was safe.

They were very emphatic about it.

They lied through their teeth from the first day, and only fools did not know they were lying.

Senate intelligence committee report on Russian interference below the fold, page 20

They told the truth, but buried it.

They document the extent of the interference and its clear aim to help Trump and hurt Hillary.

This is how they managed to do both.

Hill chimes in

H. Clinton: Separating families at border a 'moral crisis'

Hmm.

But it wasn't when GW did it?

Or when O did it?

Huh.

The IG report

slams Comey for his interference with the election but endorses the decision not to prosecute Hillary and denies any political bias in the Hillary email server business.

Update 06152018.

On Andrea Mitchell today a panelist explained the FBI and Justice Department during the election were desperately afraid of possible ire of Republicans at anything that they might do that could be perceived as reflecting pro-Clinton bias.

Hence Comey's decision not to release information to America about the extent and nature of Russian meddling in the election, even without mentioning its evident bias toward supporting Trump and hurting Hillary.

But there was no such worry in the Justice Department or the FBI about provoking the ire of Democrats by appearing to do things hurting Hillary and helping Bozo.

Hence Comey's "October surprise" late add-on bullshit about Hillary's email use still being an open question.

Poor pursued Hillary

‘They Were Never Going to Let Me Be President’

Speaking of the Electoral College, no doubt, since she won the majority of voters by some three to five millions.

Robby Mook, the drained and deflated campaign manager, told his boss she was going to lose. 

She didn’t seem all that surprised.

“I knew it. I knew this would happen to me,” she said, now within a couple of inches of Mr. Mook’s ashen face. 

“They were never going to let me be president.”

But nope.

I figured that if anyone knew whom Mrs. Clinton was referring to with that insidious “they” that, like some invisible army of adversaries (real and imagined), wielded its collective power and caused her to lose the most winnable presidential election in modern history, it was me.

They were the vast-right wing conspiracy. 

They were the patriarchy that could never let an ambitious former first lady finally shatter “that highest, hardest glass ceiling.” 

They were the people of Wisconsin and James Comey. 

They were white suburban women who would rather vote for a man who bragged about sexual assault than a woman who seemed an affront to who they were.

And yes, they were political reporters (“big egos and no brains,” she called us) hounding her about her emails and transfixed by the spectacle of the first reality TV show candidate.

. . . .

I’ve started to see the “they” she spoke about on election night differently.

They were Facebook algorithms and data breaches. 

They were Fake News drummed up by Vladimir Putin’s digital army. 

They were shadowy hackers who stole her campaign chairman’s emails hoping to weaken our democracy with Mr. Podesta’s risotto recipe. 

And they were The Times and me and all the other journalists who covered those stolen emails.

Of course, these outside forces wouldn’t have mattered or weighed so heavily on me, on the country, had Hillary Clinton, her campaign and her longtime aides — the same box of broken toys who’d enabled all of her worst instincts since the 1990s — not let the election get so close in the first place. 

The Russians, after all, didn’t hack into her calendar and delete the Wisconsin rallies.

Still saying that, is she?

Hillary in India blamed her loss in part on women voting as the men in their lives tell them to.

She has done that in the past, too.

Does not exactly shed a good light on women's independence or leadership qualities when dealing with men who may oppose them.

And, in particular, not on hers.

Particularly when you recall her complaints about Trump trying to intimidate her, and how she felt about that in the moment, on stage during at least one of the debates.

George Bush, the much smaller man, merely laughed at Al Gore when he gave it a try.

The latest attacks on Hillary

Hillary Clinton Chose to Shield a Top Adviser Accused of Harassment in 2008

 A senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate was kept on the campaign at Mrs. Clinton’s request, according to four people familiar with what took place.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. 

But Mrs. Clinton did not. 

Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.

Mr. Strider, who was Mrs. Clinton’s faith adviser, was a founder of the American Values Network and sent the candidate scripture readings every morning for months during the campaign, was hired five years later to lead an independent group that supported Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 candidacy, Correct the Record, which was created by a close Clinton ally, David Brock.

Did she read them?

