Category: POLITICS

President Obama has been firm with concept that America’s heavy footprint in the Middle East is partially responsible for stoking the intense violence of the region and that our withdrawal will reduce the nidus for the conflict.  He has been adament that the descriptiion of the violence as a premeditated goal of a radicalized Islam is our contribution to the seeds of that violence, and has no place in American thinking.  His view has led to the conceptualization of the Major Hassan as “workplace violence”, the Tsarnaev Boston bombing as “lone wolf” actions, and the recent Chattanooga recruiting station attack as a problem of “mental illness”.

Specific to the Chattanooga attack of July 16th, 2015, five unarmed military personnel were murdered by a Palestinian American named Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez, whose parents left the middle east in 1996, and accepted American citizenship, but never left their fundamental Islamist beliefs behind.   Abdulazeez, pummeled by a life of drug abuse, poor personal discipline costing him stable employment, and consumed by the internal rage of arab youth felt denied their position as the superior race, attained an AK 47 automatic assault rifle and unloaded 100 rounds into people who could not defend themselves, until he was  put down by police fire.

On August 15th, 2015, the military finally secured a combined service for the five servicemen and their families, a month past the point where the rest of the country has already put the event behind them and moved on to other things.  In a country anxious to avert its eyes to the growing threat of radicalized Islam, assisted by the Averter in Chief, the individual loss of soldiers does not take hold.  After all, the country lives through assaults every week in its major cities as part of routine urban violence and does nothing but salute the occasional thug that determined to strike back against the police.  The shared sacrifice idealization of a soldier defending their country no longer secures an emotional response among a population where the great majority of the population no longer serves, or knows someone who has.

The Vice President of this country is thankfully different, and eloquently expressed what is rarely expressed anymore by those in power.  Vice President Biden has reason to connect with loss of loved ones; in 1972 he lost his daughter and wife in a car accident in which his two sons, Beau and Hunter were seriously injured.  This summer he lost his son Beau, Delaware’s attorney general, to brain cancer.  Beau, the Biden hope for the future, a major in the Army Reserve who served in Iraq, and assumed next governor of Delaware, was taken from the Vice President with a vicious cancer  that has clearly and deeply affected the Vice President’s views on life, sacrifice, and loss.  There is likely no loss as personal as a child to a parent, and places Biden in direct sympathy with those military families who must face their overwhelming loss in silence from a country that prefers not to know.

Vice Presidents do funerals, and perform eulogies.  But there was something very special about the eulogy Vice President Biden gave yesterday.  Something so heartfelt and direct, only someone who has lost, could understand.  With his eulogy, Biden showed great clarity in what it means to serve and defend the ramparts, what it means to sacrifice, and what it means to be an American.  Sometimes the most unpredictable events elevate a person and make them worthy of our attention.  In an election season where the presumptive republican front runner clowns his way through policy discussion, and the presumptive democratic front runner has shown herself to be laden with corruption and indiscipline, Vice President Biden may have just set himself apart, and shown the world that there is still a place for someone who gets it.

Watch the speech in its entirety, and you will get it, too.

On Thursday evening, August 6th,2015, an estimated 24 million Americans tuned in to watch the national broadcast of a debate of republican presidential aspirants. With such an audience, the standard was set for the highest rated non sports related telecast in cable network history.  I’m fairly confident this huge audience didn’t tune in to see Rand Paul articulate libertarianism, judge what Megyn Kelly was wearing, or query whether Jeb Bush would respond to the name Jeb Bush.  No, the great majority tuned in, I believe, to be potential witnesses to a real time train wreck.  On June 16th, the Donald Trump train left the station with his announcement that he was running for the Presidency, and has been teetering on the rails ever since.  A nation’s audience reveled in the chance he just might in front of everybody swerve completely off the rails and self destruct.

Donald Trump is the triumphant example of the progressive superficial vacuousness that has overcome the nation’s political discourse.  The Trump agenda for the country is essentially bluster.  Were it not for bluster, he would have no program at all.  But to Trump, what ails the country is not the lack of formative ideas to solve the nation’s challenges, it is the lack of politicians  being willing to lay it on the line, and tell it like it is.  Or at least tell it as Trump think it is to be told.   He sees the world not in layers of complex historical trends, intellectual assessments, and strategic insights, only as groups of winners and losers.  If you win you are “wonderful”.  If you fail, you are “terrible” and a “loser”.  In 1987, Donald Trump burst upon the national consciousness authoring a best seller called “Art of the Deal”, in which he relayed his recipe for success.  Among its breakthrough concepts, Think Big and Get the Word Out.  As Trump tells it, ” I like to think big. If you going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.”  The Donald starred in his own television show in which he identified “losers” and “fired” them.  He states he would bringing this cutting edge management style to the executive branch of the nation’s government.