Is she truly a liberal Christian, the sort of person who reads scripture as a daily devotion but insists on the legality and even social acceptability of abortion and all forms of what Christian scripture defines as sexual outlawry hated by God but pedophilia?

He was fired after several months for workplace issues, including allegations that he harassed a young female aide, according to three people close to Correct the Record’s management.

Mr. Strider did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Those familiar with the accounts said that, over the years, a number of advisers urged Mrs. Clinton to sever ties with Mr. Strider, and people familiar with what took place did not want to see Mrs. Clinton blamed for the misconduct of men she was close to.

. . . .

The complaint against Mr. Strider was made by a 30-year-old woman who shared an office with him. 

She told a campaign official that Mr. Strider had rubbed her shoulders inappropriately, kissed her on the forehead and sent her a string of suggestive emails, including at least one during the night, according to three former campaign officials familiar with what took place.

The complaint was taken to Ms. Doyle, the campaign manager, who approached Mrs. Clinton and urged that Mr. Strider, who was married at the time, be fired, according to the officials familiar with what took place. 

Mrs. Clinton said she did not want to, and instead he remained on her staff.

Ms. Doyle was fired shortly after that in a staff shake-up in response to Mrs. Clinton’s third-place finish in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. 

And Mr. Strider never attended the mandated counseling, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The incident raises an interesting question.

It's pretty clear this guy was and likely remains an incorrigible horn-dog whose offense is that of constantly pestering women for sex, rather like Hillary's frat-boy husband.

And it appears his "inappropriate touching" went no further than putting unwanted hands on shoulders.

It seems right that no single incident of that sort deserves firing, but it's not about a single incident, is it?

It's about a chronic behavior that shows and has shown no sign of abating.

And what does that do to the work atmosphere for all the women of the workplace?

And everybody else, really?

That is not an acceptable pollution of the workplace.

Why Did Hillary Clinton Let This Happen?

Mrs. Clinton has been inhibited in addressing the issue of sexual harassment, during her most recent campaign and afterward, both because of her husband’s behavior and her own response to the accusations against him. 

As a betrayed wife, those close to her said she believed his denials and thought his accusers were lying for political purposes. 

His campaign hired investigators to discredit the women.

. . . .

In the end, as with so much about Mrs. Clinton, it depends whether you see her as somehow emblematic of women or this particular woman, marked and marred by her own history. 

“We can see looking in her biography how she may have developed this blind spot,” Professor Saguy said. 

“It was maybe a coping mechanism in her own life, maybe to get up in the morning.”

A necessary recollection

Once in a while, it is good to recall that the people choose Hillary by a margin of some three million votes but the Electors, whose only defensible constitutional job is to save us from demagogues, ignored the people's choice and made Donald Trump our president.

Imagine that.

Biden available for 2020

He's no kid, and the younger Dems are already trying to shove his generation into the ditch.

Besides, he's not really much different from Hillary, without the baggage and the misandry.

Too old, too white, too male, too straight, and too Catholic (maybe) to interest the left-minded youth who accepted Bernie because he claimed to be a socialist and openly condemned capitalism, the Democrats, and the normal processes of our republican government.

Biden: Political climate Trump has created 'is eating at the fabric of this country'

The ratcheting up of rhetoric against Trump comes after Biden told Vanity Fair that he's leaving the door open for a 2020 presidential run.

"I haven't decided to run," he said. "But I've decided I'm not going to decide not to run. We'll see what happens."

There is no Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party

Bernie is not a Democrat, never was one until 2016, and became one only for long enough to muck up the 2016 primary season.

Phooey.

A rough weekend

Everyone is speculating about who will be arrested Monday, if not sooner.

And hiding behind their eyes is the worry, or in some cases the wish, that The Duce will start the week firing Mueller, issuing a slew of pardons, or both.

Meanwhile, GOP media are both attacking Mueller (remember what the Dems did to Ken Starr?) and furiously blasting out rage over the Uranium thing, denouncing the deal as a perfectly clear case of Hillary colluding with Russians against the US national security interests and getting away with it.

Interesting that Trey Gowdy, who spends a lot of time denouncing Mueller and the Russiagate investigation, is telling the right wing noise machine to lay off Meuller.

The Duce has been tweeting furiously with attacks on Hillary for Uranium One, Comey for a rigged exoneration of Hillary in connection with the emails, Dems for their connection with the infamous Steele dossier he says is all fake news, and so on.

WSJ editorial board calls for Mueller's resignation and accuses Clinton and DNC of collusion

Mueller's latest move has Trump's staunchest allies melting down on Twitter

White House press secretary Sanders even spins the news that the DNC partially financed the Russiagate dossier as Hillary colluding with the Russians to influence the election against Trump.

“The evidence Clinton campaign, DNC & Russia colluded to influence the election is indisputable,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted Saturday morning, with a link to an article from The Federalist website detailing how Democrats paid for the Steele dossier on Russia.

Wow, that's some spin.

They paid Fusion, an oppo research company for which Steele, a former Brit agent, worked, and previously paid by a GOP donor to dig up info about Trump or his campaign, to look into their ties with the Russians and we are to see that as Hillary colluding with the Russians against Trump.

Wow.

Outside surrogates pushed the same line. 

“The speculation is so insane right now,” former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski told Fox News on Saturday. “What we should be focusing on are the continued lies of the Clinton administration.” 

It was not clear what “Clinton administration” he was referring to.

Sebastian Gorka, a former White House official who now runs a pro-Trump super PAC, said in an interview: “It’s very peculiar that just as we’re finding out about Hillary’s responsibility with the dodgy dossier, now’s the time that we can expect some action out of the special prosecutor’s office. It’s far too suspicious.”

While you're at it, take a quick look at this glimpse of Roger Stone.

Well, well. Consider the source.

This will certainly undermine the credibility of allegations of significant collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

The infamous Trump/Russia dossier was funded in part by Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer

It was Clinton oppo research on Trump.

It’s long been known that research that went into the “Steele dossier” — an infamous document filled with lurid allegations about Donald Trump’s links to Russia that eventually drew FBI interest — was funded by Trump’s political enemies, including some Democrats.

But now, thanks to a new report from the Washington Post’s Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett, and Rosalind Helderman, we’ve learned just who those Democrats were: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC. (Politico soon confirmed the report.)

Per the Post, in April 2016, lawyer Marc Elias, working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, started paying the opposition research company Fusion GPS to look into Trump’s ties to Russia. 

Former British spy Christopher Steele did this work for Fusion, and authored what became known as the Steele dossier, which contained salacious (and uncorroborated) political financial, and sexual allegations about Trump and his top associates.

Before that point, Fusion GPS had reportedly already done research into Trump, on behalf of a Republican client. 

But we don’t yet know who that Republican client is.

But Josh Marshall thinks it shouldn't be seen as undermining suspicions of Trump, at all.

[T]here’s a big effort now to present this as somehow being a scandal in itself, or discrediting Steele’s sleuthing. 

That is ridiculous. 

Is it really a scandal that Democrats helped fund research into Donald Trump’s illicit ties to Russia after Republicans donors decided they didn’t care anymore?

Not really.

And he still thinks Trump is correctly viewed as the Siberian Candidate, as Vlad's man in The White House.

Donald Trump and his campaign knowingly accepted assistance from a foreign adversary power. 

There’s good reason to believe, though as yet no hard proof, that they agreed to help Russia in exchange for assistance subverting the 2016 campaign. 

The President is still actively covering up for the Russian effort, as of this week.

Thing is, accepting aid from foreign sources, even foreign governments, with which one is in genuine sympathy is not corrupt, though for all I know it may be illegal.

And an American politician can thus be in sympathy while honestly serving what he thinks are America's own best interests.

Consider the arguments alleging advantage to America offered in support of our alliances with other powers, or of our participation in every war we've ever been in.

As for the whole America First thing and it's less than bellicose attitude toward Russia, the arguments for that have been made for many years by Pat Buchanan, arguments resting on appeals to our own national interests.

Whatever you may think of those arguments, no one has ever claimed Buchanan is or was a mere paid propagandist out to advance Russian interests against America's, or even in indifference to America's, rather than an honest pundit working for what he believed and believes to be America's good.