Is it feasible that 25% of the nation’s voting public, as currently reflected in the polls, sees Trump’s  political core thought as innovative and worthy of the nation’s highest office?  I suspect not, but there has been a progressive tendency to look for leaders that elicit emotional reaction, rather than measured thought.  Its seen in the tendency to want to look to elect the “first” of something – the “first African American”, the “first Woman”, the “first Other”.   Leaders that stoke victimization seem more caring about individual problems and concerns, rather than promoting challenging processes that might actually solve them.  Politicians also seek to identify the “villains” – the “Rich”, the “Gun Owner”, or the “Christian zealot”.  Trump nestles into the psyche of the average voter that is not entirely willing to investigate why problems exist, but fairly certain they are being at least impersonally screwed by the establishment.  Since Trump sees himself as never being duped, he aligns himself with the voters, who see him as protecting them against unseen forces.

As he is the deliverer of emotional retorts, Trump is under no pressure to secure is the logic or the consistency of his statements.  He has been able to make outrageous and contradictory statements,  because to him, the outrage is not his lack of facts, it is everyone else’s lack of outrage.  As Kevin Williamson in National Review articulates:

Asked to provide evidence for his daft conspiracy theory that our illegal-immigration crisis is a result of the Mexican government’s intentionally flooding the United States with platoons of rapists, Trump’s answer was, essentially, “I heard it from a guy.” Challenged on his support for a Canadian-style single-payer health-care system, Trump described the system of his dreams in one word: “better.” As though nobody had ever thought: “What we need is better policies instead of worse policies.” Trump’s mind is so full of Trump that there isn’t any room for ideas, or even basic knowledge.

Logic like that used to be recognized in American politics as a form of satire.  Pat Paulson, a sketch comedian on the Smothers Brothers television show ran for the Presidency in 1968 and five times thereafter on the Straight Talking American Government(STAG) party

platform, with the healthy comedic cynicism of an observer of body politics’ inherent hypocrisies.  Paulsen, freely willing to be a flip  flopper and double talker regarding  his policy statements, when caught in his incoherence, always responded with the catch phrase “picky, picky, picky!”  His presidential campaign slogan was “I upped my standards, now, up yours!”  Paulsen always secured a certain protest vote, but everybody knew he was in on the joke.

 

In 1992, H Ross Perot, a Texas businessman with a particular hatred for the sitting President George Herbert Walker Bush, set himself as a Trumpian candidate,  and his form of satire was certainly less funny and somewhat more ominous in its success.  He was quoted as saying obtuse policy statements such as, “ If someone as blessed as I am not willing to clean out the barn, who will?”  and  “If you can’t stand a little sacrifice and you can’t  stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we’re never going to straighten this country out.”  Whatever potential policies Perot felt such remarks would evolve into, he never let on, but he translated it into 19% of the national vote in 1992, and although he didn’t win a single state’s electoral vote, Perot managed to take down a sitting President and give us Bill Clinton.

 

Perot’s success set the stage for the current “businessman savior” Trump, who feels his supposed dominance  in the business world would translate into the more arcane and compromise filled world of politics.  Of course such talents never need to show their skill level running for any lower office – the Chief Executive office of the country is fundamentally just big enough for their egos.

The 2016 republican field was felt to be one of the most talented in recent history, with multiple vetted and articulate candidates with willingness to confront one of the more challenging political environments in years.  Into this maelstrom comes the distortion of Trump, who looks to steal the energy and attention of the moment to pump his own ego and potentially upset the applecart.  Trump, the runaway train, threatens to take his circus “Independent” and achieve the same notoriety that propelled Perot, and likely bring another Clinton into the office.  It would suit Trump fine as he believes the office holders are meant to be “managed” for favors, and their policies consumer items for purchase.  It certainly wouldn’t phase him as to which party would be in power, as power comes from the Art of the Deal.   Is the country so gone that it can no longer participate in a real battle of ideas and help mold its destiny?  My gut sense is that the country has had its flirtation with the superficial (see current administration) and will trade it for some serious adults, not the theater of the absurd.  If so, Trump’s train will soon be passenger-less, and its conductor once again reduced to running beauty pageants, wrestling events, and roulette wheels.  I suspect after a period of time in the klieg lights, that will suit the conductor of the crazy train just fine.

In the second century BC, the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang,  realized that in order to preserve his status and his great achievements, constant vigilance would be required, even after he was gone from this mortal coil.  When you are in it for the long haul, one can’t allow the ramparts to go unguarded, or the miscreants will inevitably look to erode your position.  Greatness, and great ideas, are unlikely to be gotten easily, and one must be a ferocious warrior for their defense.  So Emperor Qin Shi Huang made sure no one would threaten his position, even in the afterlife.  He assembled in his capital city of Xi’an an army of over 8000 warriors, led by generals, and armed to the teeth, accompanied by a full cavalry of chariots and horses.  The army was there to eternally defend his position, his power, and his greatness.  If some usurper wanted to war with his immortality, it was war they would get.

Well, its long past time we who man the Ramparts of Civilization assembled some warriors.  If you are a consistent reader of this blog, you are likely aware of what has been the gathering storm over the last twenty years, and the storm has descended upon us in full fury, and become a war for the future.  It shouldn’t have caught us unawares, but admittedly, we are ill prepared, as we felt our defenses were essentially insurmountable and inviolate. We were wrong, and the barbarians are at the gates.

Since the 1960s, a generation of attacks on the formidable fortress of liberties and rule of law that is the Constitution of the United States has progressively eroded its foundations.  What once seemed eternal and impenetrable, has now found itself with massive holes in its edifice and its very future is in peril.  If you think that civilization should be ruled by deliberative law and not by decree and the whims of the elites, you better pay some damn close attention.

The Supreme Court of the United States, considered since the founding, the apolitical arbiter of the law based on constitutionality and precedence, has joined the ranks of the barbarians.  In three major decisions this week, the court found that a law passed by the legislative body is defined by its intent and not its specific meaning, that democratic processes do not move fast enough whenever the state has determined that a “fundamental” right exists even when it was not apparent it existed before, and that the state could determine the makeup of communities based on its vision of fairness. The thought of the framers that the third branch stood to thwart, to check, the other two branches deviation from the constitution, was pounded to sand.

The specific”laws” and “rights” upheld were not of issue.  What was of issue was the checks and balances system that made this particular democracy a citadel for freedom, individual rights, and limited government.  The Constitution held that if the wording of a law or its expression was unconstitutional, the law was to be rescinded, and the deliberative process to be again undertaken to secure a constitutional law.  By policing the law’s specifics, the rights of individuals to vote for representatives who would uphold their individual rights and hold them accountable by the laws they developed would be secure.  According to the Supreme Court, a law is now only established by its intent, and its specifics can be adjusted in any way the state determines efficacious.  How does one make sure one is in compliance with such metastasizing  laws? Who can now determine whether any of the expressed rights of the Constitution are secure, or they all exposed to the  interpretation of the currents and personalities of the current day?  Justice Scalia – the last of the Mohicans – expressed better than any in his dissent the fundamental principles that have been sacrificed to the altar of “fairness”:

Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds—minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly—could not.

Each of the decisions should be read in their entirety. The war is being fought now on every front.  The government of the founders, the government that was declared as emanating from We the People, is under full assault.  It is a government that can rule you by regulatory decree.  It can determine whether your exercise of religion will be infringed by those that would have you submit to their versions of correct behavior, regardless of how it  humiliates or degrades your view. It can force you to pay for the sloth of others, and can force you to ignore their misfortune.  It can drive your education and your facts. It can declare science settled, and victories defeat. It’s your father, your mother, your cradle, and your grave.

The war has been fought for some time, and those that would make the founders vision unrecognizable have always been sensitive to your weakness in naively believing these fundamental beliefs were important to all.  When you go to that voting booth, and it is at the voting booth that the armies of change are fundamentally engaged, you better stop voting Republican or Democrat, as they are two birds of a feather.  It is time you seek those who are warriors for the founders principles, and those who are barbarians of change.  Find such warriors, and put your money, and your vote, where your future might have just a breath of a chance.  If you don’t, you will find our freedoms forever buried, like the terra cotta warriors of Xi’an, a museum exhibit to a past greatness long gone and buried.