And absent proof to the contrary it's entirely possible there was no "exchange" in any corrupt or subversive sense, if Trump welcomed Russian campaign help, if too he all along wanted to dial back Cold War II, anyway.

And that attitude would, quite by itself, explain Putin's desire to help Trump and hurt Hillary, the aggressive NATO expander and strong partisan of Cold War II, with or without Trump's - or his campaign's - knowledge or cooperation.

But Josh Marshall thinks the Steele dossier and public todo about Russiagate saved America, he says, presumably hyperbolically and because he liked NATO expansion, favoring an aggressive stance toward Russia.

Or maybe he wants us to think, with only his assertion to rely on, that he personally and sincerely thinks Trump's plans included doing or allowing such decisive damage to America that stopping them cold literally amounted to saving our country.

In which case I say the fraud is palpable.

He provides nothing to support the idea Trump intended any changes harmful to our interests at all, much less so harmful as that.

And he provides no hint at anything that justifies viewing Trump's relations with Russia as corrupt.

But all the same he is openly charging Trump with selling out his country for a shot at The White House, flat out betraying his country's national security interests in return for clandestine campaign assistance, like some Cold War American passing defense secrets to the KGB in return for money.

Aldrich Ames, for instance.

Whether the execs at top of the Clinton campaign knew about it, Marc Elias may have helped save his country by making the decision to fund this critical research. 

Thank you, Marc Elias! 

I know that sounds a bit hyperbolic but it’s really not. 

Here’s why.

Remember, the Trump plan was to hit the ground running in January with a series of policy pay offs to Russia. 

It was the mounting FBI investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, helped along significantly by information Steele uncovered, that got into the spokes of the Trump effort during the transition and hobbled the efforts to make the pay off. 

It’s what led to the rapid and chaotic series of events that forced the firing of Mike Flynn, the revelations about clandestine communications between Trump associates and the Russian Ambassador and finally to Trump’s decision to fire James Comey.

The Trump team wanted to deliver for Russia right out of the gate in January, a quick series of accommodations and a ‘grand bargain’ with Vladimir Putin. 

It was the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia that got in the way and mainly prevented it. 

It’s clear that Steele’s research played a major role in that. 

Remember, the FBI found it so critical it agreed to continue funding Steele’s research. 

Without Marc Elias’s decision, that research may never have been conducted. 

The country owes him a debt of gratitude.

Hillary's weak sisterhood theory: It was those awful white men who made those white women vote for Trump

Clinton's story, to which all the right-thinking do now and will in future nod until they realize what it actually means, is a revealing fantasy in its view of the astonishing psychic hold all those big strong men have on all those little weak women.

Why Hillary Clinton was right about white women – and their husbands

Many had expected Clinton to rally women, the same way Barack Obama rallied black voters in 2008 – and if she had, she would have handily trumped Donald Trump. 

But while Obama won 95% of the black vote, Clinton won just 54% of women – a percentage point less than her male predecessor atop the Democratic ticket. 

Among white women in particular, she fared even worse: a slim majority voted for Trump.

Last week, Clinton, who has had a lifetime to contemplate the women’s vote, copped to having a theory.

“[Women] will be under tremendous pressure – and I’m talking principally about white women. They will be under tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for ‘the girl’,” she said in an interview as part of a tour promoting her new memoir of the 2016 campaign.

And all those white husbands, fathers, boyfriends, and male employers, so aggressively dominant you would think she must be talking about Saudi Arabia, followed those white women right into the voting booths to make damn sure they did the right thing, too.

Does this mean all those big, bossy men who dominate politics worldwide would have completely cowed stubby little Hillary?

If that's what she truly sees as typical in male-female power relations, I mean.

Remember her story of how she felt about Trump stalking her on the debate stage, how she wanted to respond with an angry protest and personal insult but did not?

And did she not dare?

GW just laughed at Al Gore when he tried the same tactic.

Remember that old film of some early male competitor for office coming across the stage to her podium and lecturing her?

She froze like a deer in the headlights.