 

One has to feel a little sorry for President Obama.  Here he is, trying his best to achieve a socialist utopia in the United States and try as he might to withdraw from the rest of the world – it keeps pulling him back in.

If one can recall 2009-2010, the President put in place the wheels for an eventual total withdrawal of American influence in the Middle East to allow the region to heal itself without further suffering caused by the obviously overbearing and malign American presence. Assuming a stable Iraq, he determined to fully withdraw from the Status of Forces Agreement that kept American boots on the ground.  He announced the timing of American withdrawal from Afghanistan at the same time he announced a temporary surge of troops, thereby laying the ground work to force the Afghan government to parlay with the opposition Taliban.  Most profoundly, when faced with an Iranian government teetering on the edge of collapse under the pressure of the millions of Iranian citizens pushing for change in the Green Revolution, he determined to stay disengaged with events so that he could get in the good graces with the mullahs and devise a long term agreement of cooperation that would “open” Iran to the rest of the world. Then there was that “red line” in Syria that wasn’t.  And the Libyan over throw of Qaddafi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood election  that was supposed to be part of the “Arab Spring”.

Okay, the Middle East thing has been pretty much a disaster, but at least the President could rely on smart diplomacy and a prosperous and stable Europe to achieve lasting stability after an appropriate reset with Russia.  Despite the tensions of the cold war and the never ending hostility of the various hateful tribes of the Balkan peninsula, Europe had managed to go 70 some years without armed conflict, building itself into the democratic statist and socialist utopia Obama could only dream about for America, and securing an economic and diplomatic weight that could balance off more of that infamous overbearing and malign American influence, this time on the European continent.

Don’t look now, Mr. President, but a progressively unstable Europe may not have your back after all.

For a continent that has not known tank and artillery fighting since World War II, tank and artillery fighting have come to Europe. President Putin of Russia, sensing hesitation and weakness  like a hawk senses a wounded field mouse, followed up his blatant territory grab of the Crimea from Ukraine with further land grabs in eastern Ukraine under the proxy of the self declared Donetsk People’s Republic.  For some reason, the government of Ukraine took personally Putin’s attempt to swallow a third of sovereign Ukrainian territory and has fought back.  For the first time since World War II, there is conflict in Europe that has already caused the deaths of thousands.  Spiegel Online reports the absurdities of the new European border at Donetsk, and the progressively desperate situation for those caught on the wrong side of the line. The attitudes on both sides are hardening as the bodies pile up. European bodies.  Putin’s escapades have not been limited to Ukraine.  Similar land grab experiments following the model that a majority Russian speaking population in a portion of a sovereign country is reason enough to bring Russian military forces to assist in “Russianizing” – a pattern repeated in both Georgia and Moldova.  Now the New York Times reports that for the first time since the cold war the US is pre-positioning heavy weaponry in eastern Europe.  This time it is to support erstwhile NATO allies in the Baltics, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, who fear Putin is about to “Russianize” parts of their territory laden with heavily Russian speaking minorities. The possibilities for dangerous and untoward events are numerous.

Additionally, the Germans are beginning  to express how “tired” they are for what seems like the twentieth time, the never ending requirements to underwrite countries in the European Union that can not pay their way as part of the Euro economy. Greece, 17% of whose GDP goes to pensions, is unwilling to undertake the severe austerity required to maintain the Euro against such social compacts, and instead asks for more German economic support and debt they can not pay back.  To the Greeks, the Germans owe it to them.  The Germans have been willing to suppress their natural position as Europe’s biggest continental power, given their history, but they are not about to give in to the Greeks forever.  A “Greexit” is in the cards, i.e., Greece leaving the Euro, and the domino effect on other Euro countries in similar straights to Greece, could see the Euro implode.  Germany would left holding the economic detritus, and their reactions could bring some long suppressed European tensions back from long forgotten to oh so hotten.

War with thousands of dead Europeans. Russian and American/NATO tanks facing each other.  Europe in economic crisis.  Germany once again having to look out for its own interests.  And a dollop of islamic radical infestation from a collapsing Libya to stir the pot. The President has a transformation on his hands that has the potential to supersede all his other transformations.  The mother of all transformations, as it were.  Taking the overbearing and malign American influence out of the world may not have been all it was cracked up to be.

Mr. Obama announced on the night of his epical election in 2008 to the presidency of the United States that he felt he was called to fundamentally transform the United States of America.  It wasn’t perhaps noticed by that remark that he intended to do the same to the world.

Well now, everybody’s listening.

Six years of Obama foreign policy and the world has definitely been transformed. Libya and Syria have descended into total anarchy. Russia, its relations with the United States “reset”,  forcibly  annexed 10,400 square miles of its neighboring country the Ukraine in taking Crimea and paid no price. Iraq is in the throws of an invasion of the Islamic caliphate and the United States supports Iranian ground troops in the country to support the Shia dominated government.  The United States works to improve relations with the communist mafia of Cuba and thumbs its nose at its closest ally, Canada, who desires to share its oil bounty with the Unites States in the largest job project in years, the Keystone pipeline.  And in the zenith of transformations, the United States is seeking to assure the islamic revolutionists of Iran a lifting of sanctions accompanying a long term path to nuclear weaponry, bypass the United States Congress in achieving this goal, and looking to break its long treasured shared vision with Israel and allow the U.N. to instead sanction Israel.  And he’s just getting started.

Those who would consider this to be a man who, based on results, hasn’t a clue as to what he is doing, are under a false assumption.  President Obama knows very well what he is doing.  He is transforming the world.  From his standpoint the world was in desperate need of transformation.  To Mr. Obama, and the ‘intellectual’ apologists of the far left, history has been for far too long unfairly tilted to the domination of the western world.  The western ideals of individual initiative, technological advantage, exploitation of natural resources and suppression of the collective impulses of less developed nations has led to an unnatural superiority.  The outward projection of this western advantage has been to subjugate, colonize, and otherwise globalize the natural regional advantages of various peoples to their detriment. This has led to unnatural circumstances.  The hegemony of the United States in policing the world. The presence of Euro-Judean government in the home of the arab nation, propped up there by Western force.  The inability of African and other third world nations to get past their post colonial births.  All influenced by the casual consumer decadent culture of the Anglo-European perception of cultural superiority.

The ultimate test for the president’s re-working of the world is the need to crack the code of the Middle East and in particular, the forty year need for the United States to be the policeman in order to prop up Israel, suppress Iran, and cap terrorist impulses.  The Unified Field Theory connects Israel and Iran inextricably.  Iran, the primary exporter and underwriter of terrorism can potentially be mollified if its natural regional hegemony is recognized for the 2500 year history it has been the region’s dominant player.  By accepting Iran into a world leadership position, it would naturally look to prosper in other ways other than Armageddon theories, and would build its economy while reducing its role in instability through terrorism. The need for aggressive nuclear ambitions would be reduced by the eventual political neutering  of its abject foe Israel, eventually sublimated by the achievement of a porous border policy that has been so effective in changing the dynamic of the US.  The risk that Iran would not play nice would be reduced by the obvious capacities of the US, China, and Russia to maintain their own spheres of influence.  The Europeans, long past any inclinations of cultural identity and immersed in their own population contraction with the resultant consequences, would be more than willing to trade a difficult moral dilemma in Israel for a period of peace and stability.

And that’s what’s so irritating about the Cotton Letter from the United States Senate and the inconceivable outcome of the Israeli election in re-electing Benjamin Netanyahu.  The constant threat of having to compromise the grand vision is what is so irritating to this man.  After all, he intends to show the world why he was deserving of that Nobel Peace Prize.  In the end, when the world is back in its natural balance, the world is going to thank him. Wait and see…

 

 

 

“The rule of law in the U.S. is becoming the rule of lawyers.”
Niall Ferguson

 

In 1215, on a meadow field known as Runnymede outside the environs of present day London, England’s barons determined to secure once and for all the relationship of a ruler and his people. They secured King John’s signature to the document known as the Magna Carta, a charter that secured various freedoms, but more fundamentally, the principle that the rule of law was ultimately the final adjudicator of all citizens, whether they be king, or commoner. The concept of arbitrary rule was thus consigned to the dustbin of history, in all lands where free men were found.

800 years later, a copy of the Magna Carta lies in the National Archives next to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to remind one of how much is owed to this basic concept of freedom, and the common thread of principles that protect our liberties.

Unfortunately, the number of people who understand and want to protect the concept has dwindled to a pitiful few.

And one of them is definitely NOT the suggested potential anointed leader of the free world, one Hillary Rodham Clinton.  In a press conference yesterday the former Secretary of State of the United States and potential future President of the United States reminded all that if rule of law is your ideal, you might want to look for a leader elsewhere.  Not that this is new information.  The anointed one has been a rogue regarding the rule of law since she stepped onto the national stage some forty years ago as an assistant council on the Watergate committee , and flashed all the characteristics of her royal roguedum for the modern audience in case anyone forgot.

The press conference like all staged Clinton events was supposed to be a means by which Mrs. Clinton could bury any further conversations regarding her recently exposed use of a private e-mail service for both official and unofficial correspondence as Secretary of State, but her performance assured the issues wouldn’t go away anytime soon.  The brazen insistence that she had effectively addressed all concerns with her release of a portion of the email stream reminded us what this lawyer seems to be genetically missing – the idea that laws and the rules they engender are for everyone, and the rules for those who would govern particularly sensitivized to reduce the risk of corruption.  The Clintons, however, have always held the unique position that laws are arbitrarily interpretable, and that they were always the best positioned as to which ones they would follow and which ones they would skirt.  The former President Clinton at least brought his formidable personality and political skill to the game.  Poor Hillary has always been the edgier and more adversarially corrupt lawyer to the simplest of ethics, from the lying that led to her expulsion from the Watergate committee, to her role at the Rose Law firm regarding billing and the stonewalling on the subpoenaed records, the dark flailing about with the seamy Whitewater real estate affair as a victim of a far flung conspiracy, the cattle futures nonsensical explanation, and the hypocritical hatchet-job attacks on those that would dare fall under her husband’s lecherous influence all the while proclaiming her role as the Feminist in Chief.

The last 12 years have been a rehearsal for the job she has assumed hers, the Presidency.  She carpet bagged a residency in New York State to allow her to be handed the Moynihan Senate seat, ran for President in 2008 only to be swallowed by another more clever actor in Barrack Obama, then took the Foreign Policy role absent from her CV as Secretary of State under President Obama.  Having left the various messes behind for her successor John Kerry to deal with, she felt she had managed to position herself as inevitable for the top job.

The old Hillary problem however, her inability to do anything for a reason other than being self serving, simply could not be suppressed even when endowed with the most compliant and willing press.  The cracks were finally exposed with the tragedy of Benghazi and top came off with greedy need to make money the only way she has ever understood, having other people set her riches up.  The combination of incompetence and shady money deals needed a special capacity to control information and Mrs. Clinton found the perfect solution in likely becoming the first senior government executive to maintain all her interactions on a personal server despite her obvious role as a historical government figure. This ludicrous arrangement allowed her to erase any interactions she felt questionable or averse to the narrative of the most prepared public servant in history.  It made any conflicts of interest regarding her actions and the governments and people willing to give the Clintons millions through their foundation difficult if not impossible to trace,  All it would take would be for everyone to acquiesce to the idea that Mrs. Clinton could be trusted to protect the people’s business and separate the professional from the personal by her own rules of behavior.

And thus the press conference where she declared public records as the nation’s chief foreign policy representative to be the first in history held privately hostage, secure behind client attorney privilege.  She announced that no security breach on a private server was possible because it was physically guarded by the Secret Service, that 30,000 e-mails were destroyed as they related to her yoga schedule or daughter Chelsea’s weeding, or personally intimate interactions with her husband( who unfortunately denied having ever sent more than two e-mails in his life).   She declared there were no emails regarding her decisions leading to the Benghazi debacle and she could be trusted on that fact.  And she topped it all off, by saying as ‘ I am so forthcoming’, there would be no more access to her records or her server.  If you need to have your head explode, I recommend you watch the whole thing. The cliff-notes version however is here, and I suspect that will likely still be enough to have your head explode.

Now the watch begins.  I have always predicted that it was very likely Mrs. Clinton would not run for President because of the enormous baggage that would be exposed if she did so, and if she brazenly ran anyway, would show thee same fatal flaws that took her down in 2008.  That was before any of this mess.

In the end it always goes back to the rule of law.  You pay your taxes because its the law.  You don’t discriminate because it’s the law. You don’t steal because it’s the law. You don’t enter a country illegally because it’s the law. You don’t destroy evidence because it’s the law.  And it’s the law whether you’re the President the Secretary of State, or just another nondescript schlub.  And because the law deals with everyone on equal terms, it is as protective of your rights, as it is the most exalted leader of the land.

Are we going to throw that all away by electing a person that has never had a smidgen of understanding what I am talking about, or why that would even matter?  As Mrs. Clinton put so bluntly, “At this point, what difference would it make?”

All the difference in the world